Where to Invade Next

In his film, Where to Invade Next, Michael Moore travels around Europe to "steal" great ideas from different countries and bring them back to the U.S. He finds schools with no homework, free college, paid maturity leave, paid weeks off, free healthcare, decriminalization of all drugs, and more. Surprisingly, other countries have these policies and they lead to great success. One of the laws that I found very interesting is the paid time off. 

In Italy, the average worker receives about 7-8 paid weeks off, not including other perks such as 5 months paid maternity leave, 15 days off after your wedding, and a two hour lunch break everyday. In contrast, the U.S. guarantees zero paid days off by law, and no paid maturity leave. However, the interesting part about this is that the U.S. is not necessarily more productive and the workers are less happy. Their explanation for all of these great benefits is that they value happy people. They put the people's happiness first, and then good work results from that happiness. They way they speak of their policies also makes them sound like they value life milestones much more. For example, they think giving a new mother any less time with their newborn would be absurd. They recognize and respect that the first few months are very important for the mother to be with her baby. They also explained that of course newlyweds need 15 days off after their wedding because they have to go on a honeymoon. They spoke of this as if it is common knowledge and they wouldn't have it any other way. 

Now, just because the U.S. doesn't require paid days off by law, doesn't mean that most people don't get some paid time off. However, I don't think it would be a bad idea to adopt a law that sets a minimum for those who don't have those kind of benefits.   

Toyama 5-7

I really enjoyed continuing to read Kentaro Toyama, as I find a lot of his points about technology and advancement really interesting. In chapter 5 of his book Geek Heresy, he speaks of camera technology at a school in India and how it apparently was the cause of the schools and teachers success. What happened was they decided to document teacher attendance by camera, to ensure that the teachers were showing up to teach their classes. However, they attributed the full success of the class to the camera technology holding them accountable for their attendance. However, what they did not factor in was the years of hard work behind the teachers lessons. This goes to show how sometimes we give technology a lot more credit than it deserves. We have to remember that humans are still valuable too.
I also really enjoyed his analogy with the ant and the grasshopper. In this analogy about work and happiness, the grasshopper is content being warm and happy all summer while the ant works very hard to prepare for winter. And when winter comes, the ant is content because it worked hard to prepare and the grasshopper is cold and miserable. The moral of the story is that long term happiness does not come quickly or easily, it is something you have to work at. I think that this idea can not only be applied to happiness, but also to helping countries in need as well. Merely sending laptops in attempts to help education is not going to create long-term change or well being. Fixing the problem overnight might sound like a tempting way to help, but in reality it is not helping in the long run.

Geek Heresy By: Toyama

I really enjoyed the first section of this reading, where Toyama discusses how technology has crept into and taken over our lives, but questions if it has helped larger social issues in the long run such as poverty. He speaks about how connected the world has become due to increase of Internet access and mobile phones. So much so that mobile phones could outnumber humans on earth by 2015. This increased access and connectivity has had direct impacts on knowledge, talent, education and social change. However, Toyama questions why the poverty level hasn't gone down in the US since bigger and better technologies have been emerging. Are we not putting our money or focus in the right place?

I also enjoy the section about Technoholics Anonymous which speaks of using technology as a way to solve your problems. I think with the amount of access to the Internet and the amount of information on the Internet, it can be difficult not to search for answers to your problems. I also think that we have been relating human progress with technological progress, but that is not always the case. To go back to Toyama previous observation about poverty - just because we were advancing technologically, does not mean poverty was getting any better. I think we too often get sucked into creating technology for the sake of creating it. Instead of creating technology to mimic reality with things such as virtual worlds, we need to focus more on ways in which technology can enhance reality.

Guest Speaker - Eliza

Our guest speaker on Thursday November 3rd, Eliza from the Burlington Free Press, made a lot of great points about advertising in the age of social media. One of the very first points she made was one of the most fascinating for me. She asked the class if we remember a time in our younger lives when we were not surrounded by the internet. She went on to say that if we do remember that time, then it makes us a valuable person. Her reasoning for this is that people who remember what life was like without the internet have a very different experiences with media because it isn't as integrated or taken for granted. These people see the internet as an addition to everyday life, not as everyday life.

Eliza also made a great point about how evolving technologies have had an effect on the value of communication. Before the printing press, communication was not taken for granted because it was very limited. But nowadays, multiple forms of communication are constantly at our fingertips. Essentially, communication went from being a luxury to being easy and free, and therefore less meaningful. This directly relates to advertising because it takes so much more to be able to grab someones attention. We have thousands of messages being thrown our way, so it makes it harder for one to stand out. This leads to the common thread that was present throughout Eliza's presentation, and that is: trust. With too much competition in the marketplace, it is hard to know what brands and ads to trust. Brands also have a history of being untruthful in their ads in order to draw more attention, so this also leads to trust issues.

