Me as a Media User

When I begin an essay I find that often, I am directionless. My mind is running on auto-pilot exploring one hundred different paths and I have little ability to focus it. It is at times like these I find it helpful to choose a word central to my thesis and type it into a search engine or database to see what concrete information it can offer to guide my thinking. In this instance I typed the word ‘media’ into the publicly edited encyclopedia, Wikipedia—or Wikipediaed it, as we describe it at home—and waited while it searched its virtual pages for my answer. As I watched the flag sway in the top right corner of my Internet Explorer browser it became evident to me that this action, so casual in nature, told me everything I needed to know about my media usage. Media, I realized, is so intertwined with my quotidian experience it is nearly impossible to separate it from any other aspect of my life.

When I wake up in the morning, the first sound I hear is that of my alarm set to National Public Radio. I brush my teeth to the present weather conditions or a new think-piece on gas shortages in Lebanon as a result of the on-going feuds. Then I check my email to see what stories my friends, who are scattered across the time zones, feel are worth sharing, the updated printing policy in Burton-Conner, a forward from my father containing a list of ways you can tell someone is from New England, and dozens of pieces of unsolicited spam—junk mail—which I delete immediately.

My day continues with intermittent conversations on my cell phone with various family members, a rest in front of a billboard just off the infinite corridor to keep myself up to date with campus-happenings, a scan of MIT’s newspaper, The Tech, over lunch, and the return to my room after classes to check my email (again) for any course updates. I work on my problem sets with iTunes, my music library, playing in the background and if time permits, I flip through one of my favorite trashy magazines to get the latest details on the Kate Hudson/Chris Robinson split before I go to sleep.

Life at MIT without media would be lonely. While I have been here for three weeks, the life that I am most comfortable with remains in my hometown of Winchester, Massachusetts. Whereas at home I spent most of my time interacting with people face to face, here I focus mainly on work and substitute communication through the various media available to me for real-life connection.

The same media that keep me in touch also isolate me. Interaction within the MIT community seems to be achieved mainly through the impersonal media. Questions on problem sets are asked over the phone rather than in person and sometimes they are only posed in emails. While cell phones and emails eliminate the distance between me and my best friend who is living in New York City, they create it when someone in my dorm emails me to tell me something rather than explaining it to me in person.Clearly, media plays a great role in my everyday life. It is present from the time I rise to my final waking moments. The ease of the transfer of information with ubiquitous media is incredible and there is no doubt that it has made many of my tasks go much more quickly and smoothly. But like most blessings, it is part curse in disguise. I find that I am much more isolated in a world where all communication is achieved electronically and the importance of human interaction is overshadowed by the stress on efficiency.