Surviving for a Time without Media Access - Essay Example

My Media Life: Amusing Ourselves to Death 15 April (estimated word count 815) Amusing Ourselves to Death Introduction The modern life we lead today is marked by the prevalent influence of technology. It is a fast-paced life whose tempo is dictated by the ubiquitous Information Age wherein almost everything we do is determined to a large extent by the sheer number of consumer electronics gadgets and devices that we own and possess. Personally, I use various media to get my news, get in touch with friends and colleagues, seek certain information and enhance my knowledge on any subject that somehow interests me. The Internet, the easy availability of mobile device gadgets and instant communications help to fulfill my gratification needs to be constantly in touch with other people almost the whole day every day. Cellular phones, iPads, netbooks or any mobile device has afforded me the portability of communications not possible before any of these devices entered the consumer electronics market and makes life fulfilling. The sheer amount of information that is today available out there makes me selective on which media outlets that I visit and patronize. After all, there are only 24 hours in a day so that I have to allocate my time efficiently on what sites to visit and which media outlet to use. A person has to be very discriminating as well with regards to the information available, as it is not possible to regard everything and every bit of information posted on the Internet as very reliable. In other words, there is a pressing need for some form of content curation which will verify whether information is true or not; the rest of information out there may not be much of a worth or anything if it has not been verified or undergone some form of editing. Any person must be very discriminating indeed when it comes to getting information from some sources. Discussion I spend a considerable sum on my media access, which can be divided into television on cable and on Internet access with broadband connections. It is vital for me that I get a real moneys worth on what I am paying for but as mentioned before, I have to be very selective in the sites and sources of my information which I access almost on a daily basis. This means I get what I pay for in terms of entertainment, news information, specific knowledge on some topics for my research purposes, whatever this may be, and connecting with my friends and family in far-flung places. This means all my information sources must be reliable to a degree where I can assume everything that I read about is reliable, that information has been vetted. The Information Age has given way to the newer Digital Age; this is the period in the human history when everything has been stored, archived, produced and accessed in a digital way, be it text documents, pictures, photos, videos or anything worth recording about. This is a way of providing information in a digital content but the sheer amount of information there on the Internet especially, makes it imperative that someone has to vet this content in manner that is quite acceptable, to make all that information reliable in terms of accuracy. Content curation has played an important part in previous periods of human history, such as curators in museums who carefully select what artifacts are worth displaying in their museums, verify whether such interesting historical items are genuine or not, and select only those items which are relevant for a particular museum exhibit to highlight a particular event. This is the same earlier with television programming, such as prime time news headlines and all those soap dramas and advertisements broadcast from television stations. The news editor, for example, selects and edits certain news stories for their appropriate content and relevance to the larger events in a citys life, for example, which may have a bearing on the citizenry. It is the same today with digital content on the Internet; anything published must be curated. This section details some of the things and events that happened when I did not sort of access my favorite media even for a single day. It was a day that seemed disconnected in a way somehow, lacking in some purpose or excitement. It simply means that I cannot survive for long without any form of media access, to which I had grown accustomed to in a big way. Some older people may find it odd that I have to access my media every single day, but some people find it equally appealing to be disconnected from the outside world, even for just a day in which they do not access their cellphones, turn on the television or access the Internet. For many people, a day without media access can be considered as heavenly bliss but not for me. My day seems incomplete, purposeless, aimless and without any color or excitement. A few people would prefer that kind of day, to get away from it all and forget all worries behind. A day without media access is akin to becoming blind, not knowing what is going on or what events may have transpired during such a period of “blackout” when I do not know if my friends had tried to contact but cannot get through despite several attempts. It borders on a panic, knowing there is a message out there for me but no way of knowing what it is about. It can even be frightening, because what if that message contained an emergency notice about an event which may affect my career, or my friends life or anything terribly important. In todays