Can I Haz Cheezburger?

Google is not making us stupid. New technologies are always villanized and discounted without taking into consideration their potential for society. The Internet is making us more productive. We are able to do more and do it better because of the Internet. Our social connections have grown and so has our ability to process and prioritize information.

First I need to point out a flaw in the argument of those saying the Internet is destroying reading. If anything, the Internet has increased the amount of written (or typed) word that is being read in this country. Blogs, online newspapers, Wikipedia, and online books are very popular over the Internet. While we may be reading differently, we are still reading. The Internet is quickly catching up to TV in the hrs per day spent on each by the public. If anything the Internet should be seen as a tool which is re-invigorating the written word, not destroying it.

Nicholas Carr writes in his essay, “And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.” While I agree I read online texts and other mediums swiftly and without much thought, while reading those articles, not much thought is needed. Normally when I read online texts it is for research or an assignment I am completing at school. Whether I was reading the article online or if it were in front of me, I would still skim it the same way. The disconnect comes in when you cannot change the way you read. I still actively read books, whether on my computer or print. None of the objections Carr makes I agree with. I feel like I immerse myself in a book the same way I do in a video game sometimes; exploring someone else’s world. It would be silly to expect myself to read a novel the same way I read articles online, and I actively change the way I read to suit the medium.

Another of Carr’s objections is that, “A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.” This is truly an incorrect analysis of the ability the Internet has in prioritizing and channeling information to us. How is a telephone any different? A counter argument; You might be sitting in your living room by the fire enjoying Tolstoy, completely absolved, then the phone rings and all your attention is scattered because you have to pick it up. If anything the Internet makes it easier to decipher whether this information is important. I guarantee that (at least with today’s notification software) if you got distracted for a moment by a pop-up saying you have spam mail you could begin reading again much quicker than if you got a call from a telemarketer, had to put down your book, pick up the phone, hang up, and resume reading. Email alerts are like caller ID, you know when to stop what you are doing and pick up, and when not to. It allows us to not miss information that may be vital to the way we live. If I got an email from a professor saying class is cancelled I would stop reading the homework, or if I got an email from my mom saying she was coming to dinner that week, I would go buy food and clean. It allows us to change what we are doing to accomplish our goals (whether they be an A in a class or a nice dinner with your family) faster.

The Internet has brought about positive changes to society. Steven Johnson writes, “Television and automobile society locked people up in their living rooms, away from the clash and vitality of public space, but the Net has reversed that long-term trend.” The Internet through social media like blogs and Facebook has augmented our face to face interactions giving us access to friends we would have lost, and expanding our social networks to people we may have never met if we didn’t read that one post. It allows us to confront each other’s ideas, and share our own. Public discourse was never so broad and easy. While there might be an information overload, at least it isn’t an information shortage. The days of sloth in front of daytime TV are coming to an end. While we may just sit in front of our computers Johnson makes another point, “The networked computer makes you lean in, focus, engage, while television encourages you to zone out.” If computers continue to gain on TV as the number one American past-time, it can only lead to a greater sharing of ideas and a more informed, active public.

While there may be dissent to this analysis, saying the Internet is full of cats doing funny things and no real information. However a growing segment is using the Net for real information getting. This demographic is actually the most informed in our country. Information is what the Internet was made for.

Moreover, some believe that reading anything in digital format isn’t really reading at all. Because I cannot find a better way to word it, I will simply quote my first extended essay, “Most of these doomsday illiterate american convictions view any digital media source as visual, “…the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media…)” How exactly can you discount reading an article on the internet or a book on a kindle? Some studies show we read “differently” because we scan down instead of flip a page. I can’t see this being any worse than completely losing track of what you just read when you flip to “A4” from the front page while reading a newspaper. Just because it isn’t paper, doesn’t mean we aren’t reading.” Carr may agree with the quote from Jacoby, but he luckily doesn’t go quite so far in his essay.

The Internet, despite these protests and condemnations, will continue to thrive and take over our lives. It is an invaluable tool that everyone can, and does, use. If we get information differently than it is for the better. The studies have shown people who get their information from news on the internet are more informed than any other medium. The Internet is win, the rest is fail.

Bib.

Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad is Good For You. 1. 1. New York, New York: The Berkely Publishing Group, 2005. Print.

Carr, Nicholas. "What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains." Is Google Making Us Stupid. (2008): Print.

24

Twenty-four hours without media; a terrifying thought. However, I almost succeeded in the assignment. Circumstance allowed me to use previous engagements to eliminate most of that time, during which I was not allowed to enjoy the luxuries of media anyway. An invaluable tool to today’s society, cell phones, the Internet and TV keep us connected. Without them, we are alone.

Last weekend I spent four days in Chicago for the American Model United Nations (AMUN) conference. The annual conference hosts over two thousand students and is debatably a big deal. Not only that, the times that you are required to be in session are grueling. From 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. (with hour breaks for meals), for three days, I sat in a room with delegates representing a host of countries debating world issues. During these simulations, under AMUN rules, I was not allowed to use my laptop, much less listen to my Ipod or the radio. Knowing this I set about making my 24-hour media fast a little easier. On Sunday, November 21^st, 2010, I left media behind.

At 7:30 a.m. I woke up, turned my alarm off, put my cell phone in a drawer, and started my stopwatch. From that moment on, I was to be media-free. Because I was in conference and had I left my cell phone in my room, I couldn’t fail even if I wanted to. During those thirteen and a half hours, the only withdrawal symptom was fleeting anxiety. I hoped no one was trying to contact me, that nothing had happened. I felt completely isolated from everyone except those in the room with me. However unnerving this was, the time passed quickly and distractions from the committee made me think less and less about it.

Ten O’clock finally rolled around. Without a phone to contact my friends I turned to Jesse, my partner, to get a hold of them for me. I am unsure whether this is a loophole or if I am cheating. Hindsight is 20/20 but at the time I thought it was okay. Once Jesse had rallied the troops we set out for a night of partying. During which there was much more to focus on than TV (girls, drinks, friends.) We stayed in the hotel instead of going to a bar or club, so TVs and music weren’t an issue either. Once in the hotel room where this gathering was happening, someone grabbed the remote for the TV. I tackled him, removed the remote, and successfully avoided failing, while providing amusement for those in the room.

At around 2 a.m. I retreated to my own hotel room to sleep. I started my nightly routine getting ready for bed (shearing off my clothes and landing face first into my pillow). I then proceeded to set my alarm for 7:30 a.m. After I did I realized my mistake; I set the alarm on my cell phone. Ready to scream and completely disappointed I sat and thought about how much I rely on that little device. It tells me who is doing what (via twitter and text), allows me to contact nearly anyone whenever I want, and even tells me when to wake up every morning. Even with conference and the debatable cheating I was unable to last 24-hours without media. I had failed.

From the beginning I knew it would be nearly impossible to stay away from media for twenty-four hours, especially without having something else to keep me occupied. If I hadn’t used AMUN as a crutch for success, I doubt I would have lasted an hour. It seems the question is the same one we have been discussing all semester; is our reliance on technology good or bad. I will stick by my argument and say it is only a tool. The way we use technology can be good or bad, but it is our responsibility to decide just that.

Take my failure; setting my alarm on my cell phone. Why is this bad? I use my cell phone because I can set a multitude of alarms, use different ring tones, and take it anywhere. I don’t have to worry about calling down for a wake up call, or using the provided alarm clock radio in the room. Many times I have tried and failed getting up because those devices aren’t familiar to me. My cell phone, however, is consistent. I can rely on it to get me up on time. It is a tool. To ask us to spend twenty-four hours without a tool we use the most is like asking someone to build a house without a hammer. Technology keeps us informed, entertained and moving down the path we want. Whether that path be a news junkie or a TV slug is up to the user, not the media.

“The medium is the message,” Federman reminds us. The programming isn’t the point. It is the social changes we see as an effect of the introduction of the technology. Because we rely on media so much, our social circles have shifted, our activity level has lowered, and we are more prone to entertainment then information. We know a little about a lot, instead of a lot about a little. These changes are too recent to fully understand the consequences, for better or for worse. What is not debated is the fact that media is an integral part of life for the majority of this country’s population.

