Look around you, our economy is falling apart right in front of us. Were spending money we don’t have, buying things we don’t need and yet we can’t seem to stop. November 28th is a day to start change, it’s a day to say no to things you don’t need and a day to take a good hard look at your finances. It is time for everyone to come to the realization that money doesn’t grow on trees. Buy nothing Day is on November 28th and it is all about creating awareness about over consumption. It is pretty straight forward, all you have to do is to say that you will buy absolutely nothing on this day, it’s that simply. If it seems to easy for you why not make it a little harder, take a look at your finances and exactly everything you buy in a day. Then decide just how much of it you really needed, how much money would you have saved? I know there is probably a lot of stuff I buy that I don’t really need. For example, magazines, I don’t really need to waste my money on them so I have limited myself to buying only one a month. That’s a savings of 30 dollars a month depending on which ones I would have bought. Its amazing how one thing could save you so much money. It’s all about admitting that you haven’t been spending your money well and changing it; you can’t change something unless you accept and acknowledge it.
North America is one of the leading countries that have the most consumption. We strive to have the best of the best and for the attention of others. A lot of people sacrifice important things like shelter, healthy food and medication, in order to have the latest cool cell phone. We care so much on how we are presented in society that we are willing to lose everything. We need to have less consumption yet we seem to be consuming more. People who need food and shelter are those who consume the least, we can’t seem to get enough. In Ursula Franklin’s, The Real World of Technology she explains, “The mass production of consumer goods, even in highly automated facilities and low-wage and –overhead locations did not yield the boundless harvest of profit that some had expected. In part this is due to the fact that those who most need the mass produced goods- and this includes food, medicine, and clothing – do not have the means to purchase the very items they often make” (Franklin, 162). It should be a real eye opener when countries who need to consume more necessities, consume the least.
A lot people say well how is not buying anything on one day going to change anything? Well I agree with them in a way. I believe in the idea behind the action, I do believe that people should be more aware of over consumption but it obviously takes more than just one day. At the same time I also believe in the fact that people are just going to spend more the day before so that they don’t have to buy anything on the day of. I wonder if people will really even learn anything, will they take the time to reflect on the consumption, especially if everything they needed on Buy Nothing Day was bought the day before. McLuhan explains, “It is not an easy period in which to live, especially for the television-conditioned young who, unlike their literate elders, cannot take refuge in the zombie trance of Narcissus narcosis that numbs the state of psychic shock induced by the impact of the new media. From Tokyo to Paris to Columbia, youth mindlessly acts out its identity quest in the theatre of the streets, searching not for goals but for roles, striving for an identity that eludes them” (McLuhan). We see and then we want, McLuhan says it perfectly “we are in the zombie trance”; what will it take for us to wake up.
Works Cited
Playboy, "The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan." Playboy Magazine March 1969. 10 Nov 2008. <http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/links/mcluhan/pb.html>.
Franklin, Ursula M. The Real World of Technology. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 1999.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Making A Difference- One Question At A Time
The other day I was looking up Activist projects on the Internet to write about. I came across one that I am determined to stay involved with. I thought it was so easy to help and can be done on the Internet instead of wasting my time on Facebook. The project is called Free Rice and is “a sister site of Poverty.com. Our partners are the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and the United Nations World Food Program. Free Rice has two goals, provide education to everyone for free and help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free” (FreeRice). It is really quite simple to get involved, you just simply answer trivia question (grammar, language, French, geography and many more) and for every question you get right, Free Rice donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food program.
It is so simple and easy to accumulate a large amount of grains in a short period of time. Imagine if you sent this site to five friends and they participate and then they gave it to five friends, the cycle would never end. Who knows if this could solve world hungry but at least you contributed in some way. I know everyone has at least ten minutes out of the day in which there time could be better spent. I am a University student and it is hard to find time to complete everything but then I think of all the time I spend on Facebook. I liked this project because my time is not wasted and in ten minutes, I know I have made a small difference. In High School I attended a me to we conference about Free the Children. It was a huge televised conference that was dedicated to making a difference, no matter how small it is. I helped out with the Ecuador committee at my school by putting together candy bags and selling post cards; a small task but helped to make a difference. Free Rice is my opportunity to make a difference again.
Stauber and Rampton explain, “One of the most cherished freedoms in a democracy is the right to freely participate in the marketplace of ideas.” Without the Internet and Net Neutrality, this website probably wouldn’t exist. We should appreciate the fact that we can make a difference in such a simple way. People wouldn’t be able to help for free if we didn’t have the freedoms that we do.
Since the site opened in October 2007, they have donated 52,005,662,910 grains of rice in just one year; imagine how much that would be ten years from now! Pass on the site and see what kind of difference you can make.
Works Cited
FreeRice. About FreeRice.com 24 Nov 2008. http://www.freerice.com/about.html
Stauber, John, and Rampton, Sheldon. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! Lies, Damn Lie and the Public Relations Industry. 1st ed. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995. .
It is so simple and easy to accumulate a large amount of grains in a short period of time. Imagine if you sent this site to five friends and they participate and then they gave it to five friends, the cycle would never end. Who knows if this could solve world hungry but at least you contributed in some way. I know everyone has at least ten minutes out of the day in which there time could be better spent. I am a University student and it is hard to find time to complete everything but then I think of all the time I spend on Facebook. I liked this project because my time is not wasted and in ten minutes, I know I have made a small difference. In High School I attended a me to we conference about Free the Children. It was a huge televised conference that was dedicated to making a difference, no matter how small it is. I helped out with the Ecuador committee at my school by putting together candy bags and selling post cards; a small task but helped to make a difference. Free Rice is my opportunity to make a difference again.
Stauber and Rampton explain, “One of the most cherished freedoms in a democracy is the right to freely participate in the marketplace of ideas.” Without the Internet and Net Neutrality, this website probably wouldn’t exist. We should appreciate the fact that we can make a difference in such a simple way. People wouldn’t be able to help for free if we didn’t have the freedoms that we do.
Since the site opened in October 2007, they have donated 52,005,662,910 grains of rice in just one year; imagine how much that would be ten years from now! Pass on the site and see what kind of difference you can make.
Works Cited
FreeRice. About FreeRice.com 24 Nov 2008. http://www.freerice.com/about.html
Stauber, John, and Rampton, Sheldon. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! Lies, Damn Lie and the Public Relations Industry. 1st ed. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995. .
Connecting To Others
It must be said that the only participatory culture that I have spent countless hours on is, unfortunately Facebook. I know it is sad but I must also say that after realizing all these hidden messages about Facebook in my classes, I definitely don’t find myself on it quite so often. Although Facebook isn’t so great on the privacy side on things it is, however, great for connecting with your friends and families from far and wide. For me this is the first time that I have had access to my Uncle who lives in Vancouver, who doesn’t return phone calls nor has email. It’s a great way to leave quick messages updating people with what’s the hap. Access to people has never been so easy; you don’t even have to wait for them to answer their phone or be online. To me emails can get lost in translation or even end up in the Junk Mail; Facebook allows people to see a face and creates a quick way for people to communicate simple messages.
