Tapscott 2

With the digital age deeply entrenched in our everyday lives, people constantly strive to seek out ways to stand out, be an individual. This is because the digital age on the internet almost everyone is anonymous, and with that, everybody is the same. So to break that thought, technologies today is giving us more ability to create custom designs and customization. Customization is actually a large part of today’s society. Everybody wants to be individuals, especially in our individualistic society such as in the United States, where individual personality stands out far above. We customize our clothing, buy different cases for our phones, we tune and customize just about every aspect of our cars to show our personality, creativity, and most importantly, our individuality. Customization is a part of almost everything in our lives. Our rooms, laptops, PCs, apartments. Everything needs to be customized.

But what about the other side of the coin? If we are so concerned with being an individual, why do we stick to the “norms”? People all buy iPhones because everyone else is also getting them. We all try to live in the same community, dress all similar to each other. There are social norms which be may push but not exceed or we will be seen as outcasts. So even though we try to individualize almost every aspect of our lives, on a macro scale we try to be just like everybody else. This is because we want to belong to something, maybe something that is much bigger than ourselves, a community. So in a sense we try to be both individualistic and at the same time gravitate around the limits or social norms that society lays upon us. Anything that breaks the outer limits of this norm will be seen as very out of place. For example, we all want to look good when we dress. Men all wear formal tuxedos to formal events while women wear dresses. We may all have different designs or colors, but the fact that we all have either tuxes or dresses show that we do want to belong. Although there are people who comfortably step outside these bounds of customization such as the musician Lady Gaga, who wears literally pieces of bacon as her attire to award shows. So the bigger question is: do we seek more to be an individual or do we seek to belong to a community more?