Is Google Making us Stupid?

I absolutely loved this article. I actually debated doing my final presentation on the strategies and effects that Google has had on our society, and on us as individuals. I actually agree with alot of what Nicholas Carr has to say and think about Google in his article. I do believe that we as a society have basically become drones of the internet thriving of the immediate and convenient access to such a rich and diverse store if information. So is Google making us stupid? I personally don't think that google is particularly making us stupid at all. I think that google and the simple access to so much information is making us more lazy than stupid. I personally can can actually thank Google for expanding my knowledge of things that in the past I may not have taken the time to reserch. The human brain is definately malleable, and the way that we use these modern tools such as google or anything via the internet, is definately shaping the process in which we obtain and utilize the information we gather.
Some will certainly find biased ideas in this article, but many of the facts remain undenied. Everyone reading the article and blogging about the article are using google to do all of it. The author stresses that most of us are "power browsing" and "skimming" through information, and the time is past of reading long arduous articles of information. I feel that Google is a great and powerful tool that can be used to advance knowledge and understanding. On the other hand, its ease of access makes it perfectly capable of lending to ones stupidity...

Chap 9: Scientfic Images

When i thought about scientific images, the first thing that came to mind was DNA and the impact it has had in so many different ways. The overall advancements in the science of DNA has impacted our lives i ways that most of us don't even realize. I really like the example of DNA because I just find it so vastly amazing how scientists can alter and modify such small molecular structures in our bodies. And these tiny modifications can change and benifit our lives on Extreamly large scales. For example, just the advancements in the health industry are tremendous due to the reserch and technology of DNA alterations. Every vaccine, drug, and medicine are all devloped and used all through the invent of DNA studies. Ofcourse, along with all the scientific advancements in DNA and all the benificial and really good things that have come from DNA technology, there are many political issues that have manifested as well. The most notable probably being Stem Cell reserch, which while having many staunch supporters and proof of success, also carries many critics that feel stem cell reserch is morally wrong and somehow inhumane and unessesary. I personally feel that the simple benifits and overall good that the reserch would do outwieghs the possible dangers or problems that may occur from the use of stems cells to treat sickness and disease. i guess its just hard for me to understand why people wouldn't want to use stem cell reserch if it would almost certainly help develope a cure for MS for example. Its sad to me to think that horrible and devistating diseases like MS and so many others are denied a possible cure due to certain political, social, and religious groups and their ideals.

Chap 8: "What Happens in Vegas, Stays In Vegas!"

I went to Las Vegas this last weekend for one of my girlfriends 40th birthday party. Holy @!&$#!!!!!!! is about all i can say about that place in two words... well... with a side of "OMG" i guess. Vegas is truly one amazing city, and wheres a more perfect place to go while attending a mass media class in college. Not only is Vegas built on Sex, Drugs, and Rock'n'Roll, but the entire city is in some way or another driven by pastiche. I mean where else can you go and visit Saudi Arabia, Greece, Egypt, Italy, New York, and Paris all in one city?
On the subject of pastiche, its hard to find a better example thatn Vegas. I went there with my girlfriend and 5 other couples. On Saturday night they all wanted to go see a show. My girl and I had planned on going at first, but upon futher intoxication from the free cocktails at the blackjack tables, we decided to split from the pack and go have a nice romantic dinner somewhere. So we left Egypt, which was where we were staying, and "hit the strip!" By the way, if anyone reading this hasn't ever been to Vegas, or hasn't been in the last 5-6 years, I HIGHLY recommend going. So we leave Egypt, walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and on the way past New York, and as we aproach the Parthanon in Greece, we happened to look up and see the Eiffel Tower peircing the neon sky. So I asked Jenn, "You wanna go to Paris and have a few glasses of wine and a nice romantic dinner?, and then we'll go kiss atop the Eiffel Tower?" Whats a better way to spend the night? Granted we are in Vegas, but the minute we walked into Paris, it truly felt like we were somewhere else. Everyhting in there was made to mimic everything in Paris. We went to an amazing french restaurant in Paris, shared an awesome bottle of 2003 Pinot Noir, and ate a filet minon that was out of this world. What made the night even better is on our way out we decided to put a $20 bill in a "wild cherry" $1 slot machine. Played down to 4 dollars and then hit $360. We sat and played and drank and laughed for the next 2 hours, and ended up winning $1200 dollars. Paris was good to us that night, and so was the Eiffel Tower.
Thank God for Pastiche!!!!

