Ad Nauseum 3 & 4

This novel continues to be thought-provoking and insightful. The portion about advertising

in schools was perhaps the most disturbing and depressing chapter for me. Kids watch the same set of lengthened commercials every day in school. Advertising in classrooms?!?! As part of a typical school day?!?! This to me was a real WTF? moment. A lot of the children interviewed in this chapter thought that the commercials were public service announcements or short films, rather than ads, because they were shown in school. Kids read these commercials as if they were watching an educational film. Moreover, they are forced to listen and watch about Pepsi or Sprite during their school day. For the advertisers, this is ingenious. The Persuaders would love to creep into that niche; in fact I don't know how advertisers managed to do it. I guess that is what happens when schools are underfunded, they become corporately sponsored and are forced to show lengthy commercials about soft drinks or potato chips. Seriously, admen must see this as an incredible opportunity for brand loyalty and embedding corporations and messages of consumption into the minds of sixth graders. The schools and our educational system should be ashamed of themselves.

Im starting to believe that we are no longer free. When our kids have to watch commercials in school in order for that school to have the means to become educated, there are serious problems. The looming smog-filled cloud of corporate control and consumer culture is infesting more and more minds at still younger ages. What about our responsibility to upcoming generations?

Another interesting bit from the book was how DeBeer, through ingenious marketing, made everyone believe that the diamond ring was the ultimate statement of love. When a company can brand itself to an emotion, they have really made it big. Every man looking to propose to a woman, must empty their pockets for this rock, the ultimate symbol of forever. I thought this coincided largely with what The Persuaders movie laid out. Companies make it big when they have become a part of culture, which is exactly what DeBeer did.

The Merchants of Cool

1. Almost all of our media comes from 5 massive corporations.

2. Teens and popular culture are heavily targetted by advertising in through many different strategies of both gaining information and advertising in a cool way.

3. I now know why shows like Jackass and Tom Green were so popular, they appealed to the "Mook" character that teenage boys tend to admire.

4. I still don't understand why people watch pro wrestling, but I do know that many friends of mine were in love with it. The Mook thing, I guess.

5. Giant feedback loop? Are advertisers mirroring culture or dictating it? This film has illustrated that advertising and corporate schemes have had a major impact on culture.

Is Google Making Us Smarter?

1. Thesis: Google, along with many other technological tools that are becoming more prevalent, are advancing the evolution of our brains.

2. I can see where the author is coming from with a lot of his ideas about how Web 2.0 and other innovations in technology will effectively solve many present problems and evolve our world into a better place. I do think, however, that much of his ideas are simply conjecture, musings as to how the future will turn up. I think his opinion is clear, that technology will solve our problems and create a more highly attuned, collective augmentation of the human mind and society as a whole. While I appreciate a lot of his insight, I think that his ideas for solutions are short-sighted and narrow. For example, he talks about a technologically-induced attention deficit disorder that people develop from exposure to media and technology. His answer seems to be that those people should just take Adderall or Ritalin or the next frontier drugs that heightens cognitive thinking level to combat their ADD problem. This seems to me that we are solving problems with yet even greater problems. And this is exactly why I think his argument is flawed. By building up infrastructure and new technologies to solve present problems, we are avoiding some of the ultimate overlying issues. If we were to put all of our chickens into a basket and believe that technology is going to answer our problems and, even more, advance us into a new smarter, heightened civilization, what would we do with problems such as preserving biodiversity? Or, is that not part of his vision at all. Maybe I am beating a dead horse here, but where does environmentalism or sustainability fit into these arguments? Are we magically going to invent something that turns trash into compost? Pollution into clean air and water? Or industrial wastelands into rainforests?

Despite my skepticism, I do agree with a lot of what the author has to say. Although a lot of what he draws from is science fiction writers, he definite has some interesting and thought-provoking points. The computing power of machines is phenomenal and is constantly improving. We can now take patterns and trends and simulate future outputs like never before. We can also connect to each other more instantaneously than ever. There is more information that is shared every day on the internet and it opens up more voices and opinions, that in total create a greater shared accumulation of knowledge.

