HW 26- Photos and Question

When I asked three people what they thought about their cool "look". The first response that I got was that they like the way they look and other people might not but that are confident in their own style. The other reaction that I got was that their look wasn't cool because they don't have the newest things or because their stype it isn't. Overall I got, "I dress how I wanna dress" (individuality).

I then asked what that thought of other people liking the way they look. They both said they like that they are approved by others. I then questioned if they are not approved. One said they would be self conscious and try to adapt to that opinion unless it is the opinion of someone they don't really care about. The other interviewee said as long as they like the way they look other people's opinion doesn't really matter to them. My last interviewee said "If they don't like my style, fuck off, I don't judge them so why judge me." On the contrary I believe we all judge people at least subconsciously, some people might just be more obvious about it. Thinking about the positive opinions, all three said are nice and they make you feel good because they give her confidence.

Finally, I asked them how it helps them in life/society being cool or looking cool. One interviewee said they get attention but then again "people don't really try to dig deeper or try to get to know you better because they're so stuck on appearance." The second girl I interviewed said that everyone has a different opinion about you. She says, but that "Doesn't mean I'm gonna go around shaping my look to what others want I dress the way I dress." These girls seem like pretty confident individuals.

25 Story Comments and Analysis

Maggie- Nice story, I like how you were very specific in your description of this cool person. Because this story is about a new girl who everyone is curious about because she is mysterious and different.

Esther- I like your story, I reminded me of you a lot. The character has a very calm attitude like he doesn't really care, he's just chill.

Omar- I liked the setting you chose, for the characters to be at a concert, that was pretty cool. And I like how you portrayed the protagonist as the nice guy, the medeator, mending a relationship between two of his friends.

Jacara- Your story seemed to be of an average girl and I like how in the end you show that she says what she feels to the man with the large bag, as you said in your title, she doesn't like to make a big deal out of it but she expresses her thoughts freely.

Kate- Your story is the popular girl who is hiding from herself and this is where she reveals who she wants to be and she is still pretty cool. She has a revalation and it is within a small amount of time, good job.

I noticed some patterns in these stories. In mine and Maggie's there is something mysterious about the character, you want to know more about them because there is something different about them. But, once you know more about the person, they are not as cool or interesting anymore. This is not shown in the stories specifically but in my own personal experiences, this is what I notice.

I also noticed that most of these characters are very confident, they know what they want and they are not afraid to be themselves. Specifically in Jacara's, the character in her story was not afraid to say what she felt. Also in Esther's story, the protagonist knew what he wanted to wear and did what he felt without much second thought.

Another recurring aspect of cool that I saw in these stories, is the person is generally a nice person. In my story, the protagonist helped the girl pick up papers, In Kate's story, her character defended another student, and in Omar's blog, he mediated a situation between his two friends. All showing that the "cool" person cares to some extent which sort of contradicts the whole idea of indifference is cool. They are different types of cool but is it cool to be both indifferent and nice?

Finally, another pattern I noticed was that the majority of the stories took place in school. That is generally where most people look for acceptance of being "cool" or that is where the person's "followers" take place. School is the where we see the same people every day and when there is something mysterious about someone in school (Maggie's) it sparks something and all of the sudden everyone is interested. School is also where we grow and develop our self esteem to then practice our confidence in front of an audience. It is also the place where we interact with people. It is the main common place for teenagers to fit people into achetypes.

Cool Short Story- HW 24

Lynette Walks through the hall keeping her fidgeting to a minimal she'd been doing pretty well since she had all morning to practice going to her first four classes. She still feels eyes darting at her and says to herself, "Its not you they're looking at, its the person behind you, and even if they are looking at you, so what?" she trusted herself but fixes her shirt and rustles her hair anyway.

In the corner of her eye she notices a younger student with an unnecessarily large backpack drop several of their papers, she thinks to herself, "The first day of school has barely started, how can you have so much work already?," she rushes to the younger student and helps her.
She hands the papers back to her, "Here you go, cool necklace by the way"
"Oh, thanks" she responds.
"No problem."

She continued to walk while humming her favorite show tune going through the notes in her head. Suddenly she hears a collection of voices calling her name from behind her. She casually turns around to see her friends standing by the stair case cautiously waiting for a response, Lynette runs up to them with a huge smile on her face and fits into a group hug with her friends, "You guys look so grown up and its only been two months, what happened?," they all giggled in response. Jamie says, "Okay so where are we going for lunch?" they all respond the same way, with shrugs and "I don't knows." Lynette says "Let's just walk and see where we end up."

As they walk to lunch, she overhears most students chit chatting about their summers. April joins in and asks, "So how was your summer Lyn?" she replies, "Pretty good, can't complain" she knew it was a lie but she didn't really want to get into the details.

At that very moment she just happened to see Jason walk by, he knew about her summer and he knew what was wrong. Jason looked at her worridly, he came up to her and asked, "Hey Lyn is everything okay?" April looks at Lynette questioningly, thousands of questions building up. Lynette sighs and says under her breath, "I knew this day was too good to be true."

