Koobecaf Assignment by Cody HastingsThis is a featured page

Cody Hastings Koobecaf Assignment Evan Nave Wednesday 2:30 ANTH 204 As a whole, America’s culture is becoming more informal. Everything these days is built to make it easier for us to finish things more quickly with less emphasis put onto the formality of face to face interactions. Facebook is just the latest accelerant in the move to an informal society. If we take a look at American culture through the barrel model, we can see that every aspect is beginning to move towards an informal culture. It all starts at the infrastructural level. The technology that is thriving in America right now is the communication market, where Americans are receiving the means to bypass normal face to face conversation in favor of less formal means that save us time, such as e-mail, cell phones, and internet means, with Facebook being at the forefront of these. For the most part cell phones are no longer even used for spoken conversation; instead, we use them merely for texting. And as we move up in the barrel model into the social level, we see that informality has permeated here as well. As far as kinship goes, marriage is often bypassed for living together unwed. Handshakes are often skipped when people are introduced, or when deals or done. In our political organizations, each presidential candidate has their own Facebook support group. They have their own websites to release their positions to potential voters more quickly. Finally we’ll look at the superstructure of America. Even here the old ways have been replaced by quicker, less formal ways. In religion, people now can go to church on Saturday evenings for better convenience to their busy, fast-paced lives. Scholarly ideas are no longer always published straight into books. Instead they are placed on the internet in less formal means. They can be blogged about, instead of published peer reviews. The important ideas thought up by America’s brightest minds are able to reach the masses much more quickly and in less formal means for the average American to be able to more easily understand them. This move to less formality and quicker means is why Facebook has exploded onto the American scene. By being able to write on someone’s wall you are able to have a conversation that is public, but without worrying about their immediate reaction to what you write. Without being face to face, we are much more likely to say whatever is on our minds. Also, Facebook has helped to spark a more informal means of communication, helping to develop a whole new lingo among younger Americans. All words are written shorthand, and capitalization is lost completely. We skip the more formal private conversations for conversations on Facebook walls. No longer do we have to carry a conversation to find out about someone’s relationship to another. Instead we can view entire conversations between the two to decide what they think of each other. Overall America has seen a shift to informality. The shift has been slowly taking place over the last few centuries. However, recent technology has greatly accelerated this shift. Facebook, along with cell phone texting, has led the way in this shift. Now we must ask ourselves, if our culture continues to move in this direction, where will we be in 20 years? 30 years? How will our children see the world?


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