THE FINAL BLOG!!!

I was really dreading taking this class at the beginning of the semester because of my lack of interest in reading and books. However to my surprise I actually really enjoyed this class and the books I have read. I think what made this class more interesting then all my other literature classes I had taken before was the group work and class discussion. The group work and class discussion really let me express my feelings and opinions of the works we read and I also got to hear how other people in my class interrupted the readings too.

The works that we read this year were extremely interesting to me because although they were fiction they represent real life situations and how if we don’t change, our future will be very similar to these in the works. They just really made me put much thought in how I don’t want my future like that of conformity, and how we need to change our whole society to prevent this from happening. An example is from the book 1984, there is always a “Big Brother” looking over everything each citizen is doing giving no privacy at all and taking away all of their rights granted. Our first book Culture Jam really opened my eyes and angered me at the same time, which had never happened to me from reading a book. This because this book discussed how big businesses are taking over all the small ones, which is giving us the consumers less of an option to pick from. I was also angered in how these enormous corporations try to brainwash their citizens in needing to buy the newest up to date products through advertising. I was just so unaware before reading his book of how these businesses will do anything possible to get our money.

 I had just really enjoyed taking this course and learned how books have deeper meanings throughout them. Books help express ideas which help to fight off conformity and make people think for themselves. I really do think that from this course I will start reading more books and enjoy them much more. I hope you have a good winter break!

Hunger Games

American society today is so use to action and violence that we have lost our natural feelings. I blame this mostly on television, video games and the news. We are presented on TV with the most realistic shows and movies ever made. We get so use to seeing violence and killing on the television that it makes our society seem like it’s the norm for these actions. Same goes with video games, people play games such as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty where you are to commit crimes and kill other people. These fake portrays of violence and drama make people crave more and more. People have become so ignorant to violence that violence in real life has little impact on people emotions because they are so use to seeing these actions all around them.

The story The Hunger Games completely represents what I was talking about but in an more dramatic way. The people of the Capital in the book look forward to watching the hunger games each year and applauded the reaping picks. This society is in need of such a thrill of violence that they get two people from the eleven districts to fight and kill each other until only one person is left and they are crowned the winner of the games. This is disgusting that people would actually want to watch other living humans forcefully waste one another lives in this stupid game just for entertainment. What’s even worst is that the Gamemakers add twist to the rules to make the killings go faster and increase the violence. I really hope this isn’t what the world is turning to because of lack of necessary violence.         

Reality T.V.

                                                               

The reality T.V show I watched was the season finale of the third season of The T.O Show. This is a show that records the life of NFL superstar Terrell Owens otherwise known as T.O. The episode starts out with the film prescreening of T.O’s first movie. Next the episode moves to news reports on ESPN about Terrell’s ACL injury. After this they show him working hard in his rehab recovery for this injury. And finally Terrell Owens meets with one of the best wide receivers in the history of the NFL, Jerry Rice. Rice had the same injury in his career and gives T.O advice on recovering.

The characters or otherwise known as “hostages” that were in this episode were Terrell Owens, who is the main star of the show, Monique and Kita, who are T.O’s assistants and special guest Jerry Rice. I thought that this episode itself was kind of boring and not too much excitement happened. I think what makes this show attracting to its views is it shows the real life of an NFL superstar and how he lives. Many people wish they could be rich and live the life of fame so watching this is the next best thing. However other people are so use to just seeing NFL players on the football field that they are curious how they actually live outside of football. The role of the viewer is everything with reality T.V. This is because without viewers reality T.V shows such as The T.O Show would get cancelled because they would be losing money. Another role that viewers have on reality shows characters are that these characters try to impress their audience so they are better liked and become even more famous.     

                                 The T.O Show- ACL Rehab

       

Big Brother

In the Novel 1984 “Big Brother” is an imaginary person who is suppose to represent the power and control that the ruling government has over its citizens. “Big Brother” is really the ruling government who used this symbol of a brother to place fear and total dominance to the people. It acts as the surveillance over the people so that if people do don’t obey the laws they will be arrested by the police and punished. Everywhere the citizens are reminded of “Big Brother” whether it’s on signs that say Big Brother is watching you, coins, and cigarette boxes. The “Big Brother” even has The Junior Spies which are children who watch over adults to make sure that they are not disobeying the rules.

