Texting Take over

I wanted to share one of the articles I found while researching information on my artifact. 
Here is the link:
Teen Texting, Will Social Skills Suffer?

The article highlights the rise of teenagers who not only have more access to phones then ever before and the heavy reliability they've placed on using them, texting in particular. To me texting is a great away to reach to people quicker, easier, and at those times where you really can't talk it really comes in handy. The problem comes in when people would rather pick text someone to avoid an awkward confrontation or situation. The youth of today are basically reiterating constant escape mechanisms through avoiding face to face communication by favoring texting over all other forms of communication. This has to have direct affect on their social skills right? What happens when they get into the job force....they can't text their boss comments concerns and questions (well, maybe) so how will that make it? Is society technology advances setting our future kids up for inevitable social skill suicide? 

My artifact presentation

Today I presented my artifact to the class. I felt a little rushed for time because class was almost over, so I didn't really get to say everything I wanted to say. My artifact is on mass communication and its inevitably to take over the value of face to face communication. I really wanted to focus on the use of texting, email, facebook, and other social sites and networks, as our ideal choice when it comes to communicating to someone. No one really likes to call anyone anymore (I guess that takes too much energy) so I decided to manipulate the iphone... I made a 3-D model of an iPhone (hope my art skills are excused) and I titled it iPhorgot. This stands for "iPhorgot" how to communicate without my phone and decided to make up exaggerated applications for it. 


Coming up with the apps weren't that hard because I just thought about all the things these days people would rather do non-verbally. This is everything from breaking up with someone, telling someone you're at their door, giving someone bad news (or good news for that matter),  even telling people Happy Birthday. What happens to value of those things we no one does face to face interaction when doing them anymore? 

Culture Jam Video

This week we watched the very interesting video on Culture Jamming. I thought this video was such a good insight in to something I never knew existed. I didn't know people actually felt passionate enough about certain aspect in our cultural media enough to deface property, protest, and manipulate various situations and artifacts. I thought the girl in the video that went around literally drawing on property or changing ads in a subway was  bit of an extremist to me. She may have went a little overboard to get her point across, I felt like people may take you more seriously if you do things respectfully and not so much in a bold fashion. I felt like the billboard guys did a great job at this. They got their point across, but they cared enough to clean up their mess and clean the people who were going to find their "changes" little keepsakes behind. The Disney group of guys led by the "Reverend" was uh very interesting, for lack of better words. Watching their segment was so : | I couldn't even find words to describe how I felt. I was entertained, informed, upset, to just to name a few. I really like how they made people in the store feel different emotions. When the two lady were offended for two different reasons: one because of the actions the group was taking and one because of the fact that "Disney contributed in child labor" shows that culture jamming is sort of in the eye of the spectator. We as spectators are constantly taking in our surroundings and forming opinions and thoughts about them consciously as well as subconsciously. This video really gave me a better perspective on how to attack the manipulation  of my artifact. 

Mass Communication

Today I simply typed in "Mass Communication" and clicked on the first site I came to. 
I thought this was pretty interesting:


Mass communication refers to the process of transferring or transmitting a message to a large group of people. Typically, this requires the use of some form of the media, including newspapers, television, and the Internet. The term mass communicationwas coined in the 1920s, with the advent of nationwide radio networks, newspapers, and magazines which were circulated among the masses. The distribution of information to a wide range of people remains the main function of masscommunications, even today. It can also be an avenue of escape from the daily humdrum of our lives.


Said it all right in that last sentence, ESCAPE. Is that all we are really looking for when we rely heavily on mass communication. Just that one moment, or hours where we can focus (or not) on something other than the normal duties and responsibilities that are required of us?


Mass Communication