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Michelle BrownProfessor Logan MickelENG 1010 30 October 2012“The Effects of Media and Technology on Society”Media and technology can affect people in many ways. It is part of everything we do and is everywhere we go. They connect us with each other through the internet, cell phones, and other means. This is how people know what the latest trends are, how they stay informed about the world around us, and much more. The wealth of information available through media and technology helps to increase our intelligence and knowledge. If we include these things in our daily lives it will help us gain greater knowledge.?Some people see these things as a bad influence in our lives. There is good that comes from media and technology they just have to know where to look. Some of these things were created as a way to stay connected with each other, but it become more than that. It has been used as a means for revolution but not everybody agrees that it can be used as a tool for revolution. Sometimes they can become so intertwined in our lives that they become like an addiction.?It is almost as if there are no limits on how media and technology can influence our lives. There are many things people believe that can help us gain a greater knowledge. If we include things that interest us and look at them at the academic level we can learn to love the educational things. If people watch the certain TV shows their brain can develop cognitively. Some say that we should be watching TV because we want to and not for any other reason. In order for us to be able to learn something new or advance with something we have to know the basics. In Gerald Graff’s, article “Hidden Intellectualism” he says if teachers have students write about topics, interest, and hobbies that they like, the students will eventually come to love writing not just about topics they enjoy, but about more educational things.He tells about when he was younger he was “torn between the need to prove I was smart and the fear of beating if I proved it too well; between the need not to jeopardize my respectable future and the need to impress the hoods,” (Graff, 382). Because of where he grew up he started to be more torn to impress the hoods with his street smarts, and tried all he could to hide the fact that he was actually smart. With all the discussions he had with his friends about sports he began to realize he was becoming more intellectually smart as well street smart. What he was learning he was doing was, “how to make an argument, weigh different kinds of evidence, move between particulars, generalizations, and summarizations,” (Graff, 383). Street smarts are becoming more important than book smarts because they “satisfy an intellectual thirst,” (Graff, 384). The reason they are satisfying intellectual thirst is because they can be full of debates, arguments, problems to analyze, and much more.Teachers can have students write about topics that interest them and they will write it better than having to write about Shakespeare. Granted writing about a topic that is interesting, somebody will put more attention and care more about but that does not matter. What matters is, “not simply to exploit students’ nonacademic interests, but to get them to see those interests through academic eyes,” (Graff, 385). After students have been writing about the things the love for a time period, the will come to enjoy and find it easier to write about papers that are more educational. In Steven Johnson, article “Watching TV Makes You Smarter” claims that by watching certain TV shows someone can become smarter. The shows that somebody would have to watch in order for this to happen would be shows like 24 or the ER. This is because those shows are more in-depth, there are more characters, and the story plot line makes people think more. More connections are being made from the previous episodes to the recent ones. Making these types of connections is what Johnson calls the Sleeper Curve. This says that the human brain loves sensations more than just having to do with love and sex. They also love to be challenged by solving problems, puzzles, crimes, etc. Having to make these connections enhances or cognitive abilities. As time has gone by TV shows are becoming more complex, this makes it so everything is not revealed all at once. In the past there were flashing arrows that would tell the viewer what is coming up next. Now the producers of TV shows tend to keep their viewers on the edge of their seat; making them want to watch more and want to find out what happens next. Even the reality TV shows and the game shows are shows are making people think on their feet. In his article he shows four different plot lines to show that the shows on TV are actually becoming more complex with more characters, this is called multi-threading. Before the show Hills Street Blues came along those who watched TV could not take the complex TV shows. When Hill Street Blues came out “January 1981, it brought complaints from viewers that the show was two complicated,” (283). In two of his graphs he compared Hills Street Blues and The Sopranos and they were identical but, the big difference was the episodes that were being represented were different. The Hills Street Blues was on episode 85 and The Sopranos was on episode 8. In the twenty years that separates these shows, other TV shows were building TV viewers up to this point. No “Multi-threading is the most celebrated structural feature of the modern television drama,” (284).Dana Stevens, author of “Thinking Outside the Idiot Box” disagrees with Johnson. She says that it is not possible for TV viewers to become smarter by watching complex TV shows. There are things that Stevens bring up that can challenge Johnson’s article. She brings up the fact that he did not point out that there are sixteen minutes of commercials during the show. There are bad things that come from 24 like the, “representation of Muslim terrorists or its implicit endorsement of torture,” (296). While watching shows like this is supposed to help cognitive development, “its actively discouraging them from thinking too much about the vigilante ethic it portrays,” (296).Although