Jump Around, Jump Around, Jump Up, Jump Up and Get Down

Today in mass communications we were all over the place. We discussed a lot of topics. Before I get into the topics I would just like to say that I really enjoyed the class because of this. If I have to listen to the same subject for hours I tend to lose my focus because I get bored.

The first thing we did was listen to a couple groups talk about their activist projects. This only reminded me that I am a little behind and that this weekend I need to put down the beer and get to work. One of the activist projects that I'm looking forward to attending is the "pink party". Not only is it on my floor, which means I won't have to walk far but there is free food. I'm not trying to take away from the real reason for the project, spreading awareness about breast cancer, but as a university student I'm pretty lazy and looking for free food wherever I can get it. After Mark cut them off we watched a short video about the book Toxic Sludge is Good for You. I haven't been able to read the book yet because I have been busy studying for mid-terms and finding free food but I plan on reading it in the next couple of days. Then I'm sure that video will have a greater impact on me.

There seemed to be a lot of questions about the semiotic analysis essay. The discussion that followed sparked a couple of ideas. Are there too many awards shows? There are two commercials that I thought of which I am thinking of analysing as well, both of which show how one group of people is inferior to the other.

We then watched a video about how technology, mostly the Internet, has been changing over the past ten years and how quickly it will change throughout the next seven. This was one of the most interesting short videos I had seen in a while because I am one of the billions of consumers who encourages this change in technology. Our society throughout the world is always looking for ways to get information faster and more efficiently. After the video was finished, Mark expanded on the point in the movie that there are computers which go through our blogs and other parts of the Internet and determine which news we want to hear about. This is not always good because although it may be the news we want to hear about, it is not always the news we need to hear about. Not to mention all the real people who will lose their jobs because of this. What is the world coming to when the news needs to be sorted by robots?