Social Media Project Annotations:

For Identity (Chapter 1) by Danah Boyd and Mind Change (Chapter 9) by Susan Greenfield, my style of annotations was to highlight key terms or ideas and expand on the thought in the margins. Posing questions in the margins helped to give me some ideas to write about when I started my essay. The difference between my annotations between Boyd and Greenfield was that in Greenfield’s piece I analyzed the “They” versus the “I” say. This allowed me to see how much of the chapter was the author’s own idea versus outside sources. This style of annotating also assisted me with my first draft because I was able to identify how much of my essay was quotes and how much of it was my own ideas and analysis. It was overall a good way to check the balance of my own essay and made me realized the edits that I needed to make.

 

For Sherry Turkle’s TED Talk, Connected, but alone?, my style of annotations was not as affective as I had hoped it would be. Because it was a video, there was no transcript to follow along with it. This made it difficult for me to pick out key ideas and expand upon them. I decided that I would take notes in a word document while watching the talk. I didn’t write down time stamps when I was taking notes which made it very difficult to go back and quote Turkle directly because it took me a very long time to find the point in the video that I wanted to quote. Overall, if I use this style of annotations again, I would definitely use time stamps. I think that it would help me to be able to connect ideas and themes more easily because I would be able to find the point in the discussion easier. I also think that if I used this style again that I would write more down and expand on my own ideas even more to help make the start of the writing process easier and more efficient.  Displayed below is my annotations from the word document, copied and pasted.

 

Connected, but alone?

-Technology—letting it take us places that we don’t want to go

-devices are so psychologically powerful that they change who we are

-being together but not being together

-setting ourselves up for trouble—relationships with self and others

-customize life—control over what interests them matters most

-Goldilocks effect: not too far, but not too close

-Technology lets us edit and present ourselves the way we want to be seen

-Sacrifice conversations for connection

-Rather text than talk

-Siri will be more like a best friend who will listen when others won’t

-No one is listening—technology = automatic listeners

-Sociable robots designed to be companions

-Robots can’t empathize

-Expect more from technology and less from each other

-Technology appeals to us most when we are most vulnerable (Direct quote)

-Won’t have to be alone, put attention where we want, and always be heard=gratifying parts of technology

-Being alone now feels like a problem that people solve by connecting via technology

-Use technology to define ourselves by sharing thoughts and feelings

-If we don’t have connection, we don’t feel ourselves

-Slip into thinking always being connecting will make us feel less alone, but if we aren’t able to be alone we will be more lonely

-Time to talk—plenty of time to reconsider how we use it

-Not turning away from devices, but starting to make connections with people

-Claim spaces for conversations

-Need to focus on the ways technology can lead us back to our real lives

-Let’s talk