Perez Hilton (MARK THIS ONE)

Harold Innis said "changes in the mode of communication lie at the heart of social, cultural and economic evolution".

This could not be more true. If you were to ask any university or high school student who Perez Hilton is or what he does or what his website is about, there is no doubt in my mind that they would be able to tell you the correct answer. This website which is basically an online tabloid magazine with his own personal opinions about celebrity gossip. This mode of communicating the latest news about celebrities is indicative of exactly how much our society has evolved. We are now so fixated on what celebrities do, how they dress, who they're dating, that this fixation borders on unhealthy. Our society places an unnecessary amount of value on celebrities and their lives, but nobody really takes a minute to think about how they feel about this. This puts huge amounts of pressure on them to always look the part. We idolize them and so they feel like they need to live up to these standards to the point where it can be harmful for them (look at the number of celebrities in rehab for a multitude of different reasons). Even this video of Britney Spears getting mobbed by paparazzi after she just got out of rehab shows just how unhealthy and frustrating this must be. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9lcJHXoPIc. There are also those instances where the paparazzi get injured as a result of this too. This got me thinking.
There is no doubt that we have evolved socially, economically, and culturally through our different uses of media but is this a good thing? The social evolution is the one that really relates to Perez Hilton and is probably the one with the biggest change, however this change might not be good. It really isn't healthy that we fixate of fame and fortune. I think we place value on things that really shouldn't mean that much.
So is this evolution a good thing? Some people don't like change, they think it is bad. Progression and moving forward is usually a good thing, as long as the things we are moving into have meaning. I think that overall our evolution with communications is amazing, but I don't think our cultural and social and even economic evolution are necessarily great.

REMIX - Girl Talk (MARK THIS ONE)

Music has become such a huge part of western culture. It can be considered a language even if there are no words. There are notes and keys and phrases that make up a message for the listeners. Also the voice that is heard can tell the listeners things by sending nonverbal messages. This paralanguage isn't just for songs, it can also be demonstrated through regular sentences but for this post I'm only going to discuss it with regards to songs.

I watched the video on the muscal artist Girl Talk (Features in the picture to the left) where the narrator talks about how this artist takes songs from other pop artists and remixes them to call them his own. The narrator then goes on to talk about how this is grounds for legal action for copyright infringement but he disagrees with this, in the sense that he views this remix of songs as a new piece of work independent of the original. I, on the other hand, completely and utterly 100% disagree with the narrator. This is stealing someone's work, altering it a bit and calling it your own.

I think this is disresepctful to the original author/artist of the song. One of the songs in the video was the Jackson Five's "ABC", since Michael Jackson was such a powerful pop icon and is now deceased I don't think any of his songs should be remixed unless they have the rights to do so (by paying royalties to whoever owns the copyright). The narrator attempts to illustrate how a remix of a song makes it new by playing a part of the remixed "ABC" and asking the listeners who the author of this song is, and then he says "If you said the Jackson 5, you'd be wrong". I disagree with this, Girl Talk did not come up with the notes, words, keys, tempos or any musical aspect of that song. All he did was take a song and rearrange the order of different parts of it and to me, this does not denote any hint of musical talent. Building on this example of Michael Jackson; he conveyed a message in each and every one of his songs through his voice. The key and tempo also helped him to tell stories through his songs. he chose these elements to communicate in the way he wanted to, and they are his creations. Just because these are audible art forms doesn't mean other people should be able to take them and change them to call them their own. Would you take the Mona Lisa and give her a dimple and say that you created that? I doubt it. This is my point, music is a piece of art, it communicates ideas, thoughts, and feelings in the same way a painting or sculpture does. The music should not be changed because that is, in a way changing the ideas, thoughts and feelings that the artist was trying to portray and nobody has the right to do this unless they have been given permission. One thing I thought was over the edge was when Girl Talk described the remixing of pop songs as a way to put that artist in a headlock and pour beer on them. once again, would you do this to any of the famous dead painters? Leonardo Da Vinci? Vincent Van Gogh? Claude Monet? I wouldn't think so, so then how is this any different?

