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.

Trademark

As I continue reading “Everything Bad Is Good For You”, Johnson keeps on surprising me on his arguments as to why my generation’s pop culture is so amazing. I thought that it was going to become repetitive, but I was wrong. He makes me think about what is going around in my generation, and how valuable some of those things are to my life, without me even realizing.

I just finished the chapter on “Film” and it was interesting how Johnson says that we also do cognitive work while watching films, even children films like Finding Nemo. When one is watching Finding Nemo one “has to keep track of almost twenty unique personalities….. as well as the different story arcs…and where the child’s mind is concerned he’s just watching a movie, but each viewing is training him or her to hold those multiple trends in consciousness, a kind of mental calisthenics.” (130)

This proves why when I leave the movie theater after watching a suspense movie, or an action movie, I always end up with a head ache because my mind was literally going around in circles. I was trying to find out who killed who, or who really is the bad guy. As I get older the type of movies I can watch start getting more complicated and analytical, but I am able to watch them because I have been “trained” with the easy movies, such as Finding Nemo.

I wonder which are the movies that are going to transend into the future. Just like we study Shakespears plays, people 300 years from now could be studying movies instead of books. Are there any hidden movies that one day are going to become trademarks of our time? 

Visual Vocabulary:

Psychometrics:

the science of measuring mental capacities and processes 

Fynn Effect:

The substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day.

Back In The 1980's

As mentioned in my previous blog: “Internet Connect”, internet has been a revolutionary resource that has broadened peoples connections all around the world, but most importantly it is the home of most of the information that exists, or has existed in our time. As I read, I thought about how internet can contain so much information. Internet becomes a colloquial tool, that I never thought about its significance, but now that I do it is mind blowing.

Internet was created around the 1980’s and now I am viewing internet as a teenager would in those times. It’s incredible. How is it possible that whatever I want to find is located in this place, that I can’t even touch, called the internet. Its another world. How can all the information be saved in one place, but at the same time we don’t see it? I don’t understand how people can speak badly of something so incredible and unreal. Now I understand why my grandmother sometimes can’t understand how google works. But now that I think about it neither can I. I know how to follow the steps to find the information, but I have no clue, how this thing called Google “which has fulfilled the original dream of digital machines becoming extensions of our memory” (124) can bring all the information related to a topic that I just type in the search bar. Who is doing the searching? This is just giving me a headache.

But what mostly gives me a headache is college applications. Just a half an hour ago I was with my father at the dinner table. We were having a discussion about how stressed I was due to the college applications. My father can’t seem to understand why I hate this time of the year. He thinks applying to college is really easy, that one doesn’t have to study for the SAT, and that the essay is just a paper you right in three hours instead of drafting it five times. He said that in his time of applying to college people weren’t as stressed about this process as now a days because they didn’t know as much about the colleges, or admittance rates. People just applied and that was it.

My father is right, it’s not that people now are smarter that makes getting into college so difficult, it’s that the amount of information on this process is so overwhelming that people don’t know what to do with it, so we all go crazy. Instead, if we were in the 80’s we’d probably be stressing about if our transcripts arrived to the colleges that we were applying to, because they were sent by boat.

Internet has brought amazing things to our world, I don’t know what I would be doing without it, but I do think that before things were simpler. Less stressful. I wish I was in the 80’s right now, before internet.

Visual Vocabulary:

Mesmerizing:

capture the complete attention of (someone); transfix.

Intricate:

very complicated or detailed.

The Power of Education

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VufWDM-geUQ

Internet Connect

As I continue to read “Everything Bad is Good For You” I have distinguished the pattern that Johnson finds a way to rebuttal every argument that is pressed down on resources that our popular culture uses, such as the ones that I have mentioned in my past blogs: TV and Videogames. This may sound dumb, because the title of the book is “Everything Bad is Good For You”, which is an indicator that Johnson will be taking the good out of everything, but still its really neat.

Anyway, Johnson has demonstrated that the resources such as TV and video games aren’t only to entertain us, they actually have a cognitive value. When I reached the chapter about internet, I was eager to find out what he had to say on this subject, given that it is the one I use the most.

Now in my generation, the internet is something common that brings “Google to be our culture’s principal of knowing about itself.”(121) I don’t know where I would be without Google. I guess I’d be stuck in a library for six hours trying to find information about how World War II affected the German economy, or something simple like definitions, or diets to lose weight in four days.

As I read I thought about how much I use the internet each day. I use it to find addresses, definitions, facts, pictures, blogs, go on Facebook, Whatsapp and probably more things that I don’t realize. Our generation is the one that gets everything fast. You can reserve a table at a restaurant, order food, clothes, and more in just a matter of seconds. We haven’t experienced what it is to wait, because most things that we want come to us right away. But not knowing how to wait is a negative aspect because when it comes to waiting I drive myself crazy. For instance, waiting for my SAT scores, or application decisions. These things take time and I have no control over it, which sucks.

Johnson says that the “rise of the internet has challenged our minds in three fundamental ways: by virtue of being participatory, by forcing users to learn new interfaces, and by creating new channels of social interaction.” I couldn’t agree with him more. When there are new programs we are forced to learn them, for example the new IOS7. If we don’t learn how to manage these interfaces we will be left behind. Social networks are present all the time, and are used constantly. Facebook, Whatsapp, MSN, BBM, IM, Snapchat, and Circle are all used to communicate with people from all around the world. With just pressing the button “send” I can communicate with a friend in Abu Dabi. To us it seems crazy, but for some reason my grandmother can’t seem to understand this concept.

Although Internet may have its flaws such as “identity fraud”, all of its advancements opaque the negative aspects of it and makes us concentrate on the good things. Internet has been a revolutionary tool that the whole world uses, which has brought the world to connect.

Visual Vocabulary:

Sheaf: 

a bundle of grain stalks laid lengthwise and tied together after reaping

Xeroxed:

A copy producing process

Innocuous:

Not harmful or offensive