For this week’s experiment, I interviewed my friend Dan about how he uses the internet and technology. He is a musician, so his interests include music and veganism. Here is a transcript of the interview below:
What websites do you use the most? Are they mostly social media sites?
-Yeah, they are mostly social media sites. Tumblr and then Facebook. Mostly Tumblr though, it’s probably the main reason I use the internet. Oh and Netflix as well.
What do you mostly use the internet for? What do you use technology for in general?
-I use the internet mostly for email, socializing, watching movies and TV, buying stuff, and doing homework. I use my phone basically to do what I would do on a normal computer.
What do you like and dislike about the social media outlets you frequent?
-I use Tumblr more because I like the community of Tumblr. I find cool things I wouldn’t really find elsewhere. I don’t like Facebook because of what people post. I mostly use it just to communicate with people or event planning and such. It’s faster than email and has more structure than texting because you can make event pages. But Tumblr is more for leisure, while a lot of time on Facebook makes me feel gross.
How do your interests affect how you use the internet and technology?
-Well, I’m interested in music and recording so I use the internet to look up how to do specific things. Like I’ll look up certain recording techniques or general research about music. I learned a lot about music production from looking it up online than from my old music school.
Are there any ways that you wish technology was more convenient for your everyday life?
-No, technology is convenient enough for me. I don’t know.
Is there any way that you may like to use the internet differently or just technology in general to suit your needs?
-I feel like I’m not super internet savvy. I’ll learn enough to do what I need to do, but I don’t really stay updated with the newest stuff. Like phone apps, I feel like I have a lot less apps than most people.
Because he is a musician who works mostly with synthesizers, I created an IFTTT recipe that posts to a tumblr blog called SYNTHFINDR every time a synth goes for sale on craigslist in NYC.
I chose Tumblr as the channel it goes through because it is the social media outlet he frequents the most, and prefers to keep emails for more professional affairs. The link to the blog is here: http://synthfindr.tumblr.com/
After tweaking the current recipe and adding a new one (same idea, simply just making link posts as well), the blog started to post successfully.