Moreover according to Walker my generation is full of, “savvy, articulate, emotionally attached and educated consumers of electronic media.” Though we are consistently bombarded with media and advertising, because we grew up with it, we see through it, “millennials don't actually think much about it.” This is an invaluable point. We can swim through the mess of information to get where we are going, something I believe a lot of scholars (read: old people) miss. They are not indoctrinated into media as we are. My generation has always had (as far as remembering is important) the Internet, television, and when we came of age to own a cell phone is right when they came out, so we had those too. We are test group A, and it is far too soon to say whether our reliance on technology and media is negative or positive, only that our experience has been vastly different than our parents. Our patterns of social interaction and daily living have little in common, on a surface examination, with the patterns of our elders. Change is rarely welcomed, fear runs rampant through our society and this is just another rash of it.

‘Build a house without a hammer, because hammers make it easier to bruise your thumb.’ Technology is a tool. It makes society more productive, more immediate and more connected. I can’t live without it, neither can most people, so what? We are using a newly available tool to its greatest extent, consistently finding new ways to do so. Through which we seek improve our society and ourselves. Fear is always associated with change, sometimes rightly so, but sometimes not. We need to not jump to conclusions and watch as technology continues, like it has in the past, to dictate how we move forward as a society and a species.

Federman, M. (2004). What is the Meaning of the Medium is the Message? Retrieved from http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/MeaningTheMediumistheMessage.pdf.

Walker, Danna. "The Longest Day." The Washington Post 5 Aug. 2007 Page 2.

Medium is the message is the medium is the message is the medium...

“The medium is the message” means we know the extension of ourselves (medium) comes from the changes that the medium effects. Federman explains that the base reading of the quote “the medium is the message,” for example the TV set is more important than the program on it, is untrue. Federman shows McLuhan’s quotes, which define medium and message and lend to his definition of the phrase. Medium refers to, “any extension of ourselves” and message is “the change of scale or pace or pattern.” Every time a new medium is introduced to society we see changes in the way society functions. For example, one could argue the rise of cable television (read: national programming) has led to the steady decline in American’s interest for state and local politics, or that because we sit to watch TV, American’s are becoming more obese. Both of these show the changes TV has made, not by it’s content, but because of it’s existence. This is exactly McLuhan and Federman’s point; the extension of ourselves can be understood through the effects it has on society.

To apply McLuhan’s concept to radio as a whole is too broad, so I will focus on radio after the transistor radio was introduced (1948). “The medium is the message,” radio changed the way we get out and receive information, making people more informed more immediately, giving those without access to a host of information. Radio changed the way American’s perceived their country, during The Great Depression it helped keep families, and this country, together. Radio can also be the message. With the introduction of TV many American families thought that radio was soon to be swept away, deemed obsolete. Yet we still have radios in every car today, why wasn’t radio simply pushed out? Radio became a function of the social changes that the introduction of the new technology, TV, brought about.

Radio lasted because of a few reasons, they got smaller, they got local, and they got records. “This local emphasis, of which the deejay was only one facet, became the single most important element in radio’s success during the television era,” a quote from Forntale and Mills, explicitly states the changes that happened to radio as a direct result of the introduction of television. Yet, even this could be interpreted as a new form of media, because it also had it’s own new set of consequences. One was increased positive attention to minority groups, especially African-Americans. Even though whites owned the stations, black radio was a breakthrough, not only did it help to unify their own communities, whites listened it to as well.  

“The medium is the message.” Programming and the content of any new technology can be changed. The way we understand the new mediums, is to look at the changes they create in society, at any level.  The importance of new technology, through this method, is finally understood.

Federman, M. (2004). What is the Meaning of the Medium is the Message? Retrieved <DATE> from http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/MeaningTheMediumistheMessage.pdf.

Forntale, Peter. Mills, Joshua E. Radio in the Television Age. In D. Crowley, P. Heyer, Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. 6th Ed. p 214-218. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Surface Meaning

Is advertising taking over the way we think; probably. I currently subscribe to Gentleman’s Quarterly, which I flipped through and in no more than five minutes found an ad ripe for “deconstruction.” I will first use Firth’s method of analyzing ads to rip apart this beauty, then at least try to skim the surface of what it means for anyone who sees it. I will focus on what the ad says to men, to which it is obviously targeted to, being in Gentleman’s Quarterly. I have included an image of the ad at the bottom of the page for reference.

