Media Deprivation

“The more you drive the, less intelligent you become.” –Tracey Walter

The last movie I watched before my day of media celibacy was Repo Man, directed by Alex Cox in 1984. It is easily the best movie that was ever created; the quote above is from a monologue in the movie. I thought about that line a lot, as I drove, with no music in my car.
The first pang of missing media was in the car as I drove quietly. Thinking. The world I live in requires me to drive. To survive I have to go to work, to school, to lots of places. None of these places are near each other, and where I live is nowhere near any of them. So that’s why I have a car. As I drove to the hum and clicks of my aging automobile, I wonder, what came first: people making places of importance so far away from each other, so then we needed to invent cars? Or that we invented cars so now we could start putting stuff farther and farther away from each other. Either way, society now has commutes and people are now commuters, and something must fill the time during the commute. So the medium of radio is the perfect fit for the automobile. It’s something to occupy the minds of all the people who sit alone in their cars for hours a day. It makes the absurd notion, that people are willing to sit and drive for hours alone, bearable. Do I depend on media when I drive? Yes. But do I need it? Maybe not. I did a lot of thinking while I drove in the silence, for this paper, and for other homework and different things. I don’t get that much thinking done when I drive with music. If we all thought a little bit more, and rocked out a little bit less, I wonder if America would be a better place.
The very next thing that hit me with my media deprivation was my dependence on electronic entertainment. As I sat and read Dead Eye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut, the black face of my television stared at me, beckoning me to play. I had to read in the kitchen. Again I sat and did more thinking. Did people have so much time on their hands that they invented games to play? Or did they discover the fun of games and then start doing everything else less? I can so easily get sucked into a video game. The story, the strategy, the game play, the fun, all of it together really engrosses me. With out them, there is only me. And I’m pretty boring, I really when ripped away from my media I really understood what Jib Fowles talks about in chapter 25 when he says “City folk were along in ways more profound than country folk had ever experienced”
Another big part of feeling alone or detached is that without my phone or my laptop, I was cut off from my constant stream of information. No texts told me where my friends were or what they were doing. No blogs to tell me about the world or about what new developments were happening in politics or technology. No updates on the recent video game releases. That last one gets me the most. I felt that I was out of the “conversation.” The idea of The Conversation, or Resonance would be the Postman way to say it, I realized must not have existed to a media-less people. That’s probably because the idea is a little silly anyway. All the chatter and all the talking to nobody, all the blogs and threads and articles and posts that somehow adds up to a big giant conversation. A conversation is 2 or more people talking to each other, yet most of the internet conversation is not people directly talking to each other, though there are way more than two of them. I suppose I wasn’t really in this Conversation to begin with, I don’t contribute in anyway, I just read all the blogs and watch all the videos and that makes me feel apart of something bigger than myself, something that many others are apart of too. But without my laptop, I’m completely missing all of it.
I’m so used to feeling “connected” though I am not literally connected to anyone or anything with my phone or computer, but I’ve thought about my self as being connected for so long, its weird to be un-connected. I wonder how long it would talk for me stop thinking in those terms, to stop equating wi-fi single or Internet access with being connected to the world. It’s almost like a 6th sense, the sense of being connected, being able to experience reality with more than site and smell and taste and such. Does all this connectivity bring people together? Or is it making up for that fact that it made so atomized to begin with. I think a little of both, people don’t like to be alone, but modern life and technology make it so easy and often times necessary to be alone (like the commute). But new ways to talk open up and people take more and more advantage of them as the technology that once pulled us apart can now bring us back together.

On the subway I like to watch people. Most people on the metro have headphones on. A few years ago I remember, seeing a kid with white Apple ear buds that went from his ears into his partially zipped backpack, presumably to an iPod. But as I watched him, he reached into his backpack, revealing that the ear buds did not lead to an iPod but to a cheap CD Walkman. Imagine my shock. At the time, I just thought he was a “poser” now I see that moment as something different.
A person’s choice of media is a big choice. Or at least, we Americans think it is. The music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books we read, if we read at all, says a lot about us, and our personalities. If I take a quick look at most anyone’s facebook page, the information used to describe that person is simply a list of the media they consume. But this media is not the only thing that holds import to that person’s identity. The medium also sends a message about that person. I am saying that not only is the medium the message, but that the medium sends a message, in and of it self.
This is not s new phenomenon, way back in the 1900’s, the newspaper that people read communicated what class they were apart of. Michael Schudson in his article about New Journalism says

“The Times attracted readers among the wealthy and among those aspiring to wealth and status, in part, because it was socially approved. It itself was a badge of respectability.”

