Hey, Everybody!
Sorry I've been so far behind on my posts, but the week before finals has been brutal. I'm totally finished with my inquiry contract paper, all I have left is to fix something in the bibliography. I think it turned out pretty well, especially given the amount of time I had to spend on it. It's a full seven pages long, and one of the densest things I've ever written. You know those really boring research papers that no one really wants to read? It's one of those. Wahoo.
Something interesting that was pointed out to me but I didn't have the sources to put it into the paper:
1980. The majority of televisions in the US have about four channels.
2008. The majority have on the scale of seventy. If you have cable or satellite you might have a few hundred.
Kinda scary, huh? Originally, when the World Wide Web first spawned off of the ARPAnet, there were a couple hundred websites. People could buy pamphlets of IP addresses (the behind-the-scenes numbers that URLs translate into. EG, Google.com = 209.85.171.100). URLs, or the text you put into the address bar of Safari or Firefox (please, not Internet Explorer), were only made popular when the number of websites got so big that it was impossible to memorize IP addresses the way you memorize phone numbers.
Today there are significantly more websites on the World Wide Web than there are human beings on earth. Makes this blog seem kind of insignificant, huh?
Friday, December 12, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Thoughts on a Paper, Episode IV
More and More Sources!
Greetings, user! I come to you today with a plethora, no, a glut of exciting and stimulating information to feed your gray matter!
…Not really. But I do have a lot of interesting stuff.
First of all, in this article, the author mentioned a reoccurring motif that I've found. Goldfish's attention span. Apparently it is 10 seconds long. Not so exciting. But what is exciting is that American children (12 and under) see more than 40,000 TV commercials per year! That's crazy, man! Ten years ago advertising agencies spent about 6 billion dollars advertising to children. Today they spend over twice that. That's a lotta ads. This article was the first to suggest major changes to solve this problem. It mentioned how a lot of european countries have created legislature about advertising to children. "Greece bans toy advertisements on TV between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.; Sweden bans all TV advertising aimed at children under 12; and Denmark, Finland, and Norway don’t allow sponsorship of any children’s programs. Canada’s Broadcasting Code, which severely restricts children’s advertising, bans ads implying that a product will make a child happier or more popular." How awesome is that? I think that the US should try this out. Cooper raised an interesting point in this article as well. Adults understand what a commercial is: a sales pitch. Children don't. The APA (American Psychological Association) reports that "children under the age of 8 can't grasp the notion that commercials have a purpose other than entertainment, and they completely believe what they see and hear."
Dude? Are you still paying attention to me? This article gives a really good definition of "Attention Span", and raises the point that perhaps TV and the web aren't the cause of our inattentiveness, but rather, the result. He points out that TVs and movies use multiple angles because we'd get bored if they didn't.
Hey… I think I've heard that somewhere before. Where...?
Ah, here. This book , which has been sitting on my shelf for the past two years not only conveniently solves my lack of a non--electronic source, but also gives some interesting history to modern cinema editing. On page 121, it talks about how…
Wait. First you need to know a little something about editing.
Shot 1: Show a helicopter shot of downtown Chicago
Shot 2: Show the exterior of a busy office high rise
Shot 3: Show the busy lobby
Shot 4: We see people entering the elevator
Shot 5: Close up of a woman wearing a powersuit, checking her watch.
OK? Now take out shots 2-4. Doesn't quite make so much sense, does it? But this is changing. Movies now switch from shot 1 to shot 3, or shot 2 to shot 5. The last movie I saw in theaters (HSM3), began with an extreme close up (chin to eyebrows), and ended the scene with an extremely wide shot (an entire set or location) of the gym.
If you were to watch a film that didn't cut from angle to angle much, you'd get bored. But would you get bored if you watched a film without the mandatory explosions or car chase sequences?
Lastly, a final fact.
"In a study of 2,600 children ages 1 to 3, researchers found that the more television the little people watch the more likely they are to suffer from attention-span deficit by the age of 7."
Greetings, user! I come to you today with a plethora, no, a glut of exciting and stimulating information to feed your gray matter!