“Surface meaning” is the first lens through which I will analyze the ad. According to Firth “surface meaning” is simply describing the ad by essentially listing its contents. So, we have two couples, smiling and holding one another. They are wearing heavy jackets and scarf’s so we can assume it is winter, even though it is clear and sunny. There is a lighthouse and rocks in the background, so they are probably on a beach somewhere. Judging by the age of the lighthouse and the terrain it is in New England. Below that we have another picture of a pair of feet in Sperry boots. By the look of the jeans and style of the boot it is a man, most likely one from above. The man is stepping in the water. Finally, in the bottom right corner there reads “A Passion For the Sea – Sperry Top–Sider” with a logo and website, white background, blue and grey text.

“The intended meaning” is the meaning the advertiser wants to communicate to you. In this ad it is pretty straightforward. Sperry wants you to buy their boots so you can go on day trips to the coast in the winter and be comfortable, also that their boots are good for casual and sophisticated looks. If you notice, the man on the right is dressed down. He has on a shirt, plain coat, and loose fitting khakis. A relaxed everyday outfit, while the man on the right is in his yuppie sweater and trendy ripped jeans. In addition, that the boots are waterproof, and great if you like the ocean.

“The Cultural or Ideological Meaning” is what the ad relates to me, the straight white male.  This ad says that to be happy I need to be a straight, rich, physically fit, attractive, white male with a white girlfriend who is similarly fit and attractive. First we’ll tackle the sexual preference; both men are being held passionately by women, it’s pretty straight-forward. The money comes in when we examine that beautiful watch that the man on the right is wearing. It is steel, shiny and big, a sure sign of both masculinity and wealth. I don’t think anyone would question the looks and fitness of the models. It also communicates a racially homogenous relationship; both the men are white (who we can assume are friends out on a double date of sorts) and both girlfriends are white.

“Analyzing Social Relationships” is another way Firth examines the ad in his essay, and a method I will also employ. To analyze the social relationships I need to “look at the relationships being depicted between the people featured in the advertising.” Firth uses William O’Barr’s methods of finding power structures in what we see. So, as previously stated we have two A-typical white couples on retreat to a New England beach. I will first point out how the couples are interacting; both women are literally clinging to their male counterparts who are standing upright supporting them. Moreover, only the male’s boots are shot in the water, even though Sperry sells women’s boots as well. Now try reversing the roles of the men and women. What if the men were holding the women and she was in fact going into the water in her pair of Sperry boots? Would it seem odd or out of place, probably. What if one of the women was taller then one of the men? What if one of the people was overweight? What if one of the couples was Black/African-American or Hispanic or Asian or Middle Eastern? What if one of the couples was bi-racial? What if one of the couples was gay? What if there were no couples and just two men with no connotation?

One thing I didn’t read in any of the articles was the impact on the consumer’s willingness to buy. While advertisers perpetuate a straight, wealthy, white, patriarchal ideology, does this affect the view of the brand? For example, take each of the questions in the previous paragraph, and then ask yourself, if you saw those changes, would you be as willing to buy their product? I am positive that if at least one of those were actually true, you would be less willing. The ad isn’t really about buying shoes; it’s about buying a life the advertisers have created. Luckily for them the life you want is the one that they themselves, and a group of other corporations, have for decades pounded into your brain.

Consumer culture has an impact on the way we as humans see the world around us. It has told us through ads like these what the ideal is; that we need the money, the race, the sex, the sexual preference, the masculinity, the looks and the girlfriend to be happy. Why else would they all be smiling so much, don’t you want to be happy, here’s how; buy the shoes. In Ruskin and Schor’s article they cite a study by UCLA on what student’s feel is a “very important or essential life goal … succeeding financially has increased to a 13-year high…” Why else would people need money if not to buy things? What thing do they need a lot of money to buy; happiness. Commercialism has made the means to happiness the goods they sell. It has dictated what happiness is, what it is made of, and the idea that it can be bought.

