The here and Now

Alexis Tocqueville in his comprehensive study on American culture Democracy in America, asserted that one thing was certain of American culture; American art will always be mediocre. His basis for this was that where Europe had a rich patronage system to further artistic movements, without an aristocracy America could never achieve this. America has since revealed that not all great art movements require great monetary benefit to become regarded as fine art. The finest movements in American art history have been exemplified in the art of Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and Frank Lloyd Wright. These artists were not motivated by what people were willing to pay them for; their concern was always in the creation, the reinvention of their medium, and often the fame that came with starting a revolution. It is through these concepts which I have an acceptance for the current trends in society. 

To the question should everyone be here the answer is no. While the internet allows for universal participation only the few truly excel. I would like to show this through two youtube videos which are both without a doubt of the mediocre genre. David after Dentist is a youtube video which has received over 65,000,000 hits and is by far one of the most memorable videos of the youtube generation. This however is all that can be said for the poster of this video they have posted many other videos but they all are about the same as the original or simply referential to the original. The second video I would like to make note of is Charlie the Unicorn which was created by a user named SecretAgentBob. Charlie the Unicorn was the seventh post made by this user and the fifth animated short posted by him. SecretAgentBob is a true example of why it is okay that everyone has this opportunity. He created a tremendously successful video and has a huge cult following of the videos he posts. Youtube is brilliant in that it has captured the very idea which Tocqueville thought would never be successful and that is media which everyone has access to. Some will thrive and some will flounder but gems are always being found amongst the rubble. This references McLuchan’s theories which signify that the message is captured within the medium. Charlie the unicorn is simple and silly but at the same time it is a video which will be enjoyed for many years to come. Similarly film has gone through this same transformation not every film is going to win an academy award but there will be movies the masses enjoy and films which simply die out

On a somewhat completely other hand the act of putting your opinion, view, or creative idea in the web may not have your desired result. There are many blogs which go un-read, many youtube posts which go unseen, and there are far too many websites to make anyone think that the website which they made is the best. At this point in time anyone can create a website, blog, youtube video, facebook, myspace, twitter account and I am sure the list goes on. If people have an opinion to make they can certainly make it but has that not always been the case. When I was much younger my dad would often take me to his job in Manhattan;u before arriving at his humble office in downtown we would pass through a subway terminal where waited us a man we called the prophet. The prophet was a homeless man who between the hours of 8-11 and 4-6 preached the most unbiblical and unmoral principles to everyday commuters. Now perhaps the prophet still preaches at his station but I would imagine anyone with his similar agenda who possessed the means of the internet could accomplish their same message and reach a much wider audience if they were to do it online. It is from this notion that one must recognize that a freer freedom of speech does not make a better democracy but rather infiltrates things which the government cannot control. Politically I cannot be more inclined towards less censorship in the means that have been addressed on television and radio but when it comes to internet I think many things are fair game. 

I certainly think that the future is going to be very different as a result of advances made in technology. Perhaps in the future teachers will ask their student to respond via facebook status in regards to their assigned reading but at the same time right now there is a tremendous disconnect between student and teacher. Children are growing up in a technological age with teachers who for the most part did not learn with the aid of a smart-phone, the internet, or a database. As a result teachers are giving out test which children can cheat on. Essays can be answered with a simple Google search. Sources can be found which make assignments far easier than they were before. As a result teachers need to affiliate themselves with all the resources on the web to better prepare their students/ be aware of what their students are doing. Academic studies are not going to fall by the wayside but teachers will need to play catch-up if they want to stay ahead of their classes. It is still possible to teach the classical theories or lessons by simply using media as a tool instead of admitting it is a easy way out.

Personally I love watching media develop I feel it is a constant precursor to social stages. After all many sociologists speculate that social norms are established first by the advancement of technology. From a personal perspective I feel you cannot hold technology back and the best you  can do is follow it and pass each stage of it down to you younger generations. When the oral tradition was lost, people speculate that people lost a lot of their capacity for memory. Similarly things will be lost with the advancement of technology but people will learn to assimilate and life will go on with a better understanding of what people value as long as social norms are based around technology

here and now

Everybody is, indeed, here now - but should everyone be here? Does the rise of the amateur lead to an unnecessary devaluation of the professional? Do collective online activities promote a new form of participatory democracy and the development of new and accurate folksonomies, or rather to they lead people to overestimate the value of their unconsidered posts and opinions? Do representative democracy, academic disciplines and other seemingly elitist artifacts fall by the wayside?


Alexis Tocqueville in his comprehensive study on american culture Democracy in America, asserted that one thing was certain of american culture; american art will always be mediocre. His basis for this was that where europe had a rich patronage system to further artistic movements, without an aristocracy America could never achieve this. America has since revealed that not all great art movements require great monetary benefit to become regarded as fine art. The finest movements in American art history have been exemplified in the art of Andy Warhol, Jackson Polock, and Frank Lloyd Wright. These artists were not motivated by what people were willing to pay them for, their concern was always in the creation, the reinvention of their medium, and often the fame that came with starting a revolution. It is through these concepts which I have an acceptance for the current trends in society. 


