"Swine Flu!" say the Whiny Few...

It really is no secret that I have a great distain for American newssources who often put their ratings above any semblance of actual news reporting. The difference is so distinct that you could be watching CNN or FOX at one moment, see a story on Obama's "swagga" and switch over to PBS and watch BBC news and see a tsunami in India and pirates capturing an American ship. What is appalling is that the morning shows, the late night shows and the actual news seem to be almost the same...stupid chatter from stupid blonde smiley bobble heads. But how can comedy shows like "The Daily Show" and "Colbert Report" compare, despite the degradation of news sources on television?
When I was younger and my grandfather came to visit, all had to be completely silent while the news was on...even the NYSE and the S & P required complete silence. For the most part American's act like there is an invisible grandfather watching over them, they are completely silent during the news just taking in the supposed information and blindly consuming it like a burger with salmonella. But where is the interaction that Marshall McLuhan describes as "hot" media? This phenomenon is reserved for 8pm when the gambit of Comedy shows comes on, giving Americans a chance to laugh, to interact, to joke and to actually question the "news".
The greatest example of this is the story that plagues us (no pun intended) even now, the elusive and "widespread" Swine Flu. Despite the fact that CNN, MSNBC and FOX have all literally been infecting people with information about this new strain of flu, they are now taking a step back and saying...not to freak anyone out about this or (in reality) have this look like we were just putting all this stupid hype on television and making it look really scary. Jon Stewart responded to this hysteria saying, "Do you even watch your own networks? You're the only reason we ARE freaking out!". Stewart covered this phenomenon in his segment on April 27 in the section called "The Last 100 Days". "We were supposed to be talking about Obama's first one hundred days, and how it's gone. Clearly this guy" he says motioning towards the heavens, "has other plans".
Using clips from all three major news sources, Stewart creates a montage of all the ridiculous things reporters will ask their physicians, speculators, psychics, ambassadors, politicians. Really he takes the things they say, and actually analyzes them and then makes that analysis into comedy. After all, says Stewart Swine Flu is the least of your worries in Mexico, the elusive and contagious "Bullet flu" which remains "airborne" is still number one on things that can kill you in Mexico.
But how does "The Daily Show" go beyond making fun of the news and instead actually serve to educate people? For one, most people are absolutely sick of the political system and anything that serves up a high dose of reality is going to be popular. Secondly, by combining actual news stories into a format people can actually understand and "get" viewers are actually consuming more information than they would from the old guy taking about politcal dogma for 45 minutes. According to Rachel Smolkin in her article, "What Mainstream Media Can Learn From Jon Stewart", "A 2004 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 21 percent of people age 18 to 29 cited comedy shows such as "The Daily Show" and "Saturday Night Live" as places where they regularly learned presidential campaign news, nearly equal to the 23 percent who regularly learned something from the nightly network news or from daily newspapers". There's a reason that regular newspapers are fading and newsstations are adding segments like "Bill O'Reilly" and "Keith Olbermann"...people want someone to analyze their news for them. Just another way that Americans have become lazy. We don't want someone to give us the actual facts about swine flu, we want 20 different networks feelings about it...and no we don't want to know anything about it.
In a recent interview with Paris Hilton, CNN asked her what she thought of the swine flu, she responded, "What? I don't eat those!". Withought Jon Stewart would people who consider themselves to be "non-political" also think that swine flu has something to do with Babe or Charlotte's Web? Stewart's show allows for people who are not really big on the Capitol Hill scene to see a dichotomy between American political thought and the absolute garbage that FOX and CNN spew all day on televisions nationwide. American's finally have a chance to use what Marshall McLuhan described as a "hot" media and actually interact with a source instead of letting it tell them what to do.
Why can't journalists see past their need for television ratings and wishy-washy content to have a little of Stewarts obvious sarcasm? Smolkin mentions Jeff Jarvis, a well known bloggers reaction to reporters shyness, "After enough drinks, reporters talk like Stewart: 'You won't BELIEVE what the mayor said today!' Why don't we talk to our readers that way?" he asks, and then acknowledges: "OK. There's a lot of arguments: 'The mayor won't talk to us again.' 'It's biased.' 'We don't want to turn everything into blogs.'"Perhaps journalistic integrity and control of bias in a story are what differentiate between Stewart's disregard for authenticity and a "real" reporters take on the story.
The swine flue issue is really one that the mainstream media has picked up on like a bunch of ants on a lollipop. Dopplegangers hang off each other as each network strives to be up the the minute as absolutely nothing happens. On average, about 3000 people or more die in a car crash each day. In fact it is just as likely you could be killed by a 1, 051 pound, 8 foot wild pig that was shot in Alabama in 2007 by an eleven year old boy...talk about Swine Flu! As the Swine Flu continues to rage (and miraculously kill barely anyone) the news sources will go about thier reporting, creating a hellish outlook on the future, and Jon Stewart will be there to make it all better with a "droopy dog" face and a look that say "Forget you, I AM the news".

