Technological Determinism
A bit of background...
Something that resonated with me the most was probably "The Independence Assumption." It became less and less likely for us to hear that technologies and social relations could be independent. My prior experience in bioinformatics and software design proved that technologies and social relations shared numerous common grounds.
However, I have an ironic yet fascinating experience during my undergraduate years at CU Boulder. I am not much of a social media guy. I joined online communities mainly for academic/personal project purposes (I quit seeking attention on social media platforms after realizing the toxicity.)
#Coding#
During my undergraduate studies, I was majoring in computer science. Most of the courses required us to join and form online project groups on a website named Github.
Now, here's the thing about Github.
I considered Github to be one of the most user-unfriendly online platforms for rookies. The full navigation took me hours to figure out. The reason I said it was because, unlike other online communities, Github does not have chat rooms for users. It would become easier if people see it as storage units.
When I was collaborating with my teammates on our projects, the offline conversation was still inevitable. I hope you now recognize Github's independence. On the contrary, think about Canvas. If you want, you can hand in your homework and join a discussion group on the same website.
"Technology and social relations are independent of each other."
This statement was tricky. Even for Github, traces of collaboration or social relations can be found. In each repository a user created, Github visualized each member's contribution to the codes. You could even see the times of commits made as well as the content of each commit.
I described my
Github experience as ironic because it showed how "closed" the computer science community can be. Don't get me wrong, once you get used to how
Github works, things will become clearer and you will definitely find useful codes to assist your programming journey.
That being said, I never believed that technologies and social relations could be entirely independent of each other. "...a given technology brought about educational change, but at the same time, requirements of society operating through the educational system generated changes in the associated technology." (Bruce, Bertram, 1996) Although I mentioned the toxicity in social media, instructional media could be extremely beneficial. Take Github as an example, users lost the ease of communication through chat channels, but the community acquires order and tidiness. Especially when we take another look at a community like Reddit where memes and nasty comments take over the community.
Hi Tiger,
ReplyDeleteYour Github experience, as an example, well explained the technologies and social relations are not independent with each other and actually they are mutually constructed. I have not use the website before but probably a lot for this semester. Through your description, I think it can be helpful for rookies like me to start learning programming and be supportive community that linked people together in computer science aspect. By the way, I like your blog style and homepage picture!
Thx for liking the picture & style :D
DeleteGood luck with your programming!
Hi Tiger,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the thoughtful post! You mentioned that you "quit seeking attention on social media platforms after realizing the toxicity." That's quite impressive! I have tried to do the same - I've stopped posting on Instagram, but still find myself mindlessly scrolling through other people's feed every now and then. Would love to hear your tips on how to manage social media usage!
You also discussed the relationship between technology and social relations and stated that you never believed that they could be completely independent. Take the example of a collaborative project on GitHub. Do you think the limited chat options contribute to or hurt GitHub's user-friendliness?
On managing social media usage:
DeleteFor Instagram, I honestly couldn't think of another way other than deleting the app. Instagram per se, is "reverse Facebook," filtered photos with captions.
For WeChat(if u use it), disabling the "Moments" section under "Discover" was extremely helpful to me. I told my friend if they wanted to know how my life is going, just call/text me. If they wanted me to like their photo, tell me that they posted.
On your question:
That specific option certainly hurt GitHub's user-friendliness. The best way to navigate GitHub is to watch YouTube instruction video!
Hi Tiger,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your experience with and thoughts about social media and Github. Just like you, I quit posting pictures on social media platforms like Instagram after realizing what it was doing to my mental health. It is ironic that I stopped using the main features of this platform but am still using the DM feature to stay in touch with friends. I agree with you that technology and social relations are never independent of each other. In any platform, there is always a sense of collaboration, sharing and connection between users. Technology bridges the gaps of time, distance and cultures, creating different communities that share similar interests. It is certainly important for web developers and engineers to design the online platforms carefully so that users can navigate them easily. You gave an interesting thought on the pros and cons of Github abandoning certain features. I think Github has a specific target user group that shares a similar goal. Most members want to improve coding skills by learning from and contributing to code threads. In that sense, personal interactions are not as important as direct skill share. It will definitely help, though, if Github is more beginner friendly, and more people can have easy access to this amazing community.
I'm glad you relate to my choice of topic so well!
DeleteAnd great suggestion of keeping the DM function.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Tiger,
ReplyDeleteSorry for removing the comment. I just want to add on something. Anyway, thank you for sharing with us your thoughts on Technological Determinism and your experience with GitHub. I too quited social media 2 years ago as I gradually realized how social media changed how I felt and acted with others. The overflowing information took away what's important for me and brought lots of noises into my life. Obviously, we can train algorithms to know what we like and what we believe, what if one day they are coming backward to train us from what they learned from the other users? At least for my YouTube recommendation, I realize it's gradually leaving my niche of theater performances and starting to recommend me more talent shows and sitcoms. I'm really interested in how would algorithms shape our minds. Would algorithms make us more divided (like we only see things we are interested in) or more unified (like we are being fed with things others also like)? I don't know whether I should classify the outcomes like this but it's very interesting to think about.
Hi Ningcong,
DeleteI 100% agree with your statement "what if one day they are coming backward to train us from what they learned from the other users?"
Go to Netflix and watch the newest documentary "The Social Dilemma."
It just came out 2 days ago, and I'm sure you'll resonate with it:D
Hi Tiger,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your sharing. Your Github experience truly provides me a unique lens to consider the relationship between technologies and social relations, whether they are mutually independent or constituted. Even though the social relations among the members of the CS community in the platform are seemingly loose in the context created by technologies, there are still some indicators of the intertwined relationship between technologies and social relations. The fact that Github, as one example of instructional media, is different from Reddit, as one example of social media, in communication reminds me of social participation we discuss in this week's reading. The Reader-to-Leader framework, which is applied to study technology-mediated social technology, seems like not 100% applicable to instructional media, which are mostly driven by academic purposes. For instance, people in instructional media take a shortcut in the transition of roles, fairly short time as readers, and then quickly participate as contributors and collaborators.
Hi Haines,
ReplyDeleteGreat catch on the "reader-to-leader" framework. Sure, instructional media shared many similarities with traditional social media. It's ironic that there's not a platform constituted between academic and entertainment. Reddit was one, and it became really nasty and toxic.
Hi Tiger,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your point of Github is one of the most neophyte unfriendly websites. Even though I have used it for several projects of my grad school courses, I still feel like I did not have a clear understanding of it at all. Just out of curiosity, if you consider social media platforms are quite toxic, you seem still enjoy getting adorable pictures and posting them on your Wechat moments. Just kidding, please do not punch me on my face.
BTW, after spending my whole afternoon reading your blog, I feel like finding the answer about why I like you and I feel like I love you more than this afternoon. XOXO