It all comes together (Middle Media Exam)

It’s obvious that the media has been around since the beginning of time. From the earliest forms of block printing to the first newspapers, the media has always had great influence on our lives. Like our world, the media evolves and changes to fit our new wants and needs. There is a point in time, however, where the media started to evolve at an exponential rate. This constant evolving helped rocket the media to the forefront of technological revolution.

            When the Roman Empire began to fall, and we moved into the dark ages, technology and media advancement came to a halt. There was corruption in the church, society started to crumble, and the standards of life were less than ideal. All these factors demoted the idea of technological evolution. Society eventually pulls it’s self together and moves into a new period of time, the Renaissance. Due to the availability of paper and movable type, information was spreading like wildfire. Technology and Media was back in the limelight. At this point, our society began to innovate and propel ourselves into the future. To aid this advancement, a new movement took place during the Age of Enlightenment. Society began to reform its self through knowledge and reason rather than through faith alone. Enlightenment encouraged scientific advancement, which in the process, allowed the media and technology to grow at a rapid rate.

            So society gets back on track. We start to move through the years and get up to our present day life. Through the course, many innovations and new inventions were added to our collection of technology. But if we were to take a look at this list, there are five inventions that really stick out. These inventions are the radio, the television, the personal computer, print, and film. These five inventions hit us with media from every angle possible. The radio transfers media through air waves and hits us through audio. Film gave us the power to record and gives us visuals. Print portrays information through written word. Television was the first step to bringing all these factors together and really changed the way we look at entertainment. Finally the Personal Computer gave us control and simplified life. As it evolved, the PC has brought the five key inventions all together. The power of the internet and our virtual life has almost rendered these inventions obsolete. While all these inventions had major influence and still impact our media today, they are not as powerful when separate as they used to be.

            Let’s take a look at our technology and media today as if it were a body. The inventions are the body parts responsible for our senses. Print is our hands, used for writing and portraying our ideas. The radio is our mouth and our ears, responsible for hearing and speaking. Film and television go hand in hand and become our eyes. They give us the power to record, remember, witness, and enjoy. Finally, the personal computer is our brain, bringing all the senses together, giving us the power. Together we make the body which could be considered “The Cloud.” This cloud is what keeps everything running. Like our body, take something away, it can still function but something is missing.

            “The Cloud” is this idea of our entire virtual world. It holds everything and is, essentially, the smartest thing on this earth, filled with an infinite amount of knowledge.  It runs through the power of binary code. It can only be accessed through our newest technology, if looking at our body it’s our accessories such as glasses and hearing aids. These would include items such as laptops, smartphones, tablets, or anything else that has the power to do one thing; our accessories need to be able to connect to the internet, the key invention of technology and media today. The internet and “The Cloud” feed off each other. In essence, they are the same thing. It holds all the information of our society. It is used for work, play, entertainment, social interactions, navigating, and so much more. If this duo were to ever crash, our society would go into chaos. Virtually everything that runs on power is connected to “The Cloud” through binary code. If it were to crash we would enter another dark age.

            From the Dark Ages to the Age of Enlightenment, technology and the media have gone through a roller coaster of advancement. At times it grew rapidly, at other times it was put on halt. It gave way to the five key inventions of the media which eventually conglomerated to form “The Cloud,” run of the most important invention of our time, the internet. Our media is constantly evolving. The big question is what is next. Will “The Cloud” evolve into something else or will more be added to it. The only thing we need to watch out for is the crashing our dynamic duo, “The Cloud” and the internet. Society has always been moving forward, what happens if we are forced to press reverse? What happens if we enter a second Dark Age?

"The Big Fish Eat the Little Ones"

A lot is said in this statement. It's basically the idea that bigger is better and trumps anything smaller. This is especially seen in the media. Since the start of the media, one person or company is always trying to be better than the others. They want to be the ones that rule the media, and have the control.

Today, all mediums of media are divided into just a few corporations. While we have thousands of channels on television, they are divided into 4 major corporations with a few minor ones here and there. The radio is divided into two major corporations. Even in the internet, with billions and billions of possibilities, its easy to figure out the major companies in the medium.

While it might seem like we are paying for huge variety... are we really? Do you find variety in just four options. Maybe it's not that big of deal. Maybe it is. Maybe you would just rather remain ignorant. What ever you wish, the fact remains. We really are not receiving as much variety as we would like to think.

