For the group project in which we had to make a video, my group decided to ask people what they would change about themselves. In North American society today, people are more obsessed with perfection than ever before. We wanted to find out what people really want to change about themselves. For example, does everyone want to change physical traits, mental traits like procrastination or anything else.
We videotaped thirteen people around residence. Their ages ranged from 18 to 40 years old. The answers we got were:
-smaller feet
-no love handles
-wanting to be younger
-wanting to be taller
-not procrastinate as often
There were other answers but these were the most significant. Only a couple people said they were content with how they are and a couple people tried to think of something but couldn't so they said "I don't know".
We videotaped all the people who gave answers but unfortunately we had some technical difficulties loading them onto our computers so we can't post the video on here.
I asked a few people the question and helped in brainstorming ideas for one question we could ask. I learned that although many people seem content with who they are, many would like to change certain aspects about themselves. Not all of these things are superficial but many of them are. Our North American society has certain values in place, like looking beautiful, that everyone tries to follow.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Podcasting in the City
Script:
Kevin: Welcome to the tour of the TTC, the subway addition
Kyle: TTC stands for Toronto Transit Commission and its been running since 1925 beginning with trains, but the subway itself was built form 1949 to 1954
Katie: The Yonge Street line was the first subway in Canada, but it only came into commission was in 1964!
Kyle: And, it was the beginning of postwar Toronto's effort to accommodate the demands of the city's prosperity and its future.(Subway chime)
Kevin: What you just heard was the sound that prepared the passengers that the doors are about to close.
Kyle: So here we are on the subway riding south towards Union Station.
Katie: The Yonge line has 16 spot going from Finch Ave. all the way to Union Station in down town Toronto.
Kevin: There are 3 different lines so it is possible to get any where in Toronto. And they are currently planning on extended the Yonge line into York Region, by York University and into the city of Vaughn.
Katie: So while we’re on our subway ride, we’ll give you a few tips about the subway and some other stuff.
Kyle: Here’s an interesting fact, the subway has had over 25 billion riders since 1921.
Kevin: That’s almost 4 times the world’s population.
Kyle: So we started at the Finch station and now are at Bloor and Yonge. This is the station where you can switch subway lines if you need to go east to west when going north to south.
Kevin: But since we’re doing our tour from Finch Station to Union Station we are continuing on this subway.
Katie: Oh look at that guy over there, he’s playing a violin!
Kyle: Yeah, they’re called buskers.
Kevin: In 1980, the TTC began a program called Subway Musicians Programme.
Kyle: The TTC allows musicians to audition and the ones who make it can perform in the subway entrance and as people walk by they throw change into their instrument case.
Katie: Oh cool!
Kevin: Yup, there are a lot of cool things that happen in the subway. It’s not just a way of transportation.
Kyle: Well there’s not much more to say on this tour.
Katie: Yeah the only thing left to do is enjoy the ride.
Our group decided to do a podcast about the subway in Toronto. Thousands of people use the subway here everyday but don't know the history of it. A lot of tours are done of museums in Toronto and other places like the Hockey Hall of Fame but there are never any of the subway so this is unique.
Each of us looked up information on the Internet about the history of the TTC and put it all together in the form of a script which we recorded then pod casted.
I learned a lot from this project because I had never known how to do a podcast. This could help me in my future if I ever do a podcast for another class because it is a really good way to get information out to mass audiences.
Kevin: Welcome to the tour of the TTC, the subway addition
Kyle: TTC stands for Toronto Transit Commission and its been running since 1925 beginning with trains, but the subway itself was built form 1949 to 1954
Katie: The Yonge Street line was the first subway in Canada, but it only came into commission was in 1964!
Kyle: And, it was the beginning of postwar Toronto's effort to accommodate the demands of the city's prosperity and its future.(Subway chime)
Kevin: What you just heard was the sound that prepared the passengers that the doors are about to close.
Kyle: So here we are on the subway riding south towards Union Station.
Katie: The Yonge line has 16 spot going from Finch Ave. all the way to Union Station in down town Toronto.
Kevin: There are 3 different lines so it is possible to get any where in Toronto. And they are currently planning on extended the Yonge line into York Region, by York University and into the city of Vaughn.
Katie: So while we’re on our subway ride, we’ll give you a few tips about the subway and some other stuff.
Kyle: Here’s an interesting fact, the subway has had over 25 billion riders since 1921.
Kevin: That’s almost 4 times the world’s population.
Kyle: So we started at the Finch station and now are at Bloor and Yonge. This is the station where you can switch subway lines if you need to go east to west when going north to south.
Kevin: But since we’re doing our tour from Finch Station to Union Station we are continuing on this subway.
Katie: Oh look at that guy over there, he’s playing a violin!
Kyle: Yeah, they’re called buskers.
Kevin: In 1980, the TTC began a program called Subway Musicians Programme.
