Question: How has wireless technology changed how we think of public vs. private spaces?
It is clear that wireless technology has really answered problems of a previous generation but also caused issues for the present generation. As stated in the article by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, getting lost isn’t really a thing anymore. No one gets lost anymore because all one needs to do is go on google maps and find their way home. This solved an issue for the generation before the smartphone and that is great; no one now needs to spend more time than they need traveling from one place to another. But the advancement also had huge problems for the present generation. Bhattacharjee spoke about how parents are spending less and less time with their kids and that they are spending less and less time actually socializing. So in a private place like one’s home, wireless technology has distracted people from living in the moment. We can see this in paragraph eight where she sights the research of smartphones and how they might affect a conversation. She says “Those who had left their phones in another room fared the best. Those with the phones placed in front of them did the worst. But even those who had tucked their phones in their pockets were found to have diminished cognitive capacity.” In summary, when your phone is within an arm’s reach, you are more likely to be thinking about both getting the phone and about the conversation but not engaging in the conversation.
Personally, in terms of my own private spaces, I feel incredibly disgusted and I don’t really have anyone else to blame but me. I used an app (which is now shutdown) that was called google music (or something like that) and it was basically for listening to music. One day I go into my settings on my desktop and I see everything. I see ALL of my history. The music I listened to and when and it was very detailed as well. Even though I bought the music, google was still tracking where and when i was listening to the music and what songs as well. With wireless technology, it really helped to keep me more entertained but it also made it so much easier for big tech to track me and what i am like.
Also, I don’t know if it is just me but I never really am bothered by large antenna signals. Maybe that is me living in NYC and expecting beauty to be found not in my surroundings. I look outside and everything is already ugly as hell so there I don’t really care if there is a giant 5G antenna outside. Maybe the conspiracy theorist though. I think it is an interesting strategy that these companies like starbucks really are. The people were used to having free Wi-Fi so that they could use their phones and laptops but when these companies pushed these free Wi-Fi away and made it so that others have to pay, people were basically hooked and they had a choice, either pay up large amounts of money or don’t use it at all. This is just another example of greedy corporations turning something that was cool and useful into a milk-the-cow situation. Private spaces over the air are now controlled by corporations as well.