Facebook also allows you to join different groups to which spark your interest. These groups connect you with people of similar interest and allow you to engage in a conversation about the topic as well as aid others with questions. It’s the freedom to say whatever you want and to make groups to bring awareness to important issues (like Buy Nothing Day). It is also a great to come across issues or activist projects that you have never heard of before; allowing you to contribute more to society.
When I had first heard about Facebook, it was about a year before I actually signed up to the social network. I thought it would just be another one of those things that last a couple months and then you move on to something else; boy was I wrong. Facebook is one of the biggest social networks and has become so popular because it is so simple to use. Before I started University I had not been using Facebook very much. Since I went to school out of town, it is a great way to communicate with my friends back home without paying long distance phone charges. Without Facebook I would then have to rely on MSN, and most of friends don’t use it very often. I appreciate having access to a network which strives on connecting people from all around the world.
Benjamin explains, “The situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated" (Benjamin, 3). Everything on the internet will always have a downside to it. Facebook has been criticized for everything bad it’s done but no one ever says thanks for connecting me with a friend I use to go to Elementary school with. People always focus on the negative, yet you decided to get an account and put all the information out there for people to see. I know what I have posted about me and I use Facebook to broaden my knowledge of the world and connect to people who I don’t get to see every day. It is my way of expressing me and the possibilities seem endless.
When Hanes explains how people use media, it pretty much summed up my reasons for Facebook. He explains,
“Uses and Gratifications acknowledged that the audience had a choice of texts from which to chose from and satisfy their needs. Blumler and Katz (1974) suggested that there were four main needs of television audiences that are satisfied by television. These included – Diversion (a form of escaping from the pressures of every day), Personal Relationships (where the viewer gains companionship, either with the television characters, or through conversations with others about television), Personal Identity (where the viewer is able to compare their life with the lives of characters and situations on television, to explore, re-affirm or question their personal identity) and Surveillance (where the media are looked upon for a supply of information about what is happening in the world)” (Hanes).
Although he was explaining it through television, it best reflects everything that I get from using Facebook. Facebook is the media that satisfy me.
Works Cited
Hanes, Philip J. "The Advantages and Limitations of a Focus on Audience in Media Studies." April 2000. 5 Nov 2008 http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/pph9701.html.
Benjamin, Walter."The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" http://academic.evergreen.edu/a/arunc/compmusic/benjamin/benjamin.pdf
Facebook also allows you to join different groups to which spark your interest. These groups connect you with people of similar interest and allow you to engage in a conversation about the topic as well as aid others with questions. It’s the freedom to say whatever you want and to make groups to bring awareness to important issues (like Buy Nothing Day). It is also a great to come across issues or activist projects that you have never heard of before; allowing you to contribute more to society.
When I had first heard about Facebook, it was about a year before I actually signed up to the social network. I thought it would just be another one of those things that last a couple months and then you move on to something else; boy was I wrong. Facebook is one of the biggest social networks and has become so popular because it is so simple to use. Before I started University I had not been using Facebook very much. Since I went to school out of town, it is a great way to communicate with my friends back home without paying long distance phone charges. Without Facebook I would then have to rely on MSN, and most of friends don’t use it very often. I appreciate having access to a network which strives on connecting people from all around the world.
Benjamin explains, “The situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated" (Benjamin, 3). Everything on the internet will always have a downside to it. Facebook has been criticized for everything bad it’s done but no one ever says thanks for connecting me with a friend I use to go to Elementary school with. People always focus on the negative, yet you decided to get an account and put all the information out there for people to see. I know what I have posted about me and I use Facebook to broaden my knowledge of the world and connect to people who I don’t get to see every day. It is my way of expressing me and the possibilities seem endless.
When Hanes explains how people use media, it pretty much summed up my reasons for Facebook. He explains,
“Uses and Gratifications acknowledged that the audience had a choice of texts from which to chose from and satisfy their needs. Blumler and Katz (1974) suggested that there were four main needs of television audiences that are satisfied by television. These included – Diversion (a form of escaping from the pressures of every day), Personal Relationships (where the viewer gains companionship, either with the television characters, or through conversations with others about television), Personal Identity (where the viewer is able to compare their life with the lives of characters and situations on television, to explore, re-affirm or question their personal identity) and Surveillance (where the media are looked upon for a supply of information about what is happening in the world)” (Hanes).
Although he was explaining it through television, it best reflects everything that I get from using Facebook. Facebook is the media that satisfy me.
Works Cited
Hanes, Philip J. "The Advantages and Limitations of a Focus on Audience in Media Studies." April 2000. 5 Nov 2008 http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/pph9701.html.
Benjamin, Walter."The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" http://academic.evergreen.edu/a/arunc/compmusic/benjamin/benjamin.pdf
The Message Behind The Picture
If you see this picture as just a simple mother breastfeeding her baby and nothing more, you aren’t seeing the message in the picture. This picture serves as a much deeper message to the amount of advertisements that are taking in; starting as young as months old. It is a shocking realization that even babies are being exposed to the same amount of advertisements.I had no idea what culture jamming was until Ian explained it in class. He explained culture jamming as taking an ad and subverting the meaning and radically changing the meaning intended. In the case of this ad, the mother breastfeeding her child became a symbolic ad for the reality that parents help to feed the advertisements to their children, we are exposed from the minute we are born. This ad wants people to remember the next time they breastfeed a child or see a women breastfeeding, they want them to realize the amount everyone is consuming.
Scott McCloud explains through comics how a simple image can mean so much more. “Comics can be maddeningly vague about what it shows us. By showing little or nothing of a given scene—and offering only clues to the reader—the artist can trigger any number of images in the reader’s imagination” (McCloud, 86). What he is basically saying is that you make a simple picture mean a 1000 words. You don’t have to ramble on and on in an article about the consumption of advertisements; you can simply make a picture with no words but those on the company logos. The point of ads and using culture jamming is to embed messages in people’s mind by using familiarly images.
As I was reading other people’s blogs, I found a common theme among them. A lot of people believe that culture jamming often insults current issues or demeans them. The reality of the situation is that they bring a powerful message to people; more often than not it says what most people won’t. The problem to me is people don’t want to accept the truth or reality of the issues at hand.
Nowadays people don’t have the time to sit down and read articles upon articles about important issues in the news. Culture jamming is a way in which people can understand a current issue with a little humour. According to Roland Barthes in Mythologies he explains, “...pictures, to be sure, are more imperative than writing, the impose meaning at one stroke, without analysing or diluting it...pictures become a kind of writing as soon as they are meaningful...”(Barthes, 110). It takes only seconds to process the image and to understand the meaning it is trying to portray. Culture jamming is broadening our views on important issues.
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. 1. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. 1st. New York, USA: HarperPerennial, 1994
To Control Or Not To Control
The Internet has always been a place in which you are able to voice your opinion on whatever you want, look at whatever you, access whatever you want and listen to whatever you want. What makes this possible is Net Neutrality. According to http://www. savetheinternet.com, “Network Neutrality is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet. Put simply, Net Neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.” To sum it all up it allows everyone equally access to the Internet.
