Week 2: Domestication

The topic of domestication is a perfect eye-opener when it comes to analysing our lives in the modern world.  This includes how our lives are run, what they are run by, and what our modern day values consist of.  Although domestication is closely related to media rituals, the difference between the two that separates them quite definitely is that our media rituals is the actual act of letting media play a leading role in our lives, and domestication is how and why we let it happen.

The key point, in my opinion, is how we have brought private into public so quickly and so easily.  Media itself has countless contradictions with how its run and what we as loyal users think of it.  Consider the news and the issues that immediately come to mind.  Some of the main arguments include how the news doesn’t include unedited and raw footage and whether or not we as viewers can really trust our media/news sources.  However when real footage or photos are published/presented, issues surrounding viewers discretion and inappropriate documenation arise, creating ‘controversy’ with the latest news piece.  The same applies with communication devices such as cell phones and portable computers.  Now that technology has brought us equipment that caters to complete freedom of movement without being disconnected, there is an obvious change in mindset amongst all those living in urban and busy societies.  This is the private to public issue that is raised in the readings.  A private phone call in a public location simply means to those around the caller to ‘look the other way’ so a public conversation can occur privately.  Is this the mindset that is applicable to many or all modern urban societies? Is private the new public?  My answer would be yes, and this is how we have been domesticated in this sense.  We now commonly accept new technology to alter how we communicate and stay connected to our private lives, publicly.  This is how our understanding of social arrangements works.

The couch potato article goes more in depth with how technology becomes part of our domesticated lives.  New technology is produced and released to cater to our growing need to stay connected as easily and mobile as possible.  Smarter technology means happy and connected people.  It also means that as technology develops communications, so does the chance that it can reach areas that haven’t been accessible before, connecting even more people and places.  Each new device comes with a better/more advanced/smarter feature than the last, and in order to maintain the ‘connected’ feeling we all have, we purchase it and use it to stay up to date and stay connected.  We need a phone in our hand, or an iPod to listen to, or a computer at home to connect to the internet and new technology only makes this easier for us.

Consider a computer system upgrade, eg. Windows ’97 to a Windows 7.  It takes time to get used to it but we will go through the effort to understand how it works and how to use it to stay connected with media and technology.  This is the modern day relationship between humans and technology.  In order to use something new, we have to teach ourselves how to use it.  It is automatic and what we are accustomed with.  Without keeping up to date with new technology progress will never be made.  It is all relative from a cultural/social and economic perspective, we keep up with media and technology and media and technology keeps up with us.

Although the couch potato is the typical generalisation, there is a significant transition being made with how we will stay glued to our screens.  We will alter and adjust how we socialise and interact with others based around what the media and technology has to offer, and recently the technology that is available includes both television and computer capabilities in the one piece of equipment.  Computers and the internet is fully equipped to provide and support anything we’d watch on a television, such as live streaming of television shows and movies, news, sports, music, etc.  The media that created the couch potato and what we currently understand as typical stereotypes is transforming, changing and pushing us into a new area of media altogether.