Exploration of Cool- HW 23

I would guess the definition of cool is being accepted and well liked by the majority of the people in your life. Which sounds sort of a lot like popularity. So I wonder, is being cool the same as being popular? I think it is possible for someone to be cool but not popular, they are cool but not many people are aware of it. And it is also possible that someone is popular but not very cool at all, it is just that a lot of people know them. But I think in our society this distinction is not very defined. Depending on where one conforms to, different people find different things "cool," so the definition changes from group to group. I thing the general view of cool, is someone who is confident, attractive, athletic, and assertive. Thus, the quiet and insecure people remain "uncool."

I think the concept of cool is kind of a double standard. "The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care"- Hugh Macleod. So you can either be cool and have lots of friends but be bored all the time because of the stereotypical and materialistic routine you go by or you can be alone but have some sort of meaning in your life.

In our society, we are all trying to reach "cool." We all want acceptance so we don't feel alone, and according to Macleod's quote, we all would rather be bored than alone. "I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it. I felt like I'd been running toward it for a long time."(279) M. T. Anderson. This makes me wonder, is it worth being cool if it forces you to have a meaningless life? Is it possible to be cool and have a meaningful life? We are constantly waiting for the approval of others in everything we do but does that really make us happy? or just content and satisfied?

Today in class we determined several of the main aspects that make a person "cool." Some of the most interesting ones or the "coolest" ones I thought were careless, talents/passions, "living the dream," independence but still connection with people, heroic, organic, and attention. In the stories we came up with today, most of the characters were cool but were natural careless about it.

In our story in particular, the two main characters had talents, one liked to write and the other was into music and we thought that was cool. We also find it cool when someone is thriving to do what they want, they have something going on in their life. Also referring to our story, the main girl was independent because she had to be separated from the guy she was with but it was still cool that they kept in contact with each other.

Heroism is also interesting I thought because its cool in the movies but I don't think we really see it that much on our every day lives, everyone just seems to be everybody for themselves. Finally, cool people have to grab your attention. I think we all have these subconscious ideas in our heads and we try to fit the criteria of "cool" without even realizing it. We try to fit in based on what we see other people doing, then wait for the approval of others, and decide what to do next based on that. This seems to be the cycle of achieving coolness.

Art Project- HW 21

(Lost time, Lack of phyiscal activity, no sleep, distraction)

Bert Brecht supposedly says, "Art is not a Mirror with which to reflect the World. It is a Hammer with which to shape it." I think my drawing is deffinately a mirror because it points out to the viewer what they lose when they spend hours on the computer. I'm not really sure if it is a hammer, I would like to think that it is, but I think it takes more than two pictures to shape someone. But it also depends on who sees it and how they interpret it. I think it is up to the viewer to determine whether the piece of art is a hammer or not. Determining whether the art is a mirror I think is easier to determine.

I think my art makes me "fink" or "theel" but I am coming from a very biased perspective. Personally, it makes me think about how I could spend my time more effectively, and what is really important, how do you define a good way of spending time, what is productive and what is a waste? Everything has its pros and cons but it seems as though we are influenced (especially recently) that spending time on the computer is a waste. This makes me feel guilty for spending so much time on the computer and it makes me want to take into consideration my other options of what to do with my spare time.

I think the most interesting aspect of making are is coming up with the idea. I had a hard time thinking of what to draw. I struggled with deciding the aspects of the digital unit I wanted to portray. I started to think about how we are in such a competative society we have to spend our spare time wisely, and I don't think that the majority of us generally do, including myself. That lead me into wanting showing what we lose when we use DRDs as much as we do and how we are at a disadvantage when we want to make progression in our own lives through my drawings.

Big Paper

INTRO:
The way we communicate, the way we dress, the way we act, generally, the way we live, its all very similar. We are all being brainwashed by the media to live the way we do. The advertisements, the internet, television, and movies all influence our lives. We don't choose the majority of the things we think we do, like getting those jeans, or that screen name, or to say "like" a thousand times a day, society is set up so that is what we choose. I'm sure we've all wondered why we are the way we are, its because of society's expectations. These expectations are presented in The media presented through digital representation devices manipulate the way we live and distract us from the deception of the world.

ARG#1:
Advertisements as a form of media shown on the internet or on television manipulate the way we present ourselves; this distracts us from current events. Seeing that 74.1% of Americans use the internet (Nielsen) and 99% of American family households own at least one TV (Nielsen). This tells us the majority of Americans are fed advertisements very frequently. Advertisements tell us how we should look which distracts us from political issues. In Feed by M. T. Anderson, an allegory about modern day teenage life, the main character Titus is always distracted by his feed that fills his mind with lots of advertisements, "Feeling blue?, Then dress blue! It's the Blue-Jean Warehouse's Final Sales Event! Stock is just flying off the shelves at prices so low you won't believe your feed!"(299). Titus is constantly being told what to wear; this prevents him from noticing what is going on in the world. In contrast with his friend Violet, is not as distracted, she knows about current events and tells Titus, "Do you know the earth is dead? Almost nothing lives here anymore, except where we plant it?"(273). Violet basically tells Titus that there is nothing is natural anymore, everything is produced by humans.

