The Era of Technological Innovation

The Twenty-First Century has been deemed the era of technological innovation and advances. Rightfully so, considering everyone has a cell phone, computer, laptop, or some new generation hand held apple product allowing them to tap into every aspect of social media and communication. As our world becomes more inclined towards becoming linked through social media rather than actual physical encounters technology accommodated this trend rather well. Through out the use of technology and social media we are able to find out more about the human race as people than ever before.

On social networking sites and most technological mediums people are allowed to express themselves through different avenues. People are more creative and expressive online rather than in person. The ideas of showing whom you really are, and portraying some sense of vulnerability is off-putting to many individuals.

In a brief video done by Aaron Koblin we are able to see a project he had been working on for some time. One project, which appeared to be nothing, more than a network of lines intersecting and crossing back and forth along a grid were actually the routes of airplanes arriving and departing from various airports in the United States. It was interesting to see how much of a factor time was in these projects. Another project we were able to see was tracked cellphone data and the number of SMS text messages composed and sent at different locations, during different hours of the day. The largest amount of messages were sent on New Years, when everyone sent the obvious “Happy New Years” SMS.

One of the most interesting projects he conducted was the sheep experiment. He paid people to simply draw a sheep, he then put the collection of sheep on a web site to be seen and admired. The admiration comes into play when you realize just how diverse everyone’s drawings were. It was refreshing to see the different levels of creativity and everyone’s perception of what a sheep looked like. I found this refreshing because it showed our humanity in the sense that we are a diverse group of people and we do see things differently even if they happen to be the same thing. Allowing people to use this interface by way of social media drawing something a simple as a sheep really shows how even though we are very much the same we are even that much more diverse on a deeper level.

Every rendering of every sheep told a different story about the artist that drew it.  Which brings life to Koblin’s quote “An interface can be a powerful narrative device. And as we collect more and more personally and socially relevant data, we have an opportunity, and maybe even an obligation, to maintain [our] humanity and tell some amazing stories”