Essay Brainstorming/Initial ideas (Prompt #4)

                In one of the articles included in Critical Terms For Media Studies, Mark Hansen explains that while defining New Media, it is important to remember that, “each new medium operates by exteriorizing some function of human cognition and memory, it involves both gain and loss.” This is an extremely interesting statement that according to Hansen should be able to be applied to any form of New or, in Paul Levinson’s categorization of the mediums, New New media. Facebook is one such medium that fits into these categories.

                Facebook, which was created in 2003 by Mark Zuckerburg. With over 800 million members and growing, it is the most popular social networking site in the world.  Why is it so popular? In large part, it is because of the many functions of human cognition and memory that it exteriorizes. When Mark Zuckerburg created Facebook he was an undergraduate student at Harvard University. Originally, the fundamental idea behind Facebook was to find a way to put the entire college experience online. First, users are able to create a public (or private) profile that lets people know their sex, age, birthday, interests, education, work or school place, religion, sexual orientation, and relationship status. In the past, these were details that you would learn about someone over the span of a number of encounters or discussions but now, it is all located on a single page that we can access right after meeting someone. The biggest component of this exteriorization of memories is Facebook’s photo sharing app. Through this, anyone can upload all of their personal photos from any event and tag their friends who are in them. Instead of having to get photos developed days later, we are now able to upload pictures mere minutes after an event finishes. This allows people to relive the event for months and years to come.  

Facebook

            I remember hearing about Facebook for the first time from my best friend’s older brother in 2005. At the time, he was attending the University of Florida and was therefore allowed to register for and use the site. When he explained that it was only available for college students, I put it out of my mind. A year or two later I created a MySpace page (that was obnoxious in its design and amount of stimuli) and forgot all about Facebook. I used Myspace fervently for a good amount of time but by the end of 2007, a lot of my friends stopped using theirs and switched over to Facebook. I finally caved in on March of 2008 and joined the social networking behemoth myself. Upon first using it, I loved it. The simple layout and the ability to find friends quickly, both made me love the site. After a few months of using Myspace and Facebook, I ended up deleting my Myspace page and never looking back.

            It is hard to say what the long term effects of the mass usage of Facebook and other social networking sites will be on our society. One thing we can already see happening is a decrease in attention span. Facebook, and other technological gadgets, mediums, and websites, have played a large role in making sure that people have the ability to be informed 24/7 about nearly any subject. With this comes a cultural shift in which people expect their new, entertainment, and social connections now. People are so invested with Facebook now that I don’t think it will lose any of its popularity in the foreseeable future. In fact, with the new changes that are being made to Facebook, I thinks it’s user base will only increase.

            I have a ton of family on Facebook. Four cousins, four aunts, two uncles, and my parents are all on Facebook.

My Media Diet

On a typical day I will wake up at around 9:20 AM. Upon waking, I will check my Twitter and Facebook immediately. Along with these, I will also check Teefury to see what their shirt of the day is. After scanning through each, I get ready for the day. If there is any time left over before my first class, I will spend it reading my favorite website ever….Slashfilm.com. While on Slashfilm, I generally just scan through the large article headlines and will then click on four or five that interest me. After class, I will go back to my dorm and work, while listening to some sort of movie podcast (usually the /filmcast, Film School Rejects Radio, or old episodes of Scene Unseen). I then eat lunch and go to my next class. After that, I go back to my dorm, play some PS3 with my friends for a few hours (we play FIFA and/or Call Of Duty). We then eat at either Broward Dining Hall, or at the Reitz Union. I then go back to my dorm and do work again for a few hours. After my work is done, I watch a few episodes of various shows (Dexter, Breaking Bad, Lost) on Netflix watch instantly, which I can stream onto my tv, and then I go to sleep. Also throughout the day, I constantly listen to my music. Whether it be through my computer, my ipod dock, or just straight from my ipod, I always have to have my music playing. With any leftover free time I also like to check my goggle reader account from which I follow about 12 blogs. These include Cracked, Gizmodo, First Showing, High Def Digest, The Consumerist, Ain’t It Cool News, Film School rejects, Slash Film, Film Drunk, Film-The A.V. Club, and Box Office Mojo. I used to check all of these sites individually but it saves me a lot of time to have all of the sources in one area.

Entertainment News (Blog Post #2)!

Sidney Lumet’s critically acclaimed 1976 film, Network, is in part a satire and a warning about the state of television news programs, their business structures, and the effects they have on their viewers. The movie follows the story of Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch, an aging newscaster who becomes an overnight sensation after ranting about the “hypocrisies of his time” on a national news program. This sparks the producers of the show to change their traditional, informational format to a more, superficial, and entertainment based program. The film culminates with Beale being killed off by hit men hired by his own show’s executives for garnering low ratings after his musings took a turn to a more depressing and somber tone.

I think that the plot of this movie is very relevant to the television age in which we live today, which constantly blurs the line between what is news and what is entertainment. In the years following the release of Network, major news channels across the world gradually, in a very similar, yet more subtle, fashion to the aforementioned example presented in Network, started to switch their programming towards a more entertainment based slate. This can easily be seen by the current popularity of news/entertainment shows such as The Soup, Showbiz Tonight, E! News, Inside Edition, and TMZ News, along with many others. It seems as though as we venture into a new technological age, we crave to take in our information in a way that’s faster and more superficial than ever.

Network, also presents another very prevalent warning. Towards the end of the movie, Howard Beale’s proclaims, “You’re beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here, you're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do. Why, whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion.” This is something that the general public should think about today at a deeper level. It is something that now refers not only to television news anchors, but also to anyone through whom, or even anything that we receive our news and information through.