Also seen in the movie Wall-e, an animated film about a robot trying to bring life back to planet earth, All the people on earth traveled to a space ship to live on a machine that allows them to have the ability to do anything from their hovering chair, they never have to get up for anything. Similar to feed, the citizens have very easy access to television at all times which gives them advertisements and several forms of digital entertainment. One of the advertisements says, "Blue is the new red!" and instantly, everyone changes what they are wearing to blue without having to move an inch. Eventually, because of Wall-e's interruption to the stimulated world off of planet earth, one of the citizens' portable TV turns off and their eyes are opened up to how the world is really, they saw how everyone was in their own world on their digital devices and everyone looked almost exactly the same. The digital advertisements make consumers believe that they should look like everyone else and it distracts them from the fallacies in society.

ARG#2:
We are also being manipulated in the every day conversations we have though digital devices, this distracts us from the reality of our world. When one person is manipulated by advertisements, it is then spread in every day conversations when people talk about what to buy; this distracts us from human thoughts. I personally, know of several times where I ask for a friend's opinion about something before I make a purchase. During one of Andy's lectures, he pointed out that everyone mostly thinks about what to buy. That is ultimately how we are brainwashed. In the back of our minds there is always something we want to buy whether it is absolutely necessary or not. This distracts us from the ability to think for ourselves about whatever we find important in our lives. Our minds are so filled up with advertisements without physically owning a feed it deprives us from thinking for ourselves.

ARG#3:
Advertisements also manipulate us to have these ideas of what is important and is necessary to purchase distracting us from the control advertisers have over us. Media makes us believe we always need the next best digital representation device to be socially acceptable in society; this distracts us from the fact that we are being manipulated. I personally feel taken over by technology. I allowed the addiction to digital life and technologies to hold true in my life because it was the norm of society, everyone else had it and you have to keep up with the progress in civilization. (Will 9/9/09). In Feed, Violet's father had to buy a feed to be taken seriously in the work force. "'I was at a job interview...I realized that they had chatted me, and that I had not responded. They found this funny. Risible. That a man would not have a feed. So they were chatting about me in my presence. Teasing me when I could not hear. Free to assess me as they would, right in front of me'...'It was this that I realized that my daughter would need the feed. She had to live in the world.'"(288). the media brainwashes us to think we need the latest digital technology to survive in society distracting us from the fact that we are being brainwashed. We are so caught up in buying the newest devices we do not realize the fact that we are being manipulated.

ARG#4:
The media and other brainwashed Americans constantly advertise the next best thing that makes our lives easier and more convenient, it manipulates us to think that easy and convenient is good, this distracts us from physical activity. Emails make it easier to send letters, phones make it easier to talk to someone, ipods make it easier to listen to music on the go. Technology simply makes things easier for us. It is not necessarily something we need, but something that makes our lives more convenient. This allows us to become lazy. The physical experience of working technology and knowing how to use it is preventing us from using our bodies to its full extent. Technology allows us to do the bare minimum with our bodies, whereas in a sport we need to work our muscles to adapt to that type of physical activity. Also shown in the movie Wall-e, when a citizen fell off of their hovering chair, they would fall to the ground helplessly and a machine would have to pick them up because they were physically unable to get back up on their own. Advertisements tell us digital technologies that make our lives easier are good and it distracts us from the negative aspect, that it limits our physical ability. We are convinced that DRDs making our lives easier is a sign of progression in society but it is preventing humans from using their bodies to the full extent.

ARG#5:
Movies, shown on digital represenational devices as a form of media, it influences consumers about their own lives distracting them from reality. We all watch movies, as a country we spend millions of dollars on movies at the box office at movie theatres, a good amount of Americans are influenced by current films today (movie tickets website). Movies make viewers believe their lives have to be just like a movie, distracting us from a real way of life decided upon ourselves. In Mr. Tsui's lecture (10/27/09), he made a point that most of our ideas of love and romance come from the movies and what they make us believe. For example, the typical Disney story how the girl always finds the perfect guy and they live happily ever after. We seem to base our lives a lot on this and several other algorithmic aspects about a 'normal' life that are shown in movies constantly. Also shown in Feed, after Violet faces many problems with her feed, she begins to dream and imagine what she wants to do before she faces her inevitable death and she realizes that most of her dreams are based on what she's seen in movies. "Everything I think of when I think of really living to the full--all my ideas are just the opening credits of sitcoms. See what I mean? My idea of life, it's what happens when they're rolling the credits."(217). Similar to Violet's ideas about life, our own ideas come from what we see on the movie or television screen. People watch generic TV shows about the drama of a high school student and they expect and their lives to be just like that. This is manipulating us about the 'right' way to live, distracting us from actually living our lives to the fullest the way we want to.

ARG#6:
Media in the form of movies and television make us believe that we want to find happiness, distracting us from actually living our lives to the fullest. Norms make us believe that conforming will make us happy but fitting in distracts us from doing what we want. We think we want happiness because that is what we are influenced through the media. (Andy lecture 9/25/09). Connecting to a movie we saw in English class, I <3 Huckabees, the movie is a comedy and comes from an angle that does not take the existentialist topic seriously and I noticed, often times we don't take our lives seriously. We waste lots of time doing meaningless things on our digital devices and they don't really allow us to live our lives to the fullest. We become lazy and we may think we are living our lives to the fullest because it is what we see people in the movies doing and they look happy but we are just meeting the standards of how to live our lives. Connecting to Feed, Titus feels the same way, like he is always trying to be cool because he thinks it will make it feel better but it never does, "It turned out that my upcar was not the kind of upcar my friends rode in. I don't know why. I had enough room, but for some reason people didn't think of it that way. Sometimes that made me feel kind of tired. It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it. I felt like I'd been running toward it for a long time."(279). We are always listening to the advertisement tell us how to be happy or how to be cool or how to fit in but in the end we are never satisfied. We get caught up in the films and shows that portray this idea of finding happiness in life and it manipulates us to think we want that too but it only leaves us unhappy and distracts us from thinking for ourselves and exploring our own reasons for living.