The Internet grows more and more every day and it is amazing the amount of things that you can do on the Internet. Today, it is so easy to get your message/opinion on something across then it has been in the past. Back in the day, the only way that you could get your opinion across was if you owned a television company (chances were you didn’t), or you were a journalist and even if you had access to this you were still limited to what you were allowed to say. The Internet is what makes people’s opinions and ideas possible, without the internet this wouldn’t be what it is. John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton explain in Toxic Sludge is Good for You, “Hyped as the ultimate in ‘electronic democracy’, the information superhighway will supposedly offer ‘a global cornucopia of programming’ offering instant, inexpensive access to nearly infinite libraries of data, educational material and entertainment...’the technologies of communication will serve to enlarge human freedom everywhere, to create inevitably a counsel of the people’” (Stauber and Rampton). We rely so much on what the Internet allows us to have access to, without net neutrality we wouldn’t have all this access.
Net Neutrality has become the biggest problem to corporations. They don’t have all the control they would like to have when it comes to what we see and learn about them. Corporations want them to function like television; they want to control how much we see, they want us to watch them, in order to make money and they want to use the power of manipulation. The Internet has been a way for the truth to come out; this scares corporations. Net neutrality to them equals loss of control.
I don’t think there is better way to explain the need for Net Neutrality then to say in the words of Lawrence Lessig; “Free cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to build upon; unfree, or permission, cultures leave much less. Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so” (Lessig, 30). The Internet is my freedom and yours, without it how would we write blogs or post videos; our opinions would be limited to our means. There are two sides to every story.
Works Cited
Franklin, Ursula M. The Real World of Technology. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 1999.
"Frequently Asked Questions." Save the Internet: Fighting for Internet Freedom. Free Press Action Fund. 7 Nov 2008 http://www.savetheinternet.com/.
Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. New York, USA: The Penguin Press, 2004.
Stauber, John, and Rampton, Sheldon. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! Lies, Damn Lie and the Public Relations Industry. 1st ed. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995.
The Internet grows more and more every day and it is amazing the amount of things that you can do on the Internet. Today, it is so easy to get your message/opinion on something across then it has been in the past. Back in the day, the only way that you could get your opinion across was if you owned a television company (chances were you didn’t), or you were a journalist and even if you had access to this you were still limited to what you were allowed to say. The Internet is what makes people’s opinions and ideas possible, without the internet this wouldn’t be what it is. John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton explain in Toxic Sludge is Good for You, “Hyped as the ultimate in ‘electronic democracy’, the information superhighway will supposedly offer ‘a global cornucopia of programming’ offering instant, inexpensive access to nearly infinite libraries of data, educational material and entertainment...’the technologies of communication will serve to enlarge human freedom everywhere, to create inevitably a counsel of the people’” (Stauber and Rampton). We rely so much on what the Internet allows us to have access to, without net neutrality we wouldn’t have all this access.
Net Neutrality has become the biggest problem to corporations. They don’t have all the control they would like to have when it comes to what we see and learn about them. Corporations want them to function like television; they want to control how much we see, they want us to watch them, in order to make money and they want to use the power of manipulation. The Internet has been a way for the truth to come out; this scares corporations. Net neutrality to them equals loss of control.
I don’t think there is better way to explain the need for Net Neutrality then to say in the words of Lawrence Lessig; “Free cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to build upon; unfree, or permission, cultures leave much less. Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so” (Lessig, 30). The Internet is my freedom and yours, without it how would we write blogs or post videos; our opinions would be limited to our means. There are two sides to every story.
Works Cited
Franklin, Ursula M. The Real World of Technology. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 1999.
"Frequently Asked Questions." Save the Internet: Fighting for Internet Freedom. Free Press Action Fund. 7 Nov 2008 http://www.savetheinternet.com/.
Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. New York, USA: The Penguin Press, 2004.
Stauber, John, and Rampton, Sheldon. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! Lies, Damn Lie and the Public Relations Industry. 1st ed. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995.
There's More Than Meets The Eye
When watching my favourite stations, my favourite movies, or listening to my favourite music, it has never once crossed my mind who may own the company who creates my favourite things. For example if I’m watching the Hills on MTV, I am in return, in some way or another, supporting the company Viacom as well as all the other companies Viacom owns.
Viacom is known today as Viacom Inc. after its separation with CBS Corporation and is a multi-million dollar company. Viacom Inc. explains the several companies in which they own
“MTV Networks includes favourites like MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, COMEDY CENTRAL, and CMT: Country Music Television, Spike TV, TV Land, Logo and approximately 155 networks around the world. In addition, digital assets such as Neopets, Xfire, Atom, Harmonix and Quizilla offer compelling and interactive content, providing an even deeper connection with our devoted and focused demographics. BET Networks presents the best in Black media and entertainment featuring traditional and digital platforms. Brands including BET, BET J, BET Gospel, BET Hip Hop, BET.com, BET Mobile, BET Event Productions and BET International deliver relevant and insightful content to consumers of Black culture in more than 100 million households. And with Paramount Pictures Corporation, audiences have access to a huge library of top films through brands like Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage, MTV Films, Nickelodeon Movies and Paramount Home Entertainment” (Viacom).
These are just a small list of the companies in which it owns. I had no idea that these companies were owned by a much larger media company. There may also be a number of these companies who are partially owned by other companies, in most cases they could come full circle.
Large media companies who own large amount of smaller companies have the chance to have their opinions and views disturbed to a larger group of people. They have the power to manipulate these different mediums for their benefit; they cover any holes they might have. When we look at the sign of MTV or CMT, we don’t think of the symbol for Viacom; we don’t think of it being owned by a larger company. We merely think of it as a sole company which in actuality it’s not. According to Robert W. McChesney in the New Global Media it’s a Small World of Big Conglomerates he explains,
“The global media system is fundamentally noncompetitive in any meaningful economic sense of the term. Many of the largest media firms have some of the same major shareholders, own pieces of one another or have interlocking boards of directors. When Variety compiled its list of the fifty largest global media firms for 1997, it observed that "merger mania" and cross-ownership had "resulted in a complex web of interrelationships" that will "make you dizzy." The global market strongly encourages corporations to establish equity joint ventures in which the media giants all own a part of an enterprise” (McChesney, 2).
One thing to remember is that when you support one company you never know who else you are helping out. Cross media ownership allows companies who are known for their manipulation to manipulate through other companies. It’s all a big mystery. They subtle get messages across several different companies, McChesney explains,“with a few notable exceptions, the journalism reserved for the masses tends to be the sort of drivel provided by the media giants on their US television stations. This slant is often quite subtle” (McChesney, 3).
Any news broadcast or specific commercials on any of the companies that Viacom owns will have to be approved by Viacom. Viacom will most likely never allow anything that will give the company a bad rap/image and if they allow that, you can guarantee it will have a positive spin to it. As long as they have the control of what it is said, the company is happy. It’s not about the good of the public; it’s about the good of the company.