What would Marshall McLuhan think of Power Rangers?

When I was a kid in the 90's, at around 4pm all the kids that lived in my neighborhood would run home and plop in front of the television and watch Power Rangers. I on the other hand, usually could only watch the contents of PBS (like "Kratt's Creatures" and "Magic School Bus") and was even banned from watching "Sleeping Beauty" and "Lion King" because of content. But what if the content was removed entirely from these shows, and my mother/father looked at them with the magnifying glass of someone like Marshall McLuhan and judged purely on "the medium is the message"...would I still be banned from watching these shows as a child? Could my parent’s have made a judgment error when making me watch shows that were interestedly educational but had some other outlier that caused them to affect my behavior? For the most part these children’s shows acted as a hot medium, something that told me what to do and what to think. Did the Power Rangers allow other children to participate more in cognitive thought and become participatory watchers during their TV hour or was I really better off having information taught to me without any sort of participatory reaction, or is it inconsequential. What is the meaning of the medium, and how can it circumnavigate content altogether and find meaning in itself?
Marshall McLuhan's essay "Understanding Radio" really detaches itself from the discussion of content in media and rather looks at how it determines our behaviors and patterns. According to Federman, in What Is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message, McLuhan defines "medium" as "' any extension of ourselves'" (2). For McLuhan the medium exists in both "hot" and "cold", "hot" media being something that tells you what to believe or what to buy (like the QVC droning on about mint-green gardening capris), and "cold" media is something that requires one to think more and necessitates more participation. "TV is a cool medium." says McLuhan, "It rejects hot figures and hot issues and people from the hot press media...Radio, however, is a hot medium and takes cartoon characters seriously" (235). Radio, as McLuhan explains later, “…Is that extension of the nervous system that is matched only by human speech itself” (237) From this point of view not only does technology determine our behavior but it also can exist as an extension of our minds, our ears and our fingers--making it essential or quasi-essential to our senses, and even our sense of the world.
McLuhan gives various examples then to first show his point and then explain his main argument of "the medium is the message". One of the first examples he gives is the Kennedy-Nixon debates, at the high point of television audience, and how Kennedy mastered the cool TV medium, "It was Nixon's fate to provide a sharp, high-definition image and action for the cool TV medium that translated that sharp image into the impression of a phony"(235). For McLuhan it is understood that to look presidential and to look vital was the effect of television or as he will prove later, the message. Radio on the other hand does not allow the listener to decide, "radio affects most people intimately" says McLuhan, and then goes on to use the Orson Welles radio show hysteria as a precise instance of the hotness (or non-participatory nature) of this media (236). Where people able to look on the screen and see actual aliens, or to see Welles sitting there with his microphone making strange noises, or did they have to take what he said as real because there was no way to argue back or to deduce fact from fiction? Radio for teenagers (apparently in the 1950's-70's) have a different approach to radio according to McLuhan, "...To the teenager, the radio gives privacy, and at the same time provides the tight tribal bond of the world of common market...The ear is hyper esthetic [an abnormally acute sense of pain, heat, cold, or touch] compared to the neutral eye" (237).

