Category Archives: LIB1201

Critical Thinking: Pros And Cons.

Leave a reply

I agree with Eland Thomas about how critical thinking is important, moreover, I agree, that information which is presented for public censored and sorted and never reflect for hundred percent the reality. De omnibus dubitandum – come under question, thats what Rene Descartes offered in this case and I, personally, take it. I understand the author’s idea about nonprofit press ether, but in his proclamation (because it is what it is) he forgets two very important facts: underground press and publishing agency can be corrupt too, and it’s almost impossible to be clear and critical, when we talk about Hot News, like, for example, couple days ago, plain crushed somewhere in Asia, and some agency told it was a plain, and some report it was a helicopter, and, I bet, some of them just ignored it. Critical thinking is good for everything, except quick respond, mass media, especially periodical part of it, will not survive without gate keeping and assortment control from the side; from the other side, because critical thinking its method of logical thinking, and moreover, its scientific method – its take time and certain level of understanding from person who use it. Government control over media happened not only because somebody tried to keep some information in secret, but because majority will not understand it, or even worse – understand it wrong.

Another two articles describe and explain zines as a genre of literature. Which is, in my opinion definitely not new, authors just forget about salon writing of eighteen and ninety century, when people did absolutely the same and even at the same form.

Convergent Media

Leave a reply

In their work Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life, Graham and Young use iTunes as a perfect example of convergence technology in action. The application was created by using three aspects that never mixed together before: media content, computer hardware and communications. Moreover, authors pointed that what significant for iTunes is characterizing the whole modern media industry. Graham and Young go very deep in their explanation how technological progress affects and shapes society and as a result, how society affects it back. Authors bring a lot of different points of view from many researchers and sociologists but in general, picture looks for me like Ouroboros – a snake eating its own tale. Society creates technology, technology reforms society. But what  really kept my attention was the point  that authors just lightly touch: even with ability to create modern media with using ideas of democracy and equality people built it in absolutely opposite way. All modern media companies built with corporate structure – very strict and limited.

Another good passage, in my opinion, was about four aspects that shape technology: design, marketplace, policy debates and end usage. Authors pointed that technology is a content, in other words, technology is a key moment in understanding trends of modern society. Design part shows the cultural level, policy discussion reflects level of social responsibility, marketplace displays value and end usage – level of social adaptation.

Media Convergence

Leave a reply

Living in the twenty-first century non-text media are taken for granted; mainly because society have gotten so accustom to it and it is no longer a “big deal” to most. Technology is evolving everyday and after reading the article: Content, Computing and Communications  by Graham Meikle,  I am even more happy about its release. Apple  released iTunes, which is an application that keeps track of songs by creating a virtual library, It is also used to play, download, and organize digital audio and video . In 2003, the iTunes store was unveiled customers were then able to quickly find, purchase and download the music they want for just 99 cents per song. Thereafter videos, podcast, books and applications can be purchased or downloaded for free. I use iTunes every day because for me it keeps me entertained and it makes my life as a business owner so much easier with some of the applications. Despite the fact that  iTunes  may have certain issues like not being able to have more than a certain amount of songs in your library according to how many gigabytes you may have; In my opinion as with everything else there will always  be issues and complaints  from consumers even if it is something as amazing as iTunes.

I remembered having a discussion with my mother about traditional media and how she is learning and enjoying all these new and alternative multimedia and applications like Pinterest,Pandora and Poshmark. She reminisced about when she growing up, she had nothing but books, regular broadcasting radio and letters; there were no such thing like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter where you can find friends, post your thoughts, videos and high resolution images for the world to see and even advertising a business.

Because I am living in this century I prefer the alternative to the traditional print and media; because with just the push of a button you can listen to an almost never ending list of music selected by you or you can watch a movie or television show “on the go” via Netflix or Hulu. In my opinion, all of the alternative audios, videos , etc., are amazing and life changing in some cases; that will forever keep changing, making it challenging at times to keep up with but nevertheless the changes are welcoming for me.

A cycle that creates balance

Leave a reply

In the book Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life by Graham Meikle, the author gives  a brief account on the evolution of media and it’s convergence into this sort of entity that’s constantly improving. A great example of this combination of content, computing and communication is shown through the iTunes application. In the beginning it was used only for music but over time it has added media ranging from films to books and TV programs. Although we do not think about it, the innovation of various technologies resulting in the convergence of media is influenced significantly by how end users receives and interacts with the technology. For example the SMS text that is so popular today took off because of how the younger generation received it.

But with new technologies comes a need for regulation. This theory is seen in the introduction of the DVD. Although it was very good at the beginning for film studios, it quickly became difficult because users began to exploit this digital media by copying and sharing resulting in the rise of copyright regulators and hardware manufactures taking steps to prevent these exploitation of their property. Of course over time users will get around this minor roadblock because of differing ideas of intellectual property and the basic need to share. So in the end there is this constant cycle within content, computing and communication controlled not only by government policies and corporate interests, but also by end user interactions.

Can I have both?

Leave a reply

In the article “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age”, Ferris Jabr writes about the unique advantages of reading on paper and the disadvantages of reading on digital screens supported by research studies across the nation. The results of these studies show that, because of the taxation on the brain from reading on screens we do not gain as much understanding when compared to reading on paper. The article also talks about how reading on screens may be better for scanning or short readings of digital texts while books are better for in depth reading. But why are we comparing when we can have both. Just like having CDs and digital music, the concept is the same, where CDs are like books and digital music is digital text. With that in mind, it’s been a while since the introduction of digital music and yet the CD is still relevant, so we see that nothing can take away the good old school–but to add on it because of the ever changing world. An example of this is given in the  article “The Cobweb.” by  Jill Lepore. Just like the famous library of Alexandria we now have a web of all webs which is a sort of digital version of the library of Alexandria. Thanks to this Internet archive there is now an alternate and/or additional way of storing, researching and finding information. Notice also that this Internet archive does not take away from a traditional library but uses it as a blueprint to create new avenues in this modern technological age.