Works Cited
McChesney, Robert. “The New Global Media: It’s a Small World of Big Conglomerates.” The
Nation. 11 Nov 1999. 7 Nov 2008.
Viacom. “About Viacom” 24 Nov 2008.
http://www.viacom.com/aboutviacom/Pages/default.aspx
Viacom is known today as Viacom Inc. after its separation with CBS Corporation and is a multi-million dollar company. Viacom Inc. explains the several companies in which they own
“MTV Networks includes favourites like MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, COMEDY CENTRAL, and CMT: Country Music Television, Spike TV, TV Land, Logo and approximately 155 networks around the world. In addition, digital assets such as Neopets, Xfire, Atom, Harmonix and Quizilla offer compelling and interactive content, providing an even deeper connection with our devoted and focused demographics. BET Networks presents the best in Black media and entertainment featuring traditional and digital platforms. Brands including BET, BET J, BET Gospel, BET Hip Hop, BET.com, BET Mobile, BET Event Productions and BET International deliver relevant and insightful content to consumers of Black culture in more than 100 million households. And with Paramount Pictures Corporation, audiences have access to a huge library of top films through brands like Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage, MTV Films, Nickelodeon Movies and Paramount Home Entertainment” (Viacom).
These are just a small list of the companies in which it owns. I had no idea that these companies were owned by a much larger media company. There may also be a number of these companies who are partially owned by other companies, in most cases they could come full circle.
Large media companies who own large amount of smaller companies have the chance to have their opinions and views disturbed to a larger group of people. They have the power to manipulate these different mediums for their benefit; they cover any holes they might have. When we look at the sign of MTV or CMT, we don’t think of the symbol for Viacom; we don’t think of it being owned by a larger company. We merely think of it as a sole company which in actuality it’s not. According to Robert W. McChesney in the New Global Media it’s a Small World of Big Conglomerates he explains,
“The global media system is fundamentally noncompetitive in any meaningful economic sense of the term. Many of the largest media firms have some of the same major shareholders, own pieces of one another or have interlocking boards of directors. When Variety compiled its list of the fifty largest global media firms for 1997, it observed that "merger mania" and cross-ownership had "resulted in a complex web of interrelationships" that will "make you dizzy." The global market strongly encourages corporations to establish equity joint ventures in which the media giants all own a part of an enterprise” (McChesney, 2).
One thing to remember is that when you support one company you never know who else you are helping out. Cross media ownership allows companies who are known for their manipulation to manipulate through other companies. It’s all a big mystery. They subtle get messages across several different companies, McChesney explains,“with a few notable exceptions, the journalism reserved for the masses tends to be the sort of drivel provided by the media giants on their US television stations. This slant is often quite subtle” (McChesney, 3).
Any news broadcast or specific commercials on any of the companies that Viacom owns will have to be approved by Viacom. Viacom will most likely never allow anything that will give the company a bad rap/image and if they allow that, you can guarantee it will have a positive spin to it. As long as they have the control of what it is said, the company is happy. It’s not about the good of the public; it’s about the good of the company.
Works Cited
McChesney, Robert. “The New Global Media: It’s a Small World of Big Conglomerates.” The
Nation. 11 Nov 1999. 7 Nov 2008.
Viacom. “About Viacom” 24 Nov 2008.
http://www.viacom.com/aboutviacom/Pages/default.aspx
Fake News=Humor
In our Mass Communication class about a couple weeks ago we viewed this video on the website, the Onion. The video was about the Internet crashing and a fatal message that appeared on everyone’s computer. They go on to explain that they traced it back to one guy; they said he had 35 windows open and explained what they were. The news broadcast goes on to say how it has affected millions of bloggers around the world. Someone calls in to the station to say that there life suddenly seemed incomplete and he didn’t know what to do. The broadcast goes on to explain how AFV is broadcasting 24hour videos to make up for YouTube and that people are handing out sheets on the street with diet tips, celebrity gossip and office poems. Clearly it is obvious that this news broadcast is fake and is merely there as an eye opener to the obsession that people have about the Internet. The video is absolutely hilarious and an excellent example of satirical news.
According to Wikipedia, Satirical news is
“Is a type of parody presented in a format typical of mainstream journalism, and called a satire because of its content. News satire has been around almost as long as journalism itself, but it is particularly popular on the web, where it is relatively easy to mimic a credible news source and stories may achieve wide distribution from nearly any site. Generally, the goal of news satire is to make social commentary in a form that provides entertainment. Because news satire relies heavily on irony and deadpan humor, it is occasionally mistaken for real news” (Wikipedia).
The Onion is a perfect example of a website to which is dedicated to presenting fake news with humor. A lot of the times the purpose of their videos or articles are there to serve as a reality check to the situation. It allows the reader to realize the point of view which “normal” news companies would not realize. This website is not there to be neutral; it is there to bring light to the situation and humor.
Most news companies, newspapers and journals are there to make you comply with what they are saying. All there information is well thought out and organized to draw you in and to believe what they are saying; it doesn’t matter what the message is as long as they are getting paid for it. If you really look into who owns these news companies, you can see exactly where the stance on a situation comes from. For example if you take fox news, you will find that Fox News Channel was created by Rupert Murdoch. According to Wikipedia, “Rupert Murdoch, who hired Republican political strategist Roger Alies as its founding CEO” (Wikipedia). For several years now Fox News has been criticized as having only conservative political positions and given who owns it and is the founding CEO it is pretty safe to say that their views come from those who own it.
When I was reading Ursula Franklin’s The Real World of Technology, I came across a quote which I believe explains perfectly what companies set out to do.
“Today’s real world of technology is characterized by the dominance of prescriptive technologies. Prescriptive technologies are not restricted to materials production. They are used in administrative and economic activities and in many aspects of governance, and on them rests the real world of technology in which we live. While we should not forget that these prescriptive technologies are often exceedingly effective and efficient, they come with an enormous social mortgage. The mortgage means we live in a culture of compliance, that we are ever more conditioned to accept orthodoxy as normal, and to accept that there is only one way of doing ‘it’ (Franklin, 17).
We are so conditioned to believing everything we see and hear; which is ironic because when we were growing up and still today we are told not to believe everything we see or her, yet we do. I don’t think I can help it, Franklin was right I am conditioned to accept orthodoxy as normal. Even though something may seem ridiculous when I am reading it, in the back of my mind there is a part of me that believes it. Our entire lives we have been conditioned to those who are in power; it no wonder why we are condition to believe what the media tells us.
Its are impossible selves who have been condition to believe the view which is presented. We find it impossible to separate the fake from the real.
Works Cited
Franklin, Ursula M. The Real World of Technology. Scarborough, ON: Anansi Press, 1990.
