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.

History Narrative

A Narrative on the History of the Media

            Media has been around for the entire history of the world. It’s our means of communicating information, portraying ideas, and persuading and audience. The media are the single most important aspect to our world. Can you imagine a world without it? It’s impossible. It embodies such a wide range of forms that it is a part of every aspect in our life. It’s really almost impossible to define a starting moment of the media in our history. It’s been around for, well, all of time.

            With that being said, there is only one place we can start our journey through the media. That word is time. It’s the past, the present, and the future. It keeps the world ticking, explains when events occur, and much more. Without time we would literally have no social structure. The media works to influence people. Time does that better than anything else on this planet. It persuades us when to get up, when to eat, when to exercise, when to work and more. Many times we do these things because the clock tells us to, not because we feel like we need to. It does what the media only wishes to do.

            Moving past the very beginning, we start to get into things that are more in our vision of the media today. The first stop is religion. Religion started only one week after time, that is if you listen to the creation theory. Religion begins with the day God created man. It is arguably the most influential part of our world today and has been forever. It gets people to believe in morals, laws, and miracles. Countries and societies have been built all on the basis of religions. At the same time, wars have been fought and countries have fallen due to religion. It is super influential and has a huge impact on the way people live their life.

            Starting around 3,200 B.C we see the emergence of writing. Writing is hugely important in the world of the media. Without words, information would only be able to travel through word of mouth. In our society, we rely so heavily on social-networking, the internet, our phones, and other media devices. Information travels at light-speed because of it. While it is due to technology, the main reason it’s so helpful is because of words. Without words all we would see is pictures. While a picture is worth a thousand words, it does not clearly depict the information to each person. If in some freak event all forms of writing was eliminated from society, not only would the media fall, but the infrastructure of society would crumble. It is hugely influential and a big part of the media.

            So at this point in time, we have time, religion, and writing as our major points of media. But there was still a need for information to travel faster. Humans have this burning desire to get information as fast as they possibly can. Many different systems were developed around 2,000 B.C to get information traveling. Carrier pigeons were trained to deliver messages. The Persians developed a system of foot couriers who would run several miles to relay messages. In a sense, these were the first forms of mailing systems. Information started to move, and more people became informed. This was a huge step for the human race.

            The next step for the media was the transition from rolls to codex. This switch from scrolls to book form isn’t a huge leap but extremely influential. Imagine having to buy a psychology text scroll for class. They were impractical and just a pain to use. Books conveyed information so much easier. It was also easier for mass printing, which begins much later in life. While it was a smaller step, and we would probably be able to get on with life still in roll form, it’s still an important stop in the history of the media.

            Many people, when they hear the word media, think about advertising. I think it’s safe to say the media and advertising go hand in hand. The first forms of advertising were the Tipao in the year 615. These were government initiated, public announcements. While they started off as communications between different governments, some were made into public announcements. This could be considered a form of propaganda. A couple hundred years later, people began to put posters on store’s doors advertising different events or products. This was the start of advertising as we know it today.

            This finally brings us to the printing press. While civilizations had found ways to print, using blocks and clay, several years ago, Gutenberg was the first person to do it efficiently. He created his printing press in 1450. So while he can’t be credited with printing, he can be credited with the printing press. This made information more conveyable than ever before. It was quick, efficient, and readable. This was a huge step for the media. It marks the end of old media, and the beginning of a new era.

For more information check out my Prezi on the 50 Points of Media
To start your own research and for an even a more indepth look check out this Timeline.

The Start of Media?

For our media literacy "exam" we have to make a list of fifty points of media from the beginning to the printing press. It's a lot of work but it has proved to be very interesting. Going through, I started to think of all the little things that had to come together from all points in time and all over the world to get the media where it is today. Each little part had to be included, without each part contributing it would completely alter our idea of media! Here are some examples.

Autographs: Imagine life without autographs. No one signing off on documents, there own written work, and no claim to ideas. It would be impossible to know who came up with what. Autographs first appeared almost 11,000 years ago on tablets.

Written Gossip: Imagine a world with no gossip?! How would we even have media! That's what the media, as we know it, thrives on. Written gossip dates way back to 1,500 B.C when it was used in poems as a form of entertainment.

The Roll-Codex transition: Can you imagine reading the Hunger Games or Harry Potter on a scroll? I don't think anyone can. It would be highly impractical. Without the transition to our book form, we would still be buying super long rolls of literature. This happened just a couple hundred years into the 1st century. It would drastically change the course of our media.

The Printing Press: By far the biggest advancement in media. It made information accessible to vast populations at a quick and convienent rate. Without this writing for the masses would be impractical.

So what does that say for our future. Every little piece of media we add, from the typewriter to the Iphone, is going to have a huge impact on the media hundreds, if not thousands, of years from us. Everyday we are going to drastically change change the future. We need to ask ourselves, is this going to impact the future positively or negatively?