Which Reality is Real?

As humans, we try to be like our creator. We are always trying to replicate reality and make it as close to real as we can. But what if our real is someone elses replicated reality? How do we know we aren't a made up world? For all we know we could be in our own Sims game, just being controlled by the player.

To be honest, I don't really know and I don't think anyone could say with a positive answer, this is the true world. As much as I want to believe this is the real world (and I will continue to do so) I have no supporting evidence. What if I am just in a virtual world?

It's a scary thought, one that I wish I could just remain ignorant about. But because there is no way of telling, I'm going to continue living my life like I always have. Who knows what will happen when I die but we might as well just live for today and enjoy our life, whether it be real or fake, it still is our present reality.

Shattered Glass

        So in class we just got finished watching a movie called shattered glass. The movie is about a new young employee at the New Republic named Stephen Glass. Stephen woo's his co-workers with his fantastic stories that somehow, only he can come across. As the movie goes on, another journal becomes suspicious of an article.
      Later, we discover that Stephen made up most of his articles. It was something like 47/61 articles were fake. Stephen tries and tries to keep his job, getting caught in lie after lie. In the end he loses his job.
     This movie gives you a lot to think about. It really shows how easy someone can fake an article or a story. It really makes you think about what stories are true and what isn't. How corrupt is our media? More importantly can you spot out the truth from fiction?

Well here is your chance. Is this story about Frane Selak real, or did I just make it up?

Frano Selak: 'world's luckiest man' gives away his lottery fortune

The 81 year-old won £600,000 five years ago in the lottery in Croatia, to celebrate his fifth marriage, after earlier surviving plane and train crashes.  He also survived other disasters including landing on a haystack after falling out of a plane door that had blown open.

Now the pensioner has decided that "money cannot buy happiness" and has decided to live a frugal life.  He has sold his luxury home on a private island, given away his fortune to family and friends and moved back to his modest home in Petrinja, which is south of Zagreb, in the center of the country.  He kept the last bit of his winnings for a hip replacement operation so he could enjoy life with his wife and also so he could build a shrine to the Virgin Mary to give thanks for his luck. Mr Selak said he has never been happier.

"All I need at my age is my Katarina. Money would not change anything," he said. "When she arrived I knew then that I really did have a charmed, blessed life.  "I never thought I was lucky to survive all my brushes with death. I thought I was unlucky to be in them in the first place." He added that people were always telling him he was lucky to have survived so many disasters but he added: "I always think I was unlucky to have been in them in the first place but you can't tell people what they don't want to believe."

He had his first escape in 1962 when a train he was travelling on from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik jumped the rails and plunged into an icy river.  Seventeen people drowned and he barely made it to the riverbank after suffering from hypothermia, shock, bruises and a broken arm.

A year later, he was thrown out of a plane on his first and only flight when a door flew open.  This time 19 people died but he was thrown clear of the crash and landed in a haystack.

Then in 1966, a bus he was on skidded into a river, drowning four. He swam to safety with just cuts and bruises.

Accident number four came in 1970 when his car caught fire as he drove along a motorway and he fled with seconds to spare before the fuel tank exploded.

Three years later, he lost most of his hair when a faulty fuel pump spewed petrol over the hot engine of his car and blew flames through the air vents.

Then in 1995 came his sixth accident when he was knocked down by a bus in Zagreb but walked away with minor injuries.

The following year, he was driving in the mountains when he turned a corner to see a UN truck coming straight for him.  His Skoda careered through a crash barrier and over the 300ft precipice.  But he leapt clear at the last minute and sat in a tree as he watched his car hit the bottom and explode.

He then won £600,000 with his first ever lottery ticket and celebrated his fifth marriage saying: "I guess all the earlier marriages were disasters too."

Find the answer here

No More DVD's?!

Just the other day I visted our school's iMac lab. I have a personall project I need to edit and I would prefer to use iMovie. It's fantastic for making long movies, easy to use, and very efficent. I went to check it out and was pretty excited. I was excited until I realized there is no iDVD. This is a program that converts your iMovie project on to a DVD and allowes you to add menues, chapters, and other DVD features. I looked around to see if there is another similar program. I found nothing. I looked it up online and it said that the new computers do not come with iDVD.