“Wikipedia.” News Satire 24 Nov 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_satire
According to Wikipedia, Satirical news is
“Is a type of parody presented in a format typical of mainstream journalism, and called a satire because of its content. News satire has been around almost as long as journalism itself, but it is particularly popular on the web, where it is relatively easy to mimic a credible news source and stories may achieve wide distribution from nearly any site. Generally, the goal of news satire is to make social commentary in a form that provides entertainment. Because news satire relies heavily on irony and deadpan humor, it is occasionally mistaken for real news” (Wikipedia).
The Onion is a perfect example of a website to which is dedicated to presenting fake news with humor. A lot of the times the purpose of their videos or articles are there to serve as a reality check to the situation. It allows the reader to realize the point of view which “normal” news companies would not realize. This website is not there to be neutral; it is there to bring light to the situation and humor.
Most news companies, newspapers and journals are there to make you comply with what they are saying. All there information is well thought out and organized to draw you in and to believe what they are saying; it doesn’t matter what the message is as long as they are getting paid for it. If you really look into who owns these news companies, you can see exactly where the stance on a situation comes from. For example if you take fox news, you will find that Fox News Channel was created by Rupert Murdoch. According to Wikipedia, “Rupert Murdoch, who hired Republican political strategist Roger Alies as its founding CEO” (Wikipedia). For several years now Fox News has been criticized as having only conservative political positions and given who owns it and is the founding CEO it is pretty safe to say that their views come from those who own it.
When I was reading Ursula Franklin’s The Real World of Technology, I came across a quote which I believe explains perfectly what companies set out to do.
“Today’s real world of technology is characterized by the dominance of prescriptive technologies. Prescriptive technologies are not restricted to materials production. They are used in administrative and economic activities and in many aspects of governance, and on them rests the real world of technology in which we live. While we should not forget that these prescriptive technologies are often exceedingly effective and efficient, they come with an enormous social mortgage. The mortgage means we live in a culture of compliance, that we are ever more conditioned to accept orthodoxy as normal, and to accept that there is only one way of doing ‘it’ (Franklin, 17).
We are so conditioned to believing everything we see and hear; which is ironic because when we were growing up and still today we are told not to believe everything we see or her, yet we do. I don’t think I can help it, Franklin was right I am conditioned to accept orthodoxy as normal. Even though something may seem ridiculous when I am reading it, in the back of my mind there is a part of me that believes it. Our entire lives we have been conditioned to those who are in power; it no wonder why we are condition to believe what the media tells us.
Its are impossible selves who have been condition to believe the view which is presented. We find it impossible to separate the fake from the real.
Works Cited
Franklin, Ursula M. The Real World of Technology. Scarborough, ON: Anansi Press, 1990.
“Wikipedia.” News Satire 24 Nov 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_satire
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
The Sad Reality
There are many technologies and mediums that shape my everyday life but I would have to say the most important one to me is My Cell Phone. One of the scariest things I believe can happen to me is if my cell phone were to break or get lost. My cell phone is my link to everyone I know. Since I am away at school, if something were to happen to my cell phone, I would have no way to verbally talk to the people who mean the most to me. I find it kind of funny that something so small can have such a big impact on my life.
My cell phone is in my life from the minute I get up, it is first used as my alarm clock. The second thing I do after I get up is check my cell phone and see if I missed a call or a text message. For the rest of the day, I am constantly checking and using it to communicate with my friends. If I don’t have my cell phone, I am lost for the rest of the day, wondering who is trying to get a hold of me. I’m not going to lie, from time to time I will stop paying attention in class and return a text message. I’m not proud of it but I have just become so attached to it. My cell phone has totally changed the way I act around people, if I’m talking to one of my friends and I get a text message I immediately start ignoring them and read the text. I know its rude and I’m not really sure when people began to think that just because your cell phone rang or you got a text message that it is socially acceptable to ignore what you were already doing, but we all have done this at some point.
As Marshall McLuhan explained, "The electric media are the telegraph, radio, films, telephone, computer and television, all of which have not only extended a single sense or function as the old mechanical media did--i.e., the wheel as an extension of the foot, clothing as an extension of the skin, the phonetic alphabet as an extension of the eye--but have enhanced and externalized our entire central nervous systems, thus transforming all aspects of our social and psychic existence." Technologies are what occupy the majority of our lives, we don’t use the same senses as we use to, we are all surrounded by our forms of electronic entertainment- nothing else matters to us as long as we have our technologies everything will be okay.
My cell phone is a part of me; it’s an extension of me. Sad but true, this appears to be the future.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
Works Cited
Playboy, "The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan." Playboy Magazine March 1969. 28 Sep 2008. <http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/links/mcluhan/pb.html>.
My cell phone is in my life from the minute I get up, it is first used as my alarm clock. The second thing I do after I get up is check my cell phone and see if I missed a call or a text message. For the rest of the day, I am constantly checking and using it to communicate with my friends. If I don’t have my cell phone, I am lost for the rest of the day, wondering who is trying to get a hold of me. I’m not going to lie, from time to time I will stop paying attention in class and return a text message. I’m not proud of it but I have just become so attached to it. My cell phone has totally changed the way I act around people, if I’m talking to one of my friends and I get a text message I immediately start ignoring them and read the text. I know its rude and I’m not really sure when people began to think that just because your cell phone rang or you got a text message that it is socially acceptable to ignore what you were already doing, but we all have done this at some point.
As Marshall McLuhan explained, "The electric media are the telegraph, radio, films, telephone, computer and television, all of which have not only extended a single sense or function as the old mechanical media did--i.e., the wheel as an extension of the foot, clothing as an extension of the skin, the phonetic alphabet as an extension of the eye--but have enhanced and externalized our entire central nervous systems, thus transforming all aspects of our social and psychic existence." Technologies are what occupy the majority of our lives, we don’t use the same senses as we use to, we are all surrounded by our forms of electronic entertainment- nothing else matters to us as long as we have our technologies everything will be okay.
My cell phone is a part of me; it’s an extension of me. Sad but true, this appears to be the future.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
Works Cited
Playboy, "The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan." Playboy Magazine March 1969. 28 Sep 2008. <http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/links/mcluhan/pb.html>.
Hidden Messages
When I first read the question “Discuss a theory/concept (e.g., ideology, hegemony, media literacy) and apply it to your own everyday media practises”, I thought I have never heard a definition for these terms before. The first thing I did was look up the definition for each term to decide which term would reflect my life right now.
According to Jane Tallim, Education Specialist, media literacy is “the ability to sift through and analyse the message that inform, entertain and sell to us every day” (Tallim, 1)which in other words means being able to see the true meaning behind anything we watch or read in the media. Media literacy is defined in a three step process, according to Elizabeth Thoman, the Founder and President for Center for Media Literacy: Know how much media you consume each day and to manage your time; Learn how to analyse what you are viewing; and go beyond and seeing the other issues (Thoman, 1). These are steps that need to be learned to be media literate and to have a power over certain medias. Media literacy is meant to be applied to all of our media practices.
