Final Exam

Theme 2: As a part of Meyrowitz’s theory which is a combination of Medium Theory, along with social situations, he has concluded that through technology there is a way that people form relationships with other people regardless of if they know one another or not. He calls this the para-social relationship and it is ever present in today’s society. Through Facebook, Twitter, and other social outlets people feel that they “know” celebrities, and other people because of the information that they are capable of obtaining on the internet. But it is not just the internet that causes these para-social relationships because even before the internet people had para-social relationships. In the 1920’s there was the Kansas farm wife named Mary Dyck. As a farm wife in Kansas most of her days were spent listening to radio talk shows. She also liked to keep diaries of her daily life. In her diaries she wrote about the characters of these shows as if she knew them personally. She had a para-social relationship with these characters, and she would relate to them in her diaries. Today, instead of diaries we have Twitter and Facebook which causes us to have para-social relationships with others. Instead of relating to the characters in talk shows, we relate to the celebrities of our time. There was an article that discussed Twitter and these para-social relationships entitled “Why Oprah Will Never Talk to You, Ever.” This article said that half the time it isn’t even the real celebrity on Twitter, it’s more likely to be a person who blogs for the celebrity. It also says that even if it is the celebrity the chances of them acknowledging your message out of the millions they receive are slim to none. Another part of Meyrowitz’s theory is ambient awareness. We mostly see this part of the theory through Twitter and Facebook. People post random blurbs about themselves, or their feelings, and we read these things. And when we read these things at first it may seem like insignificant information but after a while it allows us to build an image and idea about this person without actually being with them.

Theme 3: Over the years technology has transformed much of the “old” forms of media into new, technologically superior machines. “Old” forms of media such as A.M radio, books, and T.V have advanced and changed with technology over the years. Each one of these old forms of media has changed so drastically due to technology that they are almost unrecognizable in their new, supreme form. The A.M radio is no longer a place for talk shows as it was in the early 1900’s when radio was at its peak. Now the A.M radio has disappeared almost entirely (except for the news on 1010 WINS) and it is being replaced by new technologies like satellite radio, and Pandora. Yes, in some ways it is still radio but now it is all about what the user wants to hear. Satellite radio stations allow the user to pick a station by a genre of music they like, this is perfect for people like me who listen to music that is not mainstream what so ever. Now with satellite radio I can listen to the Metal channel all day and not have to worry about hearing a million commercials or Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance” play a million times. Another way that radio has changed is by the creation of Pandora. Pandora allows you to create playlists based on one song you like, and then it picks songs for you in a similar style or genre that it thinks that you will like. I think that technological advances in the radio industry will prove it to be more successful in the digital form than regular AM/FM radio. One “old” form of media that I feel will eventually die out are books. As a future English teacher it makes me very sad to see the decline of books in society and I don’t think that the new digital forms of books will last long either. With the invention of the Kindle, the iPad, and other e-book readers less and less people are going to the library and taking books out. Why leave your house when you can just download whatever book you want to read and upload onto an e-book reader in the time it would take you to get in your car and drive to the library. I understand the logic of this, but it is still sad to see good old fashioned reading crumble to technology. Right now the Kindle and the iPad are a huge success, people are buying them right and left, and everyone is using them to read. I think that the success of these will continue but then I feel that even the e-books will start to disappear and fall to some newer form of technology. Maybe it will be something like a microchip that you insert in your brain and you don’t even have to read because the chip will put the information right into your brain. Although this seems preposterous one can only imagine what the future will hold, I just hope that the technological world doesn’t replace reading all together because where/what does that leave me to teach. Television has also been affected by the changes in technology, but I feel that this is one that will benefit from its changes to digital form. When the television first arrived on the market it was big, bulky, and in black and white. Then came the color revolution and people replaced their black and white sets with color. Next came cable television, with tons of channels, etc. Television has grown and changed over the years, and now we have HDTV’s, DLP’s, and the future of all television viewing: The 3D television. I think that the changes of television have only become better and better, it makes the television watching experience more intense, and with a 3D television, there would be no need to leave your house again. Why pay $10.50 in the theater to see a 3D movie, when you can sit on your couch in your pajamas, with your surround sound, and watch a 3D movie? This is one technological advance of an old media that I see being very successful as the years progress, the future of television is looking very bright, and very 3D.

