Days before I actually started the 24-hour dooms day, I began to note how much media was affecting daily lives. I spent my first weekend of spring break in New York City. It is nearly impossible to avoid media in this city. Whether it is the jumbo-screens in Times Square or the many discount electronics stores throughout the city, media surrounds everybody. This made me think of Susan Jacoby’s article, “The Dumbing of America” in which video is making society less intelligent. I joked to myself about how NYC is becoming dumber and illiterate without its consent. Because New York City is such a big and busy city, I decided to take my “pre-analysis” experiment home to Maryland. While at home, I began to seriously realize that the only way we are all really connected is by phone and internet. Once you are connected to your friends and you’re “hanging out” (either in a chat room or in person), the conversation almost always includes music, movies, television programs, or anything of the sort. So even if you do not have direct media interaction, it will almost always still affect your life. Doing this “pre-analysis” prepared me to complete my project. I was able to plan ahead and understand what I was about to get myself into. It was smart to plan ahead because I had a few activities lined up. Unlike the students who dreaded going in to this experiment in “The Longest Day,” I was excited, and saw it as a fun challenge. This, however, was before the day began. Even though 24 hours seems like a very short period to be deprived of media, in this day and age, it turns out to be a very long day.
The day is Wednesday, March 18, 2009, and I am currently deprived of electronic media. I started my day off waking up at 8:30 AM to go to a delicious breakfast at Denny’s. I set my buzzer alarm, but I didn’t need it because I woke up on my own. My first instinct was to check my cell phone for text messages and to look at the time. Luckily, I was smart and put my phone on my dresser the night before. When I was getting ready to leave, I felt naked without my phone in the right pocket of my jeans. My boyfriend, Jesse, and his mom came to pick me up, but the radio was off, because they knew I was doing the project. When we got inside Denny’s, I noticed a somewhat ominous background noise: the radio. That was the first thing I noticed. I just brushed it off because I figured any place I would have gone into would have had background noise. After Denny’s I found out the Jesse had to go to the doctor because he was having back spasms. I already had plans to hang out with people at noon, and I had no way to contact them about this issue. I decided to go home and meet with my friends so they weren’t lingering around aimlessly, wondering what was going on. I got home around 11:00 AM and took a nap. Around 12:15 PM, I was awoken by my dogs barking their brains out: my friends had arrived. At first we sat around and made some jokes about some pictures in The Washington Post, but eventually we head out to the woods. I am lucky enough to have a State Park behind my house, so we wandered around for about 2 hours. We then decided to head to the mall. Surprisingly, I did not come in contact with any media because I did not really enter any stores. When I got home, I remembered my dad needed the truck, so I had no way to contact Jesse to see how his appointment went and how he was doing. I already felt like an insensitive girlfriend for not going with him to the doctor, so I gave into the media and texted him. Of course he was feeling better. When my dad got home, I drove over to his house and sat with him at the television. Mission failed.
The day is Saturday, May 21, 2009, and I am currently deprived of electronic media. This day started out as much more successful. I woke up at 9:45 AM with no alarm and got ready to go to the rock climbing gym with my mom and brother. Once in the car, I reminded my mom about my project and asked her to turn off the radio. Once we got to the climbing gym, there were no electronic media devices present. We all talked and got caught up with personal events when we weren’t on the wall. For lunch, we went to this restaurant called BD’s Mongolian BBQ in Bethesda, MD. I scoped the room from my table and saw a television, and quickly switched to the seat facing the window. Luckily there was no volume. After a scrumptious lunch, my mom and I dropped my brother at the house and I went driving with my mom to learn how to drive a stick shift. After about an hour of practice, I was doing okay. When I was dropped off back at the house, I sat on the couch for about 10 minutes thinking about what I could do. I finally decided to get a head start on homework, even though every fiber of my being did not want to. I tried reading my Psychology text book and after about 15 pages, I put the book down, put my head on the pillow, and let out a heavy sigh. I was bored. I encouraged my brother to help me walk the dogs by telling him I would play Warhammer, a tabletop war game, with him. After about a 30 minute walk, my brother taught me how to play Warhammer. I kind of knew how to play by watching him play a little bit before. It is basically a dice game that’s less nerdy than Dungeons and Dragons. My brother created all the terrains and painted all the little figures, so it was neat to play with all homemade items. After we finished, the time was 6:30 PM. The phone rang. It was my dad asking us what we wanted from Subway. I told my brother my order so I wouldn’t directly be using the landline. After we ate, it was about 8:00 PM, and I did not know what to do. I drove by Jesse’s house and asked him if he wanted to go to the store. We ended up going to Safeway to get some toothpaste and deodorant for school. It is 8:45 PM and time is dragging on. This time I knew I could not give in to my boredom because I was already so close. “Just 3 more hours,” I thought. We drove back to Jesse’s and got out a board game. At first we played Monopoly, but that got boring very fast, so we switched to Clue. We got his brother and sister to join us and played for about 30 minutes. It was Professor Plum, with the wrench, in the Ballroom, and I was the victim. Only two more hours left. I got a sudden urge to bake, so we made a double layer yellow cake with chocolate icing. The first layer came out fine, but the second layer crumbled. I failed (It was still delicious!). Jesse’s mom runs a home daycare program so there was a plethora of coloring books. I haven’t colored since middle school. One hour left. I took a nap on the couch. Mission Accomplished.
