Key Terms and Main Ideas

• Filter: A process in which something is removed
• Filters can get worn out over time, thus filters can and must be changed out or improved
• Filters are often taken for granted
• Technological filters supposedly ‘limit’ our creativity and expression; such is the case with scrap-booking apps.
• ‘Emotional Contagion’ experiment- a Facebook experiment that supposedly showed that upon seeing more positive posts, users made more positive posts
• When what we see is filtered, what we feel is filtered accordingly
• We sometimes filter memories to remember good moments
• Photojournalists may seek to use the quick, filtered smartphone photo for a mix of professionalism and realism
• Goes of aestheticising the everyday: to see beauty in anything, and thus gratitude in everything
• “Photo filters enhance aestheticises”
• Filters allow us to see our lives through different eyes- “the eyes of the impartial machine” (Booker)
• This effect no longer works when filters become overused
• Filters on selfies allow us to see ourselves outside of ourselves; they keep selfies from being too raw, too revealing.
• Technological filters and cognitive filters coexist
• Cameras were originally built to take pictures of white faces; lighting and photography techniques are still based around white faces.
• Technological determinism: The belief that technology drives cultural change.
• Misrepresentation by society and cameras is an unchosen, unwanted filter.
• Photos of black people misrepresented them; photos turned out looking completely different than themselves.
• Genre filters filter types of content.
• Blogs are of a literary nature in that many expect them to have a ‘happy ending’; all events must be constant progress.
• Cognitive filters: The ways our minds and bodies perceive certain things and not others.

Summary:

At its core, a filter is the tool or process in which something is removed. This could be a coffee filter, a water filter, a photo filter, or, more abstractly, a cultural filter or cognitive filter. In the second chapter of her book “Seeing Ourselves Through Technology”, author Jill Walker Rettberg explores the world of filters both clearly visible and merely represented by their product. Photo filters, for example, show a clear before and after difference when applied to photos; changes in light, color, and saturation are all apparent. Cognitive filters, on the other hand, are how the subconscious chooses what not to perceive. Filters, Rettburg claims, are initially used to freshen our worldview and to distance ourselves from the eyes we know. A filter on a selfie may invite one to consider oneself in a different light, or to defamiliarize themselves with their image. Filters may also aestheticise everyday sights, allowing one to see beauty in them and, thus, gratitude. Memories can be filtered to include only what one’s brain deems most important, just as one’s brains might filter out that which disagrees with one’s worldview. Rettburg argues that filters, specifically technological filters, limit creativity and create boundaries that would not exist outside of the technology. As such, filters must be changed every so often, and we must not take filters for granted.

Commentary: A Disagreement

In chapter 2 of her book “Seeing Ourselves Through Technology”, Jill Walker Rettburg describes a new parent using an app to create their baby book instead of a physical scrapbook. She also discusses the 140 character limit that the social media platform Twitter holds, though since the book’s publishing, the limit has doubled to include a maximum of 280 characters. All of this is to Rettburg’s argument that technological filters limit creativity and expression. From the perspective of a person whom has grown up with technology, I believe that this is only one side of technological ability. Of course, one could not write Jane Eyre on Twitter, even with the 280 character limit, but the limited view of Rettburg is the view of one whom has limited knowledge of how to use the tools that technology provides. I think of it this way: one can easily use a ruler to measure things, as that is its purpose. For this purpose alone, rulers are a useful tool. However, measuring things is not the only purpose the tool provides. Rulers can be used as straightedges in art, design, math, and more. Rulers can be used as a straightedge when using an exacto knife to cut something, an extended reach for something that rolled under the refrigerator, or even an emergency machete! The point is that it is our abilities to use tools that limit us, not the tools themselves. Twitter does not limit a person to a 280 character limit if that person knows how to create a thread. A scrapbooking app such as Picsart does not limit one to the available templates if one knows how to create a manual board in Picsart’s freestyle mode. When I conferred with a friend about this issue, she said that “The soul of creativity is to work within limits. People are at their most creative when they have a problem to solve, and if staying within 140 characters (Is the limit)… that’s an easier task to tackle than unlimited characters.” Thanks, Mom!

Work(s) Cited:

Rettberg, Jill Walker. Seeing Ourselves Through Technology:
How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and
Shape Ourselves. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
doi: 10.1057/9781137476661.0004.