Resisting Persuasion - MARK THIS ONE

I read the article “Resisting Persuasion” and it honestly made me laugh out loud. This is the perfect example of how communication is a relational act. Each of those methods for ‘resisting’ persuasion is a response that is premeditated to allow the person who is being persuaded an escape route. Each of these ‘techniques’ are a predetermined feedback/response to a persuasion method. However at the same time communication is supposed to define who we are, help us get a sense of who the other person is as well as who we are as individuals. So how can these premeditated responses help us to do this? All these would let us do is go off of someone else’s ideas of what a good response would be. If anything by saying what someone else says to respond with this could teach us to be the opposite from what the person who wrote these is. What I’m trying to say here, is the person who wrote this seems to have a strong sense of themselves, they know all of these techniques presumably because they are a good persuader (so they would know how to overcome it), the person who needs these techniques, on the other hand, is relying on someone else which indicates that they are not as confident in themselves. So instead of learning to stand up for themselves in their own way, these people who become persuaded, are now only persuaded to do what this person tells them to do! I found this comic online and thought it was quite appropriate to illustrate my point here - the one on the left (if you can't read it, it says "Kevin: King of the social influencers").

Notice how everyone is wearing teapots on their heads? This is exactly what my point is; just because someone is telling you to do this doesn't mean it will work, and doesn't mean it is really the best idea. This next cartoon (on the right) illustrates a better example of how you can use persuasion methods but still maintain your own ideas, thoughts and personality.

Some persuasion techniques can be quite effective even if they don't utilize any of the ones listed in the article. In this second comic, the boy is explaining why he didn't do his homework in his own way, but he has hired a violinist to help set the mood of the teacher. This is an example of a boy who is being himself through his own way of communicating, whereas the other comic is a perfect example of people who are most definitely NOT being themselves.

So are these techniques effective? I'm sure that they could be when used correctly, by someone who knows how to use them. Personally, I have probably used them, not because they are listed there, and not because someone told me to, but because that is the response I came up with when faced with someone who is trying to persuade me. Would you consider using these techniques?

I did a quick youtube search on "How to persuade" and found over 2,000 results (quite a few of them are relevant). This is a video of a guy who can teach you how to be persuasive http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk01q-lNzkI. I found this to be funny, but I can't tell if it is because I don't believe this guy, or because I come up with my own communication techniques for persuasion and resisting it.

So the questions I will leave you with are, do you think this guy really can teach you how to persuade people? Do you think you are a good persuader or are not easily persuaded? Do you think those ways to resist persuasion are actually helpful?

Did You Know? - MARK THIS ONE

So I watched the video on youtube called “Did you know?” and it basically summed up the way we communicate through technology nowadays. This got me thinking about the space and time binding concept. At one point the video even said that in 25 years the computer that is in our cell phone will fit in a blood cell. I think that is kind of a morbid way to get the point across, but anyways the point is that everything will be even more space binding in the future than it is now (in relation to how we communicate).
In my opinion since we have every method of communication at our instant disposal, we have lost some of the ‘flare’ for communicating. What I’m trying to say here is that our sentences now are constructed a lot different than they were 50 years ago. For example, this is a clip from the movie “It’s a wonderful life” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC1HT3UjyDA in this clip the way the two people talk to each over is so different from the way we do now. Instead of saying “I’m shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet…” we would say “I’m leaving”, we don’t try to make our sentences sound like stories anymore. With texting, msn and all of the other ways to communicate now we usually don’t even make full sentences, and respond with half sentences like “Ya bcuz I wanna c u later”. This is a clip from the movie “Knocked up” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMvhmNJoHu8 my point in including this scene is to illustrate the different way we talk to each other now. In the time of the first movie we would never swear at the dinner table, let alone in front of people. Not that swearing is really the issue here, my point is that in the first movie it seems as though the people pick their words carefully, whereas in the second movie they say whatever pops into their heads. Also in the first movie, when they speak it is almost like poetry, whereas the second one the thought process to arrive at a sentence is not as critical. So my question is, do you think that the way we used to talk to each other is better than how it is now? Is space binding media what has started this idea of quicker and to the point is better?
I would say that yes, space binding media (or that concept) is what started that idea, and that this is not better. I think that the way people used to communicate was better. It was almost like a dance with words, and now we’ve lost that dance.