Seeing Ourselves Through Technology Ch. 2 (Notes)

Summary: In this chapter, Rettberg discusses a few different types of filters and how they impact our daily lives. She first talks about technical and cultural filters. Technical filters are those we impose through use of a codex or format. Rettberg uses the examples of baby books and apps. These books lay out a documentation format and prompts in the text, giving parents a set area to write out certain events. These prompts are difficult or in some cases impossible to change. A cultural filter is one that is not laid out in text but, in our upbringings. Similar to the baby books, a photo album has specific guidelines. They show kids, parents, families, and vacations. The people are generally happy and only the best pictures are selected for the album. While these filters are less rigid, they are no less evident in our day to day lives.

The next section discusses how picture filters have altered the way we look at our world. Applying a photo filter defamiliarizes us with our ordinary views of the world. This defamiliarization allows us to turn our pictures into art. However, when we see the same types of filers repeated many times, it looses it’s ‘shock value’ and we come to expect them.

In the third section discusses the technical limitations of technology. Many things are dictated and limited by the technology being used. Kodak, for example, made film that worked extremely well for fair skinned people, but very poorly for dark skinned people. This was due to the limits of the film at the time. It wasn’t until new film was developed that an improvement in dark skin toned pictures was seen.

The last section used genres to describe filters. These filters are a specific type of media that one looks for, or how a specific medium has specific requirement to fit into the genre. Photo albums require photos, while blogs require an episodic narration arranged in reverse chronological order.

Making Connections: Earlier in the semester, we discussed how the internet is changing the way we think, read, and act. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr talks about how the internet has changed the way we read and think. In the article, Carr describes how reading on the internet is usually done by skimming the text for the information that you want, rather than getting into a deep state of reading. This is partially due to all of the distractions online. Similar things can be said for photo filters. We have gotten so used to seeing our photos run through a filter that we forget what the real world looks like, in the same way we forget how to achieve a deep state of reading. These distractions draw our attention away from the object being photographed and to the filters being used. Sometimes this is subtle, other times it’s very obvious.

Key Terms and Main Ideas:

• Technical Filter: A filter that restricts or prompts you for a specific thing. (A daily journal that prompts you for your feelings and gives you specific areas to write in.)
• Cultural Filter: The unspoken rules and conventions that guide our daily lives or reasons for doing things a certain way. (The content of our Facebook or Instagram posts.)
• Defamiliarizing: To change the way something is presented, making it less obvious as to what the object is. (Painting a fruit bowl in black and white or changing the colors of the fruit.)
• Anesthetizing: Becoming numb or desensitized to a technique due to it’s overuse. (Seeing objects photographed through the same filter, many times.)
• Filter: A device or screen that either removes unwanted results or changes the look of a picture. (Filtering the results of an online search. Adding a photo filter to change the colors.)