This project was very difficult to complete. I learned that we are all connected by an invisible limb known as electronic media. It is much easier to sit mindlessly staring at a television than trying to finish a board game like monopoly. Just reliving the day through this essay made me realize how long that day actually was. After I failed the first day, it dawned on me how essential electronic communication is. It is the quickest way to get the information you desire. Our fast paced society requires fast responses. We as a society would become extremely frustrated if we did not have our cell phones and internet. This project would have been loads easier if I could have gone camping with all my friends and play kickball, roast marshmallows, and end the day with a sing-along on the guitar. Instead, it was a day filled with the anxiety of not knowing who wants to contact you and the boredom of trying to find something to do.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Blog # 3
Oral vs. Written Cultures
Our society today cannot be defined strictly as an oral or a written culture. Many times, the two go hand in hand. While we are a very heavily video-based society, videos do not usually simply pop out of nowhere. All of the hundreds of television shows, movies, documentaries, shorts and news reports (apparently out there in order to make people dumber) had to have a beginning: the script. With the huge, well-known writer’s strike, people had to suffer through terrible dialogue. This, however, made some people realize the importance of the true foundation of a video: the text. Script writers and playwrights spend their lives writing stories, tales, and scripts for other people, the actors, to read, comprehend and memorize. Then, after the actors have done their part of the deal, they convey the ideas of the text in their own manner, as their own defined character, to the normal citizen. Without the text of the script, the actor would not be able to be imaginative, creative, or innovative. Basically, without text, video would have no soul.
Videos have come to define the current culture. Whether it is the new Angelina Jolie movie or a funny YouTube clip, videos influence our conversations, which friends we choose, and what groups we are in. This can plainly be related to how books and novels used to influence past cultures. While some, probably old-fashioned or traditional, may believe that this mass eruption of video translation is condemning our country, others may understand that literacy is in fact changing into a different form.
Howard Gardner, a professor of cognitive psychology at Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote an article for The Washington Post, entitled “The End of Literacy? Don’t Stop Reading,” that explains how “literacy -- or an ensemble of literacies -- will continue to thrive, but in forms and formats we can't yet envision.” In my perspective, most people are accepting this inevitability with open arms. Our culture has created a unique community that intertwines a combination of written and oral literacy. With a new day and age come different minds that think, process, and invent things differently. With new ways of processing information come different outcomes. It’s not that we’re becoming dumber, per se; it’s that we, as a society, are adjusting to the new wave. Great examples that Gardner uses are his references to historical figures and events: Plato feared that a written culture would diminish the human memory and the first printing press scared religious people who wanted the word of God to be kept sacred. Today, the implication of video is acting as the written culture and the printing press, in this sense. Change is frightening, yet inevitable.
Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, also wrote an article for The Washington Post. This article, entitled “The Dumbing of America,” however, was on the different side of the spectrum. Jacoby believes that video is making America dumber. We seem to be falling in this realm of what she calls “anti-intellectualism” which has caused our attention spans to sharply decrease. It apparently also leads to an “erosion of knowledge.” What I feel Jacoby is overlooking is that fact that the culture of the 21st Century is much more high-paced than any other. Even though the reading statistics may be low, and people do not know where Iraq is, the culture is still smart in a literary sense; it is just processing different information. Ultimately, a person acquires the same information from watching an accurate history channel documentary as he would if he read a textbook. The decreasing of attention spans is due directly to the thirst of America for a higher quality of entertainment; it takes more than a simple string puppet show to keep our minds on track nowadays.
Back in the time where oral tradition began to diminish and writing began gaining precedence (a perfect era for Jacoby) people did not have PS3’s or Xbox 360’s to keep them occupied. Instead, they had the comfort of another man’s word and the intriguing, unknown, and introductory writing system. Writing in this period was seen as scholarly and extravagant and usually only nobility were able to write. However, the introduction of papyrus, as explained by Harold Innis in Communication in History, explains how writing became more accessible and available. More people began writing. The introduction of Papyrus in turn began the diminishment of writing. While this may seem like a farfetched, paradoxical, and extraneous statement, writing just made everything easier. This leads us to the situation we are experiencing today: convenience is a necessity and we need to get as much done in as little time as possible. Anything that has easy, fast, reliable, efficient, and/or convenient written all over it (figuratively speaking) would earn an A+ in any person’s grade book.