Kyle: The TTC allows musicians to audition and the ones who make it can perform in the subway entrance and as people walk by they throw change into their instrument case.
Katie: Oh cool!
Kevin: Yup, there are a lot of cool things that happen in the subway. It’s not just a way of transportation.
Kyle: Well there’s not much more to say on this tour.
Katie: Yeah the only thing left to do is enjoy the ride.
Our group decided to do a podcast about the subway in Toronto. Thousands of people use the subway here everyday but don't know the history of it. A lot of tours are done of museums in Toronto and other places like the Hockey Hall of Fame but there are never any of the subway so this is unique.
Each of us looked up information on the Internet about the history of the TTC and put it all together in the form of a script which we recorded then pod casted.
I learned a lot from this project because I had never known how to do a podcast. This could help me in my future if I ever do a podcast for another class because it is a really good way to get information out to mass audiences.
Ways of Seeing
This book is written by John Berger. It depicts different ways we look at pictures and images and what thoughts consume our mind as we look at them.
One quote I found really interesting was "We accept it in so far as it corresponds to our observation of people, gestures, faces, institutions. This is possible because we still live in a society of comparable social relations and moral values." I found this interesting because I notice this in everyday things, not just pictures. People often see other people and judge them according to society's moral values and norms. When one sees a man or woman with torn clothing or inexpensive clothing, or often someone shopping at Value Village they assume that person is poor or homeless. Sometimes people believe in certain ideals a lot stronger than other people, society doesn't deem them "normal". There is a man in my hometown, Sarnia, who strongly believes in God and is often found preaching to people on the streets about going to church. Many people avoid him or laugh at him because he's different.
Although I could really connect with that part of the book, I found the rest of it really hard to understand. I found the book to be really wordy. I found chapters hard to follow and didn't really know where the book was going. There were a lot of words that I didn't understand as well and found myself picking up a dictionary at least five or six time per page.
Overall it was a good book and the parts of it i understood were interesting.
One quote I found really interesting was "We accept it in so far as it corresponds to our observation of people, gestures, faces, institutions. This is possible because we still live in a society of comparable social relations and moral values." I found this interesting because I notice this in everyday things, not just pictures. People often see other people and judge them according to society's moral values and norms. When one sees a man or woman with torn clothing or inexpensive clothing, or often someone shopping at Value Village they assume that person is poor or homeless. Sometimes people believe in certain ideals a lot stronger than other people, society doesn't deem them "normal". There is a man in my hometown, Sarnia, who strongly believes in God and is often found preaching to people on the streets about going to church. Many people avoid him or laugh at him because he's different.
Although I could really connect with that part of the book, I found the rest of it really hard to understand. I found the book to be really wordy. I found chapters hard to follow and didn't really know where the book was going. There were a lot of words that I didn't understand as well and found myself picking up a dictionary at least five or six time per page.
Overall it was a good book and the parts of it i understood were interesting.
We the Media
The main message of this book is that big media corporations are basically taking over. It is informing the reader that these big corporations are taking over all the smaller ones. There are also advertisements everywhere keeping us on top of the materialistic world.
There was one article in the book that I really liked because it talked about this directly. It is called Moving Beyond the American Dream by Sut Jhally. Jhally talks about how citizens of the United States follow the American dream and that the reason why we follow it is because it has a massive presence in popular culture. Jhally goes on to say that the success we are encouraged to strive for is always linked to the acquisition of goods. All of this is fueled by the most influential cultural industry in the United States: advertising.
Advertisements are everywhere we look. We are advertisements ourselves. Brand names and logos are displayed on the clothing we wear and we are constantly bombarded with ads on television, radio and billboards. It is getting outrageous as to how much companies are willing to pay to get a commercial on TV. One minute of air time during the Super Bowl cost $2.4 million (We the Media, 40).
This is ridiculous. We, as a North American society can barely make our own decisions anymore because commercialism has such a big influence on us.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
A Timeline of Social/Media/History
For this project our group decided to observe four key technological inventions: language, the alphabet, the printing press and the typewriter. We chose these because without them, no other technologies could have ever been created. In this project I helped my group decide which inventions contributed to our society the most and provoked further inventions. I came up with the invention of the typewriter. Without the typewriter, the computer wouldn't have been invented and there would be no Internet. Without the Internet we would all still be getting information from books and it may be a lot harder to come by.
I learned a lot from doing this project. I realized that I wouldn't be sitting here typing right now if these four inventions had never been thought up. I would still have a pencil and paper, maybe even a feather. It's really weird to think about how everything we have now came from an earlier invention that if was never created, would leave us thousands of years in the past.
I learned a lot from doing this project. I realized that I wouldn't be sitting here typing right now if these four inventions had never been thought up. I would still have a pencil and paper, maybe even a feather. It's really weird to think about how everything we have now came from an earlier invention that if was never created, would leave us thousands of years in the past.
