Week 10....Society and Culture...determined by technology?

Most people, when thinking about society and culture, may think of religion or the seperation between the different social classes, but in this day and age, is our culture determined by the technology we use.

Alot of young people may conside it "uncool" not to have a facebook page. Then there are those youths who think it is cooler to be part of the secret society of tumblr. In each scenario, people's use of technology is having an impact on their cultural background and what defines them within society.
This is what we can discuss when looking at the idea that technology is defining our society and culture.

Week 9....Social Media

This includes web based media and the rate that people access the media. The top three websites on the internet are:

1.) google
2.) facebook
3.) yahoo.com

There are certain reasons why people enter these sites. Some people have the longing to belong to something as popular as the 3 things above. Some people need and want the attention that the use of these sites can gain you.

The creation of web 2.0 has made us, as consumers, more socially aware and has given us a chance to define ourselfs by the use of this web based medium. Social media is something most people use to network with people but alot of people also see it as a way of defining themselfs.

A perfect example of this is Tumblr. A site where you blog and complete strangers follow you. The concept is you are completely yourself because know one who knows you outside of the virtual world knows you. This leads to alot af people creating a site based around who they are and trying to get as many people them to follow them as possible so they can feel "like somebody".

This is in juxtoposition with facebook, which is a social networking site dedicated to you following your friends and family. The users of the two site often see the sites as in competiton with each other. As a user of both I know that you do not mention tumblr on facebook and vice versa. These sites have created two different types of media dependent people.

Week 8...Privacy and Surveilliance cultures.

In the world of today, with growing technology and more and more people wanting to know your private imformation every day, the theories surrounding privacy have never been as important.

The web has created people who dont mind giving their information away. But is this because they feel safe to do so. There is a data protection act, but it is also noted that each company (who asks for personal details) must have its own policy to do with data. Saying this the amount of people who take note of each companys data protection policy is very minimal.

The creation of social networking sites has made it easier and easier for people to acess imformation about you. For example, if you type my brothers name into google, his facebook page appears. Is this not a breech of privacy? Or is the fact we are allowing ourselfs to give all this imformation away showing our lack of care for our own online saftey?

Facebook....the biggest social network site on the UK.

Week 6....Networks

Networking spans back to the days when the way we communicated with each other was letter writing. This has significally changed with the development of technology. During the war morse code was frmed creating another network. There is also the invention of the telephone to consider and now there is the invention of the internet.

Mosaic was the first internet based distributed network and allowed you to find out information with just a click of a button. It was the first network of its type so was quite the phenomenon. Looking at this today it is over shrouded with the development of technology and the mass amounts of Networks that have been created. These include social networking sites, blogging sites and forums. Technology has developed our ways of networking.

Week 5: Advertising.

Advertising has always been a stong media format which has spanned over different types of  publishing. It can be print based, television based and now with the creation of the web can also be an online resource.

Print based publishing has stood the test of time and eventhough it first originated in the 1800s it is still being used today. This is an example of a print advertisement:

This is an add from the 1940s. This is now in juxterposition with the smoking adds of today which sell smoking as a bad habit. For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=688uHz6QYkQ

This video promotes the idea that children want to be just like their parents and by smoking around them you are influincing them to do something which is bad for their health.

Although advertising has stood the test of time it has also changed dramatically in its messages due to sientific advances that disproove past advertised theories. This is very appropriate when speaking about smoking advertisements and the test of time.

My understanding of Postmodernism.

Postmodernism literally translates as "after the modernist movement". There are some things which postmodernism defines as a term. These are such things as "there is no such thing as high art or pop culture anymore", "in a postmodern state you cannot be unique" and "postmodernism is an ecletic state, drawing from the past and bringing it into the future". This realtes to hebdige's idea that "postmodernism is a scyzophrenic mode of space and time". This concept basically states that time and space have been drawn together through our use of past in present and what will be our use of present in future.

There are other key terms within postmodernism. These tems include the three P's of postmodernism: Parody, Pastiche and Plunder. Parody is when one text "pokes fun" at another". Pastiche is when a text "draws influence from more that one text" and Plunder is when a text "uses one media text and dwells upon it within itself". Postmodernism is a concept that has not only been widely discredited by modernists, but also taken on board by the modern media. Most texts we will see today have examples of posmoderninity within them. Examples of these texts are:


Shaun of the dead (Edgar Wright 2004), the movie which "pokes fun" at zombie films with particular reference to "dawn od the dead" in the title.




The music video "we made you" by Eminem, which makes particular reference to different cultural phenomenon such as; The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Kim Kardashian, the relationship between Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson, the film Rainman, Sarah Palin an american politician, the game guitar hero and many other subjects.


The film The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick 1999) which creates a hyper-reality. The film makers made the film oout to be a documentary rather than a horror film and persuaded many people globally that the story of the blair witch was a true one ond the events seen within the tape were true.

These different examples of postmodernism highlight the effect the theory is having on the media, and the effect this is therefore having on the audience. A confusing term to grab at first but now this term explains so much within the media industry and the way people around the world react to the media before them.

Week 4....Simulacra and Simulations

Within his text of Simulacra and Simulations, Baudrillard discusses the idea of hyper-reality and how hyper-reality has developed from simulation and abstraction. Hyper-reality highlights that which is more real than itself. Bauldrillards exaple for this is Disney land. He states that "Disney land is more real than the real America". This is as Disney land seems to be cut of from the rest of the world and whilst there you live in a hyper real state in which that around you is the reality you come to know. The news you hear is that of the park and not of the world and the events which take place are exclusive to the audience in which are there. I agree that this is very good exaple of hyper-reality.

My exaple of hyper-reality is that of the gaming world. For exaple, you create a character, in which you play games as and speak to other games with and within this world you do things you would'nt neccessarily choose to do/ have the chance to do in real life, such a,s shoot and kill people, steal cars, save the world, go to a war zone. A good gaming example of this is: X Box 360 and X Box Live.


As the image shows you create an avatar and with that you speak to people you have never met from all around the world, you compete against them and with them as this online character. You create a hyper-real world for yourself to get lost in.

Baudrillard has many exciting and interesting points within his text but the idea of hyper-reality vs. reality is the one that stands out most to me within his text of simulacra and simulations.