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DLN Draft 1
LONG DISTANCE TECHNOLOGY
My family is one of the great ones. From the minute I was born, I knew they were special. As a child, I grew up alongside my immediate family, living about 5 minutes down the road from my grandparents, my great grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, therefore we spent a lot of time together. To this day, my family is the one constant in my life that I can always count on. My cousins and I are all relatively close in age and whenever we are together it is an insanely fun time. From the trips to New York to see the tree, to making up games in the back room of our grandparents house, to the quirky plays and musical numbers we put on, my young self believed that things would never change. In a way they have not, but in other ways they have. As we grew older, we got busy leading our own lives. My older cousins and my sister went away to college and my younger cousins, myself included, played various sports and other activities. We would see each other on holidays and other family gatherings but the days of spending nearly every day together were pretty much gone.
The question was, as we grew apart, how would we be able to stay together. How would we be able to stay as close as we had all been since birth, when we were all now working on our futures? Keeping in touch became harder as we became busier and didn’t have time to call or became tired of playing phone tag and/or leaving voice messages. Technology definitely gave us the upper hand to help bridge the distance. Supported in an article entitled Becoming Literate in the Information Age: Cultural Ecologies and the Literacies of Technology, the authors state, “Families transmit literacy values and practices in multiple directions. Information about, and support of, literacy can flow both upstream (from younger people to older people), and downstream (from older people to younger people), and across media (print to electronic environments or from electronic to print environments).” (Authors, 2004 pg. 644) Our family had to find a way to connect Vermont, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania during the down times when no family occasion was planned. Facebook, text messaging, snapchat, instagram, and various other forms of social media, provided us with the perfect outlet for both in depth conversation and downright silliness. When I was in middle school, I was finally allowed to have a Facebook account. Facebook was a shiny new toy to me and at first, I did not realize the opportunity that Facebook provided me with. I would use it to post everything going on in my life on the timelines of my friends, since I could not wait the few hours until the next day of school to tell them. I thought that the 7 minute walk to my friend’s house was long distance, but I never thought about how convenient it could be to use this social media to reach out to my cousins, who were actually living long distance from me.
Barton and Hamilton define literacy as,“one of a range of communicative resources available to members of a community.” (Barton and Hamilton, 2000, pg. 9) This being said, My cousins, my sister and I decided to create a closed group on Facebook specifically for our family to keep up to date on the goings on in one another’s lives or to post a funny picture or video. So the Fam-ski group was born and we began to use our first “literacy”. The group grew as more of our relatives created their own Facebook accounts and pretty soon we were getting in touch with 2nd and 3rd cousins adding North Carolina, Maryland and Idaho to our reach. But this mode of communication was not perfect. Sometimes it would take forever to get back to one another and it was not as much conversation as was simply liking posts. As Facebook became less popular, this group was used less and less. We needed a new way to keep in touch as we were slipping into our old ways of only speaking at holidays and family gatherings. I missed how close we used to be and how much we would do together when things were simpler. Just as the Facebook group began to fall into less use, we created a group chat that, we felt, would be a lot easier to use and a quicker way to be able to talk. As our relationships changed and technology evolved we were working to stay up with the times and one another.
This group chat was a brilliant idea for a while. It was the quickest way to get in touch with one another and we were all conveniently in the same place, even when we were not physically. It was a great platform to use to attempt to make plans. It was also good for sending out a quick message about something good or bad and even sharing a good laugh when we found a video or picture that reminded us of one another. It was working better than Facebook as anything posted in the text messages would spark conversation. It would involve more than a simple like or “hahaha,” that became common in the Facebook group. We spoke frequently, even just to check in and make sure that things were going okay. It was waking up to silly messages in this group chat that would help me start my or week on a good note. After a while, however, all of our lives became busy again and the messages were just not coming in as they once were. I was beginning to get frustrated because as we got older, holidays and family gatherings were no longer a guarantee that I would get to visit with my cousins and sister.
