As mentioned in class, Technology Drives our Leisure.
I have been sort of dwelling on this idea. It has been in the back of my mind while at work. Not much to usually focus on while cutting onions (other than not chopping of pieces of my fingers). My mind tends to wander. This week it has wandered on this idea.
So does technology drive our leisure? Any leisure really.
If it was one hundred years ago and our leisure habits were the same, would technology have changed what we would have been doing from the hundred year prior? I will focus on my habits, so in my leisure time I enjoy volunteering, fishing, shooting (firearms), and playing games/watching tv. So its 1912, and we live in the Stillwater area. We are college aged people enrolled at OSU at the time would be Oklahoma A&M College, and have leisure time. Granted their would be just a few of us since Oklahoma A&M held the first graduating with 6 men fourteen years earlier. I could attend one of the area lakes or ponds to fish, could go shooting, or play card games with my fellow friends. Technically in 1907 a Russian scientist and English Inventor created a mechanical version of the TV in 1907, but the first public demonstration was on March 25, 1925. No video games during this time frame (1958 was the first video game of table tennis on the oscilloscope, 1975 Pong is released on the Atari, 1986 Nintendo's NES is released in America, 1989 Nintendo releases Gameboy, 1991 Nintendo releases Super NES, 1995 Sony releases PlayStation, 2000 Sony's PlayStation 2, 2001 Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube, 2004 Nintendo DS, 2005 PSP and Xbox 360, 2006 Wii, PS3: from http://www.infoplease.com/spot/gamestimeline4.html). Fishing equipment is rather different, with hand made wooden lures and wooden rods. Shooting at local range would be rather hard to do too. So I think its easy to say that technology has driven our leisure.Still able to volunteer, even though the group I volunteer with won't be founded for 13 years.
So take today for instance, its 2012. I have leisure time. I can drive to Stillwater Armory and shoot at their range with my personal firearm or rent one of theirs. I can play a video game on my computer or PS3, or with the download about any game from the early years of video games and play one of them. Plenty of places to volunteer, and OSU is having the Big Event on campus tomorrow morning. I could fish, the weather is a little better than its been the last few days. I own a license, so I could go to an area lake or pond and cast my non-wood lure on my non-wooden rod. I can still play board or card games too. I firmly believe that technology drives our leisure. But what do you think? Has the leisure you participate changed in due to technology in the last 100 years? Where will it go in the next 100 years?
That's a pretty interesting take on technology and leisure. I believe your right when you say technology drives leisure. Take for instance the Ipad or even an Ipod for that matter. Just ten years ago to listen to music during a workout you had to have a radio on, now its as easy as downloading your favorite song on a mobile device. I think leisure is becoming more of an indoor activity rather than an outdoor adventure. More and more children, especially, are staying inside playing video games or fiddling with an Ipad. I'm like you though, I'd rather be outside fishing, golfing, or mountain biking.
ReplyDeleteI have too have noticed that our younger generation is doing more and more leisure inside. And this can be argued in future blogs about needing to get outside and do more stuff. But the fact is that playing video games, ipods, ipads and other electronic devices are what they want to do. Yeah, the ease of downloading songs to an mp3 player or ipod to listen to music for whatever purpose is growing easier and easier with new technology. This allows anyone to partake in leisure to some form much easier due to technology.
ReplyDeleteI agree that leisure has become easier to access, even in the rental movie industry. Companies like Netflix have taken advantage of this in droves. Now its possible for people to stay in their home and rent a movie, unlike in the past when you went to the store. I remember it was almost a social event to rent a movie, you would go out and see friends at the store then get a movie. Are we losing that social aspect with this easy access to leisure?
ReplyDeleteI think we are losing many social aspects when it comes to leisure, or at least interacting with others at the same location. We are trading that type of social aspect with the online variety. People now rent movies through Netflix of other type sites and can watch movies/tv shows through the computer, video game, or even their phone. People are also playing video games online with each other and interacting with other online gamers.
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