instantly inter-connected world, one cannot afford to stay out of touch for a long stretch of time, even for just a single day. Many things and events can transpire within a day and our modern communications facilities make it virtually a necessity that we all know what is happening out there, even if it concerns us only tangentially. I feel the need to know if an event concerns me or not, to be in control at all times by knowing what is happening. It is a social experiment to try not to access my favorite media for a single day which I know now to be not a very feasible idea if repeated all over again. The experience is like being deaf or blind such as groping my way around during the day; no media access is very much like that. What I learned from my mini-social social experiment is that I cannot survive for a time without media access, even if only for brief stretches of time. Media access has become an addiction of sorts, like getting a cup of hot coffee each morning. The day is not complete without some form of media access, even if only very briefly to read my e-mails or get in kind of touch with my friends. I guess this is the same for most people of my generation, grown up in a steady diet of media access consisting of television sound bites and Internet news articles. The general idea would be spend time wisely on which media to access, given the amount of information available from a multitude of sources. Mr. Vannevar Bush was very prescient in a way when he foresaw the need for content curation, even during the infancy of the Internet. It was him who predicted the rise of an external computer memory which can store all content in a persons life, a device he termed as Memex. He knew whereof he speaks as he was the co-inventor of the Arpanet, the precursor of the Internet today. His insightful article published in the Atlantic Monthly in its July 1945 issue precisely predicted todays information overload in “As We May Think” where the open architecture of the Internet infrastructure makes it easily accessible for anybody to publish anything about almost everything (Bush 1). Nobody knows how big the Internet is today; some experts put a conservative count or estimate of about a trillion Web pages and still counting, considering all the new blogs and material published everyday on various sites on practically any topic (Sutter 1). There are two unique characteristics of the Internet which had greatly contributed to its fast growth: it is not under any persons control or censorship, and secondly, access to it is virtually free. The sheer amount of information contained within the Internet simply boggles the mind, and by far is a much more voluminous amount of accumulated knowledge compared to all printed works so far when compared to all the digital content. Any user today must wisely choose which sites to visit, how much time to spend on that site and evaluate the information within that site. Neil Postman had dissected American society and concluded that Americans are very addicted to television. This had affected how people process information they see in the brief sound bites, as opposed to the “typographical mind” when reading information in printed text. This has contributed to the decline in the attention span of people, where information is often processed only briefly and then quickly forgotten. One effect of television is on mass media as it pertains to the electoral process, in which candidates are judged on how good they look on television, sometimes their message getting lost in the process of what is sought as photogenic such as during presidential candidate debates seeking their party nomination. The printed text has given way to images which can linger as powerful messages in the minds of viewers. This television culture is now an integral part of pop culture, similar to newspapers and magazines. Politicians now shift their stand and views on certain issues very easily, depending on which a television audience perceives them, rather than having deep personal values and beliefs. Conclusion It is indeed quite ironic that the younger generation of today feels more isolated than their older counterparts, this despite the presence of instant communications. People no longer relish face-to-face communications but rely more on e-mails and cellular phone text messages but still somehow fail to connect with other people in a meaningful way; all is superficial. The Internet has made world culture almost homogeneous, with our language and cultural barriers coming down in mass culture characterized mostly by digital content, such as video games. A negative impact of television and the Internet is the loss of individuality and creativity, where people tend to follow trending topics and no longer able to think critically. Aldous Huxley had predicted the advent of the 24-hour news cycle with the invention of cable news television; it has been extended by the spread of the Internet to make it a truly 24-hour ready availability. Huxley said people had become somatotonic and fail to communicate (Nugel et al. 168). Works Cited Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” Atlantic Monthly. Jul. 1945. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. Nugel, Bemfried, Rasch, Uwe and Gerhard Wagner. Aldous Huxley, Man of Letters: Thinker, Critic and Artist. Piscataway, NJ, USA: Transaction Publishers, 2007. Print. Sutter, John D. “How many pages are on the Internet? CNN. 12 Sept. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. Read More