Nathan Jurgenson – The Social Photo – (book, pp. 1-15)
This reading discussed the rise of different technologies changing the way the masses think and perceive information. They drew a similarity to the rise of photography, and how its inception changed how people viewed time since they could suddenly capture moments of time in an image. Photos became so important so quickly, and most of the popular apps these days involve some sort of photo. The photograph has actually changed society so much — it kind of brought us to an image-obsessed society, where people care about how they present themselves and how they look above most other things.
Jill Walker Rettberg – “What can’t we measure in a quantified world?” (talk, 20m)
This TED talk is talking about tracking devices (like FitBit) that track our activities to encourage behaviors based on the information it collects about us. The speaker talks about how this quantitative behavior tracking isn’t a new thing because people like Ben Franklin tried to improve themselves through behavior tracking as well. I think it’s really helpful to track behaviors like this so we can feel accountable for our behaviors that we are trying to change.
Ben Grosser – What do Metrics Want? How Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on FB (article)
The article is talking about how much sites (mainly Facebook) use numbers and metrics as a measure of social interaction, which in turn drives an “insatiable desire for more”. This is emphasized and brought to light in the video that Ben made with Mark Zuckerberg talking about numbers and metrics for almost a whole hour. It makes sense to me that people would become obsessed with this — humans are social creatures, so I don’t find it unusual that people want to be validated and have a sense of belonging through social metrics, to the point where their self worth depends on it, or at least is impacted in a big way through these metrics of social interaction, and makes me think about why the companies choose to show certain metrics over others, and if they are aware that they are doing this.