From there a new craze took over our little group, Snapchat. For a period of time, we spent a good chunk of time snapchatting as a way of staying connected with one another. We would have about 10 seconds of updates from one another. A really quick glimpse into what one of us was doing, something funny, or a shout out to tell on another that we missed them. Snapchat was probably the shortest lasting mode of communication, as we started to drift back towards our facebook page, group chat and even, sometimes instagram. Even further than that we attempted various sessions of skype or facetime, however these did not work at all. The one thing that skype or Facetime did provide, was a way to have our cousins be present virtually when they could not attend a family function physically, but that was the extent of its use. Video chatting has had major effects on our relationship, according to my sister, it allows our cousin, who lives in Vermont to facetime into christmas dinner and be able to sit with us. (Jessica Velez, 2017).
Rhinegold explains that, “ Collective activities and interpersonal capabilities the nobody dreamed possible have become part of everyday life for millions of people.” (Rhinegold, 2012, pg. 10). Why then, when there were so many ways to stay in touch, did it feel like the hardest task? Why couldn’t we find one way that worked and use it effectively? Is there one social media or technology based forum for communication that would prove sustainable in helping us feel as close as we were when we lived down the block from one another. It was through this experience with my cousin and my attempts to use changing technology to maintain a close relationship, that I learned that technology is not as efficient in keeping relationships as one would think. I also notice that a relationship kept through technology also allows for seclusion. Though you can reach out to someone on various fronts, it is easy for them to hide behind their screen and not respond if they do not feel like it. Despite one’s best efforts, the communication requires two way action. In the interview with my sister, she stated something similar, supporting this idea saying, “You can’t control how often someone check their phone and we can’t just get in the car and force them to open up about something that is happening to them, it is too far.” (Jessica Velez, 2017) Technology has given us the power to be selective in our communication and even provides us with a scapegoat for our antisocial acts.
It is interesting to question why we are able to so easily stay in touch with some people, than with others. For instance, I am constantly texting, snapchatting, facebooking, and instagramming my friends every day but as I understand my interactions and relationships through technology I have come to realize how important it is to be able to see someone in person. As my sister stated in our interview, “Technology makes communication more possible in a lot of cases, but it is also complicated.” (Jessica Velez, 2017) Though my family are the people I will forever be the closest too, no matter the distance and infrequent communication, I feel we are doomed to struggle to use technology to keep in touch. I may never fully understand why, I know that when we do talk it is twice as special and makes me feel twice as close to them
The question was, as we grew apart, how would we be able to stay together. How would we be able to stay as close as we had all been since birth, when we were all now working on our futures? Keeping in touch became harder as we became busier and didn’t have time to call or became tired of playing phone tag and/or leaving voice messages. Technology definitely gave us the upper hand to help bridge the distance. Supported in an article entitled Becoming Literate in the Information Age: Cultural Ecologies and the Literacies of Technology, the authors state, “Families transmit literacy values and practices in multiple directions. Information about, and support of, literacy can flow both upstream (from younger people to older people), and downstream (from older people to younger people), and across media (print to electronic environments or from electronic to print environments).” (Authors, 2004 pg. 644) Our family had to find a way to connect Vermont, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania during the down times when no family occasion was planned. Facebook, text messaging, snapchat, instagram, and various other forms of social media, provided us with the perfect outlet for both in depth conversation and downright silliness. When I was in middle school, I was finally allowed to have a Facebook account. Facebook was a shiny new toy to me and at first, I did not realize the opportunity that Facebook provided me with. I would use it to post everything going on in my life on the timelines of my friends, since I could not wait the few hours until the next day of school to tell them. I thought that the 7 minute walk to my friend’s house was long distance, but I never thought about how convenient it could be to use this social media to reach out to my cousins, who were actually living long distance from me.