CONNECTIONS:
I believe that in the past there have always been expectations for how to be normal. Women had to fit the norm by cooking and cleaning and dress a certain way because that is what would make them attractive to men. In contrast with how it is today, there are still ideas of being "normal" and accepted in society but now I feel like they have become more open. There is more gender and racial freedom specifically in the work force and thus in everyday life (Giecek). To continue the pattern, I think in the future there will still be ideas about what is normal, I think there always will be but there will be more freedom for the people who do not follow that, they create their own idea of normal for other people to conform to. (Andy Lecture 10/20/09)

OPV:
Banach argues that essentially, everyone has absolute freedom, we deceive ourselves by giving into the influences around us and we choose to fit the norms and be manipulated by the media. "We attempt to deceive ourselves and act as if we weren't free, as if we were really determined by our nature, our body, or the expectations of other people."(Part II of Banach’s lecture). He argues that essentially we all think for ourselves. But we are really being deceived by marketers and the media to believe that we think for ourselves but in the process, we fit the expectations of society because it is what we have been told and it is what is easy and convenient. We are manipulated to choose the life that is laid out for us algorithmically. We think we decide for ourselves but ultimately we take the easy path rather than thinking for ourselves.

CONCLUSION:
The media has power over us to make us think that being happy is fitting into the norms, buying the latest clothing, buying the next best digital device to make our lives more convenient, and it all leaks into our minds highly affecting our lives. All of this distracts us from the truth and reality of our society. From my life, I believe that I am being brainwashed just like everyone else. I get distracted by movies and TV and the internet. But now I feel like because I have a different perspective from studying this digital unit and looking at different sources, my personal perspective have changed and it seems as though “We’re all puppets... I’m just a puppet who can see the strings.”(Moore). I don't think I can see the strings as clearly as I could because I am blinded by years of manipulation but at this point I feel like I can identify where in parts of my life I am being influenced about what to think.

SIGNIFICANCE:
It is important to be aware of this manipulation. Instead of simply falling for all of it, we look at it from the perspective of the advertisers and see what is it that they are really doing to us. It is important to see what lies behind the amusing and shiny digital devices and ultimately do something about it.

Works Cited

Anderson, M.T. Feed. Somerville, Massachusetts: Candelwich Press, 2002.

Banach, David. "Ethics of Absolute Freedom." 2006. Creative Commons License, Web. 8 Nov 2009. .

DVD, I<3 Huckabees

DVD, Wall-E.

Giecek, Tamara Sober. Teaching Economics As If People Mattered: A High School Curriculum Guide to the New Economy. Boston, MA: United For a Fair Economy, 2000.

Moore, Alan. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 1986. Print.

Nielsen, A.C. "Internet Usage Statistics." Internet World Stats. 2009. Miniwatts Marketing Group, Web. 8 Nov 2009. .

--. "Television and Health." The Sourcebook For Teaching Science. 2007. Web. 8 Nov 2009. .

S, Andy. "Lecture." Social Studies Class. School of the Future, New York City. 20 October 2009.

--. "Lecture." Social Studies Class. School of the Future, New York City. 25 October 2009.

T, Jason. "Lecture." Social Studies Class. School of the Future, New York City. 27 October 2009.

"Get Movie Showtimes & Tickets." Movietickets.com. 2009. Movietickets.com, Web. 8 Nov 2009. .

HW 20: Big Paper Revised

INTRO:
Most people in the American culture are the same. The way we communicate, the way we dress, the way we act, and generally, the way we live. We are all being brainwashed by the media to live the way we do. The media presented through digital representation devices manipulate the way we live and distract us from the deception of the world.

ARG#1:
Advertisements as a form of media shown on the internet or on television manipulate the way we present ourselves; this distracts us from current events. Seeing that 74.1% of Americans use the internet (Nielsen) and 99% of American family households own at least one TV (Nielsen). This tells us the majority of Americans are fed advertisements very frequently. Advertisements tell us how we should look which distracts us from political issues. In Feed by M. T. Anderson, an allegory about modern day teenage life, the main character Titus is always distracted by his feed that fills his mind with lots of advertisements, "Feeling blue?, Then dress blue! It's the Blue-Jean Warehouse's Final Sales Event! Stock is just flying off the shelves at prices so low you won't believe your feed!"(299). Titus is constantly being told what to wear; this prevents him from noticing what is going on in the world. In contrast with his friend Violet, is not as distracted, she knows about current events and tells Titus, "Do you know the earth is dead? Almost nothing lives here anymore, except where we plant it?"(273). Violet basically tells Titus that there is nothing is natural anymore, everything is produced by humans.

