This week’s blog will be the first blog with ideas prompted by Jaron Lanier’s You are Not a Gadget. The first idea I found an urge to write about was that of lock-in. Lock-in happens in many ways in technology. One example is the QWERTY keyboard layout; the cost would be extremely high to switch keyboard layouts even if a clearly better layout was found, so we are locked in. That example does not seem like a big one as it likely does not hinder how we express ourselves or even slow down our computer usage much.
Other examples really can hinder our individuality. A few things locked-in I see potentially hurting our ability to be unique are fonts online and the layout of social networking sites. Fonts on websites people can post or send messages on, whether the posts are comments, social media posts, forum posts, or any other type, are usually restricted to one plain font for all users. The problem here is everyone looks like they have the same voice and are just identified by their screen name. If everyone is just identified by a short set of characters, we may not be thought of as individual humans so much. Social networking sites are usually very structured in how a profile or any part looks. Users cannot customize them much so they are forced to look similar to millions of other people on the same site. The effect is similar to the fonts one.
Even with all of this I do not see a big issue, people do not live on the internet, we are still humans with lives and the internet is just a small aspect of them, If everyone looks exactly the same online except for what they say, then the internet is just a great tool to communicate.
apfeifer3 