Does Objectivity Exist?

I started a comic book named “The Influencing Machine.” So far the book is about how a reporter named Brooke Gladstone, who “cant really process things unless [she’s] reporting them.” (12) This means that she has an obsession with expressing things she feels or hears about so that not only the public can know and understand them, but also she. In the comic she is expressing how she feels about the relationship between the media and the public.

At the beginning of the comic Gladstone makes interesting points about how society depends on the media, and how “we hunger for objectivity.” (13) But as I continued reading I realized that even though we might say we do look for objectivity we just search for what we want to hear. This can be clearly seen when presidential elections are taking place. There are certain channels that are more liberal or conservative than others, which mean that the people from the different political parties will go to their “parties” channel. Here the person is going to be content with what is being said, and will be convinced that who they are voting for is a genius, and he/she will probably win. And when we hear about another biased news, which is contradicting our opinion, we just say, “those guys are consuming lies. They are getting juiced up. Their media diet is making them stupid.” (13) Why? Because we are hearing things that we don’t want to hear.

With those points being said, I have drawn to conclusion that actually is more like a question. There is a strong relationship between the public and the media, both of them control each other. The media will say what the audience wants them to say, and the audience will keep on viewing that channel because they say what they want to hear.  So with those points being said I am left with these questions: who is really telling the truth? Is there an actual truth?

Visual vocabulary:

Punditry: someone who has been admitted to membership in a scholarly field

Craven: contemptibly lacking in courage; cowardly.

Libelous: a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation.

Tedious: too long, slow, or dull: tiresome or monotonous.

What Comes Next?

Finally, I finished “Everything Bad Is Good For You”. Johnson has a very interesting way of looking at our pop cultures new tools and habits, that even though most are frowned upon, he has the courage to defend them. Now, I can convince my parents and my elders that watching TV is good for my cognitive development, and how smart and analytical my brother is getting by playing Grand Theft Auto.

Johnson’s different points surprises me about how good everything that we use these days can be. After reading the book, just as I concluded on my previous blog, I can see how innovative and creative the people of my era are being. Humanity is pushing humanity to be better, and having more tools. Yes, many can be useless to us, like a heating towel machine, but still it accommodates our way of living. People are forced to be creative, just think about how many different sized of an ipad exist. Its still the same ipad, just with some different features, mostly physical. People always want new and different things.

When I finished the book I reflected on what I had said in my previous blog. I reflected upon how “innovative” my generation was. I started looking back into time and realized that maybe when humanity was more innovative was actually going back thousands and thousands and years ago to lets say, Ancient Greece. People started developing mathematical skills, architecture was unbelievable, and if we start going some years forward we arrive to the time where Cristobal Colon discovered that the world was round, people discovered and conquered new lands. Now that’s innovative. But does that necessarily mean that my generation is less impressive? Well no. All of the topography and basic knowledge has been discovered, but as Steve Jobs says it, “we focus on the details that are what really make the difference.” We are going into depth with the basic knowledge we find, and we are finding impressive things about the world that we live in.

I wonder what kind of things people are going to develop in the future. A prediction that I make is that years from now, humanity is going to know much more about space. At the moment we are like the Cristobal Colons of space. But I know that since science is evolving rapidly we will be able to get to know much more about our solar system and the universe. Also, there will be advances in medicine, that will make peoples lives better. Right now the sky’s the limit, even though many of us may think that we have reached our top, but the truth is we aren’t even close, and we probably will never be, because people want to keep on innovating.

I don’t know if this conclusion is what Johnson had in mind for his readers to conclude after reading the book, but its what Johsnon made me think. Of course, his arguments are very entertaining and bright, but I think a video game has more than just cognitive importance, it’s the effect it has on humanity to want to keep on discovering new games that pushes these game creators to come up with something better. Our generation isn’t one that is “dumbing down, its quite the opposite. The great-unsung story of our culture today is how many welcome trends are going up. We are innovative and creative, not “innate slackers.” (199)

Visual Vocabulary:

Innate: inborn; natural.

Omission: someone or something that has been left out or excluded.

Innovation

As I am arriving to the end of “Everything Bad is Good For You”, I have concluded that the era that we are living in can be described in one word: innovative. Our generation is pushing each other to develop more and more things to impress our minds, because we are always searching for more.

This weekend I watched Steve Jobs movie, and I realized how unbelievable the ipod, iphone, computers are I have taken these tools for granted because I have been familiar with them when I was eight years old. They have been a part of my daily life, and I have never analyzed the power that they actually have on my life.

If I did not have my music I would go crazy. The first ipod that was every created only had the capacity of storing 100 songs, now those 100 songs form only a playlist on my ipod. My computer, Internet, phone, are tools that I use regularly that have facilitated my tasks and entertained me. As I am writing this blog post, I can’t stop to think how people came up with these things. Yes, they are easy to use, but the geniuses that developed these tools are admirable because they took something that seemed unreal, and made it a reality.

Thank you to all those who have contributed to the innovation of our tools, who have made our lives easier and more entertaining. Who have worried about the small details, as Steve Jobs would say, because those are the things that mostly matter. Now it seems normal to have an HD TV, but as it is at my grandma’s house, you can still see little dots and a buzzing sound from her 1999 Sony television. Just as Johsnon says, “thirty years ago, viewers had no recourse available to them if they wanted to watch a scene again… there were no second acts. (167) If a person wanted to watch a show again “they had to wait six moths” for the channel to play it again. Now, we can stop, record, rewind, forward, all our movies and TV shows. And if we missed it, we can download them or buy them. Now its so easy!

Visual Vocabulary:

Genuine: truly what something is said to be; authentic.

Correlation: a mutual relationship or connection between two or more things.

Vigorous: strong, healthy, and full of energy.

Intertwine: twist or twine together.