Internet Exposure

For my final, I will explore the willingness of today's youth to be exposed (through images and text) on the internet through social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. I will explore the consequences of and reasoning for this exposure as well as study the amount of control an individual has over personal information once it has been posted using these platforms.

Maxymuk, John. 2007. Whose space? The Bottom Line 20, (2): 97.

Miller, J. MacNeill. 2007. The impersonal album: Chronicling life in the digital age. Afterimage 35, (2) (Sep/Oct): 9.

Nussbaum, Emily. 2007. Say everything. New York 40, (5) (Feb 12): 24.

Samborn, Hope Viner. 2007. Go google yourself! ABA Journal 93, (Aug): 56.

Spanbauer, Scott. 2006. Safeguard your reputation while socially networking. PC World 24, (10) (Oct): 152.

Get Out of Town

When creating this meme I was thinking about surviving in New York. I used the cliche "get out of town" in a very literal way. I decided to use gray, black and white graphic fonts to represent the severity and chaos of the city. I used a leafy background (a picture of an apple orchard in Maine) to contrast this severity to the subtleties of the natural world. (It also works to represent the city as a jungle)

The History Textbook as a Virtual Space

The history textbook attempts to create a uniform reality or one understanding of how the human race has existed and functioned throughout time. It is in this way that the textbook functions as a virtual space. Students learn the same facts, presented in the same way. The reader understands history and the world in the way it is presented and is therefore limited and controlled by an external force. (Often, the textbook provides a student's primary understanding of history leaving the individual vulnerable to the choices of editors) The reader is left with a predetermined, manufactuctered notion of reality.

The textbook offers an omniscient, authoritative summary of the human race. It does not encourage questions or critical discussion. This relates to Plato's concept of the cave in the sense that the history student (in a traditional public school) is confined to a very narrow idea of what is real and how we have evolved. This formulation of what is true and real is accepted without question or verification. "For, tell me, do you think our prisoners could see anything of themselves or their fellows except the shadows thrown by the fire on the wall of the cave opposite them?" Like Plato's primitive man confined to the cave where he is only able to see controlled images projected on a wall, the history student sees and digests what is put in front of him/her. He/she is given rigid guidlines is blinded by the views of others. The primitive man and the student depend on these images in the same way and cannot be intellectually self-reliant.

One could argue that there is no escape from this virtual space. One can never experience the past from an authentic perspective. Therefore, one must always rely on the assumptions and findings of others. The most realistic, achievable red pill, or method of escape from this virtual space would be to stop relying on the textbook as our primary foundation for understanding the past and introduce texts from various authors, offering varied perspectives. Perhaps the most reliable and effective texts would be primary sources since they offer first hand accounts and are most indicative of a period.

The Medium is the Message

I had trouble really wrapping my mind around McLuhan's message. However, I feel as though the difficulty that I experienced only helped to prove McLuhan's point. So often, we miss what is simple and real in our search for minutia. I found McLuhan's example of the light bulb as pure information to be incredibly helpful while reading the text. A message does not have to be visual or vocal to exist. The object that convey's a message (lightbulb, tv, etc.), the messanger, is media. The tool makes it's own statement. This statement being the tool's impact on society. McLuhan makes this evident when he writes, "What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes. For the "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs." Here, McLuhan makes his point clearest. He gives his notion, "medium is the message," a practical application.

Introduction

Hello Class!

My name is Leah. I'm a sophomore at Lang where I am tentatively studying history...or philosophy...or media studies? Really, I'm just focusing on gaining a balanced and applicable education. And I'm finding out that this is not so black and white.

I grew up in Down-East Maine (pictured above), in a very small town so I am now trying to establish myself in the city and figure out why I am here and how I best function in my newish environment (Alphabet City).

I am not very familiar with blogs and so I'm sort of weary of them. Although I regularly use Facebook and MySpace, I have trouble with the notion (or lack) of privacy today. I want to become comfortable enough with blogs so that I no longer just understand them as public diaries and can see them as tools or as educational.

In relation to Todd Gitlin's eight strategies, I see myself as a content critic. I understand that the media has a huge impact on how people understand the world and that it needs work. Although I sometimes find myself browsing Star Tracks on People.com I think the main focus of media should be to educate the public in current events and global politics. News with substance should be more relevant than Britney's latest meltdown.

Less Access Hollywood...more Charlie Rose.