For some reason, ever since I saw it this weekend, I can't help but think about the film I saw on Sunday while everyone else was watching Beyonce shake her tush onstage and the game got blacked out for a half hour. And I think it's because of the theme of how we don't realize how important the actual act of human connection is until we lose it.
I posted this on the boards, but this weekend I saw the film "Warm Bodies." It's a zombie flick, but has a twist in that it's the zombie that's telling the story, and he often talks about in his narration of the events about how the lack of human contact other than as his food makes him feel disconnected. (In one scene, when describing the more "advanced"zombies called "Boneys," he describes them as eating anything with a heart, but follows it up with, "Well, I do, too, but at least I feel conflicted about it.") (Spoiler) As he becomes more and more human as the story goes, it's discovered that the cure for the "corpses" is just simple human contact, and they are allowed to roam around free with the humans again within the walled city. (End Spoiler)
That got me thinking about the connection between humans and machines (which may end up becoming my final project, I don't know yet), and my own relationship to how I use machines and human contact.
I know that one of my primary uses is Facebook -- I use it to communicate not only with my family, but with friends, fraternity members, students (on a separate account set up for that). My mom I sometimes talk to on Skype. My first real use of computers to make a human connection was in college -- any guy I went on dates with I met online first. In fact, that's how I met my husband -- on AOL, through their "Love@AOL" section. (Ironic thing being that neither one of us is on AOL anymore)
My use of Facebook to communicate with my students started out as a bit of a fluke -- I had started an alternate name account, and soon after that I had gone to a professional development workshop with a lawyer who had told us that it was not a good idea to have students on our Facebook accounts, but the students I had on mine weren't so much on my account because they were students of mine as much as the fact that they were friends with my stepdaughter. So I had the girls move to the other account, and it started becoming my go-to account to send students to.
I like having the separate account for the students. It allows them to connect with me without seeing my more personal stuff. And it allows me to contact them if I need to about assignments if I'm doing a long term assignment.
I think a lot of the reason why I tend to use computers to make my human connections is because it's an outlet for me. I'm in a weird profession for a shy person to begin with -- teaching -- but being able to make those human connections online allows me to express myself and be "me." Everyone else sees Facebook as a loss of human contact, but for me it's regaining the contacts that I've lost.
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