technology is always already social

In many ways, new media is very social. Video games can be played online, iphones and facebook created apps that allow players to play and hang out and work together to play the game. Fansites have increased, technology in the hands of humans is very social. A classmate in my video game class mentioned that she got stuck for hours at a particularly difficult fight scene in a Zelda game. Eventually she mentioned to her 10 year old nephew that she was stuck there, he immediately told her all she needed to do was go around the corner. She had spent hours in the game, and hours online scouring websites trying to figure out how to win, when all she neded to do was talk to someone else playing the game. In Farmville on facebook a user sets up neighbors, and for xp and cash can be a farm hand on friends and neighbors farms, but if they don’t go through the exercise of making friends, they’ll never achieve the same goals. These games are inherently designed to require communication among members. So as my mom needing tech support deems me 1800.tech.support, she has a point beyond what she imagines. Technology in human hands has become inherently social, we can’t succeed in many tech adventures without being social, discussing our problems, our fights, our farms. We need to socialize about what we’re doing with technology, we need to share our iphone apps, we need to figure out how to open the email, we need to figure out how to defeat the shadow monster, or we need to figure out how to grow our crops. We’ve taken what many fear to be a solitary activity and designed it to be inherently social, so how do we create our 1800.tech.support network?