In class we’ve spoken of social movements, protests and striving towards social change and such. Between this and the occupy protests among many other movements taking place in the world, the idea of people coming together under a social movement has been a common theme of the past few months.

While I do support the idea of striving for change and people coming together for the greater good, I think the amount of social slacking that appears during these protests and movements is insane. Personally, I think the occupy movements have brilliant potential, and are actually fighting for something worthwhile that can benefit literally billions of people, however the way they go about it is a joke, much like most protests are.

“Occupying a space”, standing around, picketing, chanting, or any similar action literally has no impact at all. It can’t be ignored by those who matter, it can be counterattacked as people being a nuisance, or having too much time on their hands and wasting it on these protests, which is exactly what happened to the occupy supporters.

I’m not saying that people should resort to violence to get attention or anything drastic like that but something more than standing around and yelling would be helpful. Yelling rabble rabble isn’t going to change anything people.

“Everything that’s available to do isn’t a good idea”

Amen to that Louis. Talking about social networks and evolving social media and stuff seems to just have become a cluster of insanity that is completely unecessary. Social media and smartphones give us the feeling of unlimited control but in reality we’re more dependent than ever on technology and have almost no control ourselves.

People seem to find just about anything to argue about, Mac vs. PC is a big one when really the differences are negligible.

Makes me think people just love arguing, nobody’s listening and everyone’s waiting for their turn to speak. Communication at its worst.

Anytime I read anything referencing Marshall McLuhan, this is all I can think about. If only life were like this indeed.

Since everyone is talking about ignoring I thought I’d share this.

A New York based comedy group called Improv Everywhere puts on a musical inside a random grocery store, what I find amazing about this however is the number of people completely ignoring this spectacle and continuing with their grocery shopping. Are we as a people so distant from our local community that we can’t even be bothered to acknowledge something like this happening around us? Are our lives so busy that taking a few moments out of our scheduled routine to take in something unique is too much to ask for?

Whatever it is it seems some people need to imbrace what’s happening around them more often and not be so focused on themself.

It’s funny cuz it’s true!

Throughout the readings of this course and the discussions of evolution of media and language in the media it’s often repeated that humans are allowing the machines in media to become part of themselves. The obvious example and one that is widely used in the readings is Apple’s recent surge into popularity with the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers becoming extensions of the self into media.

I found this ironic since in 1984 Apple released a one time advertisement during the superbowl that drew inspiration from George Orwell’s novel “1984” in which an obviously independent woman attempts to destroy the status quo of man being commanded by a tyrannical computer. The symbolism here was supposed to be an attack on Microsoft’s domination of the computer market and people allowing Microsoft to control their lives whereas Apple believed this shouldn’t be the case. However nowadays it seems that Apple is more so the commanding machine that tells people what to do, what to buy and how to behave. Not even 30 years have passed and the same corporation that promoted the idea of being an individual and different from the crowd now is arguably the most influential organization shaping ideologies of media.