Week 10 Media Blog Post

Topic 1:
                Everything looks so effortless: high-speed and trouble-free. In a world of progressing convenience there would certainly come a reliance on the tools giving you that immediate satisfaction. True, it would be quite splendid to have a refrigerator that was able to convey to you what was available for dinner considering all the ingredients you had at the time, or a phone that located destinations you were soon to be headed for if you were one not keen to directions. Certainly, efficiency would result as everything could be scheduled, arranged and communicated over the phone in an exceptionally short amount of time. However, the matter of privacy comes to mind. For such an interconnected system to run smoothly, information of the personal sort must be shared almost recklessly. The ages, pictures, preferences, schedules, and location would need to be unguarded as each individual took advantage of Microsoft’s organization – information which would be easy enough to access, whether the intent be for good or evil.

                If the world is indeed headed in such a direction, there are many implications sure to come as a result. The population would feel the repercussions in the jobs available – as a whole new system would wipe out those who were previously completing tasks manually. The unproblematic access to personal information would indubitably lead to detriment for the users, whether it ended up being theft or injury. The world would be a lazy place, the people unable to do anything for themselves – helpless, indolent, and addicted.

Topic 2:

                I absolutely adored the TED Talks and the occasionally documentary we watched. I liked that the class wasn’t just about lecture – we got to hear multiple points of view from many different sources. The “WWGD?” book was amazing, and I liked that class time was interactive and incorporated many group discussions. I think that the blog is a great idea – as it is tangible proof of what a student has done through a term, but I think that there could be more that a student accomplishes. Since this class is a more general overview of media, perhaps there could be a survey at the beginning of the term to find what facet of media most interests each student, and in addition to the blog, they also create something relevant to their favorite component of media. Perhaps by the end of the term each student could create their own music video, an advertisement, a YouTube channel, etc.

                I don’t think anything should be cut back necessarily. Personally I enjoyed the readings, quizzes, and projects and felt it was a good balance of all of them. I learned an abundance of information regarding various aspects of media and was overall very happy with the class.