Facebook: whether students hate it, love it or some combination of the two; Facebook is a huge presence in many people’s lives, but how do people live around it?
This apparatus, the Whitman Sky Project, was one of many recent projects created by students in a 300-level interdisciplinary course called Raw Geographies, co-taught by Assistant Professor of Art Michelle Acuff and Associate Professor of Politics Aaron Bobrow-Strain.
As technology becomes more central in the daily lives of Americans, colleges all around the nation have begun breaking into social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Whitman has taken notice that students are living more of their lives over these social communication services.
Most of us would agree that we care about how we are perceived, and this extends to our internet personas. Yet despite this concern, we do not take our internet selves seriously enough.
For many first-years, the day acceptances arrived was marked by excitement and eagerness for something new. As students looked through the cream-colored folders and learned more about the school they would eventually attend, many wanted to see the more personal side of Whitman: the people with whom they would be sharing their four years. The Whitman College Class of 2016 Facebook page is where hundreds of incoming students ended up, learning more about the school and each other.
Aside from completely avoiding the Internet, it's impossible to completely secure your digital life from those who would try to do you harm. What follows is a quick guide to adding security to key parts of your digital life.
Whitman as an institution seems to overlook student interest in substantive, pre-professional experiences. Considering the ample ways to provide such opportunities, the college owes it to these interested students to provide adequate resources.
Social media's impact on the way we communicate is easily one of the most significant technological developments of the past decade. Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and their cohorts have created a world where the revolution is both televised and tweeted. But what does the future hold? The way I see it, there are really two possible paths that our culture can take in regards to communication and social media.
Drawing from the open source ideal in computer programing, scientists and researchers could create a global network of scientific inquiry that would greatly increase the pace of innovation.
With the intent of broadening my knowledge of social networking sites, I recently decided to get my very own Twitter account. I've been following writers, comedians, hacker groups, news organizations and the queen of England, trying to get some insight into the thoughts and workings of today's internet-goers. But despite my ethnographic aims, Twitter has left me just as clueless about people as I was before. Here's a recent tweet by a sick Neil Gaiman that I feel sums up the bafflement brought on by Twitter: “If horrible brownygreen snotgunk was incredibly valuable and rare, I would be the richest man in the world."
