Institutional Interaction

Funnily enough I touched on this in last week's comment on profanity!

There's a significance difference when it comes to interacting with your friends, your family, and your boss. Work colleagues and superiors require a certain level of tact when you're interacting with them because of the environment the interaction is taking place within. It's not the time or place for swearing, sarcasm, or playful (or not so playful) insults. Each workplace is different but one thing they all have in common is the need for at least a bit of extra care when it comes to what you say and how you say it.

The point I was making last week was basically about the difference between who you're swearing to. It's fine in context with your friends, when you're in a relaxed environment and that sort of social behaviour is acceptable but its vastly different when you're in a job interview, and subsequently when you're at work. When you're in the workplace its often not just your own image you're upholding. Many jobs (particularly the type uni students have) involve a great deal of interactions with customers or clients, and if our interactions aren't at a certain level of politeness in such a frame- we're not damaging our own image so much as we are the company's.

I don't think any further explanation is required for why that might be bad. But it's not just about swearing, obviously. Showing up dressed appropriately (or dressed at all) and following the rules of the workplace apply just the same. Smoking inside the store you work at, leaving for hours at a time, there's obviously many rules, sometimes spoken, and often-times considered so obvious there's no need to speak them, which we must follow as a part of the institution of the workplace.

If not, its probably safe to assume you're not going to be a part of that institution for much longer.

Comment on Swearing

This week I burned another one of my comments on the subject of swearing (surprisingly enough I got through it without actually swearing, pretty impressive if you ask me).

So here that is, enjoy.

http://joshnoblee.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/exploring-profanities-in-interactions.html?showComment=1351552310054#c5019318005175419587

Data Discussion

So this week was my Data Discussion Presentation, in which I talked about Humour, and how it effects our interactions.

Simply because I'm not up with the whole embedding trick, and I did spend quite a bit of time trying, I'm just gonna give you all the link to it, sorry for the inconvenience!

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FAHbig-9qPN8-yLJi8o8ErmLe7fBRsBiQLfid5GeY0o/edit

Interacting With The Internet

This topic of discussion is a little more interesting to me than some of the others simply because of my relation with it. I've read a few other people's post on the idea and a lot of the conversation starts to lead towards Facebook, Myspace, Instagram etc. and how social networking seems to benefit our overall connectivity, while having a difficult to define negative affect on our face-to-face relationships.

I am one of those few (and socially strange) individuals who've never bothered to jump on the social networking bandwagon (a bit too much sharing for my taste) yet I still find myself, despite not being attached to facebook or some of the other mediums which incite this type of online behaviour, being involved in this spiral of communication that is being dragged away from the physical sphere. Some of my best friends are people I met online who don't even live in the same country- two live in New Zealand, and a few of my "irl" friends and I travelled over there a couple of years back for a holiday.

I think the point I'm getting at here is that the internet has become such an integral part of society, and despite ranging amounts of involvement in it, we all have a stake in the way it progresses as an entity that will continue to affect our social interactions as time goes on. Even for the oddballs who don't have a smartphone, or the social-networking accounts that normally go hand-in-hand with one, the internet has a profound affect on the way they (and I) interact with people, be them friends or strangers- in our day to day lives.

It's difficult to try and define why this might be the case, that the internet is a form of digital quicksand that seems to draw people in regardless of their attempts at resisting. Is it a fear of isolation from not taking part? Connectivity is the buzz word of the times, and the idea of privacy, while many are kicking up a fuss about it, is becoming a thing of the past. A lot of people don't seem to mind, though, by perpetuating the beast and continuing to share each and every event of their daily life.

I think connectivity really is at the heart of everything. We all use the internet as a medium for interaction precisely because we all use the internet as a medium for interaction. Did that make your head hurt? I hope not. Everyone is there, on the other side of our screen our friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, friends of friends, people we've never met are all there able to be reached with little to no difficulty. Someone mightn't be home, or they mightn't pick up the phone, but you can be sure that sooner rather than later they'll check their Facebook wall and realise you want to chat.

Availability. If you want a slice of pizza but there's none in the house, you're far more likely to just walk away and not worry about it than you are if your house is right next door to a pizza store.

What an odd analogy to end this on- just when I thought I was starting to make sense...