So then what is happiness? This question I have no answer for. I see it in a big house with beautiful children and a spouse, age fifty sitting beside a fire reading, enjoying the success, recognition, and the monetary skyscraper I have made for myself. This is just another image consumer culture has put into my brain. At this point it is impossible to escape it. Yet there is hope; to know what’s happening, how it’s affecting you and the world around you, is the first step to escaping its grasp. Like Firth says, “by learning how to critically deconstruct advertisements we can begin to move away from the role of spectator to become participants in the making and remaking of ourselves and of a more democratic society.” To really top of the joke, of the shoes I own, my Sperry boat shoes are my favorite.

Bib.

Frith, Katherine Toland. "Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising." Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. Print.

Ruskin, Gary. Schor, Juliet. Every Nook and Cranny: The Dangerous Spread of Commercialized Cultural. Chapter 26. 

Sperry Top-Sider. Advertisement. GQ Magazine. November 2010. Page 129.

Goodnight and Good Luck

The Daily Show and Colbert Report are, and continue to be, viable news sources for many americans. While based around comedy, the truth, and the way it’s reported, is usually comedic in itself. The Daily Show and Colbert Report don’t have a political spin, they take other organizations’ spin and turn it on their head, thereby giving the viewer a more objective viewpoint of how the news actually operates. The Glen Beck rally in August is a great example of how the Daily Show and Colbert Report can take a news organization and turn it on itself.

    The Daily Show’s coverage of the Glen Beck rally was not only informative, but absolutely hilarious. During Jon Stewart’s “report” he first points out the pompous nature of Beck scheduling the rally on the same day as the “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr. Then Stewart goes on to identify Beck’s arguments about government and progressives, while immediately after showing Beck’s hypocrisy in using the same tools he discredits on his own audience. Through making fun of Beck you get an honest representation of what Beck stands for and what the rally will represent; some holy bullshit conservative fear fest. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reported on the same event. While explaining detailed information on who and what will be funding the operation, there would still be some confusion if you hadn’t heard of or knew that much about Beck and his terror campaign. While Olbermann does a great job, the Daily Show gives you almost entirely clips of Beck’s shows, while Olbermann brings in commentators to talk about it. This gives even more credibility to Stewart’s reporting because you can’t disagree with clips from a show, they are factual, unlike the opinions of Olbermann and his guest. I don't think I really need to delve into how Fox, the company sponsoring Beck, reported on the event. They are obviously biased in the realest sense, and have not earned, in my opinion, the right for any more than this mention.

    The Daily Show and Colbert Report are viable because they satirize the truth, something which is muddled and twisted by most major news organizations. Smolkin says in her article, “Stewart and his team often seem to steer closer to the truth than traditional journalists. The "Daily Show" satirizes spin, punctures pretense and belittles bombast.” This is the point, that because the Daily Show and Colbert Report are exposing spin, you can see through it and get to the heart of the issue, “He's sort of looking at the raw material and making a common-sense assessment of what it means.” The Daily Show and Colbert Report show us what is going on in politics and what is going on in media. It is a critical look at the way the government and news organizations function, whether that criticism comes in the form of satire or not.

    What I find most interesting is the amount of viewers who are more informed that watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report. In her article Smolkin cites a Pew survey which, “found taht 54 percent of regular viewers of “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” scored in the high knowledge category” where only 35 percent of all people surveyed got a rating in the high knowledge category. A score almost 20 percent higher shows definitively that the substance people see in the Daily Show and Colbert Report exists.

Without a doubt the Daily Show and Colbert Report are viable news sources. They are revered by journalists and news organizations, winning awards and are recognized by the public. They have statistics and experts backing their credibility and worthiness as a news organization. Though not in the traditional sense, the Daily Show and Colbert Report’s satire is biting and gives people (especially youth) a view of what’s actually going on in politics. The Daily Show and Colbert Report continue to be a personal news source for me, and should be for more people.

Bib.

Smolkin, Rachel. "What the Mainstream Media Can Learn From Jon Stewart." AJR (June/July 2007).

