Summary Of Nathan Jergenson's The IRL Fetish

At one point not that long ago it was only possible to update a Facebook status from a phone if you subscribed to the text messaging service offered by the site that would allow you to text in an update. There was no such thing as scrolling through your newsfeed as you rode the subway to work or waited for class to start. In his essay “The IRL Fetish”, Nathan Jurgenson talks about the spread of technology saying: “Each moment is oversaturated with digital potential: Texts, status updates, photos, check-ins, tweets, and e-mails are just a few taps away or pushed directly to your buzzing and chirping pocket computer- anachronistically still called a ‘phone’” (Jurgenson). Here he brings up an interesting point about the role advancing technology

In the article “Growing up Tethered”, by Sherry Turkle, she argues that technology today plays a major role in everyday life. Youths do not have the ability to branch off and have their own independence because of their reliance and attachment to technology. They also use technology to develop who they are as people and create an online personal identity of what they think is a perfect life. In comparison, their own life seems boring, pale and unwanted. Turkle also talks about how teenagers think of their phone as a “friend’s” and cannot live without it. When feeling a strong emotion, teens want to share their feelings with their friends and phone. I agree with Turkle’s opinion that technology is changing and will never be the same, which will be hard to improve this attachment to technology because too many teens are tethered.

In this society many people completely immerse themselves in a new life that often times leads to distractions within their real life. Turkle states, “For those who are lonely yet fearful of intimacy, online life provides environments where one can be a loner yet not alone, have the illusion of companionship without the demands of sustained, intimate friendship”. This statement supports her overall claim that the addiction to technology leads to a person alienating themselves. A person could have the greatest life in an online environment and not even leave their house. This continues to lead the reader to the second trouble of her soul by setting them up emotionally. In this instance Turkle is trying to elicit a reaction of feeling sorry for the people reading her essay.

Ever since technology began so prominent in the modern world, can anyone remember going outside for more than 30 minutes and not see a cell phone or computer? Probably not, as these pieces of technology have become so ingrained in people’s lives, no one wants to leave their home without still being connected. And there is no reason to, as friends, family, and strangers share the same sentiments. Unplugging from technology is not only a decision people don’t make for personal reasons, it simply isn’t conducive to a productive life, as many people’s work and social lives wouldn’t be the same, if exist at all, without being connected to other people or the internet with just a single touch.

In “Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.” by Sherry Turkle a Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been studying the psychology of online connectivity for more than 30 years. For the past five years, she has been focusing on topics: What has happened to face‐ to‐face conversation in a world where so many people say they would rather text than talk, families, friendships and romance. She has also studied schools, universities and workplaces. Among this topics she has talked and provided studies on how we have become distant from “who we are.” She reports that we as a society have lost a lot of virtues as a society such as a lack of empathy for one another, solitude, and communication with one another. As the “digital world” continues to grow we as a society continue to grow with it and apart from one another. Sherry also emphasizes that we

There are few places on this Earth, if any, where the possibilities are truly endless. However, if you detach yourself from the physical world and emerge into the “online” world, you find that this just might actually be accurate in this realm. The World Wide Web has had so much to offer to us since the early 1990s, but with this comes controversy. Unleashed onto a plane of seemingly immeasurable freedom of anonymity, was the world ready for such responsibility? Since those early days when new emerging technology changed our lives immensely, have we at all become a better place, or have we bitten off more than we can chew, and doomed our human relations forever? Exploring these concepts are three in-depth articles, including: “Growing Up Tethered” by Sherry Turkle, “The Loneliness of the Interconnected” by Charles Seife, and “Cybersexism” by Laurie Penny. Although it is thought that the Internet brings the world together, it actually does not help us politically, culturally, and economically like one would believe, as it makes us unable to be independent, isolates us from different points of view, and encourages real-world violence against women and other minority groups.