Also seen in the movie Wall-e, an animated film about a robot trying to bring life back to planet earth, All the people on earth traveled to a space ship to live on a machine that allows them to have the ability to do anything from their hovering chair, they never have to get up for anything. Similar to feed, the citizens have very easy access to television at all times which gives them advertisements and several forms of digital entertainment. One of the advertisements says, "Blue is the new red!" and instantly, everyone changes what they are wearing to blue without having to move an inch. Eventually, because of Wall-e's interruption to the stimulated world off of planet earth, one of the citizens' portable TV turns off and their eyes are opened up to how the world is really, they saw how everyone was in their own world on their digital devices and everyone looked almost exactly the same. The digital advertisements make consumers believe that they should look like everyone else and it distracts them from the fallacies in society.

ARG#2:
We are also being manipulated in the every day conversations we have though digital devices, this distracts us from the reality of our world. When one person is manipulated by advertisements, it is then spread in every day conversations when people talk about what to buy; this distracts us from human thoughts. I personally, know of several times where I ask for a friend's opinion about something before I make a purchase. During one of Andy's lectures, he pointed out that everyone mostly thinks about what to buy. That is ultimately how we are brainwashed. In the back of our minds there is always something we want to buy whether it is absolutely necessary or not. This distracts us from the ability to think for ourselves about whatever we find important in our lives. Our minds are so filled up with advertisements without physically owning a feed it deprives us from thinking for ourselves.

ARG#3:
Advertisements also manipulate us to have these ideas of what is important and is necessary to purchase distracting us from the control advertisers have over us. Media makes us believe we always need the next best digital representation device to be socially acceptable in society; this distracts us from the fact that we are being manipulated. I personally feel taken over by technology. I allowed the addiction to digital life and technologies to hold true in my life because it was the norm of society, everyone else had it and you have to keep up with the progress in civilization. (Will 9/9/09). In Feed, Violet's father had to buy a feed to be taken seriously in the work force. "'I was at a job interview...I realized that they had chatted me, and that I had not responded. They found this funny. Risible. That a man would not have a feed. So they were chatting about me in my presence. Teasing me when I could not hear. Free to assess me as they would, right in front of me'...'It was this that I realized that my daughter would need the feed. She had to live in the world.'"(288). the media brainwashes us to think we need the latest digital technology to survive in society distracting us from the fact that we are being brainwashed. We are so caught up in buying the newest devices we do not realize the fact that we are being manipulated.

ARG#4:
Movies, as another form of media, also influences consumers about their own lives distracting them from reality. We all watch movies, as a country we spend millions of dollars on movies at the box office at movie theatres, a good amount of Americans are influenced by current films today (movie tickets website). Movies make viewers believe their lives have to be just like a movie, distracting us from a real way of life decided upon ourselves. In Mr. Tsui's lecture (10/27/09), he made a point that most of our ideas of love and romance come from the movies and what they make us believe. For example, the typical Disney story how the girl always finds the perfect guy and they live happily ever after. We seem to base our lives a lot on this and several other algorithmic aspects about a 'normal' life that are shown in movies constantly. Also shown in Feed, after Violet faces many problems with her feed, she begins to dream and imagine what she wants to do before she faces her inevitable death and she realizes that most of her dreams are based on what she's seen in movies. "Everything I think of when I think of really living to the full--all my ideas are just the opening credits of sitcoms. See what I mean? My idea of life, it's what happens when they're rolling the credits."(217). Similar to Violet's ideas about life, our own ideas come from what we see on the movie or television screen. People watch generic TV shows about the drama of a high school student and they expect and their lives to be just like that. This is manipulating us about the 'right' way to live, distracting us from actually living our lives to the fullest the way we want to.

ARG#5:
The media constantly advertises the next best thing which makes our lives easier and more convenient, it brainwashes us to think that easy and convenient is good, this distracts us from physical activity. Emails make it easier to send letters, phones make it easier to talk to someone, ipods make it easier to listen to music on the go. Technology simply makes things easier for us. It is not necessarily something we need, but something that makes our lives more convenient. This allows us to become lazy. The physical experience of working technology and knowing how to use it is preventing us from using our bodies to its full extent. Technology allows us to do the bare minimum with our bodies, whereas in a sport we need to work our muscles to adapt to that type of physical activity. Also shown in the movie Wall-e, when a citizen fell off of their hovering chair, they would fall to the ground helplessly and a machine would have to pick them up because they were physically unable to get back up on their own. Advertisements tell us digital technologies that make our lives easier are good and it distracts us from the negative aspect, that it limits our physical ability. We are convinced that DRDs making our lives easier is a sign of progression in society but it is preventing humans from using their bodies to the full extent.

