Archive for ‘technology’

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May 18, 2012

take THAT to the bank and cash it, zuckerberg

by maria polonchek

Because every other blogger is using the facebook logo today. (credit: Wikipedia)

In honor of facebook going public today (confession: I don’t really understand what “going public” means other than what Charlie Sheen and Daryl Hannah taught me on Wallstreet, a movie that I’ve only seen since I’ve been married to Chris, who gets personally offended when I haven’t seen certain classics, including but not limited to: Star Wars, The Godfather, E.T., The Hunt for Red October, and Animal House.)…

Okay, we’re not even past the first sentence and I’m already off track. This is what happens when you try to write with Dora the Explorer playing in the background. Pretty soon, half my entries will be in Spanish. With a map, a backpack, and Swiper, a little sly fox. AH!!! WHAT WERE WE EVEN TALKING ABOUT?

Oh, yes. Facebook. Going public. So, the May 2012 issue of Atlantic Monthly rocked my world. When I flew to Kansas and back a few weekends ago, and had several glorious hours of airport and plane time when I GOT TO BE ALONE (!), I read the May 2012 issue from cover to cover. I DEVOURED it. I’m usually not like this with Atlantic. Chris receives a subscription every year for Christmas and, while I flip through each new issue and find a few articles I like, usually the others either 1) bore me with the topic or 2) piss me off with the tone. I find the women who write for Atlantic, especially, have this tone of  “I’m smarter and more privileged than you, but I’m going to act like I’m not long enough to suck you in and then remind you I’m smarter and more privileged than you.”

In the May 2012 issue, only one article pissed me off, and that was the review of The Art of Fielding. Yes, I liked the book, so the scathing review of it seemed a little harsh, but mainly, you don’t call an entire generation “garrulous” B. R. Meyers, without sounding like you are making some over-generalizations are probably old and grumpy. (And, yes, I had to look up the word, which probably worked in your favor, but still, this is supposed to be a book review, not a people-who-liked-it review.)

So the cover article of this issue I loved (and am thinking of devoting an entire series of posts to…) is titled Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? You might remember, Katie, that I was a latecomer to facebook, relatively speaking (to my GARRULOUS generation of peers). I joined mid-grad-school-career, in 2008 (June 29, to be exact. What ‘up, timeline!), after some peer-pressure and angsting.  And one of the first exchanges on my wall, with our (funny) mutual friend, Pat, went like this:

Maria’s Wall:

me: Is facebook giving us a false sense of intimacy by making us think we know one another better than we really do?

Pat: Oh, Maria. You and your psychoanalyzing. Facebook doesn’t want to give you a false sense of anything.

Since my first days on it, I’ve had sort of a love/hate relationship with facebook. Here are the pros:

  • Having fun with goofy status updates.
  • Finding friends from the past who I was afraid I’d lost forever.
  • Sharing updated pictures with friends and family who sincerely want to see them.
  • Letting my friends be an Internet filter for me so I’m always hooked into the funny and important stuff.
  • Getting to know things about my friends/family that wouldn’t have come up otherwise.

An example of the third one down in “cons.” Post your guesses in the comments. (thanks, paula.)

But here is the thing. The cons are sort of the flip sides of the pros, which is like life, I guess. Here are the cons:

  • Having to endure boring status updates.
  • Being found by friends from the past who I hoped I’d lost forever.
  • Getting tagged in updated pictures I didn’t want anyone to see, boring friends and family with updated pictures they don’t really want to see, and being consumed with envy by updated pictures other people share, that I obviously shouldn’t see.
  • Having to filter my Internet filter because of all of the stupid and dogmatic stuff.
  • Getting to know things about my friends/family that wouldn’t have come up otherwise.

Initially, I used “friend finder” and sent “friend requests” and “friended” everyone: ex-boyfriends, current students, people who made me miserable in high school. Everyone. And this style of collecting-more-friends-than-is-really-socially-possible is not for me. I soon found that being on facebook was pissing me off more than it was bringing me pleasure. I thought that the answer might be to cut 2/3 of my friends. I thought the problem was them. I thought it was their fault that, when I spent time on facebook, I logged off feeling sad, angry, jealous, or a bitter cocktail of all three.