McLuhan goes on to talk about his overall point in the latter half of his essay and draw mediums and their messages together. “Although medium is the message,” states McLuhan, “the controls go beyond programming. The restraints are always directed to the “content,” which is always another medium.” (239). Content doesn’t matter to McLuhan, unlike the FCC or my parents, but instead the medium (which is another extension of our abilities) expatiates our behaviors and norms which in turn is the message itself. Federland explains this concept further by adding, “Thus we have the meaning of ‘the medium is the message:’ We can know of the nature and characteristics of anything we conceive or create (medium) by virtue of the changes—often unnoticed and non-obvious changes---that they effect (message)” (2). For McLuhan the meaning of the television is not the sitcoms we watch but the overall effect it may have that we had not previously noticed or taken into the equation. The television does not create violence by showing violent shows, but rather it creates focus by making our eyes coagulate the tiny pixels that make up the picture on the screen.

Did my parents have it all wrong then? Where they purely looking at the content without realizing that the medium itself is its own message? If they asked McLuhan he probably would have argued that watching Power Rangers was not itself a causation of violence in children, but perhaps the commercials that cut up the show were a perpetuation of non-focus. Perhaps that television is a “cool technology” and that it was really requiring more thought than that of a hot television show pounding hot information into my head. Regardless of this, my parents determined my usage of technology in a way that technology would not determine me. McLuhan may argue that content is inconsequential, but technology has an uncanny way of causing arousing certain behaviors in the psyche that seem to be determined by that technology. Did Power Rangers cause or spur on the violence of today’s young adults, or did television itself have a completely different effect regardless of content? Only time will tell, but McLuhan does make a compelling argument for technological determinism and the way we process and consume media.

Like taking Candy from a Baby: 24 sans technology

This has got to be the worst timing for an assignment based on communication, a day before I did this assignment I bought a T-Mobile Sidekick 2008 and being away from it for an entire 24 hours was sort of like separating a kid from their Christmas presents right after they open them…torture. It has a full qwerty keyboard, camera, unlimited web browsing and MyFaves…basically this thing is a fully loaded communication dynamo. When this was assigned I didn’t have a need for my phone other than to text and call, and my web browsing was circumscribed to the time I was near a computer. No more! Smart phones really do change your life; they’re status symbol, communication device and quasi-necessity all at the same time. While most people are a little over-dramatic about being without their media for a day I rarely watch television and often don’t use my cell phone (pre-Sidekick)…my boyfriend nearly died spending three hours with me as I told him about the no TV, movie, music, computer and cell phone stipulations.

“Eighteen- to 20-year-olds know in their hearts that electronic media are nearly as dear to their lives as physical nourishment. They have vague memories of a time before iTunes, personalized ring tones, Facebook, Google…They have tasted the pleasures brought by binary code, and, like most of us, they're not into deprivation” says Danna Walker, was I living up to her expectations by being bothered and annoyed with not having technology? Should I really be required to know what it is like to live like a Mennonite, and does it add up to being some kind of well-rounded person or is using technology smarter than indulging?

I started the 24 hours technically at 11 pm the night before when I went to sleep after work. I began my day uneasily, waking up at 11am only because the sun was streaming in the window of the guest bedroom of my boyfriend’s house. If I had slept the night in my basement bedroom I probably never would’ve woken up because I only have an alarm clock on my cell phone. To be honest, that was kind of nice but I definitely couldn’t do it everyday. My boyfriend had a real problem with not playing music or watching TV in the morning while I was there and continued to nearly “die” because of this assignment, I didn’t really mind it other than not playing with my new toy. On my way back to my house which is a 30 minute drive from Columbia I nearly fell asleep and was completely bored not listening to music or doing anything just driving the same roads I drive everyday of my life. I finally arrived home to a silent (sadly) home and set about trying to think of something to do next. It seemed as if I was sort of lost for a little bit like there was supposed to be something I was turning on or checking or writing or listening to but all I could hear was my refrigerator roaring into action and faintly the sound of falling raindrops.

I hadn’t fully decided what I would do with my day, but I knew if it was nice outside that I could probably spend the day outside in the state park that is my back yard…luckily for me (not!) it was pouring on Thursday so I had to go to Plan B. I set aside the whole day to get some chores I had wanted to get done finally over with, which mostly included painting my drop ceiling, armoire and desk with sticky, white paint. Honestly, it was boring I couldn’t do anything to distract myself from the time. Again, I found myself really wanting to listen to music…I even tried singing but couldn’t remember all the words. Then it dawned on me, our book had it right if we don’t “think memorable thoughts” how can we remember even words and phrases we hear every day? There never is any dead space as Gene Wiengarten surmises “it can’t be done”. Finally I seemed to slip into my thoughts and detach from the paint and soundlessness and get some actual work done and think clearly. I thought about what I would write about on this blog, perhaps I would write about horror films….you know because the first thing to go is always cell phone service. “It scares people to be without technology” I thought, “doesn’t the killer or the monster always cut the phone line or drag their victim into service-less areas…(which by the way includes my basement)…oh my god what if someone tried to kill me now, should I use my phone or use this as a grand scheme to get an A?!” A door opened and I jumped, thankfully it was not Jack the Ripper and just my mom home early from work at my sister and brother’s high school.