ARG#6:
Media in the form of movies and television make us believe that we want to find happiness, distracting us from actually living our lives to the fullest. Norms make us believe that conforming will make us happy but fitting in distracts us from doing what we want. We think we want happiness because that is what we are influenced through the media. (Andy lecture 9/25/09). Connecting to a movie we saw in English class, I <3 Huckabees, the movie is a comedy and comes from an angle that does not take the existentialist topic seriously and I noticed, often times we don't take our lives seriously. We waste lots of time doing meaningless things on our digital devices and they don't really allow us to live our lives to the fullest. We become lazy and we may think we are living our lives to the fullest because it is what we see people in the movies doing and they look happy but we are just meeting the standards of how to live our lives. Connecting to Feed, Titus feels the same way, like he is always trying to be cool because he thinks it will make it feel better but it never does, "It turned out that my upcar was not the kind of upcar my friends rode in. I don't know why. I had enough room, but for some reason people didn't think of it that way. Sometimes that made me feel kind of tired. It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it. I felt like I'd been running toward it for a long time."(279). We are always listening to the advertisement tell us how to be happy or how to be cool or how to fit in but in the end we are never satisfied. We get caught up in the films and shows that portray this idea of finding happiness in life and it manipulates us to think we want that too but it only leaves us unhappy and distracts us from thinking for ourselves and exploring our own reasons for living.

CONNECTIONS:
I believe that in the past there have always been expectations for how to be normal. Women had to fit the norm by cooking and cleaning and dress a certain way because that is what would make them attractive to men. In contrast with how it is today, there are still ideas of being "normal" and accepted in society but now I feel like they have become more open. There is more gender and racial freedom specifically in the work force and thus in everyday life (Giecek). To continue the pattern, I think in the future there will still be ideas about what is normal, I think there always will be but there will be more freedom for the people who do not follow that, they create their own idea of normal for other people to conform to. (Andy Lecture 10/20/09)

OPV:
Banach argues that essentially, everyone has absolute freedom, we deceive ourselves by giving into the influences around us and we choose to fit the norms and be manipulated by the media. "We attempt to deceive ourselves and act as if we weren't free, as if we were really determined by our nature, our body, or the expectations of other people."(Part II of Bench’s lecture). He argues that essentially we all think for ourselves. But we are really being deceived by marketers and the media to believe that we think for ourselves but in the process, we fit the expectations of society because it is what we have been told and it is what is easy and convenient. We are manipulated to choose the life that is laid out for us algorithmically. We think we decide for ourselves but ultimately we take the easy path rather than thinking for ourselves.

SIGNIFICANCE:
It is important to be aware of this manipulation. Instead of simply falling for all of it, we look at it from the perspective of the advertisers and see what is it that they are really doing to us. It is important to see what lies behind the amusing and shiny digital devices and ultimately do something about it.

CONCLUSION:
Overall, the media makes us think that being happy is fitting into the norms, buying the latest clothing, buying the next best digital device to make our lives more convenient, and it all leaks into our minds highly affecting our lives. All of this distracts us from the truth and reality of our society.

Big Paper Suggestions:

Arden- This is a good rough draft. From what I got, at the beginning it looked like your thesis was that digital representation devices keeps people connected but there is still a seperation in the experience. Then when you get into the new digital language that's where I kind of get lost because you don't really connect the rest of your arguments back to your main idea.

I think you have great examples and you explain them pretty well but you need to clearly connect back.

I also suggest that you take advantage of the resources that Andy's given us, you can take stuff from lectures and cite him or talk about Feed and quote from there or some of the articles and research we have done in previous assignments. This will make your arguments stronger.

Good start Arden, and thanks for your comment :]- Sandy


Esther- You have a good hook to your intro. I really like your thesis because I completely agree with it so I think your paper has potential to be really good, just keep it up, continue to write and finish it in time :) -Sandy


Omar- I think you have some really great ideas here about conformity and what society wants to think and how it is being expressed to us through digital represenation devices.

In my understanding, you're basically saying that DRDs distract us from important things and it gets us addicted to digital devices that just kill time and don't have any realy significance in our lives.

I would suggest that you just organize your thoughts and make sure you find strong evidence to back it up and connect back to your thesis. This is a good start- Sandy

Big Paper 1- Rough Draft

INTRO:
If you go to times square and look around, soon enough you are bound to find someone similar to you. Someone who has a similar personality, similar style etc. Most people are the same. The way we talk, the way we dress, the way we act, and generally, the way we live. We are all being brainwashed by the media. The media presented through digital representation devices manipulate the way we live and distract us from the deception of the world.

ARG#1:
The media presented through advertisements on the internet or on telvision manipulate the way we present ourselves, this distracts us from current events. Advertisements tell us how we should look which distracts us from political issues. In Feed by M. T. Anderson, an allegory about modern day teenage life, the main character Titus is always distracted by his feed that fills his mind with lots of advertisements, "Feeling blue?, Then dress blue! It's the Blue-Jean Warehouse's Final Sales Event! Stock is just flying off the shelves at prices so low you won't believe your feed!"(299). Titus is constantly being told what to wear, this prevents him from noticing what is going on in the world. Because his friend Violet is not distracted, she knows about current events and tells Titus, "Do you know the earth is dead? Almost nothing lives here anymore, except where we plant it?"(273). Violet basically tells Titus that there is nothing is natural anymore, everything is produced by man.

Also seen in the movie Wall-e, an animated film about a robot trying to bring life back to planet earth. All the people on earch traveled to a _________ to live on a machine that allows them to have the ability to do everything straight from their chair, they never have to get up for anything. Similar to feed, the citizens have a tv right in front of them at all times which gives them advertisements and several forms of digital entertainment. One of the advertisements says, "Blue is the new red!" and instantly, everyone changes what they are wearing to blue without having to move an inch. Eventually, because of Wall-e's interupption to the stimulated world off of planet earth, one of the citizens' portable TV turned off and their eyes were opened up to how the world is really, they saw how everyone was in their own world on their digital devices and everyone looked almost exactly the same. The digital advertisements make consumers believe that they should look like everyone else and it distracts them from the fallacies in society.