Presenting to the unaware.

    "Present the information so that it is useful to the unaware." I feel like this quote kind of embodies the media. If you think about it, that is there goal. To inform people of ideas and information while making them care about it. It's hard to be a popular source of media if people don't care or listen to what you have to say.

This is where the media can become a problem. Sometimes people don't want the boring true story. It becomes uninteresting. Sometimes the media beefs it up to make it more intersting. Would you rather read something about a simple car accident or a huge life threatning collision that endangered the lives of millions? I think it's safe to say we would all rather read about the latter of the two.

While we want intersting, that becomes a huge problem with the media and is a leading factor as to why it can not always be trusted. They are constantly turning mole hills into mountains in order to obtain viewers and keep them interested. Then again it's not their job to come up here and tell us the truth. More so we need to find the truth in it.

The best thing we can do is to look at the big picture to get the idea of what the true story is.

"Books are pretty heavy, but their worth it."

This quote was said in class, kind of as a joke. They are big, take up space, and can literally weigh you down. The cause of this.. Information.

When used in class it did seem pretty funny. Well duh it's a book, it's going to have some weight. But if you look at this quote you can gather a pretty big concept. Books are heavy with information. In our digital age everything is going online or in "e" form. We have kindles, nooks, and ipads to hold information. Many times people don't even get books and just look up any information they need from google.

This is when we need to remember the importance of books especially when it comes to research. Research books are, for the most part, written by people who have studied a particular field and are qualified to teach it. They are loaded with reliable facts. You can get a lot out of them, A lot of truth.

If we search everything online it get's hard to differenciate between whats fact and whats fiction. It's hard to tell what websites are credible and which have just been thrown together. If all of our books go digital, they will eventually get mixed in with the rest of the internet. They would then become apart of the fact or fiction debate. Reliable or not? This is why books are so important. They have to go through the stages of getting published and making sure the information is credible. We can almsot alway rely on the authenticity of a book compared to what we find on the internet, not saying its helpful, but a book is almost always the way to go.

So while books might be heavy, they are totally worth it.

Do we want to be like God?

"It's our inate thing to create something in our likeness."

Stop for a moment to think about some of the things scientists are working on creating today. What did you come up with? We are trying to create robots, artificial intelegince, a printer that can make anything out of carbon, self-sustaining life forms... the list goes on. But all of these link back to one thing, we want to create things with out the help of nature.

The first time this happened when was God himself decided to create. When there was nothing he decided to create people in his own likeness and create a world for us to live in. He designed nature to give us all that we should ever need and the tools to evolve.

This idea leads to many questions. My first question, Is it okay to want to "Play" god? God made us in his likeness, in doing so we are like him. It sounds goofy but think of it this way. If he made us in a way he saw himself then is it okay for us to create and try to mimic him? We are trying to play god and create things out of nothing, in our likeness. Robots is the best example. We keep trying to make them to resemble us as closely as we possibly can.

If the above is true then is it okay for us to create our own nature. Consider the idea of the digital banana. The idea that we could create a carbon printer that could print virtually anything out. Were talking food, organs, plants, and more. We are fast fowarding nature's process and trying to make it as convienent as fast food. Is this okay?

In my opinion both are okay because, God gave us the tools to do this. He gave us our brains and our power to evolve in order to make life easier. We have come leaps and bounds in medicine, treatments, technology, and several other fields. However the big question is when does it become unethical. At what point do we take the role of God to far? It's something that needs to be adressed, and soon.

The first week

So I'm going on my second week of class at the College of St. Scholastica. I don't completly know how to go about making the blog for Media Literacy but here it goes.

For the first blog I want to go over a few things.

First day of class we went over the fact that Media is a plural word. We should say it as "the media are everywhere" as opposed to "the media is everywhere." I think it's safe to say this is a hard concept for people to comprehend, however I think it's important. There are many types of media, therefore it becomes a plural word. We have the newspaper, television, radio, and internet. We can go farther to say that gossip, teachings, and everyday events are media. If it puts forth information or ideals, it becomes media. This is an important concept to understand.

Now over the last few days a few quotes were made. This includes:

"Its not my job to come up here and tell you the truth." and
"Not everything I say will automatically ring the truth."

This is important to remember. While a lot will be said in class, its up to us to make sense of it and really comprehend what it means to us. Somethings will have meaning to soem classmates while to others it will make no sense at all and they will gain nothing from it. Let's look at the digital banana for instance. It's the idea that we can carbon copy food and other necessities of life. Now to me this doesn't mean  a whole lot. It would drastically change life and therefore would be in the news and become apart of our media. I don't know if thats what im supposed to get from it but I did. Others might get something else from it.

We will see how the rest of the class goes and what more I get from it. Wish me luck!