Media Memoir (finally!)

Growing up, I would say I had a somewhat typical involvement with media. I remember when we first got cable television and America Online 3.0, and how amazing and incredible it all seemed. . After school hours were now largely spent chatting and flirting with classmates on AOL Instant Messenger. From there, which was around 5th grade for me, my media and technology use has skyrocketed. I learned quickly how to use a lot of the media in my house and became probably more knowledgeable than my parents. Since that time, it seems as if media and technology has crept further into my life and has become universally the main means of researching, communicating, and interacting with the greater world.

Before we got cable, I remember hearing about Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon and how awesome all of the cartoons were and how they were on all of the time. I had been used to only getting my cartoon fix on Saturday mornings, watching X-men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons and Animaniacs. When the doors opened for more programs to watch, I remember being so excited. I quickly grew out of the cartoon phase; however, and began religiously following sports. Armed with Cable TV, I could watch Sportscenter at all hours of the day. After Cable TV, came Direct TV and than digital cable with On Demand and TiVo, all of which have continued to be a part of my life.

When we first got the internet, I was beside myself. Our Gateway 2000 was the most amazing machine I had ever seen. I could write in 50 different fonts (including Wingdings), play all sorts of cool games, and chat with friends on IM. I used it mostly at first for chatting, and became somewhat addicting to it. Everybody had to have screen name on AOL it seemed. I remember competing with my older brother and sister for internet time, along with my parents because the internet cable connected through our phone line. More and more it seemed to be the thing to do--to be on the web; but, as I've come to realize over time, it took away from a lot of other free time activities that I would otherwise be doing.

Moving on through high school, technology only became quicker, bigger, and more enhanced in pretty much every way. I remember the Napster Boom and the subsequent Kazaa and Limewire and Morpheus and all of the other file sharing programs that helped me steal music. That was fun while it lasted. Google and Ebay quickly became things to know and do on the internet. It was also memorable when internet switched from dial-up to cable modem, because everything was so much faster and more easily accessible. I remember learning how to search and sifting through webpages for research projects.

And then to college. Freshman year (2006), I opened a Facebook account because my older sister insisted that I HAD to. That blew up quickly. Also Youtube hit the mainstream that year and that was really phenomenal at the time. Soon, all school work seemed to be tied into media, there was WebCT, and now there is BlackBoard, there's e-mail, and blogger, and Twitter, and Google Docs, and Mapquest, and all sorts of new resources that I've grown up with and are now mainstays as bodies of information and programs of work. It really is amazing to look back on it all. Since college has began, I've had somewhat of a renaissance in the way that I obtain media and use it in my life. I read a lot more now, I watch less television, I still constantly use the internet (but I figure it is a must as a student), and try to spend much of my free time outdoors and away from it all. It is interesting that media and technology has subtly yet quickly become such a major force in my life and that realization is much of the reason of why I try to pursue alternative ways of educating and entertaining myself.

The movie largely reaffrimed much of my knowledge about how corporations operate. Their soul task is to create profit which is to be done by any means possible. Corporations have marginalized, enslaved, killed, stolen, annihilated, polluted, and manipulated, all in the name of the dollar. If someone or a group of people did this in the name of say, Allah, they would be considered terrorists; but, behind their bulletproof shield of being incorporated, these people are not only legitimate, but they are rewarded with being the richest people in the world. Well why doesn't our government step in? Our government? Since Reaganomics, our mantra has been "small government." It has largely allowed these corporations, these profit-sucking inhuman, immoral, juggernauts, to be able to run free, uninhibited by anything (well except for a few fines). I picture a giant monster trudging over a landscape and stepping on the livelihoods and cultures and natural resources of everything that our world is, squashing it, picking up money, and walking away whistling a tune and snapping its fingers.

