Digital Sweet Home: Reactions and Critiques

After reading the proposal from the Digital Sweet Home group, I am pretty excited to see what they can actually do to promote technology as a tool to bring families together. I really like their idea of focusing on the benefits of all the new technology and how everything from blogs to twitter can bring families closer together and unify them.

I personally have seen the power of technology in my own family, especially as I have gone to college and lived abroad. While I have been living in Utah, as well as in Europe, it has been so beneficial for my family to be able to keep in contact through Google plus, Facebook and Skype. Even when I have been on a different continent, technology has allowed me to stay in contact and up to date with my family and what is going on in their lives.

So I am very excited to be able to learn more through this project about useful tools and resources for my own family now as well as my future family. Yet I think it is vital to place an emphasis on not only the potential good that can come through technology but also how to avoid the negative aspects. Within the group’s project proposal, they mentioned the importance of addressing concerns such as “hacktivists, malware, and other threatening online presences.” I would also argue that the problem of pornography should be addressed. I really feel that these negative aspects are some of the most important concerns regarding widening our online usage, and I feel that these fears are what hold a lot of families back from harnessing the potential good that can come from online.

My main concern with this project is the proposed size of the actual output as well as the audience. Although I would love to see both a blog and a pamphlet, I really think it would be smart to start with the pamphlet and then expand outwards once that basis has been established. And I think that it is worrisome to address all the “families of the United States” even if they do start with the families the group is directly connected with.

I am really excited to see what this group can come up with as I have seen within my own life how vitally important it is to be able to use technology to stay in contact and unified with my own family. I look forward to seeing the families this group project will inspire as they share the potential good technology can bring.