Media Change and its Effects

Has rapid media change and development led to addiction to media technology?
(Looking at media change, particularly in mobile phones and video games)

It's funny to think that people used to carry around 'brick' phones, in terms of weight and size they must have been an inconvenience. Over the years mobiles have decreased in size and increased in the amount of information it can hold, as well as what it can do. The phone now is 100 times more advanced that than the original 'brick' phone from years ago.

Looking at how mobile phones used to be makes you think about what phones will be like in the future, imagine 100 years from now, the phone will most probably be amazing compared to the phones we have now. Even 20 years from now I think that mobiles will be a lot more advanced.

The phone is a device that is always being worked on and updated; smart phones, touch screens and mobiles with multiple applications are the way of the future. I think that years from now phones will be used more for video calls and eventually people will be able to watch television from their hand held devices.

                                                                          (google images)

Not only is new technology expensive, it can also be addictive. Just like a person can become addicted to some type of food, cigarettes or drugs a person can be addicted to a game. 

That’s almost the aim of the inventors and manufactures; they make a video game so ‘more-ish’ that it becomes addictive. A person getting addicted to a game is more likely to happen to a younger person that is more easily influenced. However it can happen to anyone.

The same applies for a phone. Through word of mouth people have communicated and spread the news that the ‘Blackberry’ is the new in thing, it has been said that in a London college over 50% of the students owned or have owned a Blackberry phone. 

As though the phone has attached itself to the teenage body it is rare that a teen would leave there phone at home or go for a day out without it. I have recently found myself surrounded by the sound of ‘pinging’ with groups of young people collectively looking at their phones, all wondering who it was that got the instant message.

Young people feel connected. I think this is why this consumer product, alongside the iPhone seems to have taken over. The iPhone in my opinion leans a little more towards the older teens  going up into people in their  late 30's.  Video games on the other hand I would say are for all ages. As there is so much to choose from anyone can enjoy a video game, no matter their gaming skills.

(google images)

Recently the video game ‘Call of Duty’ has taken over the minds of men particularly young boys. I was actually surprised to hear (on Facebook) that a male aged 18 missed a date with his girlfriend as he forgot and spent the day playing ‘Call of Duty, what makes it worse is that she was left out so much as a phone call or a text. Brainwashed!

(google images that I edited to represent someone being 'brainwashed' by a game)
In answer to the question, I don't think that media chance has caused addition to technology, however it is close to it. I wouldn't say that people get addicted to new technology as the word addiction is very strong, it is...

'the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.'
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/addiction

... I don't think that people are 'enslaved' to it, but do believe that it can easily become a big part of peoples lives. Especially popular computer games such as 'Call of Duty' (COD).

Blogging

If blogging was around 100 years ago, would history still be recorded on paper?

Blogging is seen to some, not just as a way of communicating, but also as personal entertainment. Since the development of blogger (in September 2009), blogger  has been known as a technological novelty, in which one person or a group of people collectively can express there thoughts and opinions on a subject of their choice. Its impact on politics and education has been massive.

Blogs are an expression of personality, usually written in the 1^st person, made so that people can contribute in terms of comments. Blogs are also ways of socialising and advertising.

In terms of history many historical event have been recorded in diary form. It makes you wonder, if blogging was around years ago would history still have been hand written, or word processed.

Anne Frank was a young girl who hid for 2 years in her neighbours attic in attempt to hide from the Nazi's who wanted to send her and her family to a concentration camp. During the two years in hiding she wrote a diary, years later it was seen as a piece of history that gave people a great insight into life as a Jew in the early 1940's and more specifically showed what Anne had to go through. 

(Above is an example of history being recorded on paper; on the left is Anne Frank's actual diary and on the right is the book that was created with it.)

If the technology that we have today was available in the 1940's I wonder in Miss Frank would still have chosen to write a hand written diary. She could quite easily have written a blog and her material would have been published a lot quicker than it was. Additionally people would have been able to comment openly on her entries and she would have been able to gain feed back, rather than her work. Nowadays people have the choice of how they record their information and an online version may have been easier, especially if she had a smart phone.

If Frank was alive today and was in the same predicament I think that she would would use some form of advanced technology if it was available to her rather than writing a diary. It's hard to predict what she would have done because I'm not her but when you think about it most people, especially young people think that technology is faster, more interesting and much more secure (it can be hard to hide something in your house that you don't want to be read rather than hiding it on your computer).

So in answer to my question, yes I think that if computers, the Internet and blogs where around in Anne Frank's time, that we would historians would be reading her recordings on the computer rather than from paper.