Ch. 7 Advertising, Consumer Cultures & Desires

I can't help but always notice the abundance of these relationship companies like "Match.com", "E-Harmony.com", and "Singles.net". The ads are always popping up and with this assignment, i thought it would be fun to look at the differences in how they advertise and they're different strategies to attract people to they're websites. Match.com's ad was just a girl laying on a lawn and smiling like she is just blissfully happy and there isn't a worry in the world. Eharmony's website is a good-looking couple laughing with eachother while hugging. Singlesnet.com's website was a younger pretty girl looking sexy with a somewhat seductive look as well. Im not positive but i think that because i searched singlesnet.com and match.com on Google, that google knew that me being male and looking for a dating service made it to where the ads that came up were ones with women. If i were a woman looking up dating services, would google automatically tell the ad company my gender, and pop up the appropriate ad? Eharmony seems to me like they might cater to an older group of people.
http://www.match.com/index.aspx
http://landing.singlesnet.com
http://www.eharmony.com

Learning Outcome #3

Gosh... where do you begin when you try to correlate the connections between the growth and changes of mass media, and the growth and changes in american society. When I first started thinking about what one single element of mass media might have been the most influencial, I immediately thought about the internet. But as i thought more about it, i asked myself "what has really influenced me and changed my views of life in terms of media?" The more i thought about it, the more I basically looked back to the good ol' fasion Television. Granted I feel that the internet has overall influenced and changed our society in more ways than television, but when it comes to mass media and its influence on our society, I feel that TV takes the cake. The diversity in all the different news channels has developed into "left wing", "right wing", far left, far right, bla bla bla... Yet most all of them claim to be "unbiased". WTF? All of these different news channels have changed the way we view the world in whole. The shear convenience and accessablity of media through television has progressed peoples opinions and views of our society, and our relationships with other societies.

Learning Outcome #2:

For the learning outcome # 2, i wanted to talk a little bit about the economic impact that mass media has had on society. About 5 years abo I hired a financial advisor when i started my heating and airconditioning company. The initial consultation was probably not very different than it would have been say 20 or 30 years ago. The normal questions like "How agressive do you want to be?", "When is your ideal reetirement age?", etc... Ever since I started paying attention to my retirement, and inturn my finances, I've realized how much the media can effect the economy, and how fun and easy it can be to actually invest your own money. I began to somewhat educate myself about the basics of the stock market, how to pick growth stocks, and how to cut my losses as they approach. I became a huge and loyal Jim Cramer fan. I started by watching his now famous "Mad Money" show on CNN. Then, after learning how highly educated and critical Jim Cramer was, I bought 3 or 4 of his books. There are highly complex and legitimate reasons to by or sell a stock. One effect that i noticed media had among the many, is that every time Jim Cramer would recommend to buy or sell a stock, that stock value would subsequently either go up or down. Because it is so easy and available for people to personally trade stocks via the internet, it is just as easy for people to be influenced on what stocks to trade or sell via the media and internet.

Learning Outcome #1-

With so much media and advertising being crammed down our throats these days, and the overwhelming abundance of the different types and styles of media, I decided to comment a little about newspapers and magazines. Growing up there were always newspapers and magazines in our house. My grandfather read the news paper everyday i think. There are elements of a newspaper and magazine that i feel are much more convenient than say the internet or television. Having a newspaper thrown on your front porch every morning from someones car window. If people don't have immediate access to a computer or television, it is often not hard to find a newspaper lying around somewhere. Walk in to any random coffee house, and you're sure to find atleast 2 or 3 newspapers lying around, and usually a few different types of newspapers as well. This allows the average person to grab up a paper and read the sports column, check the stock market, see the breaking news and headline stories, etc... With all the talk of the newspaper dying off due to the internet, i still feel that the newspaper will always have its place in modern media. I mean who is going to carry around they're laptop so that they can check the latest and greatest news stories, or sports scores and market crashes. Its really nice sometimes to just throw in a couple quarters and grab a paper and relax once in a while. In a nut shell, even though its true that paper sales have dropped significantly with the explosion in laptops and free wifi everywhere you go, i feel that the old-fasion newspaper will always be around.