It probably goes without saying that cutting 2/3 of your friend list is not the way to handle your emotional reactions on facebook. Now I just feel like a jerk. And too embarrassed to “re-friend” them. What am I gonna say? “See, remember when we met in high school/college/at that bar/church/job and I wasn’t medicated yet? Sometimes I go off my medication now and de-friend people with the assumption that they won’t notice/ won’t care/ will intuitively understand why I would do that. Please re-friend me so that you can jump on the roller-coaster that is my life.”

It’s just not happening.

So now I’ve got my friend list down to a manageable size, I use more discretion with friend requests, and Zuckerberg has understood that users need a “hide” option to avoid hurting everyone we’ve ever known. And, before the May 2012 Atlantic, I wouldn’t have admitted all of this about my facebook habits. But it turns out, I’m not the only one. This is usually the case when I think I’m crazy. This is why my generation likes to talk about ourselves, B. R. Meyers. I’m sorry we bore you.

Ultimately, the answer to the question posed in the title of the piece is, “No. Facebook isn’t making you lonely. You’re doing it to yourself.” It’s true. I usually get sucked into facebook late at night, when I can’t sleep, and am feeling bad about the world in general. This is when I catch myself looking through a friend’s timeline and feeling jealous of her and alienated from her life and forget that she could very well be going through the same thing at that moment with me, and my timeline. (I haven’t actually updated to timeline yet, but 90 out of 124 of my friends have, says the header at my home page. So I think, Pat, facebook does want to give me a false sense of my own ineptitude.)

The article concludes that, like all technology, facebook’s potential is up to its users. We decide how we want it to work for us. And I totally buy this, in principle.

But, in practice? Well…I just logged on to find those previous quotes and pictures. Even while writing this post, being totally mindful of these habits, I get a bit distracted by a picture update of my friend, Cassy…

What a great picture! She always posts such great pictures. Man, she’s beautiful. So is her dog. She’s lucky her dog is still alive. I sure miss mine. Look at all the cool places she goes. It’s so much easier to travel when you don’t have kids. What’s this she’s posted about Gov. Brownback signing a bill in Kansas that allows pharmacists to refuse women birth control? This is outrageous! Just when I think this country’s making progress I see shit like this. Wait. She’s graduated? What kind of friend am I? I haven’t even called her to say congratulations.

And on and on…

So, yeah. Me and facebook. It’s complicated. But, if you liked this post, share it on facebook!

Posted in culture, excessive thinking, technology | 14 Comments »

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May 1, 2012

dressing to fly

by maria polonchek

Hey, gang. I’m back. Both literally (I visited Kansas over the weekend) and virtually (I took a break from blogging last week). And boy, do I have things to say.

credit: Amy Vangsgard

Let’s begin this week with thoughts on flying, shall we? I have a quirky little habit that some of my peeps give me flak about: I dress up when I fly. I like to do it and I wish more people did it. Here’s why.

We could not afford to fly when I was growing up. As a kid, I thought flying was for the wealthy and privileged. It meant money and class and culture. The first time I boarded a plane, I was 16 and using non-revenue tickets graciously given to me by my best friend’s mom, a flight attendant for (now-American) TWA. I was flying to San Diego to visit my best friend, who went to college at USD. As a non-rev passenger, I had to dress up for the flight. My friend’s mum said we were representing the company. I can’t remember what I wore, but I think it involved black pantyhose and heels. I felt every bit the privileged, classy, cultured babe I had imagined all those years when I dreamed of flying. I ordered Ginger Ale and accepted a small, shiny red bag of peanuts with the biggest smile you’ve seen on a 16-year-old girl.