she is against Johnson, she is also against those who are part of the anti-TV group. She talks about National TV Turn off Week and how TV has an “endumdening effect of television viewing,” (297). Having a remote control that can turn off most TVs from 20 to 50 feet away (TV-B-gone) is all about social control. Why is a football game okay to turn off and not a nature show about leopards? The big question she asks is “Who decides?” (297) We should not be watching TV shows because it makes us “smarter,” we should be watching them because we want to watch them. People think that cell phones can be another way of improving or intelligence. People all over the world use their cell phone to text. People think that texting is ruing the English language, and causing teenagers to be corrupt. They also have come to believe that texting is the only thing they use. They believe this because stories such as this: “in 2003 a teenager had written an essay so full of text speak that her teacher was unable to understand it,” (Crystal, 338).In David Crystal’s article, “2b or Not 2B”, he argued against that and said that, in order for somebody to be able to text we have to be able to know the English language and the abbreviations. Someone cannot simple join a texting conversation and make up their own abbreviations for words; nobody will be able to understand them. One of the first abbreviations dates back to 1618, it was the IOU. Then in 1711, “Joseph Addison complained about the way words were being used… he mentioned pos (itive) and incog (nito),” (Crystal, 339). When the phone was first invented nobody ever took into consideration what letters get used the most. For example, key 7 has the letters pqrs, “the letter s is one of the most frequently occurring letters in English, it takes four key presses to get to the letter s,” (Crystal, 340).SMS abbreviations came about long before texting started; about 50 years. There was also Christmas word puzzles such as: “YY U R YY U B I C U R YY 4 ME,” (Crystal, 338). Some of the single letters abbreviations and symbols started in internet chatrooms. Texting and the use of abbreviations have developed into a new way to present them. Many poets and writers use text abbreviations to tell their stories. There is an author, Yoshi, he wrote a text-messaging novel called Deep Love. There is a book called The Last Message and it is 332 pages of nothing but SMS messages. Peter Sansom, a judge for poetry, said that reading this type of work “is an urgent business . . . with a text poem you stay focused as it were in the now of arriving line,” (Crystal, 343). Text messages can be used to solve crimes. This was the case with Stuart Campbell. He murders his 15 year old niece after his alibi was disproven. He showed certain text messages that his niece sent to show that he was innocent. After having a professional look over her text messages and compares her old messages to these one, it was found out that Stuart forged the text messages. In a five year research experiment, at Coventry University, researchers founded out that texting is not harmful. What they did find out was that the more abbreviations somebody uses equals higher test scores. In order for somebody to use abbreviations they first have to know the English language and know what abbreviations go with each word. This proves that the English language is not declining but is evolving.There are many different types of shows on TV. Some of them are good for us to watch and some of them are not good for us to be watching. Even though some TV shows are bad for us people still watch them. The viewer may be able to see past the bad things and find the good things in those TV shows. Antonia Peacocke, author of” Family Guy and Freud: Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious,” her main point is that Family Guy is not a bad show nor is it a good show. If somebody was to watch one episode of Family Guy somebody would be turned away because it is so offensive. She says this show makes more gags about race, sex incest, bestiality, etc. then any other show out there. What the viewers do not see is that it is just satirizes American culture. Through Family Guy this show, shows how much Americans are willing to follow every move of celebrities. “It must be said too that not all of Family Guy’s humor could be construed as offensive. Some of its jokes are tame and insightful, (Peacocke 306). She refers the reader to the instructional video in the episode “I Am Peter, hear Me Roar.” She uses the scene where there is an office full of women working and there is a businessman that is talking about how all the women need is for a guy to tell them they are pretty and they will be happy. People should not be laughing at this kind of humor; they should be ashamed that they are laughing at something so terrible. It has also gotten to the point where a celebrity (Carol Brunnet), has sued the show because of the parody they were making towards her show. Since there are so many things that can be easily misunderstood, Seth McFarlane says, “to ensure that the easily misunderstood show doesn’t fall into the hands of those too young to understand it, Fox will not license Family Guy rights to any products intended for Children under the age fourteen (Elliot),” (Peacocke, 307). Because this show has many things that can be offensive and misunderstood people have to whether or not they want to watch it. They also have to decide for themselves what is funny and what is not funny. In the article, “The Good the bad and the Daily Show,” Jason Zinser makes the claim about The Daily Show, as Peacocke does about the Family Guy. He says that The Daily Show is neither all bad nor all good; it has a little bit of good qualities and a little bit of bad qualities. The good qualities include that is let’s people stay informed about the world, no matter how it is being presented. It draws people in who would not normally be attentive to actual news shows. Those who watch this show stay more informed about foreign affairs then those who would watch actual news programs. Two bad qualities of this show are deception and dilution. The deception is when “the show is “unburdened by objectivity,” and yet “informs” large