Old Media/New Media - What?

When I studied at USF in San Francisco, Professor Andrew Goodwin was always a challenging facilitator. His style of lecturing is something I have aspired to. His planning and his delivery were always very very professional and well thought out and delivered.

Therefore I have kept in touch with him virtually. I see today his blog on New/Old media. Why this topic is not being discussed and evaluated as he has done HERE in all media circles is beyond me. Perhaps the simple and obvious is just not so simple and obvious.

I feel myself spiraling into a quagmire of dichotomies which I believe life, in general, to be- the simple is the most difficult, nature is simple and complex, language is so clear and multi-layered, looking after our bodies is simple and our bodies are extreme feats of innovative technologies, gardening is heavenly, the land is surreal, nature is beautiful and grotesque and so on... So I'll pull back.

Traditional Media is so well ingrained in our societies that it is going nowhere for now... And probably never will. Marketing will always have to be done to grab the attention of the market. Advertising will always have to be catching and aesthetically pleasing to us humans. Money will be the bottom line when working for the mass media.

Check out Andrew Goodwin's observations as he drank a "simple" cup of coffee (which may have travelled thousands of miles to his cup), in a simple bricks-and-mortar coffee shop in California.

Twitter - Why Fear?

It seems I am not the only one who has not used Twitter yet. Barack Obama told students in Shanghai, last week, that he had not used Twitter yet. The curiosity about the term is justified by the fact that Twitter was blocked for some time in China. Is this censorship? And why bother blocking Twitter?

Kaiser Kuo, an expert on internet use in China, said that in recent times the internet sites which are blocked in China are social media sites. "The authorities are not worried about people having access to what the rest of the world is saying, but about the ability of these tools to spread rumours very, very quickly," he said. According to him state media have alleged that social media spread misinformation and even that outsiders use social media to orchestrate violence.

China's internet population is estimated at 360 million. 124 million of those are on social networking sites. Most of the big players on the internet in China are domestic and they are large enough to monitor all content and remove anything sensitive.

Probably most of what is on social networking sites is harmless, regardless of what your opinion on a subject is. The only time that social networking becomes a problem is when content is contrary to one's ideas/ideology/interpretation of ethics. Ethically speaking, then, is it o.k. to post anything you want to post, even if it offends someone else? Is it ethical to stop some one posting if you are offended by their post? For the benefit of the many should there be free and equal access to posting on the internet and social networking sites?

It is impossible to please all the people all the time. But when the government decides to stop access we have a situation on inequality. One part of the "formula" is much more powerful than the other. Governments should not be intruding on people's access to social networking sites.

Where would it stop? Next thing you won't be allowed to demonstrate outside a government building on public property!

Sources for this post:

Branigan, T. (Nov. 23, 2009). Twitter ye not. The Guardian.

www.bladair.com: New Media Meets Gaeilge (Irish)

We launced www.bladair.com yesterday at the Mayo Science Fair in The Traveller's Friend Hotel in Castlebar.

The Mayo Education Centre launched one of it's recent projects yesterday as a part of the Mayo Science Fair. I was invited to be a part of the event and therefore I introduced many young budding bloggers to the world of blogging as Gaeilge (through the language of Irish).

The blog is live at www.bladair.com and it is a very easy step-by-step process.

The idea is to engage the language in a fun way that is not "academically" emphasised on the surface but is obviously educational covertly. (There may be a contradiction there - but y'know what I mean).

Each month until next march there will be two prizes of 50E awarded for good (the best) blogs.

So there you go. New technology plus economic prizes, being used to encourage our youth to engage with new technology through the medium of the Irish language.

Now, how else can we use new technology for other positive humanistic projects?

Skype Video Chat and People: Video meets humanity

"So I agreed to give video chat a try. We downloaded Skype and set a time to connect. They rang. I answered. My daughter waved. And then... we stared at each other. Short silences that seem natural on the phone become terribly awkward on video. Suddenly I understood why slumber-party confessions always came after lights were out, why children tend to admit the juicy stuff to the back of your head while you're driving, why psychoanalysts stay out of a patient's sightline. There is something exquisitely intimate about the disembodied voice" (Orenstein, 2009, P. 9).

I have friends who use Skype to video chat and I remember their realization that they needed to "dress" for the computer and that this was an inconvenience at 7 a.m. on a Sunday to talk to Ireland at 8 hours ahead. The ideas of new technology might seem great on first learning of the potential but as the quote above says, the romantic notions get destroyed fairly quickly.

