Photoshop

Photoshop is a photo editing program.  99.9% of images in magazines are Photoshopped.  These images can be so Photoshopped that they make women unrecognizable.  The image bellow is the same women; however the image has been so Photoshopped that she barely looks the same.  Photoshop has caused many women to have an unrealistic idea of beauty.  Their idea of beauty is based upon images they see.  Yet even the models in these images cannot obtain this beauty.  It is only on a computer that these images appear.

The Wire

The Wire was a 5 season HBO series.  It premiered on June 2, 2002.  The Wire was written by a former police reporter, David Simon.  Each episode focuses on a different facet of life in the city of Baltimore.  This show was has been described at the greatest television series ever made.  The Wire has become so critically acclaimed because of its real life depiction of life in Baltimore.  The show is based largely upon Simons 13 years working for the Baltimore Sun. 

Source:

http://www.hbo.com/the-wire/index.html#/the-wire/about/index.html

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/116351-fast-train-to-nowhere-watching-the-wire-aesthetically

MySpace

MySpace was launched in August 2003.  Until June 2006 MySpace was the most visited site in the United States; it was surpassed by Google.  In 2008 MySpace was overtaken my Facebook in number of visitors.  As of December 2011, MySpace was ranked 123^rd by total web traffic.  In just over a year MySpace lots half of its audience.  One of the major reasons for MySpace’s decline is their fail to change or evolve over the years.  They stayed the same so people got bored.  MySpace also got bogged down in a big marketing contract which caused their site to run slow, while Facebook was allowed to flourish and evolve.  O and I’m sure the MySpace face didn’t help!

Facebook

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a student studying at Harvard University.  After creating a successful website called Fashmash, which allowed students to rate each other’s hotness, he started TheFacebook.  In August of 2005 it became simply Facebook.  Since then Facebook has become a social media giant, even beating Google in March 2010 in terms of traffic volume going through their site, though only for a week.  It is now estimated that Facebook is worth eleven billion dollars.  As of July 2011, Facebook has more than 800 million active users. 

Facebook has had a wide impact on today’s society.  It has influenced media by allowing advertisers to use influencers.  Influencers are people who ‘influence’ others in their purchasing decisions.  It tends to give products credibility and spreads word of mouth about the product.  Word of mouth is the best way to advertise a product. 

Sources:http://www.sexysocialmedia.com/the-history-of-facebook-how-facebook-came-to-be/

Will We Feel Empathy: Semester Summery

Will we feel empathy?

                Our technology is constantly evolving.  We are currently nearing a time where our technology may be able to create artificial intelligence much like ourselves.  Imagine a day when you wake up and there is a person living inside your computer screen (Larson).  This person can think, feel, and fear.  What do you do with them?  If this were to happen, would people feel empathy for this person?  Or instead would we turn off our computer and act like nothing ever happened?

Webster’s Dictionary defines empathy as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also: the capacity for this” (Merriam-Webster, Incorporated).  There is an old expression that states ‘walk a mile in their shoes,’ this is empathy.  Empathy is the act of placing yourself in another person’s situation. 

                At first I thought empathy was being able to feel for someone because you can, in some way, relate to them.  In this way, empathy was just a deeper level of sympathy.  With this very basic definition of empathy my first reaction was that humans would not feel empathy for the little person living in their computer screen.  We would not feel empathy because we cannot relate.  We would label this person as ‘other’ or different from us, therefore blocking our empathetic feelings.  However, there is something else humans feel called empathic concern. 

                Empathic concern seems to be a product of “(a) perception of another as in need and (b) intrinsic valuing of that other’s welfare. Contrary to what is often thought, empathic concern is not a product of perceived similarity of the other to the self. We do not simply feel for ourselves in the other. We can feel empathic concern for a wide range of others in need, even dissimilar others, as long as we value their welfare” (Batson).  According to this new definition, humans can feel empathy for something we cannot relate to or that is not like us.  The new question becomes will we value their welfare?

                I would like to say I can answer this question with a firm “yes” but the harsh reality is I cannot.  History has shown that we have not valued the welfare of many humans.  Human nature is to label people as ‘other’ creating them as less than human in our minds.  This makes their welfare not as important as ‘ours’ and the people like ‘us’.  We do this with humans who came into the world just like we did.  Now add in the debate about if the person living in your computer screen is really alive.  If we cannot care for the welfare of our own people, we will not be able to care for the welfare of a person living in our computer screens.  Dr. Seuss once said, “A person is a person, no matter how small.”  Although I desperately want to agree with him, I think society will have a different view upon this tiny person. 

Bibliography

Batson, Dan. "Empathic Concern and Altruism in Humans." 12 10 2009. On the Human. 1 12 2011.

Larson, Robert. Media Literacy Class 28 11 2011.

Larson, Robert. Media Literacy Class 30 11 2011.

Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Empathy - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictonary. 2011. 1 12 2011.