ARG#2:
The media is also spread through digital, casual, conversations, this distracts us from the reality of our world. When one person is manipulated by advertisements, it is then spread in every day conversations when people talk about what to buy, this distracts us from human thoughts. I personally, know of several times where I ask for a friend's opinion about something before I make a purchase. During one of Andy's lectures, he pointed out that everyone mostly thinks about what to buy. That is ultimately how we are brainwashed. There is always something we want to buy whether it is absolutely necessary or not. This distracts us from the ability to think significant thoughts about things that might be more important to us. Our minds are so filled up with advertisements without physically owning a feed it deprives us from thinking for ourselves.

ARG#3:
Advertisements also manipulate us to have these ideas of what is important and was is necessary to purchase distracting us from control advertiseres have over us. Media makes us believe we always need the next best digital representation device to be socially acceptable in society, this distracts us from the fact that we are being manipulated. I feel sort of taken over by technology. I allowed this addiction to digital life and technologies to hold true in my life because it was the norm of society, everyone else had it and you have to keep up with the progress in civilization. (Will 9/9/09). In Feed, Violet's father had to buy a feed to be taken seriously in the work force. "'I was at a job interview...I realized that they had chatted me, and that I had not responded. They found this funny. Risible. That a man would not have a feed. So they were chatting about me in my presence. Teasing me when I could not hear. Free to assess me as they would, right in front of me'...'It was this that I realized that my daughter would need the feed. She had to live in the world.'"(288). The media brainwashes us to think we need the latest digital technology to survive in society distracting us from the fact that we are being brainwashed.

ARG#4:
The media portrayed through movies also influences consumers about their own lives distracting them from reality. Movies make viewers believe their lives have to be just like a movie, distracting us from a real way of life decided upon ourselves. In Mr. Tsui's lecture, he made a point that most of our ideas of love and romance come from the movies and what they make us believe. For example, the disney story how the girl always finds the perfect guy and they live happily ever after. We seem to base our lives a lot on this and several other aspects that are shown in movies multiple times. Also shown in Feed, after Violet faces many problems with her feed, she begins to dream about what she wants to do before he inevitable death and she realizes that most of her dreams are based on what she's seen in movies. "Everything I think of when I think of really living living to the full--all my ideas are just the opening credits of sitcoms. See what I mean? My idea of life, it's what happens when they're rolling the credits."(217). Similar to Violet's ideas about life, our own ideas come from what we see on the movie or television screen manipulating us about the way we should live or want to live, distracting us from living our lives to the fullest the way we want to.

ARG#5:
Media, advertising the next best thing makes our lives much easier and more convenient and it brainwashes us to think that easy and convenient is good, distracting us from physical activity. Emails make it easier to send letters, phones make it easier to talk to someone, ipods make it easier to listen to music on the go. Technology simply makes things easier for us. It is not necessarily something we need, but something that makes our lives mor convenient. This allows us to become lazy. The physical experience of working technology and knowing how to use it is preventing us from using our bodies to its full extent. Technology allows us to do the bare minimum with our bodies, whereas in a sport we need to work our muscles to adapt to that type of physical activity. Also shown in the movie Wall-e, when a citizen fell off of the hovering chair, they would fall to the ground helplessly and a machine would have to pick them up because they were physically unable to get back up. Advertisements tell us that digital technologies that make our lives easier are good and it distracts us from the negative aspect, that it limits our phyisical ability.

ARG#6:
The media also makes us believe that we want to find happiness, distracting us from actually living our lives to the fullest. Norms make us believe that conforming will make us happy but fitting in distracts us from doing what we want. Connecting to a movie we saw in english class, I <3 Huckabees, the movie is a comedy and comes from an angle that does not take the existentialist topic seriously and I noticed, often times we don't take our lives seriously. We waste lots of time doing meaningless things on our digital devices and they don't really allow us to live our lives to the fullest. We become lazy and we may think we are living our lives to the fullest because it is what we see people in the movies doing and they look happy but just be meeting the standards of how to live our lives. In addition, connecting back to Feed, Titus feels the same way, like he is always trying to be cool because he thinks it will make it feel better but it never does, "It turned out that my upcar was not the kind of upcar my friends rode in. I don't know why. I had enough room, but for some reason people didn't think of it that way. Sometimes that made me feel kind of tired. It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it. I felt like I'd been running toward it for a long time."(279). We are always listening to the advertisement tell us how to be happy or how to be cool or how to fit in but in the end we are never satisfied.

CONNECTIONS:
I believe that in the past there have always been expectations for how to be normal. Infact I think they were more strict. Women all had to cook and clean and dress the same way because that is what they were told would make them attractive to men. In contrast with how it is today, there are still ideas of being "normal" and accepted in society but now I feel like they have become more open. Not all girls dress the same and not all men dress the same, they dress similarly, but in the past the dressed more similar to each other. To continue the pattern, I think in the future there will still be ideas about what is normal, I think there always will be but there will be many people who do not follow that, they create their own idea of normal for other people to conform to.