swaths of America about foreign and national news events,” (Zinser, 366). All though this show tries to stay away from deceiving its audience, there is room for interpretation. The viewer has to be able to decide if the news that is being presented is fact or fake. The way the show is presented is done in a humor way and jokes about the news. There are two main ways the show is diluted. The first is that the “fake” news as well as many other forms of media, there is quantity but not quality. The second way “the more popular “fake” news programs become, the more likely traditional media will continue to follow suit, softening hard news with mere mixed entertainment,” (369). Twitter and Facebook (and other social media websites) were created for people to stay connected with each other, whether it is across the country or across the world. People think that Twitter and Facebook say this is start of a new way for revolutions to happen. There is also people who say that it cannot bring on a revolution.Dennis Baron wrote the article, “Reforming Egypt in 140 Characters,” he says that revolution can happen through Twitter and Facebook. This can happen because of what happened in Egypt and many other totalitarian states around the world. For Twitter to have only started out as a way to “tell your friends what you had for breakfast,” (Baron, 329), it has definitely helped. Think of all the other times when Twitter was need, like in Tiananmen Square. Only a few people had access to the internet; and a few of them had twitter accounts in the country. The word got out because “American can’t seem to survive without the constant stimulus of digital multitasking,” (Baron, 330). If this did not happen Hosni Mubarak would still be in the presidential palace. Even before Twitter and Facebook there was the telephone and the printing press which were also a quick way to get the word out. Even though these things can be used for revolution, there will be somebody to stop it. In Egypt’s case it was the government shutting down the internet. If all ways off communication were to be shut down in some form, “there’s always sneakernet to get the message out,” (Baron, 333). However, Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” disagrees with Baron. He says that social media is not a way for revolutions to start. Social media is powerful but has weak connections and when there are strong connections, it does no good. Facebook, Twitter, and others websites are a way to build networks. These networks are controlled and done through more than just one ruler. The ties that bind people together are week. One example he used throughout his article was the Sit-in’s that happened back in the 1960s. At first there were a few people sitting in at restaurants in North Carolina, but eventually more people were doing the sit-ins all over. These sit-ins did not happen by a tweet or a status update, they happened through word of mouth, and that is what made them so powerful.Twitter and Facebook cannot start big social revolutions, “the only way you can get someone you don’t really know to do something on your behalf is by not asking too much of them,” (Gladwell, 320). This is the case for Sameer Bhatia who got leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. Bhatia needed a match but could not find one. One of his business partners, sent out e-mails explaining Bhatia’s problem to four hundred of their friends. Then those friends posted on Facebook and tweeted and tried to get as many people as they could to help out. In the end almost twenty-five thousand new people were registered in the bone-marrow database, and Bhatia found a match. There are attributes in the movies, the video games, and the internet that keep people going back for more. What makes some of these things so addicting? In the article “Extra Lives” Tom Bissell talks about how he got hooked on video games; he got hooked because of how intriguing and appealing they are. On November 4, 2008 two things happened that day. The first one is Fallout 3, a video game, came out. The second one was the historic moment when the United States elected its first black president. Bissell bought the game and how he had a couple hours to play before the historic moment. He allowed himself to play for three hours tops, but instead he played it for seven hours straight; and missed the historic event.Fallout 3 and other video games have good aspects that draw the gamer in and some that turn a gamer away. For instance the game Fallout 3’s good aspects are visual enhancements; like this example Bissell described “as I turned to bash the brainpan of a radioactive ghoul, noticed the playful, lifelike way in which the high-noon sunlight streaked along the grain of my sledgehammer’s wooden handle,” (Bissell, 355) When a video game does not flow a strict story line and allows them to go on their own adventures; it is also a plus. Some of the bad aspects of the game are: the terrible dialogue, the repetitious story line, and how Bissell could over look them because, he “came to accept that games were generally incompetent with almost every aspect of what I would call traditional narrative,” (Bissell, 358).When comparing a video game to a movie they are almost the same. The only difference is that movies have plot lines that have already been made up, but in video games somebody gets to decided what happens next. Bissell does not think that video games are better or worse than novels or movies. What he cares about is “what video games can do and how they make him feel while they are doing it,” (360).These articles have many different comparison and some articles can tie into the same topics that have already been discussed. There is more than just good in bad in certain TV shows there is also good and bad in all things. In Stevens article does not side with whether or not you watch a lot of TV but she does not side with people who do not watch it at all. Baron also goes along with this. There can be revolution through Twitter, but when there is one side trying to fight what they believe there is always a side that is going to crush the revolution. By adding the students favorite topics into writing papers it will help, but only if it is done through