The Paradox Of Digital Media

What if our life becomes fully dependent on the electronic devices in the future? “In Into the Electronic Millennium”, Birkerts discusses his concerns with the oncoming electronic world. Birkerts provides lots of cons about the electronic devices that can affect people's lives. The author’s intention for writing this essay is to make the audience aware of the significant changes that have started to occur as electronic technologies have developed. He uses various rhetorical devices to convey his arguments to the readers. Through this essay, he is trying to inform the academic community that the culture of printed words has ended in the society, while electronic technologies are starting to dominate. Birkerts uses anecdotes, juxtaposition,

Overall, Jenkins is interested on the impact convergence has on popular culture, however, considering the process of convergence of modes, he recognizes that popular and political cultural are beginning to blur. Like cultural, both new and old media alike are begging to blur and evolve, while delivery technologies become obsolete and get replaced. An example would be the replacement of floppy disk to CDs and more commonly now, the use of USBs, Jenkins describes this as “The Black Box Fallacy”, where media combine as one

Technology may not be everything it seems. Although worldwide use of various devices and applications has revolutionized the way we live and our culture in a powerful and helpful way, there are many ramifications to be considered. The consequence to this revolution of culture and way of life is carefully observed and portrayed by M.T. Anderson in his novel Feed. Anderson uses the literary art of satire to create characters that are exaggerated versions of people today to reveal their uncontrollable obsession with technology.

The world today has lost touch from nature because of being too distracted by technology. The amount of hours an average person spends using technology everyday is growing and growing. In the book, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury the characters in this novel show what the world can become with the overuse of technology. The overwhelming use of cellphones, tablets, and televisions in this book has led to many problems, although people may consider technology a major advancement to the future. However, the criticism from Fahrenheit 451 that would make the largest impact on the world today if used correctly is by not using or relying on technology because it creates loneliness and too much control over the people.

Neil Postman; cultural critic, author, and teacher extraordinaire, spent his career warning and educating about the role technology was beginning to play in society. He wrote all of his books, articles, and speeches by hand and reportedly never met a computer or typewriter that he liked. He also never published an academic journal article due to his belief that his ideas were meant to be read by all, not exclusively a handful of scholars. In today's age of technological overload, just thirty years after his most well-known book "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman is revered as a prophet as more and more of our media consumption becomes purely for entertainment purposes.

Gopnik defends his redefinition that New Yorkers are always busy, but Turkle believes that individuals who recreate their online personas, actually abandon themselves. Although Gopnik feels sorry about the business that they have, he is also proud of his busyness, because “Busyness is our art form, our civic ritual, our way of being us. Many friends have said to me that they love New York now in a way they never did before, and their love, I’ve noticed, takes for its object all the things that used to exasperate them - the curious combination of freedom, self-made fences, and paralyzing preoccupation that the city provides” (160). After he loses the casual and relaxing life, he just accepts this new form of lifestyle. Busy becomes his new and normal life status, so it naturally turns into his new identity. He feels happy about being busy and satisfied about his new identity.. When he loses his identity, he does not stop to think if that is his true self; instead he tries to protect and keep that identity. Even though he realizes how bad and harmful business can be to his family and himself, he just accepts this new status, and praises it as an art. While this attitude seems inconceivable, it exposes his mentality that he fears facing and controlling his true self. Instead, he accepts whatever life gives him. The same is true in Gopnik’s situation: cyber citizens

This text is published by a media company called Mic. Their target audience is young people and they cover a wide variety of subjects such as News, Arts, and Technology (Mic /about). The author of this article is Sophie Kleeman, who, according to her profile on Mic.com, covers the “intersection of tech and culture” (Mic /profiles/152573/sophie-kleeman)

In an ideal society, the art of rhetoric - the utilization of effective argumentation and persuasion through communication - is an important tool that makes use of language in order to participate in valuable discourse. The study of rhetoric elevates the influence you have on others, shields you from intellectual despotism and vastly enhances the power we possess as a democratic citizen. The Mesopotamians and Ancient Egyptians both valued the ability to speak with eloquence and wisdom, however it wasn’t until the rise of Greek democracy that rhetoric became a high art that was studied and developed systematically

