. . . In my Interpersonal Media class, we focused on the idea of community this week. We talked about ways in which physical, embodied communities are similar and different to online communities. I touched on some of these ideas in my last blog post, asserting that online communities certainly can provide love and support, especially in hard times. This idea was reinforced by some of the readings we did for class, such as this article about the therapeutic benefits of blogging, including positive comments from readers (hint, hint). This idea was also challenged though, such as in this article about a woman who moved out of her town due to online gossip and bullying on the website Topix. Reading through the Topix page for my hometown, Felton, I witnessed adults engaging in similar behavior-- ridiculing members of the community in rather derogatory ways.
How does this relate to #HowIWouldQuit? Well, while scrolling through the funny posts on Twitter, I felt like a lot of these silly quitting fantasies were backed by some serious disdain for their mundane, challenging, frustrating jobs. I then started thinking about how the workplace is clearly shifting because of increased use and uses of technology. More and more opportunities are opening up for people to tweet, advertise, network, sell online, work from home--all online and all for a living! Are these people tweeting about quitting? Are online work communities more harsh and competitive, or supportive and collaborative?
As I go through my education, the more and more technology is implemented into my classes. In elementary school, I had set class time where we would play typing games on the computer to increase our accuracy and speed.
In high school, we would bring laptops into the classroom to conduct research and work on group projects. Students would share Google documents with our study guides to share information and help each other before tests. In college, not only do I use an online site called Moodle to get all of my homework and assignment information for most of my classes, but I've written huge group research papers without consulting each other hardly at ALL in person! This semester, once a week my Interpersonal Media class meets online in small groups to chat and collaborate on various assignments through GoogleDocs.
Working online for school has allowed for greater ease in sharing and acquiring important information, but it is also really challenging to convey ideas and compromise and synthesize ideas with other people. I often find myself feeling rushed, confused, and unable to articulate complex ideas and questions I am having. I also find that I don't bond with my group members beyond the task at hand much. If I see them in person, I might make some comment about the assignment, but I don't feel especially close to the group as a whole (compared to other groups I've done class projects with, who I become close friends through working with physically).
I suppose what I am getting at, is that I think that technology appears to be the way of work for the future, at least the path that I am on. I think that my generation is heading towards an increasing amount of job opportunities involving electronic communication skills (see here for some research on the topic). Honestly, I am both skeptical and excited about the prospect of working with electronic communication and media in my future.
I suppose #HowIWouldQuit then, would be to #unplug.
~*things to ponder and share*~
Do you hate/love your job and why? Does your current job/role require much online communication? Do you see yourself working online in the future? What experiences have you had working with an online community? How would YOU quit? ;)
It's interesting to see how people created a community just by their use of the hashtag #HowIWouldQuit. Nice post :)
ReplyDeleteWhat an entertaining hashtag!
ReplyDelete