I do not understand why there hasn't been more of an outcry in our country. We are largely apathetic and unphased by the news of awful atrocities that are occurring throughout the world. Many people dismiss it as liberal propaganda, trying to socialize the US and ruin our freedom! Media and its enhanced role in our lives has sustained our general malaise and apathy towards the problems the world, but also inhibitted our independent critical thinking skills. People watch so much television nowadays that their minds become hypnotized. Many people go through their day working long hours, with minimal wages, and eat Fast Food, drink a 6 pack, and watch TV. There is no time for critical thinking about abstract topics such as political theory and sustainability. We are certainly disconnected from many of the externalities that free trade helps create. Our apathy, as a result, is helping sustain and perpetuate free trade policies that are systematically ruining cultures of people, enslaving them into a system where they can never be anything but peasants, and destroying ecosystems on a grand scale. They are destroying the natural framework of our environment with hardly any repercussions; which in turn, encourage them to do so again, so long as it generates profit. These fat old white guys, sitting on their stacks of cash, are pointing their finger and dictating the way trade occurs.

It is all a sloppy mess of the way things are and I am not sure where or how we should go about changing things; all I know is that the way corporations operate is immoral, unjust, and unsustainable

Twitter (ctd.)

I have never used Twitter before, but have seen it become more and more of a part of culture. I guess I have never really considered its advantages; I've seen it instead as somewhat of an enslavement and obsession that I really don't need to be a part of. I like my life as it is, I guess, without the need for say, Ashton Kutcher's opinion on fashion. I can see its use professionally, in certain occupations, but in none of the ones that I am striving to have.

Class 5 catchup--Twitter

How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live

A) Twitter is creating new, exciting opportunities for people to communicate with each other; there is poignant value in connecting to people in real time.

B) I liked when Johnson told a story of a valuable experience that he has had that would not have been possible if it hadn’t been for Twitter. Their educational discussion was enriched not only by the active participants in the room, but with the general public. We now have a window into the universal living room of America and the world for that matter. We can reassure our thoughts and feelings with the entire Twittersphere when something happens in real time. We are no longer “shattered into a million isolation booths,” we can revel and react with fellow active Twitizens! And while many of the Tweets would be juvenile and irrelevant, inherently, as Johnson points out, there are some that are “moving, witty, observant, and subversive.” We can make a difference in 140 characters. I also agreed with the comparisons between Google searching and Tweets. It may be useful to find the top-hit of a given search query; however, it does not often present the most current, cutting-edge, or interesting information. You can send a question out to your 50 Twitter friends and get real, solid advice from the people you know and care about.

I found some things in the article skeptical or causing problem rather than creating solutions. The educational conference had an active and ongoing Tweet blog, which as I said earlier opens new opportunities and can bring more people’s ideas and opinions to the forefront. However, it can also detach members from the conversation at hand. It is completely distracting to look at a phone and Tweet while you are engaging in a heated, complex discussion about something such as education. I think attention would shift quickly from the in-room dialogue to the running on-screen Twitterworld. Why don’t we just sit around and Tweet all day instead of talking? I also was skeptical of the discussion about end-user innovation. While Twitter opens up new opportunities to interact in real time, it also detracts from many of the things in life that aren’t so completely hyperconnected. It can be obsessive and can drag people away from learning for themselves independently and shaping their own ideals.

Week 6 Blogging Catch-up

The Making of a Media Literate World:

I found this article to be a useful and provocative summary of media literacy, why it is absolutely essential to teach in schools, and ways to apply and teach it in classroom settings. Before finishing the article, I had a distinct feeling that this was written by a high school teacher. He outlines the issues of media today very systematically and even-handedly, and proceeds to give five ways that media literacy can become more engrained into the minds of young people. From taking this class, I was aware of a lot of the ideas that the author was relaying, but I thought that he particularly did a good job organizing and describing the ways in which media literacy can and should be implemented.