Back in 1998 I was on line doing video chatting. The image was o.k. but the quality of the motion aesthetic was stunted and slow. However, it did serve a purpose. My 2 year old daughter was living 7,000 miles away from me and through this new technology we got to see each other more often than we would have without it. Also, she wasn't talking yet so the telephone was not the best medium for communication. So video chat allowed us to "be together" without the need to chat. It was useful at the time but our interactions (outside of visits) gravitated to the old telephone as she got a vocabulary together.

It seems that Orenstein's parents had a similar experience. They wanted to see their grandchild in real time on the screen. It seemed to be a great idea. It was suggested even to leave it on all the time so the grandparents could watch their grandchild grow up! She, Peggy Orenstein, on the other hand, was wary, "I did not, however, spend the bulk of my adult life perfecting the fine art of establishing boundaries only to have them toppled by the click of a mouse." Her parents while being optimistic about the possibilities of Skype for themselves and their grandchild were unaware of the impending awkward silences that are so easy on the telephone and so difficult when on video (Orenstein, 2009).

On returning to email and electronic photos the status quo was resumed. These individuals could once again finger through a magazine while listening on the phone, they could have moments of silence without worrying if they looked bored, etc. And they can always log on to Skype for the big occasions like birthdays, etc.

If there is one thing about new technology and new media that I believe in it is caution. I believe in the positive power of media - all of it. I also believe that media is not being used close to its positive potential. So many jump on the bandwagon of each new development and think it will change the world. It might but it probably won't.

Keeping it all in perspective is prudent. Pasting pieces of ourselves all over the web in places like LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Blogs, and where ever else will have implications going forward. We know now that potential employers are doing electronic (re)searches on potential employees. It is important to be aware of this notion.

It is important to represent yourself accurately and (hopefully) honestly. After all, if I am looking to employ someone to work in my family business I do want to know what you post on your Facebook page, I want to see your YouTube videos, I want to see your LinkedIn profile, and I want to know where and how your name comes up in the electronic world that is our "extended family... bringing us together or destroying boundaries" (Orenstein, 2009, p. 9).



Source for this blog:

Orenstein, P. (2009, June 28). The way we live now: The overextended family. Is Skype bringing us together or destroying boundaries. The New York Times Magazine, pp. 9-11.

The aging among us

This is originally a post for a class in BECA, SFSU but if you ignore the text in brackets then you can experience it as it is - i.e without class implications.]

It is (intuitively in the Gitlin sense) a fact that the elderly members of our society are treated with less than optimal respect. In the vein of intuitive discovery (that Gitlin has used in his post on pop culture which we have read for this class) I assert that it is easy to convince people that the elderly deserve to be appreciated more than they are. (This insert is a little long but you might just let the music play while you read on as the tone of the tune/soundrack has an aesthetic element which lends itself to the sentiment of what I am asserting. Otherwise forty seconds will inform you.)

However, there are people in society who know this as a result of their experiences.




Among this population are these young medical professionals who (presumably) care for the elderly. The way in which they have taken control of "the means of production" (as per Marx) is an indication of the true humanistic nature of some members of our society. They wish to do good. They have done good by attempting to understand through "ethnographic" analysis what it is like to be old.

(In the Gramscian sense perhaps) One could criticize this exercise as a useless crumb thrown to the agressive train of humanity which will never accept our geriatrics as fully human. But (in the Gramscian sense) there is also (I would assert) potential here for the use of the means of production to become more than a crumb. (Marx) Many would congratulate the producers of this kind of media:



(In the Marxist sense) This is a departure from the control of media by conglomerates.

In my opinion - it is the first step. This media needs to be seen to be appreciated. I believe, (in the Gitlin sense), intuitively that I would have a challenge ahead of me to find one who would disagree with the sentiment that our elderly deserve better/more.

Therefore, this kind of media needs to be shown in schools and spread out through the virtual (and therefore real) world. We need to get this message to the forefront of peoples thinking. People want to help and "love" our elderly. They just need to be shown how. This media can do that - People do want to help:



The media have a certain amount of power to influence. Surely it can be a force for the realization of the attributes of our elderly. But these media need to be seen. Now that we have the means of production dissipated to the masses, how do we get the masses to see the production?

This may seem simplistic but if each of us brings this blog to the attention of our mother/father/grandmother/grandfather/aunt/ uncle etc... friend - then more people will be aware that they are not alone in their thoughts about the elderly in our society, whether they are elderly or not.