The day actually allowed me to hang out with my mom more than usual, I couldn’t really work on any homework because most of it was computer based so I really had no excuse for doing errands with her other than she couldn’t listen to the radio while we were in the car. This time the fifteen minute drive was far less boring, having someone in the car to talk to and also not having to worry about falling asleep and going off the road into a ditch. One thing I did learn is the value of not relying on technology and instead using one’s brain. When shopping in downtown Westminster (media free and 100’s of years old) my mom disappeared into some store and I had no idea where she was, I automatically reached for my cell phone before realizing I was helpless I had to find her and put my Blues’ Clue’s skills to work. I found her quite quickly and actually didn’t need to waste my cell phone battery on such an easy task, though I know I normally would have.

Later, after arriving home and putting another layer of paint on my furniture my boyfriend arrived at my house mostly annoyed because I hadn’t answered my phone to let him in. Although my parents were sympathetic to this assignment and complied, John really had issues with not having anything “techy” around. “I am a nerd, Kelly” he said “ I have to have my techy stuff otherwise I’ll die”. He got sick of my “boring” quiet and techno-free house and whisked me off for dinner and shopping. Luckily the noisy, music-filled mall was closed so we made a trip to Goodwill where they don’t play any background music and have no televisions. I paid with cash and brought home some new shoes (which I’m wearing today) and a few other articles. Looking for a restaurant was pretty difficult since most of them have music playing so we gave up and just got some chicken nuggets at Westminster Wal-mart which luckily is music free (weird but true) and they don’t play their televisions too loud. We steered clear of the electronics,well…I did…I lost John for awhile to the nymphic call of ipods and stereos. It was 10 pm and we had time to waste…we didn’t know what to do. For the second time that day I felt lost, like I had lost my plane ticket in Amsterdam or something. We sat in the car and talked, not about anything really important like I thought maybe we would. We didn’t come to any breaking point or pivotal point in our relationship or anything but it felt more worthwhile than talking on AIM all night or on the phone. John finally broke down and said that he had to watch a movie or he was going to implode so we watched “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” at 11 pm. So I did it! Other than the occasional note coming from faint background music I remained media free for 24-hours. To be honest, it was boring it was really boring and quiet and I felt useless (despite my white washed furniture…I felt like Huck Finn). But I would much rather do this than be chained to technology the way Weintarden was in his article, I think I would probably throw up or get a very bad migraine. The day was overall, very productive and pretty good, but mostly quiet.

Kindle killed the Book Club (Blog #3)

In the television sitcom “The Office” a group of homely looking drudges toils under their crazy -management and their paper producing, no-name company, “Dunder Mifflin”. Part of the irony of this show is that all the characters are essentially working in a doomed industry, that of paper making in an increasingly paperless world. At one point in the show Micheal Scott played by Steve Carell has a near breakdown when one of his younger contemporaries tells him that “In five years paper will be obsolete”. How then could paper or the invention of papyrus near 2680 AD (23) have made an impact on society and so readily declined to somewhat of a joke? Has the technology we have today made reading and writing in its paper form obsolete, or has it just made this technology more important? After all, our modern society was formed on the spread of ideas from Martin Luther’s writings and the printing press to Jane Austen’s volumes of romance novels.

Writing matter seems to stem from the types of things society finds laying around. For the Egyptians it seems that they had a high population of rushes with which to make papyrus, and they manufactured it right by the river where it grew (23). The Babylonians and Assyrians primarily used clay in which to write, which was commonly used as a medium for brick making and construction (26). Similarly the paper we have today is made of a combination of already recycled paper and tree products, things that are seemingly “laying around” (or at least comparatively due to our travel capabilities). Are we just moving towards a new media that is made of hardware we are just taking for granted? For example, when the I-phone first came out it was nearly $400, today it is priced around $200. A simple economic analysis of this would indicate that demand has gone down, but more that supply has jumped dramatically. This holds true for nearly all of our technology as it becomes more and more mundane and overlooked to us and becomes more and more disposable. The Egyptians had their overflow of reeds, the Babylonians of clay and we have a never ending supply of computer chips and wireless networks.