“The Wayback Machine” and “The Reading Brain”

Leave a reply

The article entitled “The Cobweb” by Jill Lepore was a very interesting and informational read. When I hear the word “Cobweb” I automatically think about the network of treads spread by a spider; indeed I was incorrect in this case. This article revealed information about archiving the web. I was never aware of the fact that webpages has a life span. It was of my belief that everything that is online will be there forever.
In my opinion this can be good or bad because many important information can be found online that may become a part of history in the further which is good. But the web page with incorrect scholarly information for example, should not exist.
With the use of “The Wayback Machine “ the deleted post by Ukrainian separatist leader mentioning taking down an airplane was archived. This machine is a great idea but as mentioned in the article it is not very well kept; as the machine stores webpages and sites by its Uniform Resource Locator (URL) which can be major pain when retrieving archived information. Additionally, will this machine every be available for everyone to use or its it going to be housed under security in that church. Either way, it was fascinating to know the life span of webpages and websites and become aware of “The Wayback Machine”.
The article “The Reading Brain” by Ferris Jabr gives insight on the differences in reading actual paper materials including books and magazines and reading on from a monitor or e-reader. In my opinion we live in an era where it is tedious to carry several books at a time as students for example; when you have the option of having those severals books as Electronic books; it definitely makes life easier.
The study mentioned in the article revealed that people comprehend information less on screens than on paper and studies published later on showed inconsistencies in that result. Personally, I would rather use electronic media because it is more effective for me, than the actual book. Additionally, I believe electronic media will replace books in the future; as technology evolves.

Chapter 1 (Badke) & New York Times Article

Leave a reply

Dated June 1982, this article in the New York Times by Robert Reinhold goes into details about technology and how it could transform society. Today in 2015; in my opinion we as a society have already reached a conclusion with respect to technology and how societies transformations by modern technology are in full force and we are all being affected daily.
But does modern technology really change the true meaning of family time and life; as suggested in the article; the author mentioned the “profound effect commercial television and automobile had on society in earlier centuries,” In my opinion, I believe anyone living in this century will not want to be stagnant and live where there are not changes and exciting innovations made available daily to them.
I can say from experience, that electronic information made life easier for me in general. In my opinion, the effects on society will be sometimes overwhelming but if you look at he bigger picture recent, modern and emerging technologies can be very beneficial to society as a whole.
William Badke, in Research Strategies wrote about several issues and notions to take into consideration with dissecting “WWW” and its gatekeepers. Electronic information having gatekeepers can hurting the quest for information especially for scholars. I use WWW several times daily and Mr. Badke’s detailed information about accessing and sharing information using technology uncovered information that I was not aware of. I truly believe as stated before that all information related in both articles can be either good or bad and one must educate themself in order to make right choices when it comes to using modern and emerging technologies.

NY times and chapter 1

Leave a reply

While reading the NY times article and chapter one of research strategies I couldn’t help but think that these articles are telling nothing but the truth; when it comes to technology which has become people’s life. An essential part of our lives which if we were not to have, we wouldn’t know what to do. I say this because I myself use my phone for everything, whether if it’s for work, checking the weather even though I could watch it on tv, and I even do my homework on it. The article on NY times speaks about how traditional life will be changed because of “teletext” and “videotext”. The fact that we use technology for everything and we cannot even have a Normal conversation face to face but instead we text. Another thing we are so attached to is the social media (facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) “Friends, peer groups and alliances will be determined electronically, creating classes of people based on interests and skills rather than age and social class.” Now a days there are even companies who have their page on one of these social networks which they are constantly updating. This world is now a technology world, technology that nobody can live without.

The Impacts of Technology

Leave a reply

In chapter one of Research Strategies by William Badke there is a strong account of how the emergence of Technology has influenced how the public goes about accessing and sharing information. This change is brought about by the existence of the revolutionary World Wide Web. In addition, an article published by New York Times entitled, “Study Says Technology Could Transform Society” by Robert Reinhold talks about how electronic information technologies such as video and teletext will transform our way of life in the future. Despite the many positives of these new technologies, we cannot deny the negatives that come with them. The cons include and are not limited to: the availability of poor quality information such as articles or websites written by non experts in the field, the existence of child pornography and terrorist websites and the gradual abandonment of traditional means of doing things. We can argue that the world is already approaching the era spoken about by Reinhold because people can earn a degree in the comfort of their homes as well as shop with just a click. Careful assessment must be made about the drawbacks to these innovations before implementation because they can indeed bring about positive change.

NY Times And Chapter 1

Leave a reply

Both the Ny Times Article and Chapter 1 of Research Strategies were very intresting to read. While reading the Ny Time, at first i could not understand what was meant by “teletext” and “videotext”. But after continuing reading i figured they were talking about all this electronic gear that we use today. Such as laptops, iPads, phones and etc. The article speaks about how life would be different with “teletext’ and “videotext”. And to me life has changed with all this technology that we have out. For me i cant even sit and have dinner without checking my phone, its sad to say but its true. I even hear people say they can not live without their phone. Technology has taken a huge toll on many people. In chapter one, one of things that stuck with me was that “The driving force of the information is the world wide web”. It stuck with me because its true. Personally i don’t find it to be a bad thing, to me the internet is just a useful tool in life.