Blog #10

The second we went over our syllabus in this class I was just mad at myself for picking this class but now that it is almost over I can say that I am glad I decided to stick with it because of how much I learned to look at situations and interpret them.  Before this class I was well aware of government/media corruption but now my understanding of whats going on around me is on another level.  All of the fictional novels we read in this class really brought out another way to view our world and I am glad I got to experience that rather than being just another ignorant person in this world because there are a lot of them. The book that provoked the most anger from me was by far Culture Jam, I really do hate this book(thanks for getting it over 1st). Just Lasn's ideas were so generalized to a generation before we even experience the other half of our lives.

Blog #9

A world without books would be a boring place, we would be living like the cavemen(literally). Name any activity or hoby, and it would not be possible without books.  If books just disapeared one day we would be fine for out life time but as time goes on the average IQ would keep dropping. If books were illegal I could see if affecting me but not nearly as much as some people, however if reading became illegal I have no idea what I would do with myself. I dont know if people dont see this but there are words EVERYWHERE (we read when we watch tv). It would not be possible in our lifetime for that to happen because the workload it would take to eliminate every word in our country would be almost impossible. 

"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches."--Ray Bradbury
By visiting sites such as sparknotes we kill the literature genius some of these auther slaved over and by reading summeries we only get a slight percentage of the creativity these books offer. But on the otherhand I am a geology major and I really dont need to know all this literature along with the geologic formation of the Ellsworth schist in acadia national park, so the application of these websites are completely necessary in my opinion.  Books can be dangerous if you live in an oppresive country because one of the biggest fears in a country of that nature is a public rebellion. Imagine if you lived in the story 1984 and you got a copy of that book(maybe with a different title). How would you react?

Blog #8

Overall this book was very good, but I do feel as if I have read this story already (1984). I dont really see myself trying to work this book into a conversation outside of talking about school work only because im not a guy who reads/enjoys/relates to books on a normal schedule.  During the novel I really liked how the competitors tried to win over the audience for support because it really can be compared to reality tv that we have now. People want to see the wildest wtf moments because thats what gives us the shock/suprise factor and the people that give them that get supported. Examples of this are seen in every reality tv show from the ultimate figher to real world.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/153992/were-all-famous

This clip is part of an episode from south park when the scientific community discovers that earth was really just created from aliens as a reality tv show for their entertainment.

Blog #7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3SLphoZpMo

I chose this clip which just recaps some of the funny moments of Pauly D on jersey shore. I have never watched a full episode of any reality tv show until this past summer when my friends made me watch jersey shore. At first I thought it was stupid as shit, and once again im bothered how people find this more entertaining then most other things.

In a sense I can see this as reality because now that its been on for awhile and the characters on the show live those lives and we are seeing how they react since they have been celeberties, but the 1st season I would call a tv show and not reality tv simply because none of them have ever had that type of exposure and it definitly changed them. I did enjoy watching this however because its just so stupid that its funny and I enjoy that type of humor.

Blog #6

I do believe we have a big brother watching over us today.  It is not nearly as serious as "big brother" was in 1984, but on the otherhand I can see how it might be.  We watch in movies today how people can hack into security cameras all around the country and it makes me wonder how secure they might be if anyone who know's how to hack well can find themselves looking at a camera watching the inside of a bank.  I do not feel that we have lost our privacy because the government really doesn't want anything more to do with you than Mr. Smith who lives down the street. The government doesn't bother themselves with people unless they suspect them to be a threat, and for the most part we don't have any idea what the government does to people who are threats, and we don't know when we find threats either. We just hear about the people who are hastled by the government when there is no reason to, and the people that are big new's to the public. I don't think we have to be worried about an event such as 1984 from happening to us simply because there are to many back doors to go to in our system today to prevent someone such as the President abusing power, especially on that level.

Blog # 5

Choice #4

Where am I, I woke up this morning in a new reality. There's huge buildings that seem to take up half the sky and the noise is ridiculous. Everything is so different, I can tell I'm still on earth but I still feel as if I'm on a different planet.  The people that I've encountered have been extremely rude and I cannot seem to grasp anything around me. 

I find it kind of ironic that I spent a year of solitude to get away from the advancements of what I thought was a new age and now I've somehow ended up in the future and I can see what has happened. The railroad was the way to travel but now there are these personalized machines everywhere which is probably terrible for the ecosystem. While I was thinking this I could just notice how dirty the air around me felt when I would breath, and I hope that I can just find another log house and live there because then I would know how to live.

