Technology, Virtual Reality, and a Surveillance Society

This is the last of the ‘blogs’ for my Communications class, as per usual, it is probably mildly confusing as I hate doing these and never know what to do for this Professors assignments.

A fully virtual world is coming quickly into our society’s future; advances in technology are bridging the gap between the physical world and the virtual one. This is a future that could never have been seen by our ancestors as these advances have happened at an extremely rapid rate. Modern technology allows us to do a variety of previously unimaginable things through a variety of different virtual experiences; conversations that cross oceans, alternative lifestyles, and mythical adventures. Currently technology has become so advanced that many people even prefer the virtual lifestyles and experiences over the physical world. Many people find solace through the virtual world, and it becomes a preferential form of socialization. Internet chat rooms, online communities and forums, and alternative virtual lifestyle platforms are becoming more popular with the new generations. Virtual reality is moving closer to becoming a fully integrated part of most people lives and there are even instances of people making money off of these types of alternative lifestyles. Certain websites allow you to buy and sell virtual forms of currency for actual money (http://www.gold4key.com/) and a limited amount of players are making a decent living from doing so- this being an example of physical survival based off of a virtual world.

The Mediation of Media and Our Reality

Modernly we can all see the impact of media in our daily life, but exactly how can we measure this impact? How can we see the expanse of media in daily life, and can we use media to prevent accidents that involve social media? Here we pose two questions (see below);

1. 1.      How can mediation be used to understand the effects of technological media in the creation of our reality?

We can see the physical impact of media into society through a variety of instances; legislature, pop culture, family rearing, and social interactions. In my opinion the easiest way to see the mediation of media is through family rearing, as a parent has to adapt to new types of media; either accepting types of media in the household, providing rules about types of media, or removing a new media from the family infrastructure. We see the effects of family media habits as our first showing of the mediation of media into society; this created its own reality over the past 100 years, as prior to this there was no need for family media regulations because it didn’t exist. Modern children are growing up in a media saturated environment (Douglas A. Gentile, 2002); this being a new type of developmental environment has drastically changed the way media is interpreted in the family. We all know of a child who had used the television as a sudo-babysitter, or a family that uses television as bonding time. Research on the mediation of media suggests that parents manage media in a variety of ways by creating certain rules; choosing which programs to watch together, discussing portions of programming, and limiting certain types of content (Shari Barkin, Edward Ip, Irma Richardson, & Klinepeter, 2006). This directly influences the creation of our reality, as we can see that new forms of child rearing have been made to address types of media and media saturation.