The importance of media literacy is to understand where information is coming from and who is benefiting from it. When we buy a movie, we know the company who produced it, but the question is who else is behind this picture? I recall a lesson from my Internet and Survey Research class, where our teacher showed us this website that was promoting a certain product but in reality believed in the opposite. The purpose is to understand the differences between credible and non- credible web sites. This helps explain media literacy and the importance in knowing the whole picture. You never really know the truth until you go looking for it. Chandler states in his excerpt, “Everyday references to communication are based on a transmissions model in which a sender transmits a message to a receiver...” (Chandler, 1). There will always be a message being transcribe to us through media and beyond that there will be those who send the message.
Media literacy plays an important part in my life, it’s explored in my classes, and it’s what I’m learning to apply to everything that mediates my life. Not only is it in my classes but it is in every advertisement, every paper, every movie that I read or see, it’s me understanding the hidden message. Going into Public Relations is especially important that I am able to analyse things I read in the newspaper and knowing how to decipher the truth away from the ‘white lies’.
Media Literacy reminds me of the book we had to read called Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.
He explains “When we abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning’ an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t. Film critics will sometimes describe a live action film as a ‘cartoon’ to acknowledge the stripped- down intensity of a simple story or visual style. Though the term is often used disparagingly, it can be equally well applied to many time-tested classics. Simplifying characters and images toward a purpose can be an effective tool for storytelling in any medium. Cartooning isn’t just a way of drawing, it’s a way of seeing” (McCloud, 30-31).
If you apply that to an advertisement, you take the main issues of the ad trying to find the main message. If we simplify the ideas, it will help us better understand the purpose. Media literacy helps understand the true meanings of media.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
Works Cited
Chandler, Daniel. "Semiotics for Beginners." 1994. 30 Sept 2008. <http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/>.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. 1st. New York, USA: HarperPerennial, 1994.
Tallim, Jane. “Media Awareness Network.”2008. 06 Oct 2008. http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/media_literacy/what_is_media_literacy.cfm
Thoman, Elizabeth. “Media Awareness Network.”2008. 06 Oct 2008.
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/media_literacy/what_is_media_literacy.cfm
According to Jane Tallim, Education Specialist, media literacy is “the ability to sift through and analyse the message that inform, entertain and sell to us every day” (Tallim, 1)which in other words means being able to see the true meaning behind anything we watch or read in the media. Media literacy is defined in a three step process, according to Elizabeth Thoman, the Founder and President for Center for Media Literacy: Know how much media you consume each day and to manage your time; Learn how to analyse what you are viewing; and go beyond and seeing the other issues (Thoman, 1). These are steps that need to be learned to be media literate and to have a power over certain medias. Media literacy is meant to be applied to all of our media practices.
The importance of media literacy is to understand where information is coming from and who is benefiting from it. When we buy a movie, we know the company who produced it, but the question is who else is behind this picture? I recall a lesson from my Internet and Survey Research class, where our teacher showed us this website that was promoting a certain product but in reality believed in the opposite. The purpose is to understand the differences between credible and non- credible web sites. This helps explain media literacy and the importance in knowing the whole picture. You never really know the truth until you go looking for it. Chandler states in his excerpt, “Everyday references to communication are based on a transmissions model in which a sender transmits a message to a receiver...” (Chandler, 1). There will always be a message being transcribe to us through media and beyond that there will be those who send the message.
Media literacy plays an important part in my life, it’s explored in my classes, and it’s what I’m learning to apply to everything that mediates my life. Not only is it in my classes but it is in every advertisement, every paper, every movie that I read or see, it’s me understanding the hidden message. Going into Public Relations is especially important that I am able to analyse things I read in the newspaper and knowing how to decipher the truth away from the ‘white lies’.
Media Literacy reminds me of the book we had to read called Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.
He explains “When we abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning’ an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t. Film critics will sometimes describe a live action film as a ‘cartoon’ to acknowledge the stripped- down intensity of a simple story or visual style. Though the term is often used disparagingly, it can be equally well applied to many time-tested classics. Simplifying characters and images toward a purpose can be an effective tool for storytelling in any medium. Cartooning isn’t just a way of drawing, it’s a way of seeing” (McCloud, 30-31).
If you apply that to an advertisement, you take the main issues of the ad trying to find the main message. If we simplify the ideas, it will help us better understand the purpose. Media literacy helps understand the true meanings of media.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
Works Cited
Chandler, Daniel. "Semiotics for Beginners." 1994. 30 Sept 2008. <http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/>.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. 1st. New York, USA: HarperPerennial, 1994.
Tallim, Jane. “Media Awareness Network.”2008. 06 Oct 2008. http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/media_literacy/what_is_media_literacy.cfm
Thoman, Elizabeth. “Media Awareness Network.”2008. 06 Oct 2008.
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/teachers/media_literacy/what_is_media_literacy.cfm
Sex Sells
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGVHdRfm2TI &feature=related
If you click on the following link, you will be connected to an Axe commercial, watch the video and then continue reading.
My first thoughts when I saw this commercial was that it would be a commercial for condoms, given the nature of the first scene which involved two people in bed. I quickly changed my mind when they started moving backwards and picking up clothes and putting them on. I was thinking, what could this commercial possibly about? Finally, the commercial comes to an end and the screen reads, “Because you never know when... Axe spray works 24 hours a day”. It is apparent now that the commercial is for an Axe spray, a cologne for men.
After I knew what this advertisement was about, my first impression is that it’s giving guys the illusion that if you smell like this, random girls will ‘jump’ you and drop what they are doing and have sex with you. In reality unless, you are a hooker, she will not. It is also telling you that you should always smell good because you never know who you could meet. This product tells us that this is the only way to achieve this attraction. It can also give a sense to women that you will want your man to smell like this- the purpose of the ad persuades you to do this.
This company use sex to sell their product. They know that this will appeal most to their age demographic- young teenager boys. Philip Hanes explains in The Advantages and Limitations of a Focus on Audience in Media Studies that “Different audiences use different media; both the audience that is assumed to be using the media...” (Hanes, 3). To sell a product they know you have to use what is on the consumer’s mind. Using these dreams of guys will most likely draw them into buying their product, and allowing them to stand out compared to their competition.
Ads are always there and the point is to persuade us to buy their product in a minute or less. It doesn’t matter how they do it just as long as it happens. Hanes explains about television that “The medium employs a wide range of techniques to address its intended audience...the scheduling highlights this view of the television audience; as television output is regulated so that there is minimal “adults” material, such as strong language, sex scene and violence, before the 9o’clock watershed” (Hanes, 3). Hanes has explained that television knows what to show and when to show to draw in different types of people. Most of us don’t take the time to really look at the ad and realize the tactics that they use to get us to buy their product.
Taking the time analysing an ad could save you a lot of time and money and will also allow you to be more aware of what the product really is and if in the end you really need it.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
Works Cited
Phillip J. Hanes, “The Advantages and Limitations of a Focus on Audience in Media Studies” http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/pph9701.html.
If you click on the following link, you will be connected to an Axe commercial, watch the video and then continue reading.
