I enjoyed this lecture and the ideas that were discussed. I have definitely used Facebook to organize a group activity with friends, and I am always using it to stay connected with my friends and family during our day to day busy lives. I think that it’s fun, and easier at times than getting on the phone for a conversation, but to be honest I would enjoy a face-to- face conversation in comparison to emails and IM chats—on any given day. But these new forms of technology communication have become a part of us; it has evolved into our lives. We have arranged ourselves in order for this to be a part of us.
The pervasive communication environment makes me think back to PR Day and how our guest speaker, the director of international communications at IBM explained that a new form of technology had made communication and work somewhat easier for the company. Instead of having to always jump on a plane and fly to another country for an hour meeting and then turn around and jump on another plane back to the states the company has been using an internet connected conference to connect these clients and business associates without any traveling being done. He explained that this indeed helps in ways of traveling and saving time, but it isn’t always as effective as meeting face-to face.
Consider our class for instance, I feel that this is still a real class even though we meet and connect through the internet. We are still doing the same work load as any other class, but we are missing out on the one-on-one interaction. I see no problem to it since the instructor has had all instructions pretty easy and straight forward. But I have had online classes in the past that did not work out as well. I needed that one-on-one interaction to understand the concepts more.
I think that our generation is extremely lucky to have the opportunity to take a class on line. Its all about time management of course, but to be honest a lot of my classes seem like a waste of time when we meet in person. A lot of times I have to force myself to go and sit in the class for a few hours—when all I want to do is go home and do the studying alone on my own time. So there are definitely pros and cons to the whole new world of communications and technology. I think that nothing can ever take away the benefits of meeting face to face for communicating.
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I'm glad you blogged about this web lecture. The idea of a pervasive communication environment seems so obvious, yet it's had a profound effect not only on how people communicate but what they expect to be able to do when they communicate. I resisted getting a cell phone for years, but now that I have it, I expect to be able to contact friends, family, coworkers from wherever I happen to be. I've also gotten so used to the online classroom--I've been teaching online for 10 years. Teaching in person seems limiting to me. There's so much more I can do online. Especially once I learn how to use Second Life in my classes. Face-to-face communication still is important. But online communication (along with my cell phone) allows me to stay in contact with so many more people.
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