Means of communication have vastly changed over the past decade. Text messaging by phone, instant messaging, checking and writing emails and on facebook by internet are means that have come to dominate today’s culture. Is this really creating a culture enriched with dumbness? These types of video (according to Jacoby, video is “every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones”) are simply just the advancement of literacy. Take facebook, for instance. One can now send video messages to friends and family members that convey more than a simple letter. However, the written aspect has not diminished completely. We can still send and comprehend messages, advertisements, online articles, or any other sort of written language that information can be gathered from quickly and effectively. Our culture heavily relies on both written and oral aspects. While it is dependent on video feeds and television programs, any thing official (law documents, important invitations such as a wedding) is still processed in ink. Even though our reading rate has lowered, and we may seem dumber because we have a less developed vocabulary, we are still a striving culture, dependent on both written and oral aspects.
Our society today cannot be defined strictly as an oral or a written culture. Many times, the two go hand in hand. While we are a very heavily video-based society, videos do not usually simply pop out of nowhere. All of the hundreds of television shows, movies, documentaries, shorts and news reports (apparently out there in order to make people dumber) had to have a beginning: the script. With the huge, well-known writer’s strike, people had to suffer through terrible dialogue. This, however, made some people realize the importance of the true foundation of a video: the text. Script writers and playwrights spend their lives writing stories, tales, and scripts for other people, the actors, to read, comprehend and memorize. Then, after the actors have done their part of the deal, they convey the ideas of the text in their own manner, as their own defined character, to the normal citizen. Without the text of the script, the actor would not be able to be imaginative, creative, or innovative. Basically, without text, video would have no soul.
Videos have come to define the current culture. Whether it is the new Angelina Jolie movie or a funny YouTube clip, videos influence our conversations, which friends we choose, and what groups we are in. This can plainly be related to how books and novels used to influence past cultures. While some, probably old-fashioned or traditional, may believe that this mass eruption of video translation is condemning our country, others may understand that literacy is in fact changing into a different form.
Howard Gardner, a professor of cognitive psychology at Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote an article for The Washington Post, entitled “The End of Literacy? Don’t Stop Reading,” that explains how “literacy -- or an ensemble of literacies -- will continue to thrive, but in forms and formats we can't yet envision.” In my perspective, most people are accepting this inevitability with open arms. Our culture has created a unique community that intertwines a combination of written and oral literacy. With a new day and age come different minds that think, process, and invent things differently. With new ways of processing information come different outcomes. It’s not that we’re becoming dumber, per se; it’s that we, as a society, are adjusting to the new wave. Great examples that Gardner uses are his references to historical figures and events: Plato feared that a written culture would diminish the human memory and the first printing press scared religious people who wanted the word of God to be kept sacred. Today, the implication of video is acting as the written culture and the printing press, in this sense. Change is frightening, yet inevitable.
Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, also wrote an article for The Washington Post. This article, entitled “The Dumbing of America,” however, was on the different side of the spectrum. Jacoby believes that video is making America dumber. We seem to be falling in this realm of what she calls “anti-intellectualism” which has caused our attention spans to sharply decrease. It apparently also leads to an “erosion of knowledge.” What I feel Jacoby is overlooking is that fact that the culture of the 21st Century is much more high-paced than any other. Even though the reading statistics may be low, and people do not know where Iraq is, the culture is still smart in a literary sense; it is just processing different information. Ultimately, a person acquires the same information from watching an accurate history channel documentary as he would if he read a textbook. The decreasing of attention spans is due directly to the thirst of America for a higher quality of entertainment; it takes more than a simple string puppet show to keep our minds on track nowadays.
Back in the time where oral tradition began to diminish and writing began gaining precedence (a perfect era for Jacoby) people did not have PS3’s or Xbox 360’s to keep them occupied. Instead, they had the comfort of another man’s word and the intriguing, unknown, and introductory writing system. Writing in this period was seen as scholarly and extravagant and usually only nobility were able to write. However, the introduction of papyrus, as explained by Harold Innis in Communication in History, explains how writing became more accessible and available. More people began writing. The introduction of Papyrus in turn began the diminishment of writing. While this may seem like a farfetched, paradoxical, and extraneous statement, writing just made everything easier. This leads us to the situation we are experiencing today: convenience is a necessity and we need to get as much done in as little time as possible. Anything that has easy, fast, reliable, efficient, and/or convenient written all over it (figuratively speaking) would earn an A+ in any person’s grade book.
Means of communication have vastly changed over the past decade. Text messaging by phone, instant messaging, checking and writing emails and on facebook by internet are means that have come to dominate today’s culture. Is this really creating a culture enriched with dumbness? These types of video (according to Jacoby, video is “every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones”) are simply just the advancement of literacy. Take facebook, for instance. One can now send video messages to friends and family members that convey more than a simple letter. However, the written aspect has not diminished completely. We can still send and comprehend messages, advertisements, online articles, or any other sort of written language that information can be gathered from quickly and effectively. Our culture heavily relies on both written and oral aspects. While it is dependent on video feeds and television programs, any thing official (law documents, important invitations such as a wedding) is still processed in ink. Even though our reading rate has lowered, and we may seem dumber because we have a less developed vocabulary, we are still a striving culture, dependent on both written and oral aspects.
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