Paper or The Screen?

            There really is no other feeling like reading a good book. Sometimes I miss the times where I could just sit back and relax with a good book, but nowadays with so many distractions it's hard to find a long enough period of time to actually spend enough time reading any book. In this increasingly digital age, the pleasures of reading books are lost on the internet and its articles.

            Although distractions from books were present before in the form of magazines, comic books and graphic novels, they don't even compare to the distractions that the internet brings. Reading magazines and comic books weren't considered really "reading" because you usually just flipped through the pages as will, there was really no concentration or thinking involved because you were mostly looking at images and skimming through words. In the case of books, you really need to pay attention, and for a long period of time. You need to read every word, imagine every scenario and it really requires you to interact with the piece of writing instead of just flipping through the pages.

            The internet has become just like the comic books and magazines, it requires no real attention span, you can just flip through websites and pictures, skimming through words, and creates the illusion of reading. In the New York Times Article by Rich, he mentions that "reading in print and on the internet are different" because readers can just skim through articles, perusing through sites that have no correlation to one another and they can start and stop their session whenever they want, while books have a certain path the reader has to follow and they cannot just turn pages at will as they need to start at the beginning and work their way to the end. A book requires a long attention span and plenty of imagination which the internet has eliminated in the most recent generations because we are able to read whatever and how much ever we want and change topics with just a click of a button.

The Status

Personally I do understand what the big deal is about accepting your mom or your dad on Facebook will do. Although I don’t care about the social implications of being known to have friended one or both of my parents, it’s the security issue that could be potentially problematic. Today’s blog is about the Facebook Status. This is probably what I changed the most about my Facebook use once I friended my parents. I act a certain way at home and I act a certain way around my friends and those I am friends with on Facbeook and they are not similar. I don’t voice my every thought at home and I don’t swear at home. Those are the two things that help me communicate to my friends my “status” at any particular moment. 99% of these statuses are not suitable for my parents because it’s either about them because they wouldn’t let me do something and I didn’t want my parents to know my every thought.

The article in the Washington post talks about kids who are having similar problems and people vent by communicating through “No parents on facebook” groups. I eventually learned to live with the change and never really panicked or acted out by writing on such groups to vent my frustration, I exclude my parents from any incriminating photos because I have an image to uphold to their standards and that is basically the only thing people are worried about. I became a more decent human being on my statuses and stopped reporting useless things, so actually it made my behavior improve! I think its just an age barrier that one has to cross before they become friends with their parents, before Facebook it was an emotional barrier that had to be crossed, and now it is an electronic barrier where you can literally “friend” your parents. The status on Facebook was really the only thing that was affected in my usage, and it was affected for the better so I have no complaints to adding my parents on facebook.

The Professional Photographer

So what is the difference between a photographer and a the average Joe with a multifunction point and shoot camera which takes great pictures? According to croteau and hoynes the basic answer is talent, but we can’t stop there because how do we decide who gets the status of photographer nowadays when everybody has a camera, which can do everything. Today’s topic is about cameras, being quite a large tech buff I absolutely love cameras. Cameras allow us to capture moments in time and save them for however long we want, it allows us to capture a moment in time in specific light, angle and position we want to remember it in. Whenever we travel, one of the main things we carry is a camera because we want to document these trips. In essence, it also allows us to share with our family and friends these points in time when we travelled and allow them to experience second hand what we experienced (through photos).

With that being said, because of the progression of technology through the years and better and better cameras being released into the consumer market, I believe the gap between a photographer and an average Joe with a camera keeps getting wider, and not narrowing. The average Joe will probably take an excessive amount of pictures to try and capture that one moment or try to capture that one moment multiple times to have different views but a photographer is able to take just one picture and capture the moment because he has a vision, he knows exactly what he wanted and he did not have to experiment with multiple shots, instead just waits for the perfect moment.

Movie Mind Games

Movies have a distinct effect on many people. In this day and age the majority of the masses are addicted to movies and television, there are an abundance of television programs filling the cable networks such that they are able to fill every spot, every hour every day with something for people to watch. Movies are a similar issue, there are just so many movies. It is either amazing the creative talent that Hollywood has inspired to churn out movie after movie with multiple new movie premieres every week but all these movies also make incredible amounts of money at the box office.

Sure the movie industry takes advantage of the holiday seasons and all the different holidays and times of year to release movies that are appropriate to that particular time but are movies released at that time in order to generate more money at the box office because it would be more suitable to release Christmas movies in the winter season rather than the summer or is the influence the other way around? Are movies released in order for people to be in a certain mindset and psychological state around those particular times of year?

Sure summer blockbusters are released in the summer, with an abundance of action movies, CGI movies and a slew of movies that just increase your heart rate in order to keep the summer energy alive. Around Christmas and thanksgiving time we get many romantic comedies, and cheerful movies to keep the holiday season happy and a slew of romantic movies release around valentine's day to keep that holiday alive as well. Now my question is that is the movie industry just trying to exploit the times of year in order to make a killing in the box office or are we being manipulated into thinking certain things at certain times of the year? like being incredibly excited over the summer, being compassionate, kind and family oriented during Christmas and being romantic at valentine's.