academic eyes. Graff says that by not doing this you are not trying to help and improve the students learning abilities. Graff ties into this section because if teachers were to have student write papers about what they like, the students can go and just write them. The students have to be taught in order for it to work (or be good) it has to be done through the academic eyes. Stevens’ article can compare to this two because she says that somebody can’t watch TV to make them smarter and they can’t avoid watching it. She also says that we have to choose why we watch TV. Just like Peacocke she says when somebody watches TV they have to decide for themselves at what point something is not funny anymore. Instead of deciding at what point something is not funny anymore, Zinser said when watching The Daily Show people have to decide what fake news is or what real news is. We also cannot sensor what reality is. With Steven we have the TV-B-Gone. You can just take away something from somebody because you do not like it. So turning of a TV show falls into that same category, because you do not want to watch it. With Family Guy there are many terrible jokes about our culture that are actually true, they maybe stretch very thin, but they are true. No matter how hard somebody tries to bring forth a revolution there is going to be the higher power that will try and shut it down. But there are always going to be somebody that will find a way past that. Johnson’s article can compare to Bissell’s because the thicker plot lines and the more depth the TV show goes the more somebody gets addicted to it. This makes them want to know what is going to happen next. Even though Bissell says that TV and books already have a written ending; it is kind of like being in a video game, there are surprises around every corner or in this case, every episode. Nobody watching the TV shows knows where the show is headed, and neither does a player in a video game. Graff’s article can tie into this section because if a teacher had a student hooked on one subject that they love it would be in their best interest to use that so the student can learn more. If the students learn more through what they love they will come to love more educational things as well. As you can see there are many different ways that media and technology affect society. There are many things that can affect our intelligence. If we include those things which we love and look through the academic eyes you can see that they can make us come to love more educational things. When we watch TV our brains have to make more connections, and recall many things that have happened in previous episodes and this will enhance our cognitive abilities. As Stevens says, we have to watch TV because we want to watch it not because it makes us smarter. Before you just jump into something you have to know the basics; that is the same with texting. Everybody always thought that texting is ruining our language, but texting can help improve it. There is good and bad in all things. With the TV show Family Guy the viewer has to pick out what is funny and what is crude. There is a meaning under all of the crudeness that viewers do not always realize. Those who watch The Daily Show have to be able to pick out what is real news and what is fake news. It does let people know who would not normally watch a news program what is happening in the world, but it does this through deception and dilution. Twitter and Facebook can also bring good and bad through revolution. Gladwell says that we cannot have revolution through twitter and Facebook because people do not have as strong ties and that can only bring forth little things. But as Baron says it can bring forth revolution, but the bad with it is that the government can shut down the internet if a revolution is going to happen. Video games can be very intriguing and appealing but there are many down sides to video games. They may let player go on different adventurous then what the story line is and have great visual enhancements, but the story line may be very repetitious and have terrible dialogue. All though there are only a few articles about this topic we can start to get a brief understanding of what people think. There are many other things that can influence that we have not even touched such as, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram. In order for anybody to really understand how these influence us we would have to do more investigation. The best place to get that information would be to go directly to those who use certain media and technology on a day to day basis. Also if we had more articles with different perspectives, we would be able to see what the other side thinks. After doing this we as individuals can choose for ourselves what works for us, because what works for one person may not work for another. Cited WorksJohnson, Steven. “Watching TV Makes You Smarter,” They Say I Say. Eds. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2012. 277-298. Print.Peacocke, Antonia. “Family Guy and Freud: Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious,” They Say I Say. Eds. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2012. 299-311. Print.Gladwell, Malcom. “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” They Say I Say. Eds. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2012. 312-328. Print.Baron, Dennis. “Reforming Egypt in 140 Characters,” They Say I Say. Eds. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2012. 329-334. Print.Crystal, David. “2b or Not 2b?,” They Say I Say. Eds. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2012. 335-348-. Print.Bissell, Tom. “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter,” They Say I Say. Eds. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2012. 349-362. Print.Zinser, Jason. “The Good, the Bad, and The Daily Show,” They Say I Say. Eds. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2012. 363-379. Print.Graff, Gerald. “Hidden Intellectualism,” They Say I Say. Eds. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Russel Durst. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company 2012. 380-387. Print. ................
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