The next time I flew, I was 17. For high-school graduation, a friend of the family’s paid for me to visit my brother in Los Angeles. I dressed up. I saw Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau filming Grumpier Old Men in LAX and I got star-struck and couldn’t move or talk for several minutes. (I can’t imagine what I would do if I saw Brad Pitt or Justin Timberlake in person. God help us.)

The next time I flew, I was 18, and spending the summer after my freshman year of college to live with my other brother in Boston. My bro bought the ticket. On the flight from Kansas City to Boston, I wore black pants, heeled sandals, and a green blouse. The woman next to me asked if I’d ever been to Boston.

I said no.

“Well,” she said. “You’ll love the tea.”

“I can’t wait!” I said. “Tea, baked beans, lobster. I love all of it!”

(She was, in fact, talking about the “T,” what the locals call the subway.) (I’m an idiot.)

The next time I flew, I was 19 and had dropped out of my sophomore year of college. I was going to Minneapolis to interview for the position of Northwest Airline’s youngest flight attendant. I got the job and went to flight attendant training, or what some people refer to as “Barbie Boot-Camp.” For two years, I flew all over the world and met all kinds of people. (Yes, I have stories. Yes, I’ll tell them sometime.)

I'll give you a hint: upper right corner.

I quit right before 9-11, thank God, because flying changed dramatically after that, for both passengers AND crew members. Now, flying and the way people feel about flying is best captured here, I think, in a Conan interview with Louis CK. Offensive language has been bleeped, but for those of you Too Busy and Important to watch the 4-some-minute clip, I’ll quote the meat of it here:

Louis CK, Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy

Flying is the worst one because people come back from flights and they tell you their story and it’s like a horror story. They act like their flight was like a cattle car in the 40′s in Germany. That’s how bad they make it sound. They’re like, “It was the worst day of my life. First of all we didn’t board for TWENTY MINUTES and then we get on the plane and they made us SIT THERE on the RUNWAY for FORTY MINUTES. We had to SIT THERE.”

Oh, really, what happened next? Did you fly through the air incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight, you NON-CONTRIBUTING ZERO? Wow, you’re flying! It’s amazing! Everybody on every plane should just constantly be going, “OH MY GOD. WOW!”

You’re flying. YOU’RE SITTING IN A CHAIR IN THE SKY.

I love Louis CK. After I saw this clip, I seriously vowed to stop complaining about flying. The only time you’ll hear me complain about flying now is if you’re sitting next to me when the plane has turned to a fiery ball of metal spinning out-of-control towards the ground and we’re all gonna die.

So, anyway, here is what dressing up has to do with all this. I suppose it’s sort of like dressing up to go to church. I have respect for flying. I have respect for the technology and the crew and the strangers I’m traveling with. (Though most of the time, it feels like “against.”)

On my flight home over the weekend, I read Jonathan Franzen’s collection of essays, How to Be Alone. In the essay “Imperial Bedroom,” he writes of the way we complain about losing our rights to privacy, but how, really, “what’s threatened…isn’t the private sphere. It’s the public sphere.” He defines a genuine public sphere as “a place where every citizen is welcome to be present and where the purely private is excluded or restricted.”

In other words, Mr.-Jackass-on-Your-Cellphone-in-Denver’s-C-Terminal-on-Sunday-Afternoon: I don’t want to overhear your one-sided conversation with your girlfriend about how miserable she’s making you and how you need to feel more like a man. And, Ms.-Sorority-Girl-with-the-Aviator-Sunglasses-on-the-Bus-to-Long-Term-Parking (I can stereotype like this because she was wearing a “Chi Omega Bid Day 2009″ shirt.): I don’t want to know that you actually wear those god-awful flannel pants with “PINK” written across your ass even when no one can see you.

WE ARE IN PUBLIC, people. Why does everyone treat airports like their own personal mental-wards?

