Blog Post #2 - The Process of Normalizing Technology


Through the lense of the Baym’s domestication of technology, the anxiety over the interactivity of new digital media is evident within Katherine’s and her families daily life. In Baym’s reading, She describes the domestication of technology as a mutually causal relationship between technology and the social. She introduces how this perspective focuses on the process of us accepting technology by normalizing it into our daily life, and how these new practices change our social interactions.

Looking at the article about Katherine’s experience with technology through this perspective allows for many changes to become evident, some of which are that various technologies, specifically her cell phone and the social media platforms she uses, have become apart of her daily routine and how these have transformed her social relationships.  At the beginning of the article, It is said that Katherine is on her phone the second she enters the car, even before she puts on her seat belt. This sentence is used by the author to emphasis that the usage of digital technology comes before safety practices that we often take for granted or have been normalized such as putting on our seat belts. Additionally, The author compares Katherines cell phone usage to typically childhood play behaviors that have become normalized in our culture when it is said that Katherine is on her cell phone, beside her younger sister who is building crafts out of beads. This sentence depicts the act of utilizing digital media as a norm for somebody like Katherine just the same as how it is a norm to do crafts for a younger 8 year old child such as her sister.

Lastly, Baym discusses how the adoption of new digital technologies in our daily lives often is not immediate, and is first a part of a three stage process of Euphoria, Moral Panic and then eventually Domestication of the technology. These different stages are evident within the article, as Katherine herself has fully adapted the digital technology since this may have been the only way she was introduced to thinking about the technology as she has grown up surrounding it. However, her father Dave is still within the moral panic stage of the domestication process, as he is said within the article to be struggling to find ways to control this technology and Katherine's usage of it as he fears it was led to negative consequences if it is not controlled. He looks to parental controls and tracking her usage by checking her phone bill for messages and call details in fear that Katherine is misusing the technology that may result in dangerous or negative consequences.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 2, 2018 at 5:40 PM

    Great post!
    I really enjoyed the point you raised in regards to how influential technology is, to even overpower, and be more important than safety. This is very concerning, but after reading this point I started to think about the different ways in which society has become more dangerous as a result of technology. It specifically makes me think of the ‘don’t text and drive commercials’, and how our society has become so absorbed into our technologies, that drinking and driving, which is what the commercial use to be about, has been replaced, because that is becoming obsolete. Even though this is considered a good thing, it is replaced with something that originally was supposed to be used in order to advance our world, not make it more dangerous. Overall, I enjoyed reading this post and the points you raised! Good work!!

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