"Charged" Image

I remember as a kid seeing pictures from the holocaust, and the genocide of the Jewish race during WWII. Looking back, I always rembered how powerful and horrible so many of the images and photographs were that I had looked at. My grandfather was a B-17 pilot for the U.S. and he married my grandmother in Germany right before the U.S. involvement int the war. My grandmother was a full blooded hardcore German woman with opinions to last a life time. Though she was against the war and against what Hitler was doing to the Jewish people, we did have some extended family members who were a part of, and in support of the Nazi agenda. I remember writing a paper about the Holocaust when i was in college at Yavapai back in 1999. I was in Terrence Pratts english-102 class. I actually interviewed my grandmother and grandfather whom i actually refer to as "Oma & Opa". With this paper I had to include some images of the autrocity and horror that the Jews had witnessed. There are so many images and pictures that show how horrible and sad that part of our worlds history was. I mean "horrible and sad" can't even begin to describe the experiance that the Jews had to endure. Images of the Hollocaust are ones that were so emotionally "charged" for me, that its almost like they're always in the back of my mind and i often think about what it had to feel like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany. There are so many images out there, but these are a few that emotionally grabbed me.http://sherryx.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/holocaust00.jpg

http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/04/30/holocaust.jpg

http://www.hanefesh.com/edu/Holidays/images/a6b.jpg
http://www.pocanticohills.org/amprogress/holocaust_concentration_camps.jpg

Modernity: Spectatorship, Power, & Knowledge.

When this assignment was posted I started trying to think of some of my favorite advertisements. I couldn't help but think straight to all of the hilarious Budweiser and Bud Light commercials that have been created over the past 4-5 years. Bud and Bud Light have honestly and absolutely NAILED the "comedy commercial" industry that have just simply become really fun to watch. Its like im always looking forward to the next hilarious beer commercial.
One of my favorites is the couple that goes skinny dipping in a pool, thinking that they are all alone and having a romantic night together, when infact the pool has a glass bottom, and there is a huge party going on below them with a bunch of people drinking budlight and taking pictures of them. Its hilarious!!!="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snaru_04K18&feature=player_detailpage" The spectatorship in this advertisement is hilarious... The commercial shows what would usually be thought of as "the norm" with a couple going skinny dipping, and then being shocked as they find out that a whole big party is watching them from below.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snaru_04K18.
Heineken also nailed a super hilarious beer commercial. It shows a scenario of a big house party with lots of people, and the lady of the house shows her girlfriends her new walk-in closet which is loaded with tons of fancy shoes and jewlery and such. All of her girlfriends start screaming with joy and envy of how awesome her new shoe collection and closet is. Then the man of the house shows all of his buddies his new walk-in closet, and its a walk-in closet slash walk-in beer cooler full of Heineken. And all of his buddies start screaming and jumping around with excitement and envy because he's loaded with tons of beer... Its one of the best beer commercials ever. I thought it was funny how it brings out the norm that the women could actually really act that way if something like that were to happen in real life. But mabey some "otherness" when the guy has a walk-in beer closet. Kind of showing a fundamental difference between two sexes...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0LgJo9Do-8.

Image, Power, and Politics

I tried and tried to post the image that i had found about Image, Power, and Politics. I couldn't quite get it to post to the blog site. I know everyone has seen an image of the American flag being burned . Its an image that really bugs me actually. There is always some radical group somewhere across the world that finds it necessary to burn our flag. Being the proud American that I am, i have a real hard time understanding why they feel the need to burn our flag. I know there is alot of animosity and hate directed toward our country for reasons many of us have no idea. I know that our govornment has created most of these feelings from other people and religious groups. Granted our country has been far from perfect in world relations, but at the same time we have also done more good across the world than any other country. It just seems like these other religious groups spend all their energy focusing on every negative things our country has done, and then relate it directly to each American as an individual. Our country has been there for so many different countries during times of distress or disaster, and it pisses me off that none of the great and good things we have done get exposed or appretiated. I mean we have saved several countries and ethnic groups from being wiped off the planet. Where's the "thank you so much!" for all those things. There are so many complex reasons why our country is looked at the way it is, but I feel like we deserve alot more appretiation along with the hate. I hope someday we can achieve a little peace in the world and people can stop warring over nonsense and religion.

