Breaking Down Borders: Hoe Technology Transforms the Private and Public Realms-Pierzchala
Breaking Down Borders: Hoe Technology Transforms the Private and Public Realms
This article starts off as the author, Robert Samuels, enters a Borders Café looking for a place to read a novel. In doing so, he observes the daily routines of several people who similarly have come to Borders looking to use it as an extension of their home. He then proceeds to go into detail about various people and their current activities. First there is a man sitting on a table chair reading the newspaper as if he were in his own kitchen, next he describes a women who is snuggled into a large arm chair who is listening to her ipod and humming out loud and out of tune. Next he describes another lady who breaks interview plans and makes vacation plans aloud on her cell phone. At first it looks like the main point of this article is to show the current role of places such as café shops or book stores in today’s society. The author makes the argument that public spaces such as these ultimately become an extension of our personal spaces. Near the end of the article, however, it becomes clear that the article is actually centered on the role of technology in allowing this shift to occur. While Borders is clearly a public realm, the use of portable technologies such as cell phones, laptops, and ipods turn these specific types of public spaces into a series of private spaces.
I agree wholeheartedly with the authors observations of the current role of “public” spaces such as Borders café in today’s society. While these places are very much located within the public world, modern wireless technologies allow for them to exist on a parallel, more private, realm. I also agree with the author’s assessment of this new shift. I feel that these technologies create positive and negative outcomes for humanity in general. On one hand, these technologies create a very distance disconnection in person-to-person interaction. We, as humans, are a very social being so this can clearly be viewed as a bad thing. On the other hand, it can be viewed that there modern, wireless technologies allow for a new, more culturally expansive person. While our direct interaction with other people is belittled by these technologies, they allow us to, in a sense, “multi-task” between the work and play functions of everyday life. One minute I could be working on my laptop on an architectural design for a new high rise building to go up in Chicago, Illinois and the next I could switch the page over to YouTube to watch a 30 Seconds to Mars music video. I feel this can be viewed as a good thing as it creates a differentiation and merger in our daily routines. Before portable technologies such as the internet, cell phones, laptops, and ipods, there were very set locations for given daily activities. For example, phones were rooted in a home, internet was centered on a private location, and music was limited to a large, more private player. Now that these technologies have become portable, it only makes sense that there are to be certain public realms that act as an extension of private ones. I don’t think this is such a bad thing.