Mr. Diahhbeetuss

So i enjoy writing allot, essays, poetry, lyrics, short stories, children’s stories, epics, whatever.  And now that I’m getting older and looking back at what i did when i was a kid, I’m seeing this huge market in books for kids.  What i find exciting about this is the amount of media litteracy allot of kids have.  Why do I find the media litteracy of children exciting?  Because now i can write about everything, things that people my age, that are now having children, will find compelling and want to read to their kids.  And those kids will get it.  Fantasmical plots about werewolves riding 20 foot tall fur seals into hords of evil zombie cyborgs, etc. etc.  10-15 years ago, PTA’s across america would’ve had my head for even thinking about giving that to children, but now, my people are the PTA, or they will be soon.  SO…. point of the story being, look out for “Freidrick the Lonely Turtle” which may or may not be arriving in local bookstores around next May depending on my ability to sell(which is very, very, very little) and GET IT FOR YOUR KIDS!!! thats mah beat.  

I’ve got a bag of mixed feelings for convergence.  I’m a pretty big advocate for nature and simplicity.  An evolved hippie per say.  I don’t enjoy the thing technology turned us into, the anxious jittery coffee driven people that we are.  And you could say that we’ve always been that way, but lately, and by lately i mean the 21 years i’ve been alive, it’s picked up allot of speed.  With so much information now available and distribituble, things have gotten a wee bit chaotic.  

But I get it, the internets cool.  Jetpacks are cool.  I can’t wait for someone to make an actual holodeck. I mean can you imagine that?  A 20 by 10 foot shiny green room that can create anything?  Think of live action halo.  Ridiculous.  But anyways, new pretty things are always attractive.  And at the current moment, it’s necessarcy to know how to use thoses pretty things to function respectably as a person.  So people might as well learn how to.  

I enjoy the quickness of the digital age, but it’s made us really lazy and snobby.  I use it to get music and do homework and learn about life, but all my socializing is done strictly offline.  The one part I’m not so sure about is where were going with this.  I can see it going well, everybody being brought together and connected and peaceful.  Looking at the whole picture instead of just what they can see in the places they live.  The earth working together to fix things.  But on the other hand, everybody has access to everything and corporations are getting too powerful, and that’s dangerous because the people trying to make money shouldn’t be the one’s with power.  Almost everything has become vulnerable to hackers, and if the communication networks fail people are going to go nuts.  No ones going to remember how to do anything without the Internet and that’s a huge problem because the Internet CAN fail.  No one’s going to know how to contact people without cell phones and we’ll all be clueless.

Ok so the first video i watched, Media Literacy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W0GSI9v5t8), was an “instructional guide” for teachers trying to explain to their students what media literacy was and how they can teach them to be media literate.  The introduction of the video showed children following their parents around copying everything they did, smoking, drinking, littering, screaming, fighting, beating their wives, etc. etc.  The video was then handed over to a lady with a creepy child show sounding voice who went on to explain, that you should teach children to use the tools of communication to interpret media messages.  She explained that you need to get them to ask, who created this message? What creative techniques were used to attract my attention? How might different people understand this message differently? What values, lifestyles, and points of view are represented by this message?  And, why is this message being sent?  

All very good things to teach children. Those kind of critical thinking skills can be applied to almost every part of communicating and its good to know that teachers are actively trying to teach younger students how to use them.

It’s kind of depressing to think how many people think that reality shows and extravagant news media are un-manipulated and 100% honest.  Come on now, this is the same human race that’s been duping people left and right for the entirety of our existence, don’t you think they’d use something as powerful as TV and the Internet to dupe you and make some cash?

On a personal note, I don’t appreciate the textbook saying that Stephen Colbert is running a fake news show.  That news is not only real, it’s funny.

tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

when i was in preschool my entire class dogpiled on me and i flipped out and it was horrifying, absolutely horrifying.

When I think of reality TV, I think of the Jersey Shore, of who’s the fattest american, of the exploitation of people’s situations by themselves and television producers to gain wealth and fame. Of pure, unadulterated, evil.  So many people are caught up in this crap it’s almost unbelievable, yet another reason that if anything happened to the United States and dropped the standard of living down a couple notches, about two thirds of the country would die.  I don’t understand how people can be so obsessed about someone else’s life, someone who, for the most part, isn’t making any difference whatsoever.  I can see the point that some people need that little escape now and then.  But it’s gotten so important that less and less people are noticing the problems, like living conditions on the other side of the world, bombs going off in Gaza, bad stuff man, bad stuff.  What does this reflect about the American culture?  It says that we, are the fattest, laziest, stupidest, drunkest, unhealthiest, vulgar slobs on the planet.  Occasionally it says that we can all pull together to help someone that should have gotten help before a production team found them and put them on Extreme Home whatever.  But none of it’s doing any good for the whole, it’s just making us more dependent on others and their opinions.  And I don’t like it, and I ain’t gonna watch it.

Ha.  Pick one day and log all the types of media you use they say.  Oh the upsides of minimalistic life.  Well, yesterday I got on the Internet, tweeted twice, went to the CP Moodle site, went to Tumblr, got offline, watched ten minutes of news, and then went outside and wrote in my notebook, for 6 hours.  I enjoyed the Internetless solitude of the outside with a beer and a fancy writing pen.  Then I used my cellular telephone to call up my friend and went to her house and didn’t touch communications technology for the rest of the day.  What did I learn from this exercise?  That I barely touch electronics, which more than likely means I’m less irradiated than you.  I dont care if the world passes me by, I gave up on that cluster-fornication a long time ago.

When i was a kid, i could have cared less about media and mass communication.  I was usually too busy playing in the woods or creeks, just spending time outside.  i watched TV occasionally but only the cartoons.  When i got older and society made it necessary to have a myspace and facebook i choose to stay in the loop so i conformed to that, but i did, on my own, discover the 24 hour news networks and that form of mass media.  i never really liked the way they did or said things, but getting news about the world is important and that’s a damn good way of getting it.  today, i see the usefulness all this connectivity provides, but the losses we’ve taken because of it, and the weaknesses we’ve gained, and the attitude it’s instilled in us, is honestly kind of sickening.  I’d be just as content waiting on a letter, at least writing’s maintained some sort of emotion and purpose.  Technology is a mixed bag of pros and cons that have pushed humanity to a different level, not necessarily a better level, but a different one than we started at for sure.