Stand-up Comedy

                Everybody is used to stereotypes. It is usually the first thing that comes to mind when you meet new people, they are those little preconceived notions everybody has about everybody else in order to define certain people's characteristics or just simply define them into a certain group. The fact is that many people are often upset when they're stereotypes are confused or don't come true.

                When I was at Indiana University at Bloomington before I transferred, the first thing that people noticed was that I did not have an Indian accent when I spoke. The first reactions I got out of people was the astonishment that I did not fit the criteria for an Indian international student. The stereotype there was that all the Indians had an Indian accent, they all hung out with the rest of the Indians on campus. Being on the receiving end of the confusion was an interesting experience, but I have been on the other side as well, I never actually thought of how strange it is when you hear something you don't expect to hear coming from certain people.

                These stereotypes are usually formed through the mass exposure to different types of media. I know one big influence for me was listening to various different stand up comedians and hearing people tell jokes about what the comedians were talking about. The basis for many comedians' material are exposing the different stereotypes that we all know about but giving it a more entertaining factor. The stand-up comedians I most listened to were Russell Peters and Robin Williams. Their material revolves around exploring the different stereotypes that emerge from all the different nationalities in the world. For example, Russell Peters usually makes fun of Indians, and in one clip he talks about how Indians are usually lazy and are not fit for manual labor, but can do math very well and he makes a joke about how if an Indian were a slave, it would be counterproductive but he would offer to do your taxes instead. The bulk  of Robin Williams' material revolves around similar topics. My question is, is it ethical to exploit these stereotypes for humor? Will people take it the way it is meant to be seen or will people take the jokes too personally?

Russell Peters - whole world's mixing

Russel Peters - Indian Slaves in South Africa

The SmartPhone

                Smartphones have infiltrated our culture as being one of the most useful items around and embedding themselves into our lives to become essential tools of communication. Blackberries and iPhones in particular have become the most prominent and used hand phones around. Not only do smartphones enable the average user to make calls, but they also allow them to check their email, show the time, allow them to send messages instantaneously back and forth between the respective devices, take pictures and listen to music. The connectivity function in particular allows us to synchronize our lives with the world and stay in touch with everything that is happening that instant. In the Technology and Ideology reading, it mentions that daylight savings was only a recent invention. Before all the times were synchronized according to time zones, each town or city would adjust their times according to where they were positioned in the world and noon would be when the sun was highest in the sky and the shadow was the smallest on the sun dial. People did not seem to be in much hurry at all or too concerned about what was happening in the next town, or the next city, state or continent for that matter. As the technology improved, and people were traveling to different places and communicating across significant distances, the concept of synchronization became more important. As mentioned in our reading, once the railroads spread across the continent, there was enormous confusion with scheduling which made it difficult to run the trains. Technology progresses to satisfy people's needs, the progression in technology also creates a new culture, usually of getting things done faster, in a shorter time, and efficiency becomes more important. The emergence of smartphones has satisfied our need for increased efficiency in communication and being able to synchronize ourselves with the rest of the world even better.

Defining Media

            In general, the perception of media is such that, the first thing that people think of when they think of media is what they see on television, what they hear on the radio and the other visual attractions that are generally associated with the entertainment industry. In fact, that is only a very small proportion of what media actually contains, according to Marshal McLuhan media is anything that man can relate to any of his five different senses as well as the form of the media itself to convey the message to its public. There are several ways to think about the what media does to the world but media itself is simply a way to convey a message from one community to another.

            Many things have evolved into the most efficient forms of their being over time, similarly, it can be thought that the definition of media through different media theorists could have evolved into the most efficient definition, from McLuhan's definitions in 1964 to Croteau and Hoynes' definition in 2003. Croteau and Hoynes delve into the actual word media and split it apart into its root forms to get a definition that seems the most accurate for our times. They find that "Media is the plural of medium" which is "derived from the Latin word medius, which means middle" (Croteau & Hoynes, 2003) and they come to the conclusion that media is nothing but the way of communicating a message and the transference occurs through the medium. In current times, this is the most prevalent in areas of business such as marketing and advertising, as well as the entertainment industry. Marketing and advertising is built on getting a message through to their target market or niche market in order for their product or service to be known and purchased. In order for them to accomplish this task they have to find the most effective way of communicating with their selected audience. In this modern world, the media is often exploited for monetary benefit, there are numerous examples where by using a medium, communities have been helped in certain situations, the UN uses mediums to create awareness and many different other NGO's use mediums to create awareness and ask for assistance. Therefore, Media is combination of ways to convey a message across to different communities of people, as defined by Croteau and Hoynes.

             Nearly 5000 years ago, the world was granted a sacred religious text called the Vedas. "The Vedas are the primary texts of Hinduism," (Sacred-Texts¹) these are the texts that used to govern life in India thousands of years ago and these are the religious guidelines everyone usually adheres to. The way the Vedas were born was that the Hindu priests used to believe that they heard the prayers from around their lives. They used to hear it in the wind, they used to hear it when they prayed, and soon enough they were learning these new prayers through their sense of hearing. Through their sense of hearing they used to say the prayers, transferring from one sense to another. Marshal McLuhan's perception of media contains the method in which the Hindu priests were able to learn the sacred Hindu prayers because "Media [are] the extensions of Man." (McLuhan 1964) and therefore Man uses the extensions of himself, his senses, to absorb any and all messages that are transferred to him and around him. Also, McLuhan's second perception of media was that "the medium is the message" (McLuhan 1964) and the Vedas, the message, were the medium through which they were created because the medium was the sound that was heard, which was the prayers, and the prayers were the sound, therefore the Vedas (the prayer) was the message.

            Croteau and Hoynes have the most efficient definition of media that encompasses all its uses in the modern world and the corporate world where mediums are used for entertainment and advertising, to create the well known word we know today, "The Media", while McLuhan gives perceptions of the media that are linked to everyday life where messages are passed through anything and everything, including our own body's senses. Therefore, media, simply put, is an information transfer highway where messages are sent and received through various different mediums.

 ¹ Hare, John B. "Sacred-Texts: Hinduism." Internet Sacred Text Archive Home. Web. 12 Sept. 2010. <http://sacred-texts.com/hin/>.