The Daily Show Video - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/27/stewart-beck-rally-civil-rights_n_696758.html
The Keith Olbermann video - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/27/olbermann-keeps-up-mocker_n_697244.html

Analog v. Digital

    It’s too early to tell whether we are truly shifting from print to an oral and visual society. It is also too early to truly tell whether one of those media sources are better then the other. I believe most findings are both grossly overstated and grossly overemphasized. I don’t believe it is a matter of reading v. watching, I think the content in each is what’s driving the perception of ignorance. Tv and videos are always geared more to entertainment, if they were geared toward information getting, like news print sources, then print media wouldn’t be valued so highly.

    While there have been plenty of studies testing the general knowledge of people who watch media vs. people who read print media, it is truly too early to tell the impact. On a very basic level, my generation is the first to be absolutely immersed in audio/visual media. Most people from my generation get their information from videos, our intelligence cannot reliably be tested against those who have lived longer and collected more information. I think Howard Gardner said it best, “Literacy -- or an ensemble of literacies -- will continue to thrive, but in forms and formats we can't yet envision.” New media like the Kindle and Ipad are reviving “print” media. We have to wait until the impact of these new technologies is realized before we make any broad, sweeping generalizations about the validity of digital/visual media.

    Moreover, most of these doomsday illiterate american convictions view any digital media source as visual, “…the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media…)” How exactly can you discount reading an article on the internet or a book on a kindle? Some studies show we read “differently” because we scan down instead of flip a page. I can’t see this being any worse than completely losing track of what you just read when you flip to “A4” from the front page while reading a newspaper. Just because it isn’t paper, doesn’t mean we aren’t reading. Convictions about the knowledge of people who view this media is discounting their intelligence, and giving the real problem; the content of most TV and web videos, a break.

    These shifts and changes have been greatly overemphasized. I do not disagree with the statistics because the numbers exist. What I do disagree with is their importance. Eric Havelock, while discussing about the creation of the greek alphabet wrote, “ Have the outward social and political effects of full literacy really been as important and profound as is sometimes claimed? Our later examination of oral cultures and the way they function may throw some doubt on this.” I believe the same thing is happening here, the print media is being held up while visual media is being thrown under a bus, when really the shift isn’t that important. Let me return to the idea that the content of the media is what is driving the statistics, not the media itself, and that it can be easily fixed.

    Before I go on to discuss the content of the various audio/visual media outlets, I will discuss whether this shift is actually detrimental. While I don’t entirely agree that the shift is happening, if it is, some scholars say it is presenting a new wave of thought that is actually positive. Walter Ong suggests we are entering an age of “secondary orality.” This new way of thinking brings with it group-mindedness, “The individual fells that he or she, as an individual, must be socially sensitive.” It also ushers a somewhat faux spontaneity, “We plan our happenings carefully to be sure that they are spontaneous.” Both group-mindedness and spontaneity are, at least in my view, refreshing and good compared to what it would be like without it. This new “secondary orality” might just be what this country needs.

    The real issue with “anti-intellectualism,” as Susan Jacoby so eloquently puts it, is not the differences between what audio/visual media and print media are at the base level, but their content. We seem to be comparing two very different things. Information contained in a thirty second YouTube video of some cat playing piano cannot be compared with a national newspaper (but maybe some local publications). The same as we can’t compare a romance novel with CNN. These are intrinsically different things, and to say all audio/visual media is making us less intelligent because people who watch more cat videos know less than those who read the Washington Post daily, is not a meaningful analysis.

    Speaking of content, the way TV’s content is arraigned is not the same as newspapers. A video is almost always organized for entertainment first, and information second, for print media, the opposite is true. We have entered an age of “infotainment” where our news sources care more about how exciting their content is than the value of it. I reference here mostly cable news sources. Instead of reporting a new bill, they slander the president or report a rape all in the name of ratings. Though it might be initially more engaging for the viewer, it doesn’t increase their understanding, and leaves them without the knowledge to understand the policy changes that actually effect their lives. This problem increases exponentially when we realize that cable news has a larger audience because of its availability and syndication. It is much easier to flip to channel 55 and sit on the couch than engage in reading online news articles. Not to mention, cable news is more entertaining than reading articles. There are plenty of articles citing the divide in general knowledge of people who get their news from online sources and cable news. Those who read online articles tested better than any other news source, including print media. Those who watch Fox News and local news programs are the least informed. Unfortunately, Fox News and local news programs have the highest amount of viewers.