So what is the point of having iMovie if you can't put them on DVD's. Well I found my answer. I clicked the share button and it gives me choices to save as a file, or send to itunes. I could also upload my video to facebook, youtube, and a few other websites. Finally I could send it to my tablet, phone, computer, iPod, or iTV. All of these are great but it poses one problem, I have to keep my movie in digital form.

This might work for some people, but for a lot of people it doesnt. It's impractical for everyone to have enough space for a 3 hour movie. I just want to make several DVD's and hand them out to my friends. I want them to have that DVD in their possesion.

In other words, apple is making a huge push to make everything go digital. This might not be a bad thing but were moving a little to fast. It's shocking to me that they don't even give you the option to burn a DVD. If were not careful, our entire world, moreso then it is now, will be sucked into the internet and go completly digital.

This might be good, it might not.

"Ignorence is Bliss."

Well, it is. This seemingly simple quote says a lot about the way we feel and think when informed of something new. Many times, we would rather not hear news that is complicated to understand. We would rather remain ignorant then to understand what is going on. I have not really understood this phrase until our media literacy class. We watch so many documentries, about topics I have never dug into, and it really opens your eyes. Most the time, I wish I had never seen it in the first place.

The first example was the documentary we watched on vaccines called "The Greater Good." It's a movie questioning all the vaccines we give our children and if they are really necessary. It talks about the horror stories of people effected. It was kind of scary and really made me think.

Another example was "Food inc." Its a look at where our food actually comes from. What are we actually consuming. Now I had heard of this movie before class and I purposely did not watch it because I didn't want to know. I would rather just happily eat my food, assuming its natural, then actually know what it's made of. I watched it anyways. While I still eat food, it was eye opening and really interesting. However, it made me rethink what I ate.

Finally, we just recently watched a cartoon about the "American Dream" and our economy being in debt. It was very informative but made me feel scared, helpless, and small.

While part of me wishes I had never watched these videos, the other part of me is thankful. I'm now informed and no longer ignorant. While I would remain in bliss had I not seen these, I would have still just been a sheep, controlled by all these things without even knowing it. So while being ignorant is nice, being educated gives you power... power that you can't use.

The importance of advertising.

We haven't really went over this in class, but while I was researching for my 50 points of Media presentation and watching my favorite show Survivor, I started thinking about advertising. Yes advertising is super annoying but it is extremely important for the world of television.

Advertising started when some English man put a poster up on the door to a store advertising for some type of product. It was probably an ingenious idea at the time. It spread the idea of his product. It presented something to the unaware. Not a whole lot more is known about this but I'm sure his product sales went through the roof.

Now lets fast forward to the advent of the television. Programs need to get money to run their show somehow, so they use advertisements. People pay to have their products endorsed on breaks of television shows or promoted through product placement. Variety shows used to have people sing jingles of a product and game shows would have questions or the timer sponsored by a company.

 

Fast forward to about the year 2008. Television companies started coming out with the DVR, or digital video recorder. This made it possible for viewers to record their favorite t.v shows and save it for a later time. This also enabled them to skip commercials. By 2011 42% of households had a DVR. Compare that to the 1.2% in 2006 and you can see the drastic jump. Of the people who have these devices, only 36% still watch live television. This could be very bad.

 

If the percentage of people who own these dvr's continue to grow, and advertising continues to be skipped, will we still have commercials? Why should advertising companies continue to pay if their product is just going to be skipped over? If this is the case, what happens when programs lose their funding?

 

This idea of television going permanently off the air probably won't happen anytime soon however, advertising companies are going to get smarter. We will probably see more product placement in our actual shows, we will probably see still frames (almost like comics), and maybe even the chance of commercials not being allowed to skip. If you try to watch an episode online, you already have to watch four commercials before your show. These are impossible to skip. What if we start seeing that on our t.v? The big bucks we pay for our dvr's will eventually become worthless.

 

This is a scary thought but there is still hope. Advertising agency's are forced to become more creative. For now, advertisers are working hard to get you to press play during the fast forwarding and watch their commercial. Think about all the weird promotions you see when your watching the magic box. Everyone is guilty of stopping to watch the latest Geico or Etrade Baby commercial. Advertisements might actually become more entertaining.

 

For now we have nothing to worry about, but we will see the way we know advertising change. It has already started. So while advertising is annoying, its necessary for entertainment.