Online video games

I honestly have never played any online video games via the internet. Nor have I joined the Video Game revelution and glued myself to my TV for hours on end like many of my friends do. I was however addicted to an original vintage 1986 Nintendo for a few years that i got for Cristmas that year. The infamous Super Mario Bros. The best game ever invented for quite a many years. So i tried to find it online and see if any original versions were available. Although there were many offers to download, none of them were the original version. How can you play Super Mario Bros. if its not the original version? I mean there was just something about sitting next to your best friend or brother, grasping that old, white, TV remote looking controler, and just knowing that you were going to beat level 6-2 before your buddy did. Those feelings just aren't there with any online versions. I mean how can they be. We used to get up hours before we had to go to school to try and beat the level that we couldn't beat the night before, just so we could brag about who got the furthest that day at school.http://www.1980-games.com/us/old-games/java-games/mariobros.php
These newer versions are obviously much more technologically advanced and the animation is ofcourse way better. I would say that the older original version is goemetrically linear in perspective. Everything in the game was certainly based from geometric shapes, and you could only keep going right across your TV screen, with the ocasional super jump. The game was never violent in any sort of way. well you had to kill a few turtles and other misc. creatures, but overall it was a peaceful, fun, "goal" oriented game in nature. There are many more features in the newer games. The link above is a newer online version of the game. I just thought it was interesting to think how this game impacted my life in whatever ways; setting goals, following through, appretiating defeat and success, and mabey a little patience. All at the age of 9-12. The game is still around and has been given numerous amounts of steriods over its lifetime... All in all nothing will ever replace the memories of the original.

Interpelation assignment

I recently traveled to Phoenix where I had for some reason taken a sharp notice to the homeless people that were in the area. After spending time in the Phoenix, and from my prior experiences in L.A. and other big cities noticing homeless people, I’ve began to develop a different outlook on them now compared to when I was younger. I also found a picture of me and this homeless guy that I let live at my house for a couple months while I remodeled the house. It reminded my of his stories and I thought I’d look at some different images of homeless people on line. These two images in particular, of the many, spoke to me the most. When I was younger and working constantly, I would often be asked for money from homeless people. Back then I used to think in my head, “no way, I work hard for my money, go get a job!”. After some humbling life experiences and a little strife of my own, I began to develop a different outlook on the lives of the homeless. I think there a lot of different views on the homeless form different people. Some have the “Get a job!” attitude, while others have a little more empathy. I think the people who produced these images were trying to simply show the reality of many homeless people’s situation in the united states. They are showing the reality and severity of this major problem. I also feel that these images were posted to somehow gather a little sympathy and understanding from people who aren’t homeless and have things in life. Most of these people certainly do not wish to be homeless and a little empathy is healthy. And a dollar or two makes a huge difference in their have not lives.

Strong vs. Weak news

I signed up for this class because i am interested in learning more about the dynamics of mass media. On the subject of bias, i decided to see if i could notice a particular difference in Fox News and CNN News based on they're "left" or "right" wing tendencies. After reading the two articles about Bin Laden's comments regarding Obama's action on the Middle East. Although each news report basically reported very similar information, there was still an underlying bias that can be picked out with close attention. Fox news, known as a right wing news outlet, seemed to use harsher words when describing how Bin Laden feels about Obama's actions. CNN news on the otherhand, known as a left wing media outlet, seemed to use soft and somewhat benign and non-offensive words when describing the character of Obama in regardes to actions in the Middle East.I believe that both of these stories are biased and ultimately create propaganda. Because the Middle East conflict has had so much political influences, it seems that both political parties use stories like this to gain support for themselves while at the same time, undermine the ideals of the other. Stories such as this I feel are weak, and serve no overall good to anyone.I feel that media should focus more on the health of our own country right now. Especially consedering the condition and stablilty of our economy. for example, all of this so called "Bail-out" money, and what it is being spent on. This is information that American people should be concerned about. I incluided a link on all three articles.