    This divide explains Jacoby’s view America’s ignorance. It isn’t the type of media, but what is being displayed to the viewer. If major TV news broadcasts began displaying the news in the responsible fashion that print media and online sources regularly do, then general knowledge would greatly increase. Though it seems the viewer should be responsible, find multiple sources and view media critically, hasn’t it been shown throughout history that this doesn’t happen? Propaganda, by definition, shows that people are influenced heavily and will not challenge the validity of whatever is being advertised. Which is when we come to the unfortunate conclusion that large media outlets need to be responsible on their own, for the good of our people. Instead of advertising ideology and party politics, they need to report truth.

    The differences between analog and digital media, and their ramifications, are extremely complex. I really feel constrained while writing this. I feel that I can’t dive deep enough without writing a two-hundred page dissertation on the subject. While we can cite facts and quickly explain away ignorance, it’s important that we understand there might be multiple things contributing to these startling statistics. The comments in the articles cited are valid and are due more examination. But most importantly, we need to keep thinking critically and examining all sides of media, to find the true reason for the declining levels of knowledge in this country.

Bib.

Gardner, Howard. "The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading.." Washington Post 17 Feb 2008, Print.

Jacoby, Susan. "The Dumbing of America." Washington Post 17 Feb 2008, Print.

Ong, Walter. “Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media.” Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. Ed. David Crowley and Paul Heyer. Boston: Pearson Education Inc, 2010. 49-55. Print.

Havelock, Eric. “The Greek Legacy.” Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. Ed. David Crowley and Paul Heyer. Boston: Pearson Education Inc, 2010. 38-43. Print.

3

    Secondary orality is a term Walter Ong uses in his essay to define a new age of oral memory. Ong argues that memory has gone from mnemonics and formulae in oral culture to our current memorization skills using words as a label. Ong believes oral cultures had some qualities like spontaneity and group mindedness which are now only coming back through secondary orality. Unlike my other two blog posts, I really don’t have a stance on this one.
    Ong describes the oral culture’s memory for a good portion of the essay. He goes on about the rhythm and way words used to be organized to aid memorization. Ong sees them as forming the, “… substance of thought itself. Thought in any extended form is impossible without them, for it consists of them.” He talks about the obvious hardships surrounding memorizing a theorem or other large ideas. He also talks about the communal nature of needing a listener, you can’t talk to yourself, so inclusiveness is developed more. Ong seems to see preliterate societies as having a somewhat larger, richer, rhythmic, formulaic memory.
    In the third paragraph Ong describes the “interiority of sound.” He describes sound as, “The auditory idea, by contrast, is harmony, a putting together,” this is in contrast to the dissective, clear, distinct nature of the written word. Later he describes knowledge as a unifying force and, “without harmony…the psyche is in bad health.” He is stating essentially that we have lost knowledge. The fact we visually comprehend our language has somehow taken away a part of our humanity. That we have become less because our voices aren’t as poignant as they were before, and because we can relay our ideas to paper.
    Secondary orality is the new uprising of oral thinking. However, as Ong repeatedly makes clear, this second orality is nothing like original oral speaking cultures. Ong cites the new waves in electronic media, TV, radio, telephone, as reasons why we are again beginning to perceive like the illiterate cultures used to. However, this isn’t enough because we now, “plan our happenings carefully to be sure that they are thoroughly spontaneous.” Again this highlights Ong’s disdain for the current world person, just from this quote we can infer that the author feels current literate cultures have no spontaneity. Throughout the essay Ong only describes one example of the impressiveness of oral culture; an old presidential debate. He describes the oratory as robust and antagonistic, unlike the cool debates we see on TV now (which I don’t really agree with, check out Biden in the ‘08 democratic primaries).
    I really don’t agree with Ong. His ideas seem to infer that we are stupid because we are literate, which is ridiculous. I believe that it’s an interesting topic, but his argument seems to suggest we’d be better off if we couldn’t read. This isn’t because of anything Ong specifically said, but what he didn’t say. He never once gives credit to written language, and only describes oral culture in a positive light. It really doesn’t bother me that two presidential candidates aren’t screaming at one another outside in the middle of summer for two hours, I would rather be able to read.

Crowley, David, and Paul Heyer. Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. 6th ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, Print.