Technology Diary

        At 8:25 my alarm went off. I hit snooze and it went off again at 8:40.

·      After I got ready for class, I had a few minutes to spare and got on facebook for 10 minutes.

·      Right before I walked out the door to go to class, I checked my phone to see what the weather was like which took about 2 minutes.

·      Right before my class started I used my phone to check my emails, which took about 5 minutes.

·      During class, I received 2 texts and sent 2 texts back, which took a total of about 5 minutes.

·      When I got home from class I was on my computer for about 30 minutes, and I watched TV for about 45 minutes.

·      As I did both of those I texted throughout which was probably a total of 45 minutes on my phone.

·      When to class and took notes, so I was on my computer for an hour and 48 minutes.

·      After class I texted on my phone for about 20 minutes.

·      Dialed a class that lasted 30 seconds

·      Received a call that was 2 minutes and 46 seconds

·      Dialed call that was 15 minutes

·      Received call that was 1 minute and 26 seconds

·      Watched 30 minutes of TV

·      Drove 5 minutes away and had my radio on the whole time

·      On my computer for 20 minutes

·      Wrote an email that took about 3 minutes

·      Received phone call that was 7 minutes

·      Texting on my phone for 5 minutes

·      Watched TV for 35 minutes

·      Texting on my phone for 10 minutes

·      Online shopping for 30 minutes

·      Watched a recorded TV show for 60 minutes

·      Right before I went to bed played solitaire on my phone for 20 minutes.

Total technology use: 514.76 minutes, which is roughly 8.6 hours.

Where does my time go?

            When looking back at my recorded data, I can see that a lot of my day is spent on my phone texting and making calls or on my laptop checking emails or going on other distracting websites.

Was my time well spent?

            As the day goes on, I’ve never really realized how often I am using or overusing a piece technology. However, as I begun to write it down and evaluate how much of my time is wasted in front of the TV, or computer screen I began to question what I’m actually doing with my time. Today felt like a pretty productive day and I got the majority of my things done plus a little more. However, as I looked at all the down time I had and looked at what I decided to use the time on I question if it was really time well spent. I could have chosen to do other productive things such as study and work on homework but did not. Technology is always going to be used, but I hope that I can cut my use down and use my time on more sufficient things.

A theory that applies:

A theory that clearly applies to the use of technology would be the Critical Mass Theory. The theory deals with the value of technology, and how it goes up with the number of users. For instances the more users that use the technology makes the value greater. For example the more people that use facebook, the more people get of out it, people are more likely to subscribe to a social network if they knew a lot of their friends were doing the same thing.  When I had signed up for my facebook account, I was one of the last of my friends to do so, and the only reason I did was because I knew all of my friends were on the site as well. One of the main goals that the Critical Mass Theory goes for is universal access. As anyone can see the social network, facebook and twitter have gotten a large universal access. Facebook and twitter are the top two largest social networking systems in America, people all over the world join these two sites to keep them up to date with family and friends and other reasons as well.

Citation: Comm 240: Class notes, from September 29. Ch. 3 Adoption&Theories, by Jesse Fox.