Blog 5 Ethnographic Notes

Last week, our classmates had been asked by the instructor to go around the room and introduce ourselves to classmates who we had not met, akin to a cocktail party.  We were then asked to record and recall what we noticed during the those introductions and conversations.  This exercise was in relation to the literature we had read that day about ethnographic studies.

Here is what I had noticed during the event:

1. A noticeable lack of eye contact.
2. Majority of classmates owned smartphones
3. Most classmates had smartphones on hands
4. Most times, classmates were looking or giving input on their phones when listening, with eyes on the phone.
5. First questions usually involved something to do with the respective interviewee's educational major, careerism
6. Majority of classmates were female students

Week 2 - Shaggy Dog Stories

A Discussion of 'Shaggy Dog' Stories


I was assigned into a group of three and had discussed the literary genre, the 'Shaggy Dog' stories, a joke that starts with a long winded story, roughly a paragraph long, ending with a punchline about the length of a sentence.

From the discussions I had with my other group members and the professor, all agreed that Shaggy Dog stories usually have the following elements:

- A long winded plot
- Intentionally chosen plot elements (word choice, situation,)
- Double entendres
- Use of puns
- Ridiculous or unlikely scenarios
- Shared meaning

We discussed and came to agree that for a Shaggy Dog story to 'work', those elements had to be used effectively, and that for the joke's punchline to work, the reader and writer should be in agreement with the meaning of the story and the story's elements.  For example, in order to get lawyer jokes, as discussed in one of the stories, the reader had to have already had prior knowledge of the popular perception of lawyers and/or disdain for the legal profession.

The Art of Smartphone Snubbing, or 'Phubbing'

Go into any coffeeshop, any restaurant, or any bar, and you're more likely to find people
staring into the blank empty white void of their tablets, cellphones, laptops, or the television.  Of the few tables where you will see a couple or a group of friends & coworkers speaking to each other, within minutes, they too will eventually join the herd of people who are affixed to the eternal and omnipresent screen.

Our lives are becoming more and more similar to the future depicted in Spike Jonze's fim 'Her'.   Already, we are 'in love' with our devices, or at least spending an unreasonable enough amount of time with them, even more so than with our lovers in the bedroom.   Or so says the BBC. 

Source: // http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25094142   

But why?  Why are we so enthusiastic to 'connect' to each other on the Internet, versus the person sitting right next to us, much less our next door neighbors?   Somehow, it's considered 'rude' to not text before making a call.   Somehow, it's considered awkward to 'friend' people in Facebook before meeting the other person offline, versus previous and current social networking websites where it 'is' acceptable to 'friend' people without prior contact.

Questions begging to be answered, are they not?

Hence, despite being a phenomenon unique to this century,  and, despite research and debate both in the scholarly circle or in the bar room circles, I myself will attempt to answer this question.  Why are we more 'connected' online, than 'offline'?   

This will probably an impossible task, if not improbable, but it's a topic that's been bothering me for a while.   Hopefully, I will finally be able to put all my years of education (and that's being generous) to some actual use.  

Wish me luck.