Also seen through her presentation of the evolution of advertising is that this industry is defined by change. As we could see through the years and years of history she went through, Eliza pointed out that the communication industry is constantly changing. Whether it be the communication forms, the social media, or the target market, this industry will constantly be changing and advertisers are constantly trying to keep up with it.

Transmedia

"It's flat-out impossible to nail down a single definition that everyone can happily agree on." Basically, this chapter does the best it can to describe what transmedia is, but the reality is that there isn't one true definition that everyone can stick to. However, that is exactly what makes transmedia what it is. People seem to be obsessed with the fact that everything needs to be defined and therefore it is restricted to being only within those parameters. But transmedia can take on variety in scale, media, storytelling style and more. So transmedia holds this broad definition because the possibilities are essentially endless.
As I mentioned, these stories that are told across platforms take on many different forms in terms of scale, media and storytelling style. For example, the scale of a transmedia told in the West Coast (Hollywood) is much larger than one made in the East Coast. An example of a West Coast transmedia would be Star Wars, but the East Coast produces for a much smaller audience. They also take on different forms of media. The West Coast tends to have transmedia stories through movies, websites, books, and much more, but the East Coast tends to use web and social media. There are also a couple different ways to format your story. One way of doing it would be to take one story and spread it across multiple media, or you could start with an initial story and keep adding to it. Overall, transmedia is a very creative and thoughtful process that can really lead to powerful storytelling.  
 

Vimeo

When comparing Vimeo with YouTube, it is clear that they target and attract different audiences, and therefore have slightly different uses. While they are both video sharing websites, it is clear that the atmosphere on Vimeo is more sophisticated than that of YouTube. After making a Vimeo account, the screen read - "Discover amazing HD videos and share your own." This immediately sets up the mood of the site, while YouTube is seen more as a place to post any video no matter what aesthetic quality it has.

One way of looking at it is, YouTube is a place for everyone including filmmakers, but Vimeo is where filmmakers post their videos to be seen and commented on by other filmmakers rather than just everyone. The audience on Vimeo are others who post videos of similar quality and significance, so the comments and community that is created is constructive and mature. I'm not sure if the comments are regulated by Vimeo to create this atmosphere or if it is just created by it's users, but it is nice that Vimeo has created this space for filmmakers to have this community. 

Something else I found fascinating about Vimeo that is in-line with the filmmaker community is that once you upload a video, you can replace it with an updated version without losing stats from the video. There have been times when I've uploaded a video to YouTube and have had views on it, but realize that I need to make a slight change. I would love to just be able to replace the original video rather than start from scratch. Overall, after looking more into Vimeo I can see myself uploading some of my videos there in the future.  

Black Mirror: The Entire History of You

This episode of Black Mirror is set in a future where humans use a memory implant called a "grain" that records everything they do, see, and hear for later playback or a "re-do" as they call it. I immediately thought of how this is technology going to the extreme to capture moments so we can "remember" them, kind of like how we take pictures and/or videos of moments. I put remember in quotes because since they have it recorded and in their head forever, they don't really have to work to remember anything. However, that is just one problem I saw with this technology as this episode played out. Another downside to this was that as much as we may think it would be great to relive moments without needing to use a device to capture them, this episode shows us why it isn't always that great.
Liam expresses to his friends that he doesn't think this appraisal at work went so well, and they instantly want him to "re-do" it for them on the screen so they can analyze it. Since most people in this future world have a grain, they all can share moments they've experienced whether it be awesome, sad, intimate, or embarrassing. At first I thought that the only positive to this technology was that we would be able to live more in the moment because our eyes are just capturing everything for us for later, but then I wondered if they are truly living in the moment if they know they can just replay it later. I think our ability to store and replicate any experience whether it be by phone or by grain, takes away from being fully present in a moment as it is actually happening. Another problem I saw main character Liam experience was over analyzing everything that had been recorded. Since he could play back everything he's ever seen, it was so easy for him to dwell in the past. In today's world, I think we definitely see this in text messages. People over analyze what people say to them because it is permanently recorded on their device.
However, I think the hardest part to absorb about this episode from a "grain-less" perspective, is the normalcy that this technology has taken on in their society. Looking at Nancy Baym's four theoretical frameworks, they are definitely in the domestication stage. This makes me step back and think about technologies that are domesticated in our society today, like cell phones for example and even further - Facebook. And it makes me wonder how ridiculous it could look from a "phone-less" and "Facebook-less" perspective that we are constantly looking at these devices and connecting with friends through them. It worries me that the power that technology seems to have over us will eventually lead our society to situations we wouldn't want to find ourselves in - like living with the grain.