Something in particular that stuck out for me was when he talked about how media is retelling the “stories and values” of America today. No longer are our parents, community members, and role models in the driver’s seat; the massive conglomerates of media dictate what we should know and how we should feel about those things. This isn’t to say that media has overthrown parenting and the teaching of sound morals, but it is an inexorable truth that media has a large impact on culture. The values brought forth from media are often contradictory to that of which parents strive to enrich their children with. Rather than preaching “good” things such as: responsibility, independence, mindfulness, critical thinking, and self-confidence, media tends to sway people towards holding a reliance towards products, a poor self image, mindlessness, and above all that happiness is achieved through material consumption. Media promotes several of the seven deadly sins including gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, and envy. I am happy to see that education is catching up to the amassing juggernaut of media dominance and I hope to see media literacy taught in a more widespread and universal manner.

Killing Us Softly:

1. I found the idea of women portrayed as passive, vulnerable and silenced, as opposed to how men often appear violent and aggressive to be an interesting and disturbing truth in advertising. Women are told that power is unattractive and that their greatest assets are in their body and appearance. The trivialization and general nonchalance of society towards this issue is astounding. Both women and men are victims to advertising shaping culture; but as she so eloquently points out, the impetus for women revolves around their sexuality and appearance.

2. Advertising sells values, images, and concepts of love, sexuality, success, and normalcy. “It tells us who we are and who we should be.” For women, it tells us what beautiful is and that if you do not look like Michelle Pfeiffer, than you better try your damn hardest to get to be.

3. The part about how girls’ self-esteem plummets when they reach adolescence is truly sad and horrible. Right when they reach a certain age, they are expected to be sex symbols rather than whole people. This video reveals that we are stripped of our wholeness as people and expected to fit into small windows of what is “normal” in order to be happy and successful.

4. Models are so damn skinny. It is revolting how we prize our women to look like some of these emaciated, dismembered, and compartmentalized women. It is perpetuating a wretched societal complex that advertising is helping to carry out. Being that skinny cannot be comfortable or healthy in any way.

5. Men are victims as well, but not sexually as women are. Instead, we are fed thoughts that values such as sensitivity, empathy, and compassion are feminine and girly and that we should strive to be more aggressive, powerful and dominating. Media is turning people into parts of a whole, and is teaching people to be ashamed of their deemed masculine or feminine attributes.

The Persuaders

1. Advertising is best done when it can become a part of culture

2. Narrow-casting creates specific niches for consumers to relate to

3. Ads have begun to become integrated in movies and magazine articles.

4. Advertising attempts to hit our reptilian hot button, and attack our unconscious. Scary!

5. Cheese is dead in the USA

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the first few chapters of Ad Nauseum. In many ways, it summarizes and expands a lot of what we have been talking about throughout the course of this class. If the book wasn't so horrifying and potentially disastrous, it could be very comical. Advertising has truly cemented itself as a significant part of culture and life. It is almost unavoidable. The Chapter, "Dying a Slow Brain Death" discusses this, and its harmful consumption-driving mentality that it perpetuates. Advertisers want to surround us with things to consume, so that it is unavoidable. This correlates with what the film The Persuaders highlights, which talks about the inner-workings of ad agencies and how they want to enclose us in a advertising and consumption culture. I feel that most people shrug off advertising as stupid, saying "well people are stupid, but it doesn't affect me." The more I think about it, the more I truly believe that it HAS to affect all of us, no matter how perceptive or oblivious one is to their consumer messages. Advertising feeds off of the notions that we think we are above it, when really the power is being shifted towards an ad and consumption culture. I was also reminded of Consuming Kids while reading the first few chapters. Kids that are brought up in this free-for-all world (which includes my generation) are the greatest victims to consumption culture and advertising. They don't ahve a choice; it is cemented in culture. It is sad :(

I also found the chapter "I'm with the Brand" and also "Disneymaniacs" both interesting and disturbing. This brand loyalty can really cloud the way people decide to consume. People, for example, can completely prefer Geico, simply because it is hipper and funnier in its advertising campaign than say, Allstate or StateFarm. Older folks might lean towards these companies which seem more responsible and wise in their ads. And Progressive might be for the type A internet-savvy people who connect more with their insurance. These companies hardly offer better rates or are better to deal with; in the end, they are corporations sucking on society's wallets for a good profit margin. Also, it seems crazy that people become so crazed about, for example, Ariel from The Little Mermaid. People are crazy.

