Assignment 1: Exploring your media practices through personal writing

In his introduction to the anthology The Digital Divide, Mark Bauerlein writes that “Digital tools have proven so efficient and compelling and helpful that it now requires a leap of imagination to recall what life was like before their advent” (xi). He argues that, in order to understand the impact of the transition to digital forms of communication, we should avoid sweeping statements and instead look closely and critically at “ordinary behaviors.” In this assignment, you’ll do just that.

Many writers have described people now in their teens and early twenties as “digital natives,” who can’t remember a time before the Internet. But that assumption is a sweeping statement too. In this essay, you’ll talk back to the scholars of digital media consumption by making a deep and critical exploration of how your own use of media shapes your life.

In the series of exercises and workshops that lead up to you turning in your final draft, you’ll discover new ways to think and write critically about what you do every day––and you’ll start to build your own expertise as a scholar of college students’ digital practices.

Assignment:

Choose a piece of technology you use every day or a digital practice in which you participate frequently.  In no less than 900 and no more than 1200 words (3-4 pages in double-spaced 12 point Times New Roman) respond to the following question in a thesis-driven essay:

What is the most important way that this digital technology has shaped your life?

Questions to guide you:

• Think about the details of what you do in this practice: are you alone or with others? Are you using your hands, your eyes, your ears, your whole body? How does it make you feel––excited, connected, lonely, happy, sad?
• Think about your history with this practice or technology. Can you remember a time before you used it? How has it changed over time ? Have the changes been in the way that you acted, as you grew up, or in the practice as a whole? (Some of the assigned readings will help you with this.)
• Think about how digital technologies operate in your school, work, social life. Do those different parts of your life conflict or do they fit together smoothly? How would your day to day life would have been different if this technology had never been invented? Is your digital media practice so much part of the fabric of your life that you barely notice it? When do you become aware of it––when you meet someone who uses media differently, perhaps someone of a different generation? When there is a power cut?
• On the other hand, perhaps digital technology is not a major feature of your life. You can also write about why you do not make extensive use of technology.
• Does the way you use digital tools fit in or conflict with the representations you see in TV, film, and popular culture? If not, what are the differences? Why do you think these differences are there?

DUE: in class and via email (.doc, docx or pages format) September 24