The last bit is the key part in my thought. The medium of a newspaper, a particular newspaper, became a badge. The Times and other papers like it wanted to separate themselves from “yellow” journals that were filled with much more sensational and scandalous reporting. These journals were seen as the rag of the lower class, and that it “soiled the breakfast cloth.”
Here we see two kinds newspaper, with different branding, that send two different kinds of messages. And though the content of the papers was important, in a way. It didn’t really matter.

“And yet, while the tastes of different classes remain different from one another in a given period, they change over time. Up until about the Civil War, the most sophisticated elements in the population preferred their literature, and even their journalism, flowery rather than plain, magniloquent rather than straight forward. By 1900, when information journalism was sponsored by an economic and social elite, it was prized.”

So even the style of the content can change, the message of The Times, never changed, regardless of its content, it was a paper for the elite by the elite.
Let’s go back to my previous anecdote. The young man with the false ear buds wanted people to think he had an iPod. Maybe I’m judging his motives, but apple ear buds aren’t that good, the only reason to have them is because they come with an iPod, and they signify to everyone who sees you, that you listen to an iPod. And that sends a message to people. At the time when I saw this kid, the message the medium of an iPod sent was probably different than it is now. Now iPods and iPhones are such an hegemony that it almost doesn’t mater if you have one (I still don’t, but ill get to that later). But a few years ago, listening to an iPod meant that you had money, were tech savvy, got all your music online and that you were cool. Maybe, that kid on the subway wanted to be seen that way, he wanted to be cool. Even though he still had to change compact disks like any loser.
But still, maybe subconsciously, he knew the message of the medium, and didn’t want to be seen as one who used an “out-dated” medium. An iPod might not make someone seem high class, but I know what medium does. Vinyl. If you are the kind of person who scores through thrift stores for old LPs, only listens to records, and despises MP3s for their lack of full sound quality. Then your probably one of my hipster friends. And hipsters know that listening to the warm lossless sound of a vinyl record makes them better than everyone else.
Today it’s the same story as the newspapers from the 1900’s its just a new medium. The content matters some. But even that will change, what was once the overproduced, overlooked pop of the eighties, is now a great find in a thrift store bin by the vinyl-loving hipster.
A similar case could be made for those who made the switch to HD televisions, and those who just got a converter box. Or “Mac” people and “PC” people, Xbox and PlayStation 3, smart phones and dumb phones. We label ourselves with all sorts of mediums. And what makes certain mediums become a status symbol? Do people buy into these mediums because of the status they already have? Or do they use certain mediums to obtain a desired status? The short answer is probably, a little bit of both.

reading update

nukes.

big scary, nukes.

the linked piece is from the Daily Kos, and Plutonium Page goes into why and how our generation sees nukes in a completely different (and probably wrong) way. it has big implications not only on media effecting our knowledge, or foreign policy. but how we think about things we've never actually experienced in real life. only in media. and yeah.

nukes.

crazy.

and another Kos piece about the economy and the people who messed us all up. definitely helpful if your like me and only have a loose grasp on the minutia of economics. it also show us totally botching the example that Japan set for us. maybe we pay too much attention to ourselves.

News, Nukes and Nobel’s

“The telegraph introduced a kind of public conversation whose form had startling characteristics: Its language was the language of headlines — sensational, fragmented, impersonal.” - Neil Postman

When people first received telegraphs from across America, they must have thought they were the hot shit. And honestly, they totally were. Through electrical wires, dots and dashes, people hundreds of miles away could tell each talk like they were next-door neighbors. Well, not entirely, but they no doubt thought it was just as good. If only those people could see me know.

Our dear friend Mr. Postman, in Amusing Ourselves To Death, says that the telegraph not only fundamentally changed the way the way we got our information, but also changed the content of that information. It has only gone downhill from there, or uphill depending on how you look at it. Back then, one person could receive one message at a time, and, unless they wrote the message down, couldn’t keep it for records or reference. Now I get my facts from Google reader. I can receiver hundreds of messages a day simultaneously and keep them all catalogued. Alexander Graham Bell would have crapped his pants. The change in the content of the information has also become more and more “ Sensational, fragmented and impersonal.” The following is a quote from sensei Postman with a few changes of my own.

“ The internet permits no time for historical perspectives and no priority to the qualitative. To the internet, intelligence means knowing lots of things, not knowing about them.”

Perhaps I an painting with too broad a brush, but this is the way I use the internet, this is way I use my Google reader, which for me is the internet, and it is where my “facts” come from. Here is an example.

Our president has won the Nobel Prize. The way I learned that “fact”, or that “news of the day” if you will, was from one of my news blogs, I don’t even know which one. I don’t even know if I reacted. But many other people have. Page van der Linden from the Daily Kos says this

“Winning the Nobel Peace Prize is indeed an honor, but it is also a responsibility. Those who realize the dangers posed by nuclear proliferation understand and applaud Barack Obama's intention, and ongoing efforts, to make sure our national security goals set an example for other nuclear powers in the world.”