OPV:
Banach argues that essentially, everyone has absolute freedom, we decieve ourselves by giving into the influences around us and we choose to fit the norms and be manipulated by the media. "We attempt to decieve ourselves and act as if we weren't free, as if we were really determined by our nature, our body, or the expectations of other people."(Part II of Banach's lecture). He argues that essentially we all think for ourselves. But we are really being decieved by marketers and the media to believe so but in the proccess, we fit the expectations of socitey because it is what we have been told and it is what is easy. We are manipulated to chose the life that is laid our for us algorithmically. We think we decide for ourselves but ultimately we take the easy path rather than thinking for ourselves.

SIGNIFICANCE:
It is important to be aware of this manipulation. Instead of simply falling for all of it, we look at it from the perspective of the advertisers and see what is it that they are really doing to us. It is important to see what lies behind the amusing and shiny digital devices and ultimately do something about it.

CONCLUSION:
Overall, the media makes us think that being happy is fitting into the norms, buying the latest clothing, buying the next best digital device to make our lives more convenient, and it all leaks into our minds highly affecting our lives. All of this distracts us from the truth and reality of our society.

Outline Feedback:

Esther- your thesis is good because you have good evidence to back it up. Your Feed and Wall-e evidence seem to be the strongest so when you organize your essay those should be the first and last arguments so you can start of and end your essay strong.

Your arguments about humans needing entertainment, so they created photographs and the development from there seems pretty logical but you should get some evidence to back that up.

I suggest that you use maybe lectures or stuff from you previous blog posts of your own or of others that might strengthen your arguments. Andy also gave us a list of several sources that we could use, it might be helpful to go through them.

This is a good start Esther! - Sandy

Omar- You have an interesting thesis.

I think you make a good argument that most people are entranced in pop culture and the media and DRDs and that distracts us from the important things in life. I think this is a valid argument but you could get specific about what is it about pop culture that attract us and what is it really distracting us from, what is so important that the media doesn't want us to see?

I also think you should take advantage of the sources that we have researched in class, maybe some sources you have in your previous posts, or Feed, or Wall-e.

This is a good start Omar!- Sandy

HW 16- Big Paper 1 Outline

Thesis: The media presented through DRDs manipulate the way we live and distract us from the deception in the world.

Argument 1: The media in advertisements presented through the internet and television manipulate the clothes we wear and distract us from the deception of the world.
-->The advertisements tell us how we should look and what we should buy and distract us from political issues.
*Feed ("Feeling blue? buy some blue jeans..everything must go!")
*Wall-e ("Blue is the new red")
*Digital Experiment (TV attracts more attention than reading because it feeds you the info)

Argument 2: The media is spread through digital conversations in casual conversations distracting us from the deception of the world
-->When one person is manipulated by advertisement, it is then spread in every day conversations when people talk about what to buy, distract us from real human thoughts
*Own experience (When I talk with others about making smart decisions about purchases)
*Andy Lecture (all we ever think about is what to buy)

Argument 3: The media in advertisements presented through the internet and television manipulate our minds to believe what is a necessary purchase to distract us from the control advertsers have over us.
-->Media makes us belueve that we always need the next best DRD to be socially acceptable in society, this distracts us from the fact that we are being manipulated.
*My Video blog post
*Feed (Violet's father needed the feed to be taken seriously in the work force)

Argument 4: The media expressed through movies influece viewers about their own lives and distracts them/us from reality
--> Movies make viewers believe their lives have to be just like the characters in the film distracting us from coming up with our own ways to live.
*Tsui Lecture (is that allowed?..our views of love and romance are based on how it is portrayed in the movies)
*Feed (Violet's dreams and Titus's expectations came from movies)

Argument 5: The media expressed through advertisements about DRDs manipulate the way we are looking for our lives to be so simple, distracting us from the reality of our complex lifestyles.
-->the latest digital technologies make us believe that convenient and easy is good, distracing us from physical activity.
*Video blog post (we minimize the way we use our bodies)
*Wall-e (the people don't ever have to move, they live their lives completely digital)

Argument 6: The media expressed through advertisements and movies makes us believe we want to be happy, this distracts us from living our life to the fullest.
--> Norms make us believe that conforming will make us happy but fitting into the norms distracts us from actually living our lives to the fullest.
*English I<3 huckabees ("We waste lots of time doing meaningless things that don't really allow us to live our lives to the fullest.")
*Feed (Titus is always chasing cool but never reaches it)

Connections:
-->In the past there have always been expectations to be 'normal' or like everyone else if not more strict.
-->In the future, I predict that the norms will slowly bein to be broken then then new norms will form as well.
(I need to find sources for this..)

OPV:
-->One could argue that the media only influences the way our lives are and we essentially chose the way we live (Banach's absolute freedom)
-->I disagree and believe that in the end we all do what's easist, choose the life that is laid out for us algorithmically. We may think we are deciding for ourselves but ultimately we are chosing the easy path rather than the creative path (which I think is difficult to find).

Significance:
-->It is important to see how the DRDs are manipulating our minds so we know what lies behind the amusing and shiny digital devices and ultimately do something about it.