Blog #4

Thoreau and Emmerson really went about getting their voice's across the right way in my opinion. I had to read through Emmerson's piece a couple of times because it didn't make any sense to me but I enjoyed reading his section a lot because there were a lot of quotes that I liked in it. "The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. "   The power we get is through our intelligence and at 20 years old I know that I have not experienced anything compared to the generation above us, and Emmerson gets this. This quote is very powerful because we shouldn't question the strength of a person until we are positive they have put their best foot foward, and not only should we not question one person but definitly not an entire generation hense the second part of the quote "and none but he knows what that is which he can do" .   The last section of the quote reminds me of my mom when I was growing up in elementary school because I tried everything from the tuba and trumpet to almost every sport we could do. The point here is that it was that time of year last year when my elementary school was showing all the band instruments to my 11 yr old sister and she wanted to play the trombone.  I 99.9999999% KNEW that she would not stick with it and so did my brother so we were telling our mom not to waste the money on it. She got frustrated with us and told us its not the point that she's not going to stick with it, she gets to try something knew and we dont know whats going to happen, what if she likes it.

The Dumbest Generation

A couple of quotes stood out when I was reading this week, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I agree and disagree with this statement, I can relate to this but only on a small scale and not on an entire generation of people. There are too many variables to consider for this quote to even be possible.

"47% of grads in 1950 could name the largest lake in North America, compared with 38% in 2002."  My first instinct after reading this comment was just to backlash on it because it is completely irrelevant to what the author is trying to prove.  52 years have passed from 1950 when the government had taken their first survey. The amount of information that the world has discovered and all the advancements in every field of work we have had improved  drastically for the most part. It should be obvious that a little fact like that would stop being at the top of peoples minds when there is much more to focus on. 

Also in our class discussion one of my group member Katie was bashing on Dr. Bauerlein because he puts a lot of the blaim for our so called ignorance on us and its our responsibility.  I can say that sure some of it may be ours to take, however if it bothers the older generation so much then they should step in with different ideas rather than writing a book that says its my fault. Just for an example, we have changed the way the world looks at our generation because of popular media, but if you look back in time who's fault was it for global warming, and the DDT crisis. So everybody makes these mistakes, and it will just continue and keep cycling.

Culture Jam / Second Skin

This week was very interesting for the simple fact of how I felt I was reading and watching a part of my life in the passages from "Post Human" as well as "Second Skin".  Its really weird talking about this just because the general public all have the same perspective that anyone who plays warcraft is a geek or weird, and this video doesn't do my arguement and justice, however the game is extremely competitive. The people in "Second Skin" are taking this a little to far in my opinion, because they are in a documentary and for the purpose of it being succesful they needed to spice it up a bit.

The person who wanted to kill himself because he couldnt face his family due to losing his business, girl friend, and house is pathetic. I use to play during the school year probably 7-10 hours a day, and I still obviously went to school, had a job, and played a year round sport in high school. The only thing that really bugged me about Second Skin was how everyone they showed were overweight.  The video itself is a perfect example of the Post Human passages in culture jam, but just to be repetitive "some" online games are just an escape from reality and create a world with a better reality than your own, and instead of taking the time to better your own life you can have a new life after 2 hours of downloading a game.

Its kind of funny because one of the quotes from "the cult you're in" expresses how I got hooked.
"You light up a Metro, a designer cigarette so obviously targeted at your demographic... which is why you steered clear of them until one day you smoked one to be ironic, and now you can't stop." This quote isn't exactly how it happened but I remember it perfectly from lunch in high school, the lunch table I sat at just joked about one of my friends for playing warcraft and I made fun of him also, not to be hurtful but just because that's what my mentality was at the time, but after playing it for the first couple of weeks I was addicted.

Introduction to me

What are your interests/hobbies? 
-Guitar, Volleyball, MMA, Brazilian Jui-Jitsu, and videogames

What is your major/minor? 
-Geo-environmental sciences

What interested you in this class?
-Discussing technology in society today interests me because of how it impacts my life and it will always be apart of our lives.

What was the last book you read?
-I cant remember

What type of popular culture are you interested in? Music, movies, television, video games, art, etc.
-Music: I am a big fan of heavy metal and screamo music, but I like listening to almost anything.
-Movies: I enjoy watching lots of movies but comedies are my favorite.
-TV: I dont watch that much TV but I like Comedy Central, G4, Spike, etc...
-Videogames: First person shooters, and some MMO games

What are your past experiences reading "literature"?
-Just high school and Wifys from ship

What is literature, in your opinion?
-Literature is a way to express emotion in some cases or its a way to pass the time by reading and using your imagination to see what your reading.