…Not really. But I do have a lot of interesting stuff.
First of all, in this article, the author mentioned a reoccurring motif that I've found. Goldfish's attention span. Apparently it is 10 seconds long. Not so exciting. But what is exciting is that American children (12 and under) see more than 40,000 TV commercials per year! That's crazy, man! Ten years ago advertising agencies spent about 6 billion dollars advertising to children. Today they spend over twice that. That's a lotta ads. This article was the first to suggest major changes to solve this problem. It mentioned how a lot of european countries have created legislature about advertising to children. "Greece bans toy advertisements on TV between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.; Sweden bans all TV advertising aimed at children under 12; and Denmark, Finland, and Norway don’t allow sponsorship of any children’s programs. Canada’s Broadcasting Code, which severely restricts children’s advertising, bans ads implying that a product will make a child happier or more popular." How awesome is that? I think that the US should try this out. Cooper raised an interesting point in this article as well. Adults understand what a commercial is: a sales pitch. Children don't. The APA (American Psychological Association) reports that "children under the age of 8 can't grasp the notion that commercials have a purpose other than entertainment, and they completely believe what they see and hear."
Dude? Are you still paying attention to me? This article gives a really good definition of "Attention Span", and raises the point that perhaps TV and the web aren't the cause of our inattentiveness, but rather, the result. He points out that TVs and movies use multiple angles because we'd get bored if they didn't.
Hey… I think I've heard that somewhere before. Where...?
Ah, here. This book , which has been sitting on my shelf for the past two years not only conveniently solves my lack of a non--electronic source, but also gives some interesting history to modern cinema editing. On page 121, it talks about how…
Wait. First you need to know a little something about editing.
Editing 101
Wide shot: feet to above head
Medium Shot: waist to top of head
Close up: Collar bone to forehead
Ok. So when editing first became a profession and stopped being a chore, directors (and studios, by proxy) had very little confidence in their audience. They believed that if the film cut from a wide shot to a close up, audiences would get confused. They wouldn't spatially understand what just happened. Take, for instance, this hypothetical scene pitch.
Shot 1: Show a helicopter shot of downtown Chicago
Shot 2: Show the exterior of a busy office high rise
Shot 3: Show the busy lobby
Shot 4: We see people entering the elevator
Shot 5: Close up of a woman wearing a powersuit, checking her watch.
OK? Now take out shots 2-4. Doesn't quite make so much sense, does it? But this is changing. Movies now switch from shot 1 to shot 3, or shot 2 to shot 5. The last movie I saw in theaters (HSM3), began with an extreme close up (chin to eyebrows), and ended the scene with an extremely wide shot (an entire set or location) of the gym.
If you were to watch a film that didn't cut from angle to angle much, you'd get bored. But would you get bored if you watched a film without the mandatory explosions or car chase sequences?
Lastly, a final fact.
"In a study of 2,600 children ages 1 to 3, researchers found that the more television the little people watch the more likely they are to suffer from attention-span deficit by the age of 7."
Monday, December 8, 2008
Thoughts on a Paper, Episode III
Hello, Slaves to the Internet!
First of all, a couple of house cleaning things. One, I apologize for not posting the last couple of days. I've been really busy. Hopefully I'll have less homework this week. Secondly, I realize now (a week too late) that I neglected to provide a link in Episode I. Here's the link:
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
OK. Now to business.
I've spent the last two and a half hours doing research for this paper. I'll give you a quick run-down of the sources and what I've learned.
First of all, the article that rox my sox. Is Google Making Us Stupid, by Nicholas Carr. Carr wrote this article for The Atlantic when he realized that his attention span-- especially when he's reading a long book or poem-- is totally shot. He blames it on the Internet. Carr raises some interesting questions, ones that I hope to answer over the next... good gosh, two months!
In an article called Appetite for Distraction, Angelica Candelaria pointed out that the change in the way we think is reflected in modern cinema (something I'm very interested in). Movies no longer have in-depth character development, instead focusing on pretty visual effects and complex action sequences. American Theaters no longer host foreign films, because we don't have the patience to read subtitles.