The ecology of media was defined by Marshall McLuhan in 1977 as a "means of arranging various media to help each other so they won't cancel each other out, to buttress one medium to another. You might also say, for example, that radio is a bigger help to literacy than television, but television might be a very wonderful aid to teaching languages. And so you can do things on some media that you cannot do on others. And, therefore, if you watch the whole field, you can prevent this waste that comes by one cancelling the other out."
Media ecology looks at how media of communication affects human perception, understanding, feeling and value. It also looks at how our interaction with media affects our chance of survival.
Language/Speech (50,000 yrs ago) - Language was probably one of the most useful invention of all time. Language or speech was so important because this is when human could effectively communicate the way we can still communicate today using words and sounds. Humans no longer had to draw pictures or grunt or act out what they were trying to communicate, they were able to use words. Although it may not be the same kinds of languages we use today, without this we my have never become so intelligible to actually speak.
The alphabet (over 4000 yrs ago) - from the alphabet came the invention of spelling and grammar which eventually turned into books etc. The alphabet has made it easier for humans to learn and read about new information and effectively communicate with each other through reading and writing.
The Printing Press (1430’s) - the printing press gave humans the ability to mass produce books and newspapers not only once but millions of times. The printing press has given most people the privilege of books and learning how to read. The world has become a lot more educated and informed because books, newspapers and magazines can be ass produced.
Typewriter (1886) - Books no longer had to be hand written when the typewriter was invented. The typewriter allowed work to be completed a lot faster then before. It also provoked inventors to later invent the computer etc.
"Media Ecology". Wikipedia.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Shock Commercialism
I have seen lots of commercials that aim to stop people from smoking or to be careful when at work to avoid accidents, but two commercials I recently saw take these to a whole new level. They use shocking images to scare the viewer into quitting smoking and preventing workplace accidents. The smoking commercial shows surgeons over a dead body and they are removing the lungs. The lungs are black and disgusting because of all the chemicals in the cigarettes. The viewer sees one of the surgeons cut open a lung. The surgeon then talks about how everybody who gets diagnosed with lung cancer always say the same thing, "I wish I had quit sooner."
The second commercial shows a female chef who says she is getting married and has a good chance of becoming head chef in a year. She then goes on to say that she won't be able to do either of those things because she is about to be in a terrible "accident". Then she picks up a pot of hot oil, slips on some grease and her face gets burned horribly. The viewer can see her face as it burns. The link for this video is http://youtube.com/watch?v=P1Z8xxWhh5k.
In the U.S. smoking causes 445 new cases of lung cancer every day (http://www.resolvequitsmoking.com/smokingstatistics.html). There are tons of commercials that try to keep consumers from buying and smoking cigarettes that don't use this shock value. There are even warnings on the labels of the packs of cigarettes. The world is becoming descenitized by these ads because we see so much of them, so we begin to care less and less. That statement is true about workplace incidents as well. It is estimated that 1.6 million accidents occur each year in the workplace (http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/EnvironmentalServices/HealthAndSafety/hs_accidentsintheworkplace.asp). A lot of people aren't getting these messages so we need to use this shocking material to get the message in the heads of the viewers. These shocking images will hopefully be more successful in getting people to stop smoking and in getting people to be more careful at work.
The second commercial shows a female chef who says she is getting married and has a good chance of becoming head chef in a year. She then goes on to say that she won't be able to do either of those things because she is about to be in a terrible "accident". Then she picks up a pot of hot oil, slips on some grease and her face gets burned horribly. The viewer can see her face as it burns. The link for this video is http://youtube.com/watch?v=P1Z8xxWhh5k.
In the U.S. smoking causes 445 new cases of lung cancer every day (http://www.resolvequitsmoking.com/smokingstatistics.html). There are tons of commercials that try to keep consumers from buying and smoking cigarettes that don't use this shock value. There are even warnings on the labels of the packs of cigarettes. The world is becoming descenitized by these ads because we see so much of them, so we begin to care less and less. That statement is true about workplace incidents as well. It is estimated that 1.6 million accidents occur each year in the workplace (http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/EnvironmentalServices/HealthAndSafety/hs_accidentsintheworkplace.asp). A lot of people aren't getting these messages so we need to use this shocking material to get the message in the heads of the viewers. These shocking images will hopefully be more successful in getting people to stop smoking and in getting people to be more careful at work.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Go Home Styrofoam
For the activist group project my group decided to address the issue of styrofoam containers in the cafeteria. Styrofoam is horrible for the environment. It can take up to 500 years to naturally decompose. To raise awareness we each made a large poster the size of a piece of bristol board. We placed these around the cafeteria in the residence building. They are meant to encourage people to either bring their own plates from their rooms or ask for a plate instead of styrofoam containers from the cafeteria. The people who work in the cafeteria never give you the option of using a plate over the containers you have to ask for it. Today I did see a few people in the cafeteria using plates rather than styrofoam containers and this shows that a few people can make a difference.
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