To the question should everyone be here the answer is no. While the internet allows for universal participation only the few truly excel. I would like to show this through two youtube videos which are both without a doubt of the mediocre genre. David after Dentist is a youtube video which has received over 65,000,000 hits and is by far one of the most memorable videos of the youtube generation. This however is all that can be said for the poster of this video they have posted many other videos but they all are about the same as the original or simply referential to the original. The second video I would like to make note of is Charlie the Unicorn which was created by a user named SecretAgentBob. Charlie the Unicorn was the seventh post made by this user and the fifth animated short posted by him. SecretAgentBob is a true example of why it is okay that everyone has this opportunity. he created a tremendously successful video and has a huge cult following of the video he posts. Youtube is brilliant in that it has captured the very idea which Tocqueville thought would never be successful and that is media which everyone has access to. Some will thrive and some will flounder but gems are always being found amongst the rubble.


There will always be those who consider themselves in the cultural aristocracy and will bash things such as youtube for all their lives. Personally I can appreciate the finer things in art but no man can be immune to the occasional guilty pleasure. 


I'm going to call this the halfway point but I'd like to get some time to re-edit the first half too.

assignment on social media

Today many TV shows and advertisements try to look amateurish or "homegrown" to emulate what is often seen on the Web. Do you think professional production values will continue to drop, or do you think amateur user-generated content will get better over time? WHY??

 I think that professional production value will you eventually drop but certain pictures will always end up being high budget. A prime example of this can be seen this year there have been many large budget productions but they have had extremely varied results. Inception which was a huge production and many years in the making is being held as a huge contender for best picture. Avatar although visually stunning is being labeled as nothing more then a stunt for the eyes. Having worked at a movie theater for a couple of years I know how people have been responding to the prices of 3d movies and it's not pretty. At the end of the day productions are going to need to scale back and make movies more affordable for the working class. that said the production value of movies has been so high it's hard to imagine them scaling back so much. That said if movies with lower production values continue to make progress as they have been it could be a huge boost for the movie industry. I am not talking exactly about blair witch project stylized movies but more along the lines of movies like juno which are shot on lower budgets. while this is not exactly what the question is addressing it is not as far from it as it may seem. user-generated content is getting better with higher production value as time goes on. I do not think that it will be long before youtube movies become a highly regarded artistic format. After all this is the film style which micheal gondry based the be kind rewind style of film on. All this said I believe high level productions will decrease but there will always be a few and they will often be academy award winning productions. that said there will be years where the lower budget films will get academy recognition.


What social media sites do you find yourself using the most, and why? In your opinion why is Facebook so much more successful than MySpace, and do you think Facebook is "here to stay" for the long term.

The only social media site I use is Facebook. personally Facebook has the same appeal that microsoft had after windows 98, everyone uses it. I'm not sure it is here to stay but I imagine it will always hold a spot for a lot of people wether it is the popular social media of the time or not. There are a lot of reasons facebook is more succesful then myspace but I'll stick to the reason that I chose facebook over myspace. I made my myspace account in ninth grade when i was a very different person. and also my ex girl friend knew my pass word and made it so i couldn't use my myspace any more. I'm sure that isn't the reason why the majority of people made the switch but that's my story.


Why is transparency such an important concept in the Social Media world? Is it MORE or LESS important in the offline world? Why?

transperency is a huge deal in society and social media. I get a phone call from my mom weekly about something me or one of my friends posted on facebook and the bottom line is in the future culture will have to adapt to becoming more open to what people are willing to express. not for nothing this has been an ongoing trend in U.S. supreme court tradition for the last few decades. it is more important offline and will continue to be for a while. technology has given people a unique oppurtunity to do things less face to face. In person we are often on gaurd and hiding alternate motives. when we are in contact through text, im, facebook, phone, or video chat there is a level of disconnection which makes people free of such social restraints. eventually society may catch up to technology as those who study the social sciences suggest, but for now transparency is far more important offline.

so since we had a free class period to mess around with photoshop I decided to make an image showing the de-socializing effect communication technology can have on society. I'm not anti technology or anything I just think it has a serious effect on time spent with actual face to face time.  This is some what where I feel McLuhan was going in his media is the message.

I'm still a little confused on some of the photoshop techniques but I was able to try and collage a bunch of images to make a image which encompasses some of the people who have exemplified the nature of facebook. I'm not totally happy with the finished project. I think that if I used many more images I would be able to make a better collage. so perhaps this will just be a work in progress.

For my project I decided to use youtube. The content contained withen youtube is an extensive library of video media created by personnel users of the site. Youtube's content is totally controlled by the user's making it a universally accepted medium. the medium however has quite a different message. By making youtube open to all members it allows every member to be a screenplay writer, directror, cinematographer, or actor. This is a mildly confusing subject to deal with when you think about in terms of what mcluchan would think. In one respect it gives a lot of chances for people who are striving for these roles and don't have the oppurtunity to pursue these roles. At the other time it detracts from networks and films as a source of media affecting their ratings. This use of media causes people to stay home and not contribute to conventional buissnesses but at the same time it allows people who would never reach stardom to reach internet fame. Youtube is a very convuleted concept from a pre-internet perspective so it is hard to evaluate from a mcluhan perspective. That said his concepts hold true that the medium of youtube delivers a message more powerful then the content withen. Each individual can create their own content and deliver their own message but the bigger news is that youtube represents a means for everyone to show media to everyone else. Youtube really channels the idea that mcluhan preeched wich was that the medium in which content is conveyed is more important then the content itself

medium is the message

medium: Twitter

medium: Video Conferencing

medium: Youtube