Blog #5 Final Blog

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Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolution in 1962 which defined the popular concept of the Paradigm shift. The paradigm shift is a concept that consists of changing one way of thinking to another. It could be a type of revolution or a type of transformation. However, it’s not a change that can just spontaneously occur, but it rather enabled through a series of changes. An example of this would be the invention of the printing press. The printing press aided towards the printing of a large amount of books that was easily accessible to many people. These books contained certain languages that influenced the people’s minds and beliefs. Eventually this cause lead to the giant Scientific Revolution. As time goes and human develop advanced technologies, our society begins to change their ways of thinking. Let’s use our current postmodern society as an example. Social media has become a very popular tool that many people in this generation are using. Through social media, people are able to connect with each and create social networks without having to be physically with each other. Social media can enables practices that link people together through commonality and reciprocity. In the book Technically Together by Michele A. Willson the author quotes, “Commonality enables reciprocal practices to take place and to be understood within a specific context” (Willson 30). Since people can create networks through their phone, we begin to think that face to face interaction is no longer necessary. This is where the Paradigm shift comes into play in our society.

Our society has changed their ways of thinking by believing that we no longer need face to face interaction with other people. We find it easier to make a phone call or text someone in order to get out points across while not feeling fully emotionally connected to the person. This practice is deadly to strong relationships and is a huge distraction to millennials. Through the use of technology we are breaking physical bonds between each other and living an emotionless life. Our society has evolved to believe that face to face interaction is okay, but it’s not. Our society is being impacted in a negative way because we are losing our abilities to connect with those around us and losing the ability to process other people’s emotions in real life. It’s almost as if we are all becoming programmed robots, a society that none of us want to live in. Another impact on our society would have to be in the change of thinking with out ways of life. A lot of people in our society tend to believe that there is only a certain way to live a perfect life due to the use of social media. People go on Instagram or Facebook and see what other people are doing, only lower their self esteem. People are becoming more depressed because they see how other people are living their life through social media. Our society is shaping their thinking to believe that we need to live our live a specific way in order to be happy which is has a major negative impact on our society. One last way social media has changed is by how we express ourselves on the internet. We are able to present ourselves as anybody we want through social media. This has caused many problems in our society with people saying who they are when they really aren’t. This creates a facade in our society with fake people. Our society has believed that its ok to show us who we want to show even if it’s not the truth, which is very harmful to our society.

“The social meaning of the technologies is not determined by the technologies themselves; rather, it will be shaped and reshaped by how they are embedded into social life, advanced and transformed by the myriad of individual actors, large institutions, practices, and projects that constitute contemporary reality.” In every type of social life communication must be involved. The type of communication being used affects the structure of the social life. Since our society currently revolves around social media, we embed these “technologies” into our social lives. As we combined social media with our social lives, we begin to see a major change in our communication techniques. For example, we see our friends with other friends on Instagram, or you see your friends at a party on Facebook that they didn’t invite you to. You start to think differently and begin to question if those people are truly your friends. Eventually you start to change your relationships with people depending upon what you see on social media. So while social media isn’t purposely created to alter relationships with other people, they can provided a gateway to how relationships can be changed.

I want to explain the part of the quote that talks about the “myriad of individual actors”. This term refers to individuals who are using social media for their themselves. They use social media in a personal aspect of their life. They decided how they use social media. They can post pictures for themselves, their family, or their friends. It could also used to promote products, businesses, or entertainment. These are the people who change the form of social media. They use social media and change the purpose of social media in a way that our minds couldn’t even imagine. For example, I recently read an article in class written by Michael D. Shaw’s article from the Huffington Post, titled Understanding Social Media’s Data Treasure Trove. The article talked about how large business advertise products on social media in order to promote what they are selling and hopefully make sales. It is quoted in the article, “social media builds an audience of millions.” Social media companies, according to Shaw (as of 2015) have earned “an estimated $8.3 billion from advertising.” This is how business specifically have shaped the use of social media, they have used it as an advertising tool. However there are many other ways people have used social media for benefits. Another example would be the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement. This organization promotes their ideas, people, and experiences involved in this movement on social media in order to gain a lot of attention. Since social media has so many users, many different people will find different ways to gain as many viewers and followers as they can.

As for our contemporary reality, we have many changes to face as a whole society. With technology always advancing to new levels, we as humans will develop new ways to use technology and new routines will develop that affects our everyday lives. As of now, we are seeing positive effects and negative effects of social media. However, we have developed a life that revolves around our phone which may only get worse in the future. In our current society, we have developed a practice of living on our phones and our future generations will not know any better. I predict that the future will still look like today’s society. People will want to be using social media to gain mass attention and many people will want to avoid face to face interactions with each other because they will find it easier to hide behind a phone and say what they want without having to receive a direct response from the other person. However, if we raise awareness for our future generation hopefully we can teach them that they need to live their life in person and not just on a phone. Although social media may seem like the best thing to them, nothing will beat living life in the real, physical moment.

 

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