Perhaps paper is just one more writing instrument on the long line of media available for writing and we are simply ushering in new era of screen-writing rather that print or handwriting. Paper seems to be the modern-day equivalent of heavy and hard to carry clay tablets, and handheld devices and the computer as the more advanced papyrus of the ancient world. According to Howard Gardner in his article, “The End of Literacy? Don’t Stop Reading” he argues that, “In the past 150 years, each new medium of communication -- telegraph, telephone, movies, radio, television, the digital computer, the World Wide Web -- has introduced its own peculiar mix of written, spoken and graphic languages and evoked a chaotic chorus of criticism and celebration” (para 6). Papyrus was probably criticized in its day, the change from clay to a disposable and easily broken medium may have seemed absurd and risky, just as a move to computer generated literacy today may seem to be a great loss today.

To many the use of computer-generated literacy seems like cheating. That the media we have today is not like writing and is completely something else. But what would we tell the ancient Egyptians who still wanted to use clay tablets? We would most likely tell them that they are crazy to carry around those heavy things instead of the ever-knowing pocket iPhone or Blackberry. , “…At the start of the 21st century, there's a dizzying set of literacies available” says Gardner, “Few media are likely to disappear completely; rather, the idiosyncratic genius and peculiar limitations of each medium will become increasingly clear. Fewer people will write notes or letters by hand, but the elegant handwritten note to mark a special occasion will endure” (para 10). According to Gardner the use of our technology is not cheating or even undermining the beauty and intricacy of print, but rather moving to a media more suitable out environment. Is the Rosetta Stone any less amazing to us, are the Dead Sea Scrolls any less monumental? No, and they shouldn’t be they were the stepping stones that modern literacy is based on.

Similar to the Egyptians our phones, MacBooks, PC’s and other hardware all seem to require some sort of magic and produce magic information production out of nowhere. Similarly, the spread of papyrus started with this same concept. According to Harold Innis, “The use of papyrus rapidly increased after the expulsion or the Hyksos. The cult of Thoth had played an important role in the New Kingdom and in the expulsion of the Hyksos. Thoth became the god of magic. His epithets had great power and strength, and certain formulae were regarded as potent in the resistance to, or in the expulsion of, malicious spirits” (26). Just one walk into the Apple store in the mall can tell you that the Itouch is truly magic. There is a screen that constantly shows you how the thing works, it can look up, down around it can zoom in on tiny places on the Earth’s surface, it can read books it can create books, and it is powered by magic. Essentially, whoever knows how a technology is run, can hold and use its “magic” to their own benefit. In Egypt this was most likely the priests of Thor, and in America this role most likely belongs to Steve Jobs.

Where will paper be in the next few years? Will it give way to the ever changing role of literacy and become the like the clay tablet of the past? Perhaps the Dunder-Mifflin crew should apply at Google or Apple. Regardless of our technological audacity and brevity paper will still be viewed as a viable media for writing, After all, computers require batter space, Microsoft Word or some office tool and require an absurd amount of energy. Our society is simply in a shift from one medium to another, as with the Babylonians and Egyptians this could take many years. We haven’t figured out all the details to make our literacy completely computer-generated but likely society will follow that path. Will handwriting become increasingly obsolete? Most likely, but even with this change there will be creativity and literacy…literacy is not dead it has simply “re-spawned” into a new body.

Real Blog #2..the other was just a fluke!

“Writing is among the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest invention, since it made the history possible. Yet it is a skill most writers take for granted” (36)says Andrew Robinson, and this is exactly why I went to university: to learn how to write proficiently, and get ahead of most of the young men and women in my age group. I realize that because writin skills are becoming more and more obsolete, learning this skill would make my job prospects more and more definite. Daily practice is the most tried and true way of mastering a skill, and I try to write with a purpose whenever I write. My friends think I am really strange for correcting their spelling on Facebook.com and while texting. For me, the world is my stylus and everything I say is going to count at some point.

