Final Post Assignment

Our Relationship With Technology - Technology's Relationship With Us

— Do you think your relationship with technology is healthy? Why or why not? Do you think that you are giving technology the appropriate amount of time in your life, or do you think that technology is taking up too much time in your life? Do you think technology is informing you and making you smarter, or do you think that technology might be misleading you and giving you unreliable information? Do you ever worry about these things, or do you think it's just an accepted part of the society we live in?

— What about your friends and family? Do you think that technology is a positive part of their lives? How does technology play a role in your relationships? Good and bad.

— What is your online footprint? If you were applying for a job today, the first thing your prospective employer would do is go online and find out as much as she or he could. What would they find? How much of an online presence do you have? Google yourself — that's the first thing they will do! What comes up? What kind of image does it paint? Is there anything you should edit out of your online presence?

    When it comes to one saying if one's relationship with something or someone is healthy, usually it is not best to ask the person who's relationship is being judged directly. This is because they may see things from a skewed angle, and may not know for sure if something is bad for them. It is best to ask someone from an outside perspective, and let them observe the person in question, and let them decide whether their relationship with something is healthy or not.

    I bring this up because while I personally think my relationship with technology is fine, others may not see it that way. I will admit that I spend a lot of my time on technologies such as computers, phones, and sometimes gaming consoles. Granted, ever since I started college, I have been spending much less time on gaming consoles, but due to my primary interests being playing video games, coding, drawing/animating, and video editing, as well as my major being game design, I spend a lot of time using technology anyways. To further develop these skills, I have to use technology, and I am perfectly fine with that. While I personally think my relationship with technology is healthy (unless if not being able to function or do anything without it counts as unhealthy), a bystander may say otherwise, due to the amount of time I spend using it (an amount fine with me but will likely appear as abnormal for others).

    While those are my primary uses for technology, I also use it for internet browsing. Not only do I use it to look up how to do something (whether it has to do with technology or not), or I go on YouTube to watch videos while eating or to listen to music while doing work. I also have several webcomics bookmarked, and I check in on them to see updates to the series. And of course, I use technology to be able to do schoolwork- I am using my gaming laptop to write this post right now. With all of this, I believe that technology is helping me be more informed and more knowledgeable.

    However, there is still a fair share of both misinformation and disinformation caused by technology- or more specifically, it helped drastically increase the spread of both. Not only that, but anyone can post anything online, whether it is a website, video, document, etc, and say anything as long as it does not violate ToS. People are able to be rude to anyone, or be "toxic" or "trolls." I'm glad that technology also greatly increased the spread of accurate information, but fueling both sides of this conflict will not help it die down. This conflict is so large that whenever we open ourselves to a new source, we read with caution, and compare it to what we already know, to see if the source can be trusted or not. Despite this, we have accepted the fact that there are people out there who spread misinformation and disinformation, and that besides not letting anyone post anything, there is no way of stopping this spread.

    While I cannot truly speak for my friends and how technology has affected them (even though a large majority of my generation cannot escape the clutches of TikTok), for family I'd say it positively benefited them. My parents use computers for their jobs, TVs and portable devices (phones, tablets, etc) to watch shows and movies, and sometimes use Facebook. I can even think of some specific examples- almost a decade ago my dad even ran three Clash of Clans accounts simultaneously- he now instead plays Fortnite for 30 minutes to an hour each day. My sister mainly uses a gaming laptop for schoolwork and sometimes games, and uses her portable devices to access social media, to either see what her friends are posting or to post content of her own (which she did for TikTok and Instagram).

    Googling my name brings up dozens of people, none of which are me. I was able to eventually find myself after several minutes, but only through a site that lists everyone with my name that lives in the United States. I feel like it was harder to find me because I try not to associate my name with my social media accounts. My YouTube channel, which I have been posting videos on for almost 4 years, does not have my name documented. However, when I searched my name via images, I found myself quite quickly, only because HPU required us to create a LinkedIn account. If it was not for this account, I would say that my online footprint is nearly invisible.