Candelaria is the first so far to give possible solutions. She mentions that you should decrease your overall time on the internet, and when you are doing research, you should print out lengthy articles and read them off-line (something I'm doing with this project). She also gives some rather odd solutions, such as improving your diet and practice memory games to increase your memory, but she does raise some good points.
Turning into Digital Goldfish, from BBC News Online, doesn't have a whole lot, but it does have an interesting factoid: You spend an average of less than 60 seconds per website when you're browsing. Scary, huh?
Is TV Evil?, by Kevin Drum, is more of a rant than anything else, does have an interesting anecdote. The author's mother was a fourth grade teacher, and she found that when she first started teaching in the 1970s, the average attention span for a 4th grader was about 30 minutes. Any longer and the kids would get distracted. When the article was published, the average attention span had dropped to under 15 minutes.
Lastly, Informing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman, the same dude who came up with the concept of Future Schlack, has some really interesting facts in it. Did you know that in America there are...
Good golly, Miss Molly!
First of all, a couple of house cleaning things. One, I apologize for not posting the last couple of days. I've been really busy. Hopefully I'll have less homework this week. Secondly, I realize now (a week too late) that I neglected to provide a link in Episode I. Here's the link:
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
OK. Now to business.
I've spent the last two and a half hours doing research for this paper. I'll give you a quick run-down of the sources and what I've learned.
First of all, the article that rox my sox. Is Google Making Us Stupid, by Nicholas Carr. Carr wrote this article for The Atlantic when he realized that his attention span-- especially when he's reading a long book or poem-- is totally shot. He blames it on the Internet. Carr raises some interesting questions, ones that I hope to answer over the next... good gosh, two months!
- Do hyperlinks drive us to other sites, keeping us from finishing the current thought?
- Do students go online to avoid having to "read in the traditional sense" for research projects? (I know I do!)
- Maryanne Wolf says "We are how we read". If we are what we eat, have we become consumers of knowledge? Is information now a commodity?
- When Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter because he was going blind his writing changed. His writing style changed dramatically, and he stated that "our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts". Do we think in txt mssge and iChat speak?
- Lastly, Carr points out that data mining companies like Google and Yahoo! benefit from our jumping from site to site (it's how they make money. The longer we read one article, the more money they loose). Does that mean that our decrease in attention span is intentional?
In an article called Appetite for Distraction, Angelica Candelaria pointed out that the change in the way we think is reflected in modern cinema (something I'm very interested in). Movies no longer have in-depth character development, instead focusing on pretty visual effects and complex action sequences. American Theaters no longer host foreign films, because we don't have the patience to read subtitles.
Candelaria is the first so far to give possible solutions. She mentions that you should decrease your overall time on the internet, and when you are doing research, you should print out lengthy articles and read them off-line (something I'm doing with this project). She also gives some rather odd solutions, such as improving your diet and practice memory games to increase your memory, but she does raise some good points.
Turning into Digital Goldfish, from BBC News Online, doesn't have a whole lot, but it does have an interesting factoid: You spend an average of less than 60 seconds per website when you're browsing. Scary, huh?
Is TV Evil?, by Kevin Drum, is more of a rant than anything else, does have an interesting anecdote. The author's mother was a fourth grade teacher, and she found that when she first started teaching in the 1970s, the average attention span for a 4th grader was about 30 minutes. Any longer and the kids would get distracted. When the article was published, the average attention span had dropped to under 15 minutes.
Lastly, Informing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman, the same dude who came up with the concept of Future Schlack, has some really interesting facts in it. Did you know that in America there are...
- 2.6 x 105 billboards
- 11,520 newspapers
- 11,556 periodicals
- 27 x 104 video stores
- 3.62 x 108 TV sets
- 4 x 108 radios
- 4 x 104 books published every year (3 x 105 world-wide)
- 6 x 1010 pieces of advertising-oriented junk mail sent per day?(just for reference, that's almost ten times the population of Earth!)
Good golly, Miss Molly!