Theme 4: MacLuhan says that “the medium is the message” which means that it isn’t the content or information that you receive from the medium, but it is the medium itself that delivers the message. When we use websites to gain information we take on the “intellectual technologies” we use. What this means is that through the growing need for the internet, and the knowledge gained through the use of the internet people are forgetting to use their brains. Why sit and think about a word that you don’t know the meaning of when in thirty-five seconds you can have a definition pulled up on Google. New technologies and media take away from our cognitive thinking skills and replace them with a whole bunch of useless garbage that we acquire from the internet. Most people are using the internet to be lazy, or when they are bored, therefore they are not learning, or expanding their minds in any way when they are on the internet. Instead of reading a book, and then writing about what was learned from this book, people take the easy way out and read a summary of the book on sparknotes. I think that all of the articles we read on this topic such as “Is Google making us stupid?” and “Old fogies in their 20’s,” prove very valid points on the way that the internet impacts society. Google is making a predominant portion of society stupid, but it has no effect on me. I love Google, not because it makes my school work easier, but because it allows me to gather and obtain information that furthers my knowledge. Yes, I will say that some of what I look up on Google is irrelevant, such as the twenty-three flavors in Dr. Pepper, but for the most part I look up information that will strengthen my mind. I like to read, to study, and to learn new things, so for me the internet is a great place. For others new media such as Facebook, Twitter, and even Google, is just taking away the ability people have to think for themselves. People are more preoccupied now a days with who broke up and whose dating on Facebook then with who/what the president is doing. It really is absurd that people care more about their friends and Facebook/Twitter, than they do with the politics that govern our nation. The internet has replaced many things including human abilities to think for themselves and communicate with one another and it has almost entirely replaced reading altogether. With new media’s such as the Kindle and the iPad many people have replaced their books with technology, and some people have stopped reading all together.

Theme 5: With the rise of the internet comes the rise of two great powers, the power of Google, and its way of finding you exactly what you need to know, and the power of Facebook which brings friends closer to you, and causes relationships to grow. Both of these internet titans are VERY successful, and for the time being they are both free for us to use. They make their money through advertising but eventually I fear there may come a time when money is requested from these sites. If this is the case I think that both sites will fall. Why? The answer should be obvious, if we had to pay for Facebook or Google, we just wouldn’t, everyone would go back to Myspace and Dogpile instead of paying for the others. In the end I think that Google will win this war, but I don’t think that Facebook will ever really disappear. Google is successful because it is something that people of all ages can use in an effort to acquire information they need, information about anything that they could think to look up. There is nothing that really lures us in on Google except for the fact that from Google you can find anything on the internet. Facebook on the other hand has many games and apps which help to consume your time, and your soul. Facebook is very different then Google because it is not a search engine, it is a social networking website which allows us to find people we know and communicate with them even when they are not near us. The success that Facebook has is almost entirely due to societies needs to be in the loop 24/7. Facebook is constantly flooding you with information about your friends and what they have been up to. This also leads us to seek approval from our friends, as with the “like” feature. When you update a status your other friends on Facebook have the ability to like it, which lets you know you have their approval. There is no “dislike” button and I’m almost glad there isn’t because I feel that it would cause issues between friends on Facebook. Why would you “dislike” someone’s status? Normally if it says “so and so is really sick L.” I would dislike that status, especially if it was a friend of mine. But other people would dislike a status that says “so and so is out with [insert friend name here],” just to be mean, or because they don’t like that friend. Both Google and Facebook are extremely useful in many different ways. Facebook definitely has a better ability to hold our attention, and Google definitely has better resources for finding out information. If I had a question that I needed an answer for I would go on Google before I asked my friends on Facebook, because quite frankly my friends are not that smart. I think that both Facebook and Google will hold the titles of the internet titans for years to come, the only opposition they may face is if another titan tries to take their place.