My first thoughts when I saw this commercial was that it would be a commercial for condoms, given the nature of the first scene which involved two people in bed. I quickly changed my mind when they started moving backwards and picking up clothes and putting them on. I was thinking, what could this commercial possibly about? Finally, the commercial comes to an end and the screen reads, “Because you never know when... Axe spray works 24 hours a day”. It is apparent now that the commercial is for an Axe spray, a cologne for men.
After I knew what this advertisement was about, my first impression is that it’s giving guys the illusion that if you smell like this, random girls will ‘jump’ you and drop what they are doing and have sex with you. In reality unless, you are a hooker, she will not. It is also telling you that you should always smell good because you never know who you could meet. This product tells us that this is the only way to achieve this attraction. It can also give a sense to women that you will want your man to smell like this- the purpose of the ad persuades you to do this.
This company use sex to sell their product. They know that this will appeal most to their age demographic- young teenager boys. Philip Hanes explains in The Advantages and Limitations of a Focus on Audience in Media Studies that “Different audiences use different media; both the audience that is assumed to be using the media...” (Hanes, 3). To sell a product they know you have to use what is on the consumer’s mind. Using these dreams of guys will most likely draw them into buying their product, and allowing them to stand out compared to their competition.
Ads are always there and the point is to persuade us to buy their product in a minute or less. It doesn’t matter how they do it just as long as it happens. Hanes explains about television that “The medium employs a wide range of techniques to address its intended audience...the scheduling highlights this view of the television audience; as television output is regulated so that there is minimal “adults” material, such as strong language, sex scene and violence, before the 9o’clock watershed” (Hanes, 3). Hanes has explained that television knows what to show and when to show to draw in different types of people. Most of us don’t take the time to really look at the ad and realize the tactics that they use to get us to buy their product.
Taking the time analysing an ad could save you a lot of time and money and will also allow you to be more aware of what the product really is and if in the end you really need it.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
Works Cited
Phillip J. Hanes, “The Advantages and Limitations of a Focus on Audience in Media Studies” http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/pph9701.html.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Mediated Lives
When I first read the question "What does mass media mean?" I thought to myself I have never thought about what it meant before. When I think of those two words, I think of a large medium in society. Mass media to me is any large communication that distributes and communicates information to people. There are several means of transmitting information to people that have over time shaped our society.
I started remembering what Ian had said in one of our lectures, he said that we cannot go one day without our lives being mediated. There are six main forms of media that mediate my life more than the others; the Internet, television, radio, newspaper, books and magazines. Every day at least five out of six forms of media mediate my life. These are all extensions of my skin (McLuhan, 10); they are what make my life easier.
Mass media is also what has changed our society for the good and the bad. If you take art for example, at one point in our lives the only way to see art was to physically go to where it was located. Nowadays you just type it in on the Internet and it comes right up on your screen. Walter Benjamin argues how art has changed, “One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence” (Benjamin, 3). Our technology can do so much that it takes away from things like art which we created to be viewed in person and have now the aura has been taken away.
Major mediators are there to make our life easier; they distracted our life from everything else around us. Walter Benjamin explains the difference between Distraction and Concentration:
“...Polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work as the way legend tells the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction. The laws of its reception are most instructive.”(Benjamin, 13)
We see information in a completely different way in the 21st century. In the past we absorbed information like one would absorb art. It is like a distraction now; I am prone to multitasking while doing academic work-anything from MSN to listening to music on You Tube. Mass communicators allow us to do multiple tasks at once- we no longer concentrate at the task at hand.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
Works cited
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
http://academic.evergreen.edu/a/arunc/compmusic/benjamin/benjamin.pdf
Marshall McLuhan, “The Playboy interview”
http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/links/mcluhan/pb.html
I started remembering what Ian had said in one of our lectures, he said that we cannot go one day without our lives being mediated. There are six main forms of media that mediate my life more than the others; the Internet, television, radio, newspaper, books and magazines. Every day at least five out of six forms of media mediate my life. These are all extensions of my skin (McLuhan, 10); they are what make my life easier.
Mass media is also what has changed our society for the good and the bad. If you take art for example, at one point in our lives the only way to see art was to physically go to where it was located. Nowadays you just type it in on the Internet and it comes right up on your screen. Walter Benjamin argues how art has changed, “One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence” (Benjamin, 3). Our technology can do so much that it takes away from things like art which we created to be viewed in person and have now the aura has been taken away.
Major mediators are there to make our life easier; they distracted our life from everything else around us. Walter Benjamin explains the difference between Distraction and Concentration:
“...Polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work as the way legend tells the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction. The laws of its reception are most instructive.”(Benjamin, 13)
We see information in a completely different way in the 21st century. In the past we absorbed information like one would absorb art. It is like a distraction now; I am prone to multitasking while doing academic work-anything from MSN to listening to music on You Tube. Mass communicators allow us to do multiple tasks at once- we no longer concentrate at the task at hand.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
Works cited
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
http://academic.evergreen.edu/a/arunc/compmusic/benjamin/benjamin.pdf
Marshall McLuhan, “The Playboy interview”
http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~gisle/links/mcluhan/pb.html
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
A Culture Taken Over By The World Wide Web
Hey there all you bloggers,
As I am writing this blog, I’m using the Internet. Once I have completed posting the blog I will mostly go on Facebook or MSN and immediately be connected to several other people who are using it as well. It seems as though our generation has started a dependency of the World Wide Web. We cannot seem to go a day without turning it on - or at least I know I can’t. The Internet has become our way of communicating anything to anyone. It’s like a drug for most people - we need are daily fix.
In Neil Postman’s The Humanism of Media Ecology, he describes the principle of what media ecology is. Postman describes it through the word medium, “A technology within which a culture grows.” (Postman, 1) The Internet is the technology in which our culture grows. Everything you would ever want to know can be found through a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo and everything new we find seems to be more often than not, put onto the Internet. Our culture is growing right at our fingertips. There is so much information coming on to the Internet each and every day. The question is when is it too much? Neil Postman stated that “My own answer question concerning access to information is that, at least for now, the speed, volume, and variety available information serve as a distraction and a moral deficit; we are deluded into thinking that the serious social problems of our time would be solved if only we had more information, and still more information.” (Postman, 5) The Internet gives us access to the information in such an overwhelming state that sometimes it can be hard to determine what to listen to. It is so quick to access this information that it allows us to forget to take time and evaluate everything.
To our generation it seems as though this is the future. Pretty soon everything will be done on the Internet. Postman explains that “After all, we can listen to music alone, watch television alone, and watch videos alone. And now with the aid of computers, we can shop at home, we will be voting at home, and going to college at home-...” (Postman, 4) It seems as though our culture we will be dependent on this sole technology. But for how long? Culture changes with time; at one point in time we use to be dependent on books for knowledge and the development of ourselves, now we rely on the Internet. We can’t with certainty say that computers and the Internet will be there tomorrow because cultures are always changing. These technologies only shape our cultures for what is in the future, what impacts they have now reflect what the culture could become.