Class #2: Brave New World?

To receive full credit, this blog assignment must be posted by Monday night, February 1st at midnight. If you post late, please email me your post directly at sdebross@uvm.edu as soon as you are able, and I'll give you partial credit.

Please read Clive Thompson's September 5, 2008 New York Times article "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy," and then, at this thread below, answer the following questions:

1. IYOW, identify the thesis of Thompson's article, in one sentence.

2. What does Thompson mean by the phrase "ambient awareness?" Explain, and provide 1 example from your own life.

3. Describe TWO observations Thompson makes with which you agree, and TWO observations Thompson makes with which you disagree. Be clear and specific.

1. Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are recreating the way that people communicate with each other, and personal contact and connection is suffering as a result.

2. Ambient awareness is a phenomenon that Facebook and Twitter induce. People become aware of things peripherally via their Twitter and Facebook updates. No longer do they have to keep up with people; the information comes to them. Because of facebook update feeds and instant Twitter posts, people have access to a lot of people's daily routines, ideas, and musings. While it is certainly useful in the efficiency and ease of learning of others' updates, it detracts from tangible real contact. I have somewhat rebelled against being hyperconnected to friends on Facebook or religiously checking Twitter posts, but it does seep into culture and the world around me. People, I feel like, now almost expect others to join in updating statuses and whatnot, such that if someone were to not do that, they are seen as inactive and not "with it."

3. I agree with a lot of what the author has to say. His writing takes on a tone of forewarning, saying that we should probably pay more attention to how these networking sites devalue certain other aspects of life. I agree when Thompson questions whether having online "friends" is truly a mark of how popular or rich in friends you are. Most of my Facebook "friends" are acquaintances--people who I knew from high school or simply random people that I've met throughout the years. I have only friended true friends or family members; somehow Im not utterly fascinated with what Joe from summer camp in sixth grade is doing. It's just silly to me.

I also agree with what he says about becoming emotionally shallow when you are constantly checking and passing judgments based on Twitter or Facebook updates. It can cause people to jump to conclusions and interact things through a computer screen. This can definitely detract from real social conversation and connection. I don't even like looking at Facebook because I find myself making judgments of people off of snip-its or drunken photos; it really doesn't paint a picture of the depth of personality that people have.

I find it tough to disagree with persuasive articles that spread awareness of the impacts and possible dangers that social networking sites can birng. I think I agree with his overall message and appreciate the insight more so than anything. There are a few things, when taken out of context, are things that I disagree with, but his piece overall builds on his thesis, which I do agree with. Anyway, having said that, I disagree with when he says that Facebook and Twitter help know one's self better. It can for some create the illusion of expanding your personality and creating a page that expresses who you are, but when it comes down to it, people need to be able to physically interact to know where you stand. Also, I have spent a lot of time alone in the backcountry and have developed my character and presence far more so than in front of a computer screen. Overall, great read.

a. IYOW, identify the thesis of Hodgkinson's article, in one sentence.

b. Describe TWO observations the author makes about Facebook with which you agree, and TWO observations he makes about Facebook with which you disagree. Be clear and specific.

Facebook

A. Facebook is taking over the world and we should be more cautious as to who we are putting our money towards and be more mindful of how we truly connect and what truly makes us happy.

B. I agree that facebook has a way of creating this alternate reality of connection, one that is unbounded and in cyberspace. This separate internet community claims that they are connecting us to each other, when really they are marginalizing us and our way of socializing. We truly are social beings and we are putting all of this social energy into a webpage, rather than towards actually socializing with real people. I also agree and am somewhat frightened by the author talking about Facebook's privacy policy (or lack there of) and how it is a cesspool for advertisers and the CIA to "steal" our most personal information. The fact that ads are personalized towards our interests is also a scary thing to wrap my mind around.