My news of the day has now been filled out some. My president not only won the prize, but he got it because he doesn’t like nukes. And who does really? I have more to say about nukes, but first a word from father Postman,

“In both oral and typographic cultures, information derives its importance from the possibilities of action….But the situation created by telegraphy, and then exacerbated my later technologies, made the relationship between information and action both abstract and remote.”

I read that. I understand it. I ask myself “what will the information of my president having won a Nobel prize effect in my actions?” or better yet “will knowing that its because he doesn’t like nukes make it effect my actions?” Postman based his quote from information he had about the telegraph, the telephone and television. He had no idea what a Link was.

When I get a “telegraph” (a blog post) I can find out al sorts of background information, and related information. I can turn my initial ignorant reaction into and informed and well rounded, fact- checked opinion. So does this prove Senior Postman wrong? Are the bits of information I get from news blogs, and media blogs, and technology blogs, and video game blogs, and fashion blogs, and art blogs, and graphic design blogs more than just fodder for a cross word puzzle? I could link information together all day. I could weave it like an electronic Quipu, colored strings of text spiraling together, knotting in quotes that relate from one post to the next. All that to say I could get deep. But is it truly depth? Is it more than what papa Postman calls “knowing lots of things” and knowing nothing about them. I’m saying “no.” Width is not depth. All of the internet “news of the day” I receive may be able to be spread wide and linked to all manner of sources, but that does not make it deep. It still lacks importance, because it has nothing to do with my life’s actions and choices. It doesn’t matter how deeply I know about nuclear proliferation, or the history of the cold war, or North Korea, or mutually assured destruction. None of that information effects how I live, not for the positive anyway. In a Wall Street Journal article by George Shultz, Will Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn, they say

“Nuclear weapons were essential to maintaining international security during the Cold War because they were a means of deterrence.”

So at one point we needed nukes because other guys had nukes, and as long as we both knew we had them, we wouldn’t blow both of us to hell with them. The only way that information can affect the life of a normal human is to scare the-ever-loving-shit out of them. Honestly, what could a person living in the 70’s do about any of that? Nothing. One person hearing the news of “Russia has nukes” can’t apply that information to any part of their life, other than telling kids to hide under their desks. And really? Who was that helping?

So flash-forward to the present, I can receive Information faster and in more “depth” than television or the telegraph could, and I read “America’s President doesn’t like nukes, and he got a shiny Nobel award for it.” What in the world can I do with that information? Can I decide whether we use nukes or not? Can I tell Mr. President that I am going to throw away all of my nukes too, since I know he doesn’t like them so much? If I owned a nuke, I wouldn’t be a poor college student. That much is true. There is nothing I can do to stop American from making nukes, there is nothing I can do to get rid of the ones we have, there is nothing I can do to stop others from using their nukes on us. I can vote for people who might have some say on the matter, but even that is very small action that only happens rarely, and my vote holds so little a sway. This is almost depressing. Almost. Another thought from master Postman,

“we may say then that the contribution of the telegraph to public discourse was to dignify irrelevance and amplify importance.”

If once there was a time that information meant that I would make different choices to survive my day, and my life would vary to the amount of information I was given, this is not that time, and this is not that information. Getting blown up by a nuke seems very, very important. It seems that it might be of life or death importance. But really, that’s just the telegraph talking. It’s very good at blowing up things that don’t really matter (pun very much intended). It makes me think that I really, really need to know as much as possible about the threat of nuclear annihilation and the man who stands between us and mutually assured destruction. But do I really? Is that information anything more than the wireless signal that translates to light on my computer screen, and makes text that’s only worth put into a crossword puzzle? Am I asking to many questions? One final thought from the Postman

“There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre.”

I feel like a man lying on a hospital bed, who has been so caught up in thought about his medicine, forgot all about the iv in his arm.

Is it strange to give an award to a man that is against blowing up the world? Is it strange to live in a world where men have the ability to wipe out millions of lives with the push of a button (or the turn of a key if your into WarGames). Are there more than ten people in this world who actually like nukes? Probably. And that too is a bizarre thing. Things seem a lot more bizarre these days; I don’t think I realized it till recently.

I asked a lot of questions, and have answered almost none. But the more questions I ask, the more clearly I can see the situation. The more detached I can become in order to see all the “space between” fact and the screen its shown on. Maybe the more I learn and the more I read, more answers will appear. I doubt it. But I will keep looking and I’m going to keep asking. And maybe Postman and his magical words from his magical book will help me out.

