Post-Class 9/23

Today in class we had an interesting discussion about whether or not our culture is “hyperstimulated”. I think that it’s obvious that it is and it gets worse and worse as time goes by, because technology is just getting more advanced. When we were talking about cell phones today, I thought about how I really can’t live without my cell phone. At home, I live in an area that has no cell reception except for a couple places in my house and I will literally put my phone in a certain position so it gets service and keep it there and continually check it to see if I have any text messages or missed calls. This summer I went away to SC with my family and my phone broke on the car ride down, so I had to go without a phone for a week and honestly at first it was really difficult for me, but as time went on it was actually a a good thing that it broke. It enabled me to fully give all my attention to my family and it really made the trip a good experience. Even though I should probably try this more often, it’s very hard for me to be away from my cell phone because if I don’t have it I feel like I can’t communicate with anyone. I agree with the person in class today who said that if technology completely disappeared it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I think at first everyone would go into panic and there would be extreme levels of chaos, but after a while it would actually allow us to know each other on a different level, probably a better level. Technology may not always be a good thing; for example, with texting, you can’t tell someone’s emotions so it has the potential to cause arguments. It’s impossible to get away from this type of this “hyperstimulated” culture, because it truly is everywhere. It is fair to say that it would be extremely hard for a person to go a whole day without any contact with technology…I know I couldn’t do it.

Every time you observe any type of media (TV, newspaper, radio, magazines, etc) there are numerous amounts of ads that are trying to convince the consumer to buy the product. This ties into “the cult of the new”, which we talked about as well. We talked about the example of cell phones ads and how basically every time you turn on the TV you see a commercial for the ‘newest’ type of phone. The commercials makes consumers feel like if you don’t get the new phone then you are lacking the most up to date services, therefore the better cell phone. This reminded me of Marx’s idea of commodity fetishism, which is the idea that all commodities gain their popularity through market exchange and when people see that everyone else has that item they become obsessed with it and they have to buy it as well.

“On my honor I have not given, nor received, nor witnessed any unauthorized assistance on this work”