A Day Without Technology

For this weeks workshop, we looked at creating our own media campaign video to raise awareness of a particular cause of our choice.

Working in groups, we looked at several issues we could potentially explore and use in our campaign. We watched an interesting video for a campaign for 'Free Hugs' (http://www.freehugscampaign.org/) which I thought was a really nice way of promoting togetherness and found it to be a simple idea for something which has since influenced others in different countries to give out their own 'free hugs'.

Free Hugs Campaign (PeaceOnEarth123, 2006)

We found it difficult to come up with a idea for our campaign and brainstormed many ideas, we then asked ourselves what is relevant in our lives and important to us that we consider a worthy cause. We came to the conclusion that as we live in a technological age, we are constantly using our phones, iPods, the internet, television and various other technology that we as students have always grown up with. We asked ourselves one fundamental question:

This became the basis of our campaign - A day without technology. We wanted to look at how we as students could go without technology for 24 hours when in this day and age we have become so used to checking our phones and email everyday, using the internet, watching television or listening to music on portable MP3 players or iPod's. 


Jenkins (2006) wrote "media technologies are fully integrated into our everyday social interactions", we use technology in our everyday life as a means of communicating with people via social networking and mobile communication. We do so much so in a way that we as a society have come to rely on technology for almost anything, particularly socially in which we continue to carry conversations over the web and in a mediated form at home rather than in person. The ability to do things without leaving a room has put social interaction as well as even physical movement to a bare minimum. To the extent that losing this immediate form of mediated interaction such as the loss of phone or internet access can leave many feeling isolated and helpless. Technology has allowed us to be more sociable and given us a faster and convenient way of communication as well as deliver us information where new media has now become the first choice for many for their source of information. Our campaign attempts to show one student given the challenge of avoiding many types of technology and demonstrate to others the pros and cons of relying on technology in the day of a life of a student. 





The campaign video showed one student, Luke, as the subject as we followed him in his daily routine without the use of any of his personal technology (mobile phone, television, iPod and laptop).

Much of the video depicted him talking to the camera and explaining what he was doing as we were going along. We used several scenarios to show Luke refraining from using technology and using other activities and resources:  Luke talking to several flatmates to organise a game of football showed how we had to avoid using his mobile phone/social networking and use face-to-face interaction.

Another scenario showed Luke going to the library to write an essay by hand as a substitute for using Microsoft Word on his laptop. A scenario also involved Luke getting his news from a newspaper with the rates of newspaper sales in decline to show a way of avoiding reading news from online news sites and social networking like Twitter which tends to break news as and when it happens.. 


The last scenes of the video showed how his friends had failed to meet him for a football game and reflected on how important technology is in his life and how he relied on it to organise events and needed this to keep in contact with many of his friends. He concluded that technology can have it's good and bad points but overall felt he needed technology to help him with most of his day, realising what a strong reliance he had on it. The overall point of the campaign video demonstrates our constant need for information and contact with our friends so much so in creating feelings of isolation, as young people we use it more than any other age group and has become a huge part of our lives as we grew up always using technology, we know no existence without it.

Campaign Project - A day without technology

Sources: 

Jenkins, H. (2006) Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape [WWW] Available from: http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/11/eight_traits_of_the_new_media.html (Accessed: 26/03/2012)