Barton and Hamilton define literacy as,“one of a range of communicative resources available to members of a community.” (Barton and Hamilton, 2000, pg. 9) This being said, My cousins, my sister and I decided to create a closed group on Facebook specifically for our family to keep up to date on the goings on in one another’s lives or to post a funny picture or video. So the Fam-ski group was born and we began to use our first “literacy”. The group grew as more of our relatives created their own Facebook accounts and pretty soon we were getting in touch with 2nd and 3rd cousins adding North Carolina, Maryland and Idaho to our reach. But this mode of communication was not perfect. Sometimes it would take forever to get back to one another and it was not as much conversation as was simply liking posts. As Facebook became less popular, this group was used less and less. We needed a new way to keep in touch as we were slipping into our old ways of only speaking at holidays and family gatherings. I missed how close we used to be and how much we would do together when things were simpler. Just as the Facebook group began to fall into less use, we created a group chat that, we felt, would be a lot easier to use and a quicker way to be able to talk. As our relationships changed and technology evolved we were working to stay up with the times and one another.
This group chat was a brilliant idea for a while. It was the quickest way to get in touch with one another and we were all conveniently in the same place, even when we were not physically. It was a great platform to use to attempt to make plans. It was also good for sending out a quick message about something good or bad and even sharing a good laugh when we found a video or picture that reminded us of one another. It was working better than Facebook as anything posted in the text messages would spark conversation. It would involve more than a simple like or “hahaha,” that became common in the Facebook group. We spoke frequently, even just to check in and make sure that things were going okay. It was waking up to silly messages in this group chat that would help me start my or week on a good note. After a while, however, all of our lives became busy again and the messages were just not coming in as they once were. I was beginning to get frustrated because as we got older, holidays and family gatherings were no longer a guarantee that I would get to visit with my cousins and sister.
From there a new craze took over our little group, Snapchat. For a period of time, we spent a good chunk of time snapchatting as a way of staying connected with one another. We would have about 10 seconds of updates from one another. A really quick glimpse into what one of us was doing, something funny, or a shout out to tell on another that we missed them. Snapchat was probably the shortest lasting mode of communication, as we started to drift back towards our facebook page, group chat and even, sometimes instagram. Even further than that we attempted various sessions of skype or facetime, however these did not work at all. The one thing that skype or Facetime did provide, was a way to have our cousins be present virtually when they could not attend a family function physically, but that was the extent of its use. Video chatting has had major effects on our relationship, according to my sister, it allows our cousin, who lives in Vermont to facetime into christmas dinner and be able to sit with us. (Jessica Velez, 2017).
Rhinegold explains that, “ Collective activities and interpersonal capabilities the nobody dreamed possible have become part of everyday life for millions of people.” (Rhinegold, 2012, pg. 10). Why then, when there were so many ways to stay in touch, did it feel like the hardest task? Why couldn’t we find one way that worked and use it effectively? Is there one social media or technology based forum for communication that would prove sustainable in helping us feel as close as we were when we lived down the block from one another. It was through this experience with my cousin and my attempts to use changing technology to maintain a close relationship, that I learned that technology is not as efficient in keeping relationships as one would think. I also notice that a relationship kept through technology also allows for seclusion. Though you can reach out to someone on various fronts, it is easy for them to hide behind their screen and not respond if they do not feel like it. Despite one’s best efforts, the communication requires two way action. In the interview with my sister, she stated something similar, supporting this idea saying, “You can’t control how often someone check their phone and we can’t just get in the car and force them to open up about something that is happening to them, it is too far.” (Jessica Velez, 2017) Technology has given us the power to be selective in our communication and even provides us with a scapegoat for our antisocial acts.
It is interesting to question why we are able to so easily stay in touch with some people, than with others. For instance, I am constantly texting, snapchatting, facebooking, and instagramming my friends every day but as I understand my interactions and relationships through technology I have come to realize how important it is to be able to see someone in person. As my sister stated in our interview, “Technology makes communication more possible in a lot of cases, but it is also complicated.” (Jessica Velez, 2017) Though my family are the people I will forever be the closest too, no matter the distance and infrequent communication, I feel we are doomed to struggle to use technology to keep in touch. I may never fully understand why, I know that when we do talk it is twice as special and makes me feel twice as close to them