So, I dress up when I fly. Yes, I feel just as shitty on the inside as everyone else, for any or all of the following reasons, depending on why I’m traveling:

  1. I’m with 3 small children and a husband who makes fun of me for dressing up.
  2. Airport and airline crews are over-worked and under-paid and they occasionally take it out on the rest of us.
  3. I haven’t shit for days, or have had a constant stream of diarrhea for days.
  4. I’m hungover as fuck.
  5. I had to wake up at 4 a.m. for a 6:30 flight.
  6. Because I had a later flight, I got to sleep in, but have had a string of delays and have been at the airport for 12 hours.
  7. Worst-case scenario: I’m traveling with 3 small children, the lady checking our bags was mean, I haven’t shit for days, I’m hungover and had to wake at 4 a.m. but after a string of delays have been at the airport for 12 hours.

flying is awe-inspiring, through the right eyes...

But looking dignified makes me act dignified and an airport (and traveling, in general) is where you need your dignity the most. So consider, next time you fly, wearing a nice shirt or some earrings, glancing out the window AT LEAST ONCE to witness the miracle in which you are partaking, and, of course, having the Ginger Ale.

yours truly,

Maria Polonchek

Posted in life, technology | 11 Comments »

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March 23, 2012

a scientific study on the effects of iPhone usage, and also motherhood, on the brain

by katie savage

I recently read an article in my alumni magazine that begins this way: “You might be less likely to finish reading this article if you have an iPhone.” Humph. Well. I have an iPhone. It’s pretty new, actually. I was in the Stone Ages for a while with a cute red slide-y one, but now I can’t imagine breastfeeding without a little “Words with Friends” action. So I took this first sentence as a challenge and hunkered down to read every last word of that damn article.

I read.

I turned the page.

I turned the next page, to see how much longer the article went on.

Then I started skimming.

Skim, skim, skimeroo.

Right before I gave up entirely.

So the magazine article (which, in case you’re interested, is called “Is Technology Scrambling Our Brains?” by Christine Spicer) won. It wasn’t a boring article—on the contrary, it was full of very useful information about how technology is retraining our brains to make us more distractible. I highly recommend the first few sentences, and the ones that were pulled out and enlarged in big, colorful bubbles.

When did this happen to me? I am a writer. A reader. A student. I have gotten through Beowulf and Moby Dick and more than one John Irving novel. I stayed up into the wee hours of the morn trying not to confuse the Russian characters in The Brothers Karamazov, and I did so with a bit of success, if I do say so myself. And now I can’t get through a six-page article that freakin’ dared me to finish it?

Maybe technology is changing me. Stephen L. Carter, in a fascinating piece (that I read almost all of) called “Text a Little Less, Think a Little More,” maintains that we, as a culture, are losing our ability for independent thought because our brains are never, ever idle. We move from one thing to the next with surprising speed. If we have even a moment that is not chock full of media, we are pissed. (Have you ever forgotten your phone? Like, for one trip to the grocery store? It’s like the apocalypse. WHAT IF SOMEONE NEEDS ME? Gah!!! WHAT IF I DON’T KNOW WHAT CEREAL SCOTT WANTS? WHAT IF I’M BEING CHASED BY ZOMBIES?!?!! HOW WILL I INFORM THE JEDIS?)

I can’t give my iPhone all the credit, though. That would be too easy.

I’ve done some scientific research, and here is a chart indicating the precise brain activity I can expect on any given moment:

Image

I also forgot “Desperately trying to get that blasted Wonder Pets theme song out of my head,” which is a slight flaw in my research.

Being a parent of small ones has got to change your brain way way way way way way more than owning an iPhone, right? Way more.

I know you know the feeling—you posted about it here. Whether it’s my iPhone or my children or my lifestyle or simply this point in my life that is causing the shrinking attention span, is there anyone out there who can give me some encouragement? Does it get any easier? Because this can’t bode well for a writer. Maybe when the kids can start doing their own laundry? Or at least when they start watching shows with better theme songs? Like Mad Men?

You probably haven’t finished reading this, anyway. Did anyone finish reading this?

Posted in technology | 14 Comments »

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