For people looking to rely less on the Internet, it almost seems impossible. From school to work, the Internet has become an easy tool for professors and co-workers to communicate with each other. It allows what needs to be said and in manner that requires less interaction with verbal communication. The Internet is taking away from the human interactions; we have the ability to be connected to thousands of people through instant messaging and Facebook but in the end we are all alone. We aren’t talking with emotions anymore; we are talking in one tone and whatever you type is left for the reader to interpret.
What media ecology would tell us is to watch what we are doing with the Internet? It is trying to determine how it affects us and why. If we take the time to access this technology, like we would getting to know a stranger - the technology would take less of ourselves and in return not have such a negative effect on us as humans. Media ecology wants us to see the whole picture, not just the positive side. Technology will inevitably take over certain parts of our lives but what we need to ask is how much we will allow it to take over. We decide how to spend our time.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
Works Cited
Postman, Neil. "The Humanism of Media Ecology." 16jun2000 23 Sep 2008 <http://www.media-ecology.org/publications/MEA_proceedings/v1/humanism_of_media_ecology.html>.
As I am writing this blog, I’m using the Internet. Once I have completed posting the blog I will mostly go on Facebook or MSN and immediately be connected to several other people who are using it as well. It seems as though our generation has started a dependency of the World Wide Web. We cannot seem to go a day without turning it on - or at least I know I can’t. The Internet has become our way of communicating anything to anyone. It’s like a drug for most people - we need are daily fix.
In Neil Postman’s The Humanism of Media Ecology, he describes the principle of what media ecology is. Postman describes it through the word medium, “A technology within which a culture grows.” (Postman, 1) The Internet is the technology in which our culture grows. Everything you would ever want to know can be found through a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo and everything new we find seems to be more often than not, put onto the Internet. Our culture is growing right at our fingertips. There is so much information coming on to the Internet each and every day. The question is when is it too much? Neil Postman stated that “My own answer question concerning access to information is that, at least for now, the speed, volume, and variety available information serve as a distraction and a moral deficit; we are deluded into thinking that the serious social problems of our time would be solved if only we had more information, and still more information.” (Postman, 5) The Internet gives us access to the information in such an overwhelming state that sometimes it can be hard to determine what to listen to. It is so quick to access this information that it allows us to forget to take time and evaluate everything.
To our generation it seems as though this is the future. Pretty soon everything will be done on the Internet. Postman explains that “After all, we can listen to music alone, watch television alone, and watch videos alone. And now with the aid of computers, we can shop at home, we will be voting at home, and going to college at home-...” (Postman, 4) It seems as though our culture we will be dependent on this sole technology. But for how long? Culture changes with time; at one point in time we use to be dependent on books for knowledge and the development of ourselves, now we rely on the Internet. We can’t with certainty say that computers and the Internet will be there tomorrow because cultures are always changing. These technologies only shape our cultures for what is in the future, what impacts they have now reflect what the culture could become.
For people looking to rely less on the Internet, it almost seems impossible. From school to work, the Internet has become an easy tool for professors and co-workers to communicate with each other. It allows what needs to be said and in manner that requires less interaction with verbal communication. The Internet is taking away from the human interactions; we have the ability to be connected to thousands of people through instant messaging and Facebook but in the end we are all alone. We aren’t talking with emotions anymore; we are talking in one tone and whatever you type is left for the reader to interpret.
What media ecology would tell us is to watch what we are doing with the Internet? It is trying to determine how it affects us and why. If we take the time to access this technology, like we would getting to know a stranger - the technology would take less of ourselves and in return not have such a negative effect on us as humans. Media ecology wants us to see the whole picture, not just the positive side. Technology will inevitably take over certain parts of our lives but what we need to ask is how much we will allow it to take over. We decide how to spend our time.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
Works Cited
Postman, Neil. "The Humanism of Media Ecology." 16jun2000 23 Sep 2008 <http://www.media-ecology.org/publications/MEA_proceedings/v1/humanism_of_media_ecology.html>.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Opening The Door to Academic Blogging
Hey there all you bloggers,
Well this is my first ever blog posting and I have to say it is pretty exciting. When Ian told us that half of our mark would be blog postings, I have to say I was a little worried that I would not be very good at it or know what to say. Surprisingly it seems to be quite easy, I enjoy the idea of being able to speak my mind and sharing it with the World Wide Web. I can't believe that I have never tried this before.
I began my journey into the blogging world about one week ago by looking through all the recommended blogging services. I narrowed the search down to just two, Blogger and WordPress. I found that since I was a first time blogger that Wordpress wasn't as straight forward as blogger. Blogger seemed like the perfect option, just two quick pages to fill out and you were officially a blogger.
What has to be the most difficult part of becoming a blogger was finding the perfect name for my blog. When I started thinking about names I knew there were two things I wanted; First I wanted it to be original and secondly I wanted it to best reflect the purpose and relate to the discussion that will be throughout out my blog. I started by talking to some people on my floor at rez, then asked my boyfriend and we came up with about 10 names. I narrowed it to three when I realized the other ones were not really speaking to me. So here I am with three names and I am thinking to myself what am I going to do, how am I going to be able to pick between the names. I was stuck between the Gears of Media, Freedom Writing and Freedom Writer, so I decided to let it sit with me for a couple of days. In one of my classes that week we were talking about how the media manipulates what the story really is, and then it hit me, Persuasion By The Written Word, what a perfect name it describes exactly what I wanted to say. The idea behind the name was how the media persuades you by their words, and since we will be writing it became written word.
There it is my blog is complete. I am officially ready to put myself out into the World Wide Web.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
Well this is my first ever blog posting and I have to say it is pretty exciting. When Ian told us that half of our mark would be blog postings, I have to say I was a little worried that I would not be very good at it or know what to say. Surprisingly it seems to be quite easy, I enjoy the idea of being able to speak my mind and sharing it with the World Wide Web. I can't believe that I have never tried this before.
I began my journey into the blogging world about one week ago by looking through all the recommended blogging services. I narrowed the search down to just two, Blogger and WordPress. I found that since I was a first time blogger that Wordpress wasn't as straight forward as blogger. Blogger seemed like the perfect option, just two quick pages to fill out and you were officially a blogger.
What has to be the most difficult part of becoming a blogger was finding the perfect name for my blog. When I started thinking about names I knew there were two things I wanted; First I wanted it to be original and secondly I wanted it to best reflect the purpose and relate to the discussion that will be throughout out my blog. I started by talking to some people on my floor at rez, then asked my boyfriend and we came up with about 10 names. I narrowed it to three when I realized the other ones were not really speaking to me. So here I am with three names and I am thinking to myself what am I going to do, how am I going to be able to pick between the names. I was stuck between the Gears of Media, Freedom Writing and Freedom Writer, so I decided to let it sit with me for a couple of days. In one of my classes that week we were talking about how the media manipulates what the story really is, and then it hit me, Persuasion By The Written Word, what a perfect name it describes exactly what I wanted to say. The idea behind the name was how the media persuades you by their words, and since we will be writing it became written word.
There it is my blog is complete. I am officially ready to put myself out into the World Wide Web.
Till the next time,
Sarah Young
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