New media experiences

There is no question of a doubt that I have grown up in the era of new media, twitter, facebook, blogger, but this is the first time I'm becoming aware and receptive to the extent to which these new ways of engagement have affected the nature of our social interactions, and identity formation as just one aspect of more global trends.

It is this angle that is most immediate from our experiences of everyday life- in print, T.V, film, billboards, these have all become incorporated into fb likes, twitter feeds, so that using products now becomes an active assertion of our own identity. In many senses we have now captured a form of virtual advertising that is peer to peer, and also overlies a sense of materialism and capital relations into these expressions of identity. This in many senses involves the new horizontalisation of identity and material relations, but it is not quite so absolute as before objectification would occur in face to face interactions. Inherently re-raises Daniel Miller's questions about the commodification of modernity.

even without thinking about media theory, we can make passing observations about the nature new spaces for exhibition. Facebook now used between friends to share common cultural references in temporal chronology, for one, maintains a group identity of functioning in the same social space. The number of friends as a status symbol, photographs as making lived experiences somehow more 'real'. This compulsion for validity, may be said to be driven and shaped by these new media, or simply just facilitates fulfilment of latent desires. This is still uncertain; with the possible paths for exploration still unmapped. Also to what extent does the technology and structure of facebook discover or create these new aspects of our social world?

There must be some overlap with narrative and literature, than began personal intrigue. Susan Sontag's questions about journalism, about boundaries being created between foreign spaces and now. In looking at photographs from distant places, as exotice, we can now scrutinise the fundamental details of each other's lives. The idea of the diary is transformed into the blog, which adds an element of other people, that is immediately proximate. We now get instant feedback, and instant interaction between author and reader, across geographical space. The guardian ran an immersion competition to Rwanda, where the 'suffering' became personal, and this subverted a way of knowing. Knowing in terms of the experience of another, instead of an authority.

we are eroding the influence of mass media hegemony, however coercion may have appeared in different ways as shared symbols and compulsions- both negative and positive in terms of 'insecurities' and concern about 'who we are' and what we want in life. These expectations of experience is the attitude of youth and possibility. What we know and see now about new media is still in kindergarden, but we should be aware of the dangers of stunted emotional growth.