One major revelation i had in this class was that media is changing our cultural values away from privacy and toward surveillance. This has partially to do with the connectivity available to us each and every day. I found it shocking to learn that advertisers monitor your internet searches, calls, ect, in order to build an advertising profile for each person. Then when you are online, pop-ups are designed to target you specifically. These profiles have also been used by politicians to narrowcast. These personality profiles are another way in which we are similar to the kids in Feed. This is evidence that we are moving toward an age of hyper-commercialism where advertising to us from as many mediums as possible as much as possible becomes the main goal. Also, sites such as twitter allow us to know what people are doing across the globe without even talking to them. This will eventually replace calling people because it's going to me much more convenient to check their tweet rather then calling them. As convergence continues to grow and we stay more connected social sites will continue to grow. In conclusion, what i gather is that we are only as subject to surveillance as we allow ourselves to be. I included the video below because it shows how surveillance can be used in a negative way rather then protecting our safety. The 2nd video below shows how each time you use technology it can be monitored, from computers to credit cards.
Media Revelation #8) Media / Politics
A major thing I learned is that media influences the way politics are conducted. Page 97 in Amusing Ourselves To Death talks about how candidates were worried about their visual impressions rather then debating the issues. Television changed the way we elected our presidents because all of the sudden appearance began to play a role. One can argue that media has a positive change on the debates because now anybody could listen and watch them, but did it really? We as human being judge others, its part of our nature. If we see a candidate on television we will be influenced by their appearance even if we think we are not.
Also, now that advertisers are able to view individuals information they can narrowcast. This basically means telling certain people different things from other when door to door campaigning. This is shady business because everyone should know the same information about the candidate so they can make their best choice. Narrowcasting is a way for politicians to hide certain issues from some demographics because those facts will hurt their votes. The video below is Katie Couric talking about how the political news isn't really news because everyone knew who was going to run for president even before.
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