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Can You Hear Me Now?

The cell phone, such an invention has many uses; its first original function included helping you connect to the people you need to talk to, whenever, wherever. It's the advertisements that haunt us everyday that influence us to pick up our phone, and pay our dues, also known as monthly bills.

Can you hear me now? This trademark slogan is heard by millions of people around the world, and it does not occur to most of those people that the cell phone has taken over our lives. This advertisement has been on television approximately 100 times a day for the past three years, and Verizon Wireless has invested more than $50 billion since the company was formed to increase the coverage and capacity of its national network and to add new services. Verizon Wireless is currently serving 87.7 million customers, and with every advertisement their numbers increase.

Neil Postman once said, "Technology giveth and technology taketh away." Meaning that even though the cell phone has become an essential necessity for most of us, for every advantage it has, there are added disadvantages. But to most, it's all worth the cost in the end, and Verizon has one thing to say about that: "Good."

Works Cited

McAdam, Lowell. "Verizon Wireless Best Network in America." Welcome To Verizon Wireless. Web. 06 Oct. 2009. .

Postman, Neil. "Neil Postman: Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change." Departamento de Matem. Web. 06 Oct. 2009. .

Blogging

Blog Like You Mean It

It feels refreshing, it feels like I am being heard. To write a blog is simple, to write one for purpose is a completely different story. I believe that blogging reflects our unconscious, and what I mean by that is we speak our minds, without really knowing we're revealing much at all. It's a scary thought to most, but for me, it's refreshing.

The public judges people by their appearance, an audience judges blogs by their words. In those words you can describe yourself, someone else, a situation or event, but none the less you are putting your opinion on a billboard that anyone can click the link to. Such importance can show your strengths or your faults, and in writing you show yourself. What makes a good writer? What makes a good blogger? Myths are found in literature everyday, blogs are not about tricking people, but using the power of language to prove a point, to raise a discussion or a question."Even objects will become speech if they mean something"(Barthes 1).

Chuck Klosterman is familiar with the concept of questioning. In his book "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" he goes into intimate details of what makes us think, what makes us ask the hard stuff. Not once have I ever been afraid to say what I feel, but many times I have been afraid of what people think of my feelings. Klosterman is one of those people who isn't afraid to speak his mind. "Because when push comes to shove, we really don't want to have sex with our friends...unless they're sexy." (Klosterman 6). Blogs are an expression of ideas and mind games, the ideas are what provoke people to continue reading, and the games provoke them to ask why. I am now officially a public figure that is contributing to the public, and it feels good.

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. "Mythologies." Turk's head review. Web. 07 Oct. 2009. .

Klosterman, Chuck. Sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs a low culture manifesto. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.

Ecology of Media

Brainwashed

What in the world is that noise? That constant buzzing in our heads that never seems to cease, it is not our brains trying to think up our next blog, or our computer starting up. It is the buzz of the media world that is taking over every inch of space and thought in our lives.

The television has become a universal magnet to people all over the world. If someone does not own a television, it is rarely by choice. The thoughts and perceptive ideas of Marshall McLuhan give us an inside look into what the media is doing to us, or what some people may think, for us. I found myself trying to understand the concept of media becoming an entity of its own, and began contemplating whether it is something that is crucial to our society at large. Whether or not man can come to terms with the fact that technology is no longer a mythical future, it is our now, our present, was something that McLuhan had high hopes for. Cable and satellite television have taken over our world, and McLuhan also stated that the television developed the political sphere.

"TV is revolutionizing every political system in the Western world. For one thing, it's creating a totally new type of national leader, a man who is much more of a tribal chieftain than a politician."

It is everywhere, it is our dependence, and that is what I am personally scared of most. The fact that we rely on the television to help inform us of what is going on in the world around us, and in turn basically developing the easy way out. I agree with McLuhan that we have substantially lost course of our senses, hearing, seeing and touch.

"We live in a transitional era of profound pain and tragic identity quest, but the agony of our age is the labor pain of rebirth."

Television is what engages us in the real world and allows us to participate in our global environment, but the outlet to this source...is it so bad?

Or are we just brainwashed?

Works Cited

McLuhan, Marshall. "The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan." Folk.uio.no. Web. 06 Oct. 2009. .