“Untitled” by Paul Kuczynski also contains satire, however the author of this portrait uses satire to depict the theme of isolation, instead of misery, poverty, ruin and neglect. This simple, yet thought provoking picture, shows a man looking through a periscope that is shaped like the Facebook symbol, to see through a window above an open door. The door is not barricaded in any way, shape or form, so the man is able to walk outside and see what is going on in the world first hand. Instead, he chooses to stay inside by himself and view the world through Facebook. Through “Untitled,” Kuczynski conveys the message that social media interaction is overtaking physical interaction. People are more likely to go on social media to find out what is happening than to go out and experience it themselves. Kuczynski’s painting greatly showcases that even in its simplicity.

The film “ Digital Nation” is an exploration of diverse people's views on digital media, in today's world. Some of the most important topics were on the virtual world, and the pros and cons of technology within different groups like gamers, students, families, teachers, administrators, children, military and businesses, as well as the experience of general people. In the movie, Prof. Sherry Turkle said, “Technology challenges us to assert our human values. Technology is not good or bad, is powerful, and it is complicated which means first we have to figure out what they are”. Currently, technology has taken over, wherever one, goes one will find it. Over the past years, social media in particular have spread worldwide; from Facebook to Instagram. There is constantly something new, extra advanced and creative. Overall, the technology has evolved the way humans interact with each other. In particular, technology influences by motivating students towards learning, saving time, building literacy and communication skills.

Throughout this essay I will be discussing how the digital age has transformed society in many ways. The digital age also known as the information age, is the evolution of technology in daily life and social organizations have led to the fact that the modernization of information and communication processes has become the driving force of social evolution.” This is a time period in which we live in now where Internet and email are available; this is an example of the digital age. The Information Age is the idea that access to and the control of information is the defining characteristic of this current era in human civilization.

Today, the world is much different than it was fifteen years ago, much less fifty years ago. The progression of technology has been even more significant than ever before in the last several years, but has ultimately lead us astray from our core character. The production of cell phones, social media updates, websites, and technological tools is constant, but these new and improved technologies have left the world with very few longstanding advancements. Though the internet has brought the world innumerable innovative opportunities, life before technology was much more efficient, filled with many more promising benefits: responsibility, socialization skills, and controversy.

Old media like broadcasting, print, and film created a consumer culture in the public. Participants would consume the media they could find, and that was the extent of their engagement with a piece of media. But during the digital age, participatory culture has exploded. Participatory culture is a concept coined by Henry Jenkins where consumers take part in both the consumption and the production of media. The advent of computers facilitates a low barrier of entry for creation of digital media and its propagation. With the availability of personal computers and consumer level software to manipulate media as well as the popularity of the internet to spread content, fans have become more engaged with the media they consume. In turn, participants can create forms of that media that comment and expand upon the original content. Participants who used to only consume media now have the avenues to become producers of media. In this essay, I will explore participatory culture through the lense of Lev Manovich’s Five Principles of New Media: Numerical Representation, Modularity, Automation, Variability, and Transcoding.

Information and entertainment today are usually spread through the development of technology. Due to this, various medias enable us to give and receive information. Media can be divided into traditional media and new media (Christian, 2014). While it is easy to pinpoint the differences of the two medias, there are also some similarities that tie both medias together.

It can change opinions because they have access to people and this gives it a lot of strength. This strength can either be used constructively by educating the people or it can be used destructively by misleading the innocent people. Power of the media can transform the whole society especially in the developing countries it can be used as a 'weapon of mass destruction'. But I think the most important use of media is to educate the people about the basic human rights. The dilemma of the developing countries is that people are not fully aware of their basic rights and if they know, they don't know about what to do and where to go. They don't know their collective strength. Even they don't know how to protest and what is the importance of