I am a little burnt by this semester and I felt like I would leave my last post, to the very last minute. This is my take on the whole semester; I hope you are ready.
The media has gone through many changes. It began with oral tradition and it moved into the written form, against the better judgment of Plato. Then came the industrial age where the printing press made literature and media, in all forms, readily available to the mass public. The radio changed the face of verbal transmission of ideas and concepts which lead into the age of television. All of a sudden that voice has a face, yet you still can not engage in dialogue with it. The television added color as a way to further distract us from the actual facts and subject being discussed, thus leading us to forget that the messages are being spoken at us instead of to us. More people were able to write with the invention of the type writer and then the creation of the word processor. The ability to control the ideas, and how those ideas are delivered became easier and more people had the way to communicate ideas that have been edited and rearranged as a way to get the most persuasive message arranged for massive perversion of facts.
Today, we live in the digital age, an age where information is passed along electronically at speeds close to the blink of an eye. Information can cross the continent in sheer seconds that used to take days. Facebook, Twitter and Myspace have blown onto the scene and places us, the user, at the center of attention for all to see. We place photographs, and witty remarks about “stuff.” We collect items such as “friends” and farm animals, as a way to consume ourselves in meaningless and trivial pursuits. Social networks are a good for some and just plain bad for others. The letter that was sent with personal greetings and photographs with loving remarks tied to them, have been replaced by a computer screen with mass salutations to all whom care enough to seek you out. It just does not seem keep in the same holiday spirit. Do you think Norman Rockwell would paint pictures of the modern day family huddling around the warm glow of a computer screen laughing at the last post from Aunt Edna? I would like to think not.
The more I thought about this, more it dawn on me, how lazy we are getting as a society. It occurred to me that kids and adults do not need to even leave their video games to update their statuses or respond to another gamer. They only need to pause their games and change their dashboard. Game system of today, are internet ready with almost all the faculties a CPU has to offer. The accessibility of these media devices, are in fact changing the face of our society.
Google and its ease of use allow us to take for granted the information gathering that we once did. Days and days in the stacks at a wide variety of different libraries in order to research a term paper has been reduced to a few clicks of a mouse and “viola” we have answers.
If McLuhan is right and the technologies are extensions of us how do we learn to wield this new power? Will this power, in the end, rule us? We have discussed in depth the amount of information collected from us could be as rich as what we collect from it.
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