Tech between people
A couple of weeks ago I became fascinated by personal websites that have “Hi, I’m…” on the home page, but I wasn’t sure why. There’s something different about a website that speaks in the first person.
Having thought about it some more, I think it’s about how we anthropomorphise technology and how it intermediates relationships between people, especially those we don’t know.
We say, “Hey, Alexa” to speak to voice assistants as if there is a person listening and waiting for us.
Phones mediate how we talk to each other.
And, a website that speaks in the first person creates a different kind of connection between people.