Idle Robot
I recorded myself for 35 minutes using Camtasia to see how I interact on the Web, and it was really creepy watching myself in the playback. The largest discovery is that I seem to have a very intimate relationship with my computer. I ate lunch with my laptop, sang to Led Zeppelin and Queen with it, swore up a storm when it was buffering, commented aloud on articles and posts, and even sometimes begged it to hurry up loading.
Most of the time I looked really bored and just sat in front of the screen with a very glazed over expression on my face. But I did react numerous times to the things I was looking at, with laughter, disgust, commenting aloud, yelling or swearing.
Throughout the recording, Camtasia was slowing down my computer's performance speed and I was getting very frustrated. At one point the screen froze for a while and I yelled, "Damn it," and then once it started working I actually said aloud, "Thank you," to my laptop. Or I'd ask it to, "Please open," something that was taking longer than usual. I think I might just be crazy, as if my computer could hear me actually talking to it.
Most of the time while I was scrolling through Facebook feeds or pages, I wasn’t actually reading, but instead just seeing what would quickly grab my attention. Instead of thinking and searching up songs on YouTube I was using my “Watch History” to quickly go through music to listen to. And in the span on 35 minutes, I checked my Loyola email three separate times.
After taking a Buzzfeed quiz, I shared the link with my roommate/best friend on Facebook, which is something I do quite often whenever I find anything I think is interesting. Then I messaged her about something that happened to me that morning, even though she would be coming home in just a couple of minutes. But just in case I forgot to tell her, she received the message immediately on her phone.
It was very interesting watching myself interact with new media, and also just kind of scary, because I look and act like a robot absorbed in these technologies. It all just seems like a waste of time and I'm not completely sure how I could change my behavior while interacting with new media because it is a very idle activity most of the time (at least in the physical real-world), but even so it actually is in some way very interactive, just not in the traditional sense of the word.
We interact with a screen that displays back to us an infinite amount of content with a whole variety of things to do. Computers are not humans that can judge us for what we're doing, so I think that's why I have such an intimate relationship with my computer. I don't think about what I'm doing in the moment or care how I react, because no one is really watching me (well unless the NSA is watching me, which then all I have to say is, "GO AWAY.")
Most of the time I looked really bored and just sat in front of the screen with a very glazed over expression on my face. But I did react numerous times to the things I was looking at, with laughter, disgust, commenting aloud, yelling or swearing.
Throughout the recording, Camtasia was slowing down my computer's performance speed and I was getting very frustrated. At one point the screen froze for a while and I yelled, "Damn it," and then once it started working I actually said aloud, "Thank you," to my laptop. Or I'd ask it to, "Please open," something that was taking longer than usual. I think I might just be crazy, as if my computer could hear me actually talking to it.
Most of the time while I was scrolling through Facebook feeds or pages, I wasn’t actually reading, but instead just seeing what would quickly grab my attention. Instead of thinking and searching up songs on YouTube I was using my “Watch History” to quickly go through music to listen to. And in the span on 35 minutes, I checked my Loyola email three separate times.
After taking a Buzzfeed quiz, I shared the link with my roommate/best friend on Facebook, which is something I do quite often whenever I find anything I think is interesting. Then I messaged her about something that happened to me that morning, even though she would be coming home in just a couple of minutes. But just in case I forgot to tell her, she received the message immediately on her phone.
It was very interesting watching myself interact with new media, and also just kind of scary, because I look and act like a robot absorbed in these technologies. It all just seems like a waste of time and I'm not completely sure how I could change my behavior while interacting with new media because it is a very idle activity most of the time (at least in the physical real-world), but even so it actually is in some way very interactive, just not in the traditional sense of the word.
We interact with a screen that displays back to us an infinite amount of content with a whole variety of things to do. Computers are not humans that can judge us for what we're doing, so I think that's why I have such an intimate relationship with my computer. I don't think about what I'm doing in the moment or care how I react, because no one is really watching me (well unless the NSA is watching me, which then all I have to say is, "GO AWAY.")