Update

I'm going to be fallowing the blog Daily Kos now. Rolling stone didnt seem to be updating alot, and the stuff they were didnt seem interesting to me. I'm still going to read them , but if I'm going to jump in I'm going to jump in with both feet.

Cheers.

here also is a little picture for your troubles.

the_media_in_my_head

Hello world. My name is Jeffrey martin, and I hope we can get along.

I consume a lot of media; I also try to create some of my own. I am a white male and I am about as average as it gets, straight, no handicaps; I don’t lean to far in any direction politically. My political compass score is -1.25 economic -2.36 social. Some people might say that there is no middle class in America, I don’t know if I agree, because I feel pretty middle class most of the time, I drive a used Volvo 240 (1992) and I change my own oil. So class wise I’m pretty normal, I think most people are much more normal than they give themselves credit for. And there’s nothing wrong with being normal, some of the greatest people who ever lived were normal.

The primary media that I ingest is and is about one thing, videogames, and to a lesser extent art, graphic design and music. But ever since I was young, for some reason I don’t know, videogames have had a hook in me that I cant get out. I love the psychological part of video games, the way that they differ from any other art form, and I wish I had more time to play them. So I read blogs, listen to podcast and subscribe to magazines all to get news and conversation about videogames. Maybe I just never grew up, and maybe I don’t want to. Videogames are pure fun and their made to be enjoyed. I consider myself to be very sarcastic, much too sarcastic, and videogames keep me evened out. When people wine about “realism” or “plots” in the stories they watch or play, I do it to, it just makes us seem spoiled. In a video game all sort of sophisticated technology and design went into it for one purpose, so you can have fun. And at the same time a game can pull many emotions out of people, and many more than a movie or book can too. In other mediums one watches or reads events taking place, all sorts of cool or thought provoking thing happen, but that’s it, they happen. In a game I do them, I am the main character, and all of the events are MY doing, so any emotional response is because of the consequences of my action or inaction. It’s a fundamental shift from a book, or movie.

I am also a graphic designer by trade and went to art school, so I keep up on artistic and design trends, which also helps inspire me for making my own work. I work digitally, but I also draw and screen print t-shirts.

One of my main ideologies is that I love to make things. Yet creation can be hard when it seems like everything has already been made. Any drawing you try to do, tons of illustrators and animators will already have made that drawing and many better ones already. And slogan or song or rhythm or picture one tries to make will always be similar to something else without even trying. So what does an artist do? Is there really nothing left to create for my generation? The answer I think is Girl Talk, if you have ever heard Girl Talk, he is a DJ that mixes parts of tons of different music together to make something new. Beats from one song, guitar from another some rap lyrics with choruses by alt rock singers, all thing we know and are familiar with all mashed up to make something new, to make something beautiful. So that’s what I want to do with art, take all these things that I see and hear, and mash them altogether to make something new, something designed, and something fun to look at. So anything I ingest as media, I am always thinking, planning, how can I put this into something else. Does the shot of this movie make a good composition? That will work well with the typography of a line from a song? Mixed in with the details and texture from the cells I’ve seen in bio 109? And how can I scan all this stuff to get in my computer and then in Photoshop? These are the questions I filter most of my experiences through.

I spend more time with the Internet than I do with many other media outlets, I don’t watch a ton of TV, though I do enjoy movies. I listen to music, mostly with lots of screaming. I find it a very manly thing to like aggressive music, I guess I’m over compensating for being a dork and an artist, not the mostly manly professions. Going to live concerts is something I do, and I love watching the crowd as much as the band. I don’t have an ipod, and I have the secret desire to be the last man alive without one. The communal aspect of listening to music is really an amazing thing. At any other sort of gathering it can be really hard to get six people to all focus and participate in one thing, but at a concert, hundreds of people will all focus and sing and stand much to close to together and perfect strangers will feel like family all because of the joining power of the music. This is especially evident in smaller club shows, which are far superior to large venues.

Seeing people moved by media to me is just as fun as experiencing the media itself. A creative advertisement is great, a scary poster at a bus stop, but seeing some one look at it and curl their face in disgust, or pump their fist in excitement for that movie or whatever, that is what is really amazing. A piece of paper, a lit screen, a few pixels, these simple things are able to pull emotion out of us, and elicit a response.

So because I’m really just a nerd, and don’t listen much to politics, I wasn’t really sure what blogs to pick. I’m going to start reading the Baltimore Sun, since I live close to Baltimore, seemed like a good choice. (www.baltimoresun.com/) And I’m going to read the Rolling Stones blog (www.rollingstone.com/nationalaffairs/) since it seems like a good place to start and I enjoy a more light hearted take on politics, so I’ll watch more John Stewart too.

all_together_now