The use of technology has increased rapidly as time has gone by.  In “Growing Up Tethered”, Turkle proves that the young generation need to be connected at all times by relying on their phones a lot. Reality is now based on technology, which people now live off of. Turkle’s argument in “Growing up Tethered” was used in the form of a book, with a well-organized smoothly transitioned article telling of the disconnection of the world we live in today, due to technologies such as cell phones, and social networks. We are slowly becoming a society of distance amongst each other with face to face conversations being limited to 20minutes phone conversations, and on social network sights we are making a portrayal of a person who we are

The rapid expansion of technological advancement is engulfing our culture. The author of IRL Fetish, Nathan Jurgenson argues that people have a weird interest in the world of offline. Technological advances are leading people into the realm of online, but Jurgenson also realizes the glorification of movement to offline. People who believe online world is destroying the real-life connection and many writers lament, “Writer after writer laments the loss of a sense of disconnection, of boredom (now redeemed as a respite from anxious info-cravings) …” (Jurgenson 127). People who are saying technological advances is removing people from the real-life so they think they can create a world where online does not exist. This new movement is educating the world that phone must be put away and boast about being offline. In IRL Fetish by Nathan Jurgenson, the author illustrates the practice of fetishizing of the offline world creates a misrepresentation of online and the offline world.

Within Jenna Wortham's article, "Turn Off the Phone (and the Tension)," Wortham discusses the impact that social media possesses, in which Wortham believes that technology is responsible for shaping people's lives negatively. From Wortham's previous experiences, she shares a moment in her life that made her realize that people often compare their lives to others excessively- one of the reasons why people have social media attachment issues. Wortham also expresses how social media users brag about their lives being better than others through exaggerated posts- something that shouldn't be encouraged. With effort to resolve this issue, Wortham considers and suggests Mr. Hofmann's advice to readers: go screenless for a certain

In this passage, Dustin Kidd opens the reading by admitting to the readers his addiction to social media. Kidd confronts that his morning routine consists of checking his notification on his phone. However, the narrator flips the subject from his social media obsession, to the problems of today’s society. He explains how society persuades people that they are “too skinny” or “too poor” and will never be “good enough.” Not only does he describe the cons of social media, but he also justifies how social media can be a powerful device. The internet can be used as a platform that enables people to stand up for themselves.

Sherry Turkle's article "Growing Up Tethered" exposes the change in adolescent's demeanor while growing up in a technology-fueled world. This modern world inhibits growth towards independence, causes psychological problems, and an intense amount of pressure to uphold online identities. She opens up with various experiences today's youth have gone through trying to stay connected. Some go as far as to risk their own lives and the lives of others to check their phone.

The article “I’m So Totally, Digitally, Close To You (Brave New World of Digital Intimacy)” (2002) is written by Clive Thompson, who is also a blogger and columnist. The author aims to explain the users’ attraction of Facebook, Twitter and other forms of “incessant online contact” through his text. Since social networking has become a nearly ubiquitous aspect of human contemporary life, Thomson has effectively illustrated the invasion of the social media into human daily lives, how people are commanded by it. He later goes on to explore the benefits of social networking sites and a few challenges of the usage assumptions.

In Stephen Marche’s article, Facebook is a reason people are becoming move lonely and standard. The relationship between technology and loneliness is strong. According to the article people who spend their time on devices and social network sights are finding themselves lacking in the ability to communicate in person. One effect that is brought up throughout the article is loneliness, in which is made the more often one drowns themselves in social media. Facebook in particular, is the

A few years ago, the New York Times published a moving piece rightly called, Turn Off the Phone (and the Tension) by Jenna Wortham. Wortham called on many who had spoken on the topic of technology creating a successful piece urging people to put down the technology and embrace the world around them. Wortham opens with a personal anecdote about a time she went without her phone using it to drive her fist big point that for many smartphones and their counterpart social media act like “appendages they are rarely without” Wortham continues explaining the impacts they have on us “swaying our moods, decisions and feelings. Wortham then empathizes the tension this can cause users but encourages the reader that it is “possible to move beyond the angst that social media can provoke – and to be glad that we’ve done so.” Wortham then uses this as a seamless transition to bring up two very different phenomenon’s “Joy of Missing Out” (JOMO) and “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO). JOMO or “Joy of Missing Out” is a phenomenon explained by Anil Dash this is the idea of moving past technology and being happy about it. FOMO or Fear of missing out is the opposite of the tension we feel from technology because technology and social media show all people are

By spending inordinate quantities of time in the interactive, virtual, two-dimensional, cyberspace realms of the screen, she believes that the brains of the youth of today are headed for a drastic alteration.” (10) Numerous youth that interact online come in contact with people who are pretending to be someone that they are not. That causes the “pretenders” to lose touch with their personal identity and reality. It also causes the youth that they chat with to falsely learn about people. How could you possibly have strong relationships with people that you don’t really know accurate information about?