Being somewhat of a romantic, I still readily default to writing to letters when I want something I have to say mean more than "OMG did you watch 90210?!" I have written a few letters this year, mostly Christmas cards, birthday cards to my friends in Michigan and notes to my boyfriend. I feel like a letter or a card is much more important and relevant and shows a lot more effort than a simple email or Facebook.com post. Since my parents have always stressed the importance of thank-you notes after receiving a present, I know I will always feel like I have to, or at least should, send people thank-you notes (even though I really hate them). I think most people my age forget about the thank-you note after interviews or after receiving some kind of monetary donation, especially in applying for grants and internships. Especially since most of the people who are donating or interviewing are Baby Boomers, writing should be stressed when interviewing or writing thank-you notes to friends, family and future employers.

I don't often talk on my phone (almost all of my "whenever minutes" are unused) but I do talk to my boyfriend and my family on my phone just to let them know what I'm doing and when to meet up. As texting and phones with interne plans like the I-phone and Blackberry become more common (and cheaper…Iphone is now $99??) people are less likely to call with the phone and more likely to leave a wall post, text or email. For the most part I think this is because people don’t like going outside their comfort bubble and talking on the phone has its fair share of awkward silences and strange etiquette rules. I mostly text because I am always in class or at work where I can't call people back or talk on the phone; there’s a matter of discreet communication. Also, I have a larger texting plan to accommodate people who can only text. I only use email to talk to teachers and my grandmother; basically, it is outdated enough for it to have no real purpose but to link me back to emails and sales at AmericanEagle.com.

Of all the technologies and websites that I dislike I hate Twitter, and Myspace.com the most. Whereas, at its simplest, Facebook.com is more effective and easy to use, Myspace.com is basically a place for creepy stalkers and fifteen year olds to hook up in androgynous cyberspace forums. Secondly, Twitter has its own brand of annoyance, it texts you every time someone posts a new status—the problem with this being an individual’s choice of friends. Where you might be friends with someone outside of cyberspace, it is extremely difficult to remain friends with a Twitter friend because they instantly become a cyber three year old, always posting you on every single event in their life, where they are all at all times, and what they are thinking or feeling. Basically Twitter allows you to babysit your friends, what to do with these texts completely boggles me. Why would anyone care if their friend was running to the store, going to the gym or even picking their nose...or the most annoying: "my life sucks I hate everything wah wah wah"? Facebook.com still remains my most used means of communication as it holds a complete advertiser's dream it is still much better than Myspace.com which is so much more smutty.

Just as Plato argued in Phaedrus, technology (in his case, writing) has made us much more likely to forget important information and perhaps, a stupider society. In the recent film “Wall-E” the entire human population of the universe floats around in large hovering Laz-E-Boys and drinks big, blue slushies while controlling their universe with a more grandiose version of the universal remote. Are we headed to this fat, stupid and mechanized future? Perhaps we are a long way off, but there is definitely a hint of a de-evolution of culture as we become more and more isolated from each other, yet more connected on cyberspace and as we digress into all-knowing, extremely informed hermits.

InTroDUctIOn

Hi, my name is Kelly-Lynne. I don't have a lot of time for stuff outside of school or work, but I do enjoy organizing my room, going antique shopping, traveling and hanging out with my boyfriend....pretty lame (-; I'm involved with Cru at UMBC and am an avid watcher of Gossip Girl (guilty pleasure). So...enough about my boring life...
For me, media not only includes the regular TV/movie/news venues and extends to almost everything I encounter. Since I want to work for a magazine or some sort of news program my schoolwork and habits include ingesting a LOT of media. In part "media" has negative connotations in my mind, but since media is most likely my future "media" has a very different definition.
My media habits are pretty up-to-date, for 2009. I don't have the newest technology but I do have access to technology on a pretty regular basis. I bring my phone and laptop everywhere because they hold so much of the access to communication that I need throughout my life. Sure, I don't have a fancy I-pod phone or a high-def television but I don't really have time for watching television all the time...perhaps that is because I don't have TiVo.
My view of the media is primarily based on how I can use it to benefit my life. Although this may be the reverse of technological determinism (technology helping versus affecting our lives negatively).
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