The Media Psychology Blog

It’s been quite a while since I started exploring computer technologies.  I, and so many others, began the often laborious process of learning how to handcode computer programs with a first line of code that was often a basic instruction line now known the world over.  I hoped my little coded instruction would result in a simple text phrase on the monitor that said “Hello World!”  It was a quiet little phrase, in green text, lost in the sea of a black, mysterious pit.  It was an innocent phrase, but it harbored great expectations.  Around this little innocuous phrase, amazing things emerged over hours, days, months, years, and decades - for me and for technology.

When this tiny little programming effort worked for the first time, I felt that I had officially entered the future.  I was never quite sure if “Hello World!” was inviting me into someplace, or sending me out somewhere.  But I did know that it had something very much to do with the future.  The funny thing about this technological future was, and remains, that one never gets to arrive at the present.  The technologies evolve so quickly that we are forever chasing the future.  I once suggested that we rearrange the accepted timeline of “past-present-and future” to “past-future-and present.”  Afterall, it seems that we are sometimes? / often? / always? in the process of creating the future in order to achieve the present.  Was that too deep or too trite?  :-)

So, here I am, more than two decades later, and typing my very first blog entry with great ease.  The mysterious sea of black has been replaced by form, and color, and content all sitting upon a sophisticated system imagined, but not quite realized, only a relatively short time ago. 

Over the years, I have fallen behind the trends in some respects while I maintained pace in other regards.  I had to pick and choose the technologies I would explore and use as the options grew larger while my time grew shorter.  Blogging has been patiently waiting on my list for quite a while, and its day has finally arrived.  Between my first line of computer code twenty-five years ago and this blog entry, I have journied away from direct involvement with coding, software, and hardware and am now exploring human interaction with technology, specifically the psychological interplay around the creation, use, and evolution of mediated communications.  These are the topics that I will be exploring with you in this blog.

And now a little info about myself.  I hold a degree in Media Psychology.  I am also a professor of psychology who currently is exploring the psychological effects of virtual world engagements.  I speak about this topic quite extensively around the world and am in the process of setting up my next research project, which I’ll fill you in on in the weeks to come.  I am also a coach-consultant and focus on positive psychology and appreciative inquiry approaches to goal and satisfaction attainment.  I live in Philadelphia with my dogs and cats, a wildly eccentric neighbor, cherished family members nearby, and friends who talk about things other than technology and psychology, which help keep me from becoming too insultated and too boring at parties.

Hello World!