Introduction: "Thinking Differently" About the New Media

In: American behavioral scientist: ABS, Band 52, Heft 1, S. 3-7

Abstract

Professors are "people who think differently." In "Psychology and the New Media, Volume 1," instead of focusing on the technology of the new media as most people were in those days, the authors explored some of the psychology: What facilitates and what impedes people's access to the new communications technology? How do people make sense out of what they encounter? How do the new communication technologies affect principal arenas of life? In this second volume, we explore the psychological side of a wide variety of new media applications: human isolation and connection, addiction, terrorism, self-revelation, e-satisfaction, education, innovation, and the effects of encounters with the anthropocene, or the "built environment." Finally, we ask if different kinds of people—by personality type and developmental stage—experience the new media differently and what the implications of that differential impact might be.