Nancy Baym: "Making new media make sense"

The second chapter of the book "Personal Connections in the Digital Age" has as a main topic new media and the impact it has in our lives. Nancy Baym drives to the conclusion that new media has such an impact in our lives that it is starting to take control over us, mainly because we don't know how to properly use it. The author of the book talks about this technology from a social point of view, trying to understand what it brings to our society from a cultural and historical perspective. Also, she makes reference to how new technologies, new media, affect us in a personal way. Finally, she states, indirectly, that these new technologies are replacing what we know as personal relationships, or face-to face as she refers to, instead of being an addition to it.

From a personal point of view, I fully agree with Nancy Baym and her perspective on new technologies and how they affect us on our day a day basis. New media is making us more independent from each other, separating us from the rest of the world, especially with people that we used to spend most of the time with. 

In order to back up this statement I want to use examples text messages and Snapchat. First, text messages have grown to limits that might seem impossible in the last couple of years. Nowadays, text messages are such an important level in our lives that we wouldn't be able to survive without them. Text messages aren't only good to communicate daily messages and share information, they are also really important nowadays in order to communicate important information. In other words, information that a decade ago would only be given face-to-face. For example,being in the same building and asking someone what their plans and if he wants to hang out, nowadays you can do it with a simple click on your phone. Text messages have changed our lives, making it much easier in some ways, but also converting us in 'machines' that we weren't suppose to be. On the other side, Snapchat has also changed us in a drastic way. People are nowadays more focus on showing themselves to other people, than actually focus on their actions and activities. What in the past would be a great moment hanging out with friends and having a good time, nowadays is a perfect scenario to be on our phones taking pictures of a moment that could be but never will be because of our addiction to our gadgets.