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Thoughts on a Paper, Episode II
Welcome back, Faithful Internet fiends!
> I'm pleased to announce to y'all that I believe that I'm finished with my proposal. Feel free to read it here.
> So what topic did I choose? I chose to talk about how the media and the ease of access to information is shortening the attention span of youth in America, and decreasing their intelligence.
> Sound exciting? Oh yeah! I can't wait to start researching.
> Over and out.
> I'm pleased to announce to y'all that I believe that I'm finished with my proposal. Feel free to read it here.
> So what topic did I choose? I chose to talk about how the media and the ease of access to information is shortening the attention span of youth in America, and decreasing their intelligence.
> Sound exciting? Oh yeah! I can't wait to start researching.
> Over and out.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Thoughts on a Paper, Episode I
Hello, Internet!
> Tonight's assignment is all about my up coming Inquiry Contract paper, and my progress on it for the day. This is episode one, season one of said posts. This Thursday I have to turn in a two page proposal for a topic. So tonight, sit back and relax, as I tell you my thoughts on THE TOPIC TO END ALL TOPICS.
> So my first thought is my old crutch. Gay Marriage. But common, that's been said and done way too many times. So therefore, I'm going to choose a totally divergent topic. Now, what shall that be...?
> Aha! I have an idea. So I was reading this fascinating article a while ago about how Google is taking away our ability to concentrate for a long period of time. Go ahead. Click on the link. I'll bet that your attention span has already been decreased long enough to keep you from reading the entire article. Scary, huh?
> In fact, come to think of it, I was reading an article a while ago (I have no memory of where, what, or when) that was about a study conducted a number of years ago. In 1990, a bunch of kids were asked to sit still and do nothing for as long as they could. If I remember correctly, the 7 year olds could sit still for 7 to 10 minutes, at which point they would become distracted or give up. The same experiment was conducted again in 2000, and the results were rather depressing. Only a few of the 7 year olds were able to make it past two minutes.
> Why does this happen? Well, I can't say for certain yet, because I haven't actually done any research yet, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with TV, videogames, and the immediate access to just about everything that the average American child has today. How do we fix it? Not a clue. But that's where the controversy comes in.
> LaMags gave me an interesting article to look at. I haven't looked at it yet, but here's the link to it. Go read it, and I'll read it with you.
> Ok, read and done. So now I have a choice to make. I have come up with two topics:
> Tonight's assignment is all about my up coming Inquiry Contract paper, and my progress on it for the day. This is episode one, season one of said posts. This Thursday I have to turn in a two page proposal for a topic. So tonight, sit back and relax, as I tell you my thoughts on THE TOPIC TO END ALL TOPICS.
> So my first thought is my old crutch. Gay Marriage. But common, that's been said and done way too many times. So therefore, I'm going to choose a totally divergent topic. Now, what shall that be...?
> Aha! I have an idea. So I was reading this fascinating article a while ago about how Google is taking away our ability to concentrate for a long period of time. Go ahead. Click on the link. I'll bet that your attention span has already been decreased long enough to keep you from reading the entire article. Scary, huh?
> In fact, come to think of it, I was reading an article a while ago (I have no memory of where, what, or when) that was about a study conducted a number of years ago. In 1990, a bunch of kids were asked to sit still and do nothing for as long as they could. If I remember correctly, the 7 year olds could sit still for 7 to 10 minutes, at which point they would become distracted or give up. The same experiment was conducted again in 2000, and the results were rather depressing. Only a few of the 7 year olds were able to make it past two minutes.
> Why does this happen? Well, I can't say for certain yet, because I haven't actually done any research yet, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with TV, videogames, and the immediate access to just about everything that the average American child has today. How do we fix it? Not a clue. But that's where the controversy comes in.
> LaMags gave me an interesting article to look at. I haven't looked at it yet, but here's the link to it. Go read it, and I'll read it with you.
> Ok, read and done. So now I have a choice to make. I have come up with two topics:
- How the media and technology is decreasing the attention span of youth in America, and what can be done to prevent it?
- How America is suffering from "Future Schlock", and what can be done to prevent it?
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