Communication of the Future While looking around and observing people you will most likely find one thing in common; they all are on their cell phones. In this day and age, with technology growing so rapidly it is inevitable. As Ian Frazier says in Dearly Disconnected; “Even sitting in a restaurant, the person on a cell phone seems importantly busy and on the move” (376). Face-to-face conversations are becoming less and less important, using cell phones is more of a convenience. In Sherry Turkle’s essay Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other she writes: “Technology makes it easy to communicate when we wish and to disengage at will” (324). Both Frazier and Turkle make points in their essays about the
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Turkle begins with the story about a girl named Ellen. Ellen and her grandmother have Skype dates every week twice a week. Although they were having a conversation, Ellen confessed that she did other things while talking to her grandma. “During their Skype conversations, Ellen and her grandmother were more connected than they had ever been before, but at the same time, each was alone” (324). The point of the introduction was to show an example of how even though two people may be talking and connected, communication can still become part of a daily chore and is added in with the distraction of technology. Frazier begins with the story about how his future wife called him from a payphone in Florida to his remote home in Montana. He kept the number and decided to call a few days later, and with luck, it was her who picked up. He shared the sentimental value that a payphone has to him and that being part of the reason that he is so intrigued with …show more content…
Turkle says “I remember my own sense of disorientation the first time I realized that I was ‘alone together’” (324-325). This experience came to her at a conference when she realized how many people actually paid attention to the speaker while multitasking other things online. I like how she used the term “alone together”, because that is exactly what it is. We are all together, yet zoned in to our own little world not paying attention to those around us. Frazier agrees with this social travesty. He writes “I think this is what drives me so nuts when a person sitting next to me on a bus makes a call from her cell phone. Yes, this busy and important caller is at no fixed point in space, but nevertheless I happen to be beside her” (376). The new normal is to be locked into our phone and constantly distract ourselves, we cannot sit idle. Having conversations with an actual person right beside you have become out of the ordinary. Dearly Disconnected is more geared towards comparing the past to the future. The author gave a brief history of the payphone and how it is beginning to die off because of the cell phone. He gives a lot of his opinion and how it makes him sad to see the once overly used and beaten-up payphone disappear. “Unfortunately, the world itself is fluid, and changes out from under us” (377). Because of the ever changing advances in technology, it will only get easier to communicate
Turkle begins with the story about a girl named Ellen. Ellen and her grandmother have Skype dates every week twice a week. Although they were having a conversation, Ellen confessed that she did other things while talking to her grandma. “During their Skype conversations, Ellen and her grandmother were more connected than they had ever been before, but at the same time, each was alone” (324). The point of the introduction was to show an example of how even though two people may be talking and connected, communication can still become part of a daily chore and is added in with the distraction of technology. Frazier begins with the story about how his future wife called him from a payphone in Florida to his remote home in Montana. He kept the number and decided to call a few days later, and with luck, it was her who picked up. He shared the sentimental value that a payphone has to him and that being part of the reason that he is so intrigued with …show more content…
Turkle says “I remember my own sense of disorientation the first time I realized that I was ‘alone together’” (324-325). This experience came to her at a conference when she realized how many people actually paid attention to the speaker while multitasking other things online. I like how she used the term “alone together”, because that is exactly what it is. We are all together, yet zoned in to our own little world not paying attention to those around us. Frazier agrees with this social travesty. He writes “I think this is what drives me so nuts when a person sitting next to me on a bus makes a call from her cell phone. Yes, this busy and important caller is at no fixed point in space, but nevertheless I happen to be beside her” (376). The new normal is to be locked into our phone and constantly distract ourselves, we cannot sit idle. Having conversations with an actual person right beside you have become out of the ordinary. Dearly Disconnected is more geared towards comparing the past to the future. The author gave a brief history of the payphone and how it is beginning to die off because of the cell phone. He gives a lot of his opinion and how it makes him sad to see the once overly used and beaten-up payphone disappear. “Unfortunately, the world itself is fluid, and changes out from under us” (377). Because of the ever changing advances in technology, it will only get easier to communicate