In the beginning of the year, media communications was my least favorite class. The horribly short blog post I did are evidence of this. I didn’t feel like we where learning anything important. While the short films we watched where interesting and filming our own movie was fun, that’s not what I expected to do in this class; I took digital media to learn about filming and editing movies. Once we started studding the actual culture of various types of media I felt like the information I was receiving was more valuable. Watching Michael Wesch’s speech about the anthropology of Youtube was definitely the most interesting part of the year. I thought the part of the vide where one of Michael’s students used a mirror to show she was talking to a camera was very insightful, but overall the entire video gave a great deal of interesting information, especial to someone interested in sociology such as myself. When he talked about first blogs and showed those of himself and his students it gave me more confidence when making my own blogs.

When doing the Digitally Nation unit we received a lot of useful information on how the media and technology has change the world, and we got the opportunity to debate whether we thought these changes where good or bad. I noticed that most of the tabs on the Digital Nation site had something about video games. I really liked what the Gee guy said about how video games help us learn not only about the world but ourselves.

I think I would have enjoyed the advertisement unit more in we didn’t focus on the food industry. This is a technology-orientated class so I think it would have been cool if we studied computer ads or maybe even ads you see in web page margins. I didn’t like watching Food inc. because most of their information was biased.

Overall this class was enjoyable, especially once we got to second quarter.

Food Inc.

The goal of this video was to make the food industry look as bad as possible, so I think it was a little biased. They filmed farms with the harshest conditions, rather then showing us how the average one ran.

The major reason animals grown for food have such poor living conditions is not because the companies only care about money and power, but we, the consumer, demand food cheaply and quickly. There are also laws in place that make it so places food is grown and processed must maintain a certain level of cleanliness or risk being shut down. As for the way the workers a treated, I think they are just as much at fault. Most workers with poor conditions are illegal immigrants and if they only receive harsh treatment because they can’t complain without risk deportation. Apparently the immigrants think this treatment is better they the working to become a legal citizen.

As for the vast amount of corn grown in the U.S, every region has a prominent crop ours is corn. One of videos points is that feeding a cow grass can kill 805 of the E. coli in the cows system; however, what the video fails to tell us it that not all E. coli are bad. In fact one of the only strains that is harmful to humans is O157:H7, the strain that causes food poisoning. Other strains found in almost all mammals produce vitamin K2, which prevents osteoporosis and coronary heart disease, and prevents pathogenic bacteria from inhabiting the intestince.

The chapter about seed irked me more then the others mostly because it was true. Monsanto can get away with owning the right to seeds not only because they have more money and power, but because so many people of govermental possistions also work for Monsanto. What irritates me the most is that they are all elected official, meaning they where put in office by the American people and most of them continue to be re-elected despite the obvious harm they are causing.

Digital Nation

The past week we have been watching our peers present their tabs from Digital Nation. Everyone had great information to share, and it was very interesting. 



First, I will discuss Living Faster, Brant and Keith's tab. The facts they presented about how technology is affecting our bodies where very interesting. For example, one hour of playing a high paced action game can increase visual perception. They also mentioned that as we reach adult hood 60% of the brain prunes off, and the sections of the brain that decay depends on how we live and technology directs this. We also discussed the topic of multitasking. Some said people switch from one activity to the next with such haste because they lack focus. I think that doing multiple activities simultaneously could actually require more focus then devoting your attention to a single activity if you want to focus on them all at once and not get anything mixed up.

When Justine presented her information about what stood out to me the most was the censorship discussion. Justine showed us a video about a girl with anorexia and how she went to websites that glorified anorexia. They even turned the disorder into a goddess called Ana. There are harmful website, but no one owns the internet so it can’t be censored as a whole.

In the Virtual Worlds tab, presented by Willie, Cody, and Kinsey, I found the part where scientes where putting people in a virtual setting and making them think it was real. Someone said this was like dreaming, but our dreams are not controled by someone else so I would clasify it more as brainwashing. Kinsey mentened Second Life to show how virtual worlds affect us. In Second Life people can trade and earn real money. They can get jobs and form relationships. Some virtural sites try to make them more real then reality, which is scary.

Vlog 5

Vlog 4