I feel that a smaller version of the “Big Brother” has taken place in the United States today. I believe this because the government enacts laws that they say are to help better protect our freedoms but really they are talking away from them. After the 9/11 terrorists attacks President Bush made wire tapping laws which made it legal for the government to listen into phone conversations. This had reminded me of the “Big Brother” in the novel because he is constantly watching and listening over all of the citizens. I also believe that the police force acts as a “Big Brother” over our society today. This is because they police are always making sure that all of the citizens are obeying the laws and will arrest them if they are not. Police also strike fear in people’s heads for getting in trouble and have power to control the citizens. I believe that we have lost some of our privacy due to the fact that the government wants to attempt to protect us from harm. However the government keeps on taking our freedoms away in order to insure this protection. The real question is how much is this protection worth in terms of losing our basic freedoms? I personally believe that the government should not interfere with our everyday activities because it is taking away from our privacy that you may not want the whole world knowing about.         

Blog 5

In Emerson’s essay Self-Reliance he tries to show our society not to just go with the flow and do whatever everyone else is doing. He wants you to have your own thoughts and opinions on topics even if no one else listens to you or believes you. His quote “nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind” explains how important your own thoughts on opinions are and how your mind is special to yourself. I completely agree with what Emerson states I think we do need our own opinions on ideas to involve conformity. Without different opinions our society would be in complete chaos. Just imagine one person telling the whole world what to do and everyone agreeing, this would be madness. As Emerson claims that great people betray how society thinks and extorts their own opinions.

            In Thoreau’s book Walden, Thoreau goes and lives in the middle of the woods for a year with only the most basic necessities. He thought that technology was ruining society, and was not needed in everyday life. The quote “why should we live with such hurry and waste of life” is one of Thoreau’s many reasons the simplify life. I personally could not live in the woods for a year without technology. In today’s era we are so dependent on technology such as cell phones, laptops and televisions for our everyday activities and to receive news. I believe it would be extremely hard to get rid of our technology completely, but limiting it would be possible. I believe it would be good to limit technology when not necessary so we would not be as dependent on it and be able to have our own thought and opinions.        

Dumbest Generation?

I believe the statement that we are “the dumbest generation” is completely bogus considering all that this generation has accomplished. We are the technology era, before our generation we didn’t have the great technology that we take for granted everyday such as computers and the internet. Before we had these we would have to go through hundreds of pages in text books looking for answers to questions you may have. But now all we need to do is type the question in Google or another search engine and there the answer pops up in a second. Mark Bauerlein’s main point is “today's digital generation is becoming insulated in its own stultifying cocoon of bad spelling, civic illiteracy and endless postings that hopelessly confuse triviality with transcendence”. This necessary does not make us dumb it just means that we have been using your technology to help us. People rely on spell checker when typing a paper that they don’t care if they spell something wrong because spell checker will automatically correct if for them.

If Bauerlein knows for a fact that we are the dumbest generation can he please explain why IQ scores have been rising every year since the 1930’s? IQ measures your all around intelligence, and from this statistic we are actually the smartest generation. Bauerlein claims that our generation does not know as much history and politics as earlier generations. But the earlier generations had a much narrower education of mostly just math, History, science and writing. However today we have a much broader educational list including all the new technology and businesses courses. So instead of being focused on only a couple subjects today we know a broader range of information. I have no idea where Bauerlein has any room to talk about us being the dumbest generation, all I can think of is that everyone looks down to younger people claimer that they aren’t as mature and don’t know as much as their elders.    

Virtual World vs. Real World

 On page 46 Lasn writes “if you spend enough time in cyberspace, emote commands start taking the place of emotions”. This is what he calls an “emoticons”. In my eyes he is comparing people to acting like robots who have no emotions or feelings for themselves. I thought it was very interesting when Lasn was describing the young man on page 44 talking about how he had made many different characters on the Multiple-User Domains however none actually represented himself. But each of these characters has become as real to him as himself. This shows the power that such MUD’s have on people, making an imaginary world be as real as their own life. This video I found is about a teenager’s mom cancelling his World of Warcraft account and the kid freaking out. This video is ridiculous; I don’t get how someone could get so angry over a cyber game. I guess it just goes to show you how real these games are to the players and how it impacts their lives.

            In class we watched the movie Second skin which was about the lives of people who were cyber gamers. The people featured in this movie took these Virtual Worlds of gaming and made them their real world. This means that they spent more time in these virtual worlds that they actually felt like they lived in these and the real world seemed like a made up world. I completely disagree with them I feel like virtual worlds can never become a real world to a person. First of all it is just a video game, you cannot have complete control over the actions and what happens in the game and you can always start or stop playing whenever you want to. I also think its outrageous that real life relationships start from these cyber games. You may have a connection to another player in the game but a relationship outside game is way different. You have to be able to communicate, take care of and get along in the real world. Most of these players turned the Virtual world into their real worlds because they were uncomforted couldn’t handle the real world. This just does not make any sense to me how a virtual World relationship could possible work in the real world.