BY: SEBASTIAN BACK
As technology continues to transform the social interaction of humans, the question remains: is the shift in the mode of communication liberating us from our surroundings or caging us into a screen? The Future of Interaction by Sebastian Back debates the impact of the digital sphere on human communication.
Sherry Turkle, an MIT Professor specializing in the transaction between psychology and technology, writes that technology “proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies”. Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase “the medium is the message” tells us that there is a symbiotic relationship between the mode of communication and perception. Does the way we communicate now affect what it is we choose to communicate? Social media and text messaging create a platform for us to self-brand, but equally so, to self-censor. As Turkle puts it, “I share, therefore I am.”
As we become “the stars of our own lives” through social media self-editing and play conversational chess through text messaging, is there important interaction we are missing in-between notifications? Or is the opportunity to communicate across borders and create communities of common interest all the more important?