According to Croteau and Hoynes, there are certain forms of media that have to work within political constraints, but they could be working inside these political constraints that have been constructed by the existing media because of the agenda setting theory. Sure there are political constraints but only because people are led to think a certain way through different types of media and are lead to think certain things are unacceptable. The main method of determining social norms is through observance and usually people are influenced to think and act a certain way so is it safe to say that the movie industry both creates these constraints as well as exploits these constraints for a box office killing?

Ridiculous Influence

There is no doubt that media does have influences on people’s lives, it might dictate how people act, it might change how people think and feel, but could it get us so sucked in that it makes us want to replicate scenarios we see/experience or live with or like people in the movies and characters in video games?

There have been numerous instances of people becoming so addicted to video games that they play too much and because of the stress and the continuous play without taking care of their daily health it eventually leads to them passing away. Most recently, and probably the most ridiculous a “Tokyo man marries video game character”. In a Nintendo DS video game called ‘Love Plus’ players are allowed to create characters and is characterized as a Dating Game.

In our TV Delinquency Debate reading, there are three basic propositions of the influence of media on delinquents which all say there is a strong correlation between the amount of exposure and influence on children making them delinquents. Apart from people marrying video game characters, which does indicate a high level of influence on that particular individual, what about all the other violent and irrational games that exist? GTA is one of those games which are extremely violent and vulgar where players are required to drive irrationally, kill, have sex and run away from the police.

Though the companies who release these games have the age warnings and disclaimers, they are rarely ever followed, how can we be sure that kids these days won’t be taught how to live life by these video games? How can we be sure that kids won’t run around killing, having sex with prostitutes and run away from police? How can we be sure that they won’t drive incredibly fast and irrationally as they do when they have fun playing video games?

Tokyo Man Marries Video Game Character: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/16/japan.virtual.wedding/index.html

Facebook Inbox-ing vs. Email

Facebook has infiltrated so many people's lives. It has made it easier to communicate in this technology filled world. One specific part of Facebook seems to be a substitute for email these days. Before the days of Facebook, I used to send out many emails, for personal reasons, to keep in touch with family back in India when I lived in Indonesia and to contact teachers and other professionals. After I joined Facebook, I noticed a significant decline in my use of email to contact friends and family.

Most of the time my family back home would be enraged in my lack of communication with them but my response would be "just join Facebook". For some reason I avoided the use of email because it seemed more of a hassle than to simply click the inbox button on Facebook (even though the procedure was the same, I still had to choose a recipient, subject and type out the message). The effort level would have been the same regardless of using Facebook or email but for some reason I had developed some sort of mental block and because 99% of the people I wanted to stay in contact with were on Facebook, it was a mental hassle to long into a different website to contact a select few other people.

Media has infiltrated our lives, much like the hypodermic model which states that media has been injected into our bloodstream, it is also the case that we have been given a bigger dose of certain types of media than others. In the case of Facebook, I think we have been given quite a large dose. The procedure for writing a Facebook message and an email is exactly the same, search for the recipient, type a subject and type the message, but I would much rather send it on Facebook than use my email.

Glasses, am I better off without them?

I got glasses at a very early age because I probably watched too much television or played too much game boy and I now wear them to aid with my vision problems. My glasses clarify the otherwise blurry world I would have to experience 24 hours a day, not being able to decipher anything, would not be able to pay attention to anything the professor writes on the board, I couldn't see who people were, and I would only be able anything within a few feet of my eyes. So I thought I was pretty grateful for this marvelous invention.

Over the years we have discovered how much of an impact media has on our lives. It is literally everywhere. Many studies conducted say we are exposed to anywhere between a few hundred to up to 8,000 advertisements and opportunities to be an observer of any type of media. We see media everywhere we look, they range from the logos on everybody's clothes, billboards, television ads, and the incredibly annoying pop-ups and sidebar blinking advertisements on all sorts of websites. We are exposed to more media than we should be, and our generation especially has endured probably the most exposure because we grew up during the time of the tech boom and we probably spend the most time in front of the television or the computer.

The problem starts off with the political socialization theory where they target the young audience, adolescents who are just old enough to make up their own minds about the nature of politics and social movements and falls into the cultivation theory which is the cumulative impact of the media on the public. This definitely talks about our generation, we grew up with media screaming in our faces, who is to say that we are not shaped by the media? Theorists say that it is this extensive and long term exposure to media that has the real effects, and I think being exposed our entire lives qualifies. What could we do or what can we do in order for us not to be taken prisoner by the media? It is possible to avoid such influences and be mentally stronger, but there are so many different people who are susceptible and easily influenced by anything.

I ask my question again, was it worth it to get my glasses and be able to see clearly the incredible abundance of media around us?