Seeing ourselves through technology (CH1) Reflection

I thought that this article/short book was informational and accurate (at least I think it is) based on the fact that the author Jill Retburg, backed up what she wrote with historical and real world examples of how self representation came to be and what it’s effects are on the individual and the social world around them. I liked the fact that she first states what the article/book is going to be about before she starts in with the chapters because it’s then easier for someone to know what it’s about right at the start and know what they are getting into. She says that she is going to cover three main aspects of self-representation; written, visual, and quantitative, which she does in detail. But I also thought that she wrote too many things that she didn’t need to, mostly common sense statements such as, “self representations have always been a part of our culture,” “people that were alive in the 16th century couldn’t get there opinion out mainly because there was a lack of technology,” and “social media is about communication with others.” I agree with her on the topic of amount of body we tend to show in pictures that get posted than previous times. I feel like there is a unnecessary need to show more of your body than you have to, for example, girls tend to show more of their skin than boys do because they think it will get them more attention, which it does in most cases. I’m not saying that it’s not alright to do that, do whatever you want, but I am saying that we see it more now than let’s say the medieval/colonial age, up to the 80’s and even the 90’s. There are a lot of ways that you can represent yourself and with every one, unless private, will get criticized at some point or the other because certain people have certain beliefs and they can’t accept anything that’s different. I get people have their own opinions on things but some people don’t need to go as far as they do, like I was taught, if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all and keep it to yourself. I also agree with how technology has advanced and grown to affect a larger amount of the population when it comes to self representation with cameras on our smartphones, different types of blogs, and social media platforms. It can’t be denied that if you want to get represented in a big way today, you have to either do what’s trending or be totally unique in what you do. And that to get the feeling of representation, you have to be responded to, commented on, or the amount of likes you get.  I guess it depends on the situation that a person is in because different topics need to be discussed more in depth and the comments or discussions that arise from these topics either provide a good or bad “footprint” on it and it can’t really be prevented. Overall this article/book gave me more knowledge on how self representation  has changed in society through technological developments.