Snapchat is a "real-time picture chat" application for iPhone and Android-based telephones: a user takes a photograph, captions it, and sends it to a friend with the Snapchat application installed on their telephone. Photographs and their captions persist only for a user-selectable duration of time, up to ten seconds. After this, they disappear forever. In class, we discussed the repercussions of ephemeral photographs. These photographs allow for a certain amount of non-judgemental play between users; a smile can be shared, a frown, or a funny face.
We also discussed the nature of digital identity: what does it mean to create persistent, online profiles? how do these profiles relate to our self-identity?
For more information on Snapchat, visit the Snapchat homepage.
I feel like our personal identities are becoming more and more digitized. I think that, like journals, these profiles are slowly becoming places where we pour out ourselves, place parts of ourselves in them. The only difference is that we share these profiles with others. These lesser forms of journals has caused us to be separated into pieces, some of which we hide from people, and others that we show the world. The issue of privacy comes in when the parts of us we don't want seen by all becomes public information.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading "The Shallows", before even finishing the prologue I thought of snapchat. The class's main argument against snapchat was the belief of its promotion of pornography. In class I held my belief that this exchange of content that many view as inappropriate does not cause the app to be something we should oppose. As Hayden points out, the app can easily be used for much more innocent exchanges. Carr writes on page 3, "...a medium's content matters less than the medium itself in influencing how we think and act." Just because there is a new outlet for potentially 'inappropriate' behavior, that does not mean that everyone using the technology will become inappropriate people.
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