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A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both. -- James Madison
“When a dog bites a
man that is not news,
because it happens so often.
But if a man bites a
dog, that is news.”
- Editor John B. Bogart, New York Sun
man that is not news,
because it happens so often.
But if a man bites a
dog, that is news.”
- Editor John B. Bogart, New York Sun
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15 comments:
From the introduction to Glitin’s book, Media Unlimited (I don‘t know why blogger won‘t let me italicize that, sorry), I would think that Gitlin would find Professor Nazemi’s shattering of the cell phone acceptable and almost necessary. At first, I was a little unsure of what he would think, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that Gitlin, unlike the impression I got from Keen, likes the media. The way we use the media, however, Gitlin finds overwhelming. We have become overindulgent and have completely drowned ourselves in this media frenzy. On page eight Gitlin asks a series of questions and I find the most important and relevant one to be ”have we become less sociable - indeed, less democratic?” This question is one that has stuck out, in my mind, most of this class. Keen discussed it with the decline of small record stores and I see it in myself as well as my peers that we have all become so attached to our laptops, cell phones and iPods that we have significantly less social engagements than our parents and grandparents did. This, is the reason I think Gitlin would have agreed with Nazemi smashing the phone, and would have perhaps grabbed a hammer himself and joined him.
I think that Gitlin would agree with the smashing of the cell phone. From reading the introduction I came to the conclusion that Gitlin feels the media is in a way too accessable. On page 5 he states, "We aim through media to indulge and serve our hungers by inviting images and sounds into our lives, making them come and go with ease in a never-ending quest for stimulus and sensation". Because the nmedia is so accessable it makes it easier to crave it more and partake in it. The media is everywhere and it is extremely easy to access it in the classroom. I think that Gitlin would have definitely approved the hammering of the cellphone because the accessability has caused us to become dependent on the media
Since the smashing of the cell phone was all an act, I think that Gitlin would agree with Professor Nazemi's actions. Gitlin makes clear that he believes technlolgy has the potential to work for the good of the people, and aid in information and communication. However,he sees that people have come to misuse the technology that is available to us so that it, in a sense, as Freedman says in the article, "makes us dumber". Gitlin explains that the media has brought us to the point where we see bare skin, and we automiatically think of sex and where we see and use the Internet mostly for entertainment purposes. And although Gitlin would not likely support the smashing of an actual student's cell phone, he would support the concept behind it: that students should not be using their cell phones in class. After all, cell phones were invented for emergencies, not entertainment.
I’m not quite sure that Gitlin would be appalled by the professor shattering the cell phone, but I don’t think he’d necessarily agree with it. The professor shattering the cell phone, while it gets everyone’s attention, I’m not sure it really makes an impact that we need to lessen our reliance on technology. I think the only message students would take with them is that they definitely would want to shut their cell phones off in that class.
By shattering the cell phone in class, the professor appealed the emotions of people living in a media saturated culture. Like Gitlin says in the introduction of Media Unlimited, “Our prevailing business is the business not of information but of satisfaction, the feeling of feelings, to which we give as much times as we can manage…” So with the professor’s demonstration, he’s bringing the same kind of media stimulation students are used to into the classroom, the same classroom he is trying to keep technology out of.
While I understand the professor’s need to for dramatic action to get his point across, the message isn’t being understood the way he probably intends it. Students aren’t turning their phones off because they want to be fully engaged in the material he’s teaching, they’re shutting them off for fear their cell phones will be smashed into tiny pieces, too. So, in that case, I think Gitlin probably wouldn’t approve of the professor’s demonstration.
After reading the introduction to Media Unlimited I would have to say that Gitlin would agree with the professor shattering the cell phone. However, in the same breath I have to add that although he would agree with the actions of the professor, he also would not be surprised at the typical reaction of the student and other students in the class (to continue texting eventually after the scene faded away).
Gitlin describes the world in which we live in today. A world that is ruled by the various sectors of the media. He briefly describes the positive attributes of a media driven society. Some of these include the easy accessibility of information (though sometimes questionable) and the ability to express yourself and connect with a certain identity.
This correlates with the professor smashing the cell phone issue because the accessibility of information is the thing that is distracting so many students in classrooms all across America.
I think that from what I read in the introduction, Gitlin would think it would make no difference, but yet i think he would understand why the teacher did it. I think that based on Gitlins ideas, he would completely understand the frustrations that teachers have when competing with technologies such as texting and Facebook, and what not.But i think that he would also at the same time understand from the students point of view that this is what we know. We have grown up living amongst the media and using the media is part of our daily habit. The teacher did that experiment in hopes to teach a lesson to not use the cell phone in class, not to promote never using cell phones. In the article the teacher clearly states that he is for using it in positive ways to benefit in the classroom, not as " a new way of passing notes."Gitlin understands that getting information from the media is how we keep updated and learn things we might not other know about and this is a positive aspect. Dependency is however not positive and that's where the problem lies.
Personally, it seems like anyone could agree with smashing the students phone just due to the disrespect of the professor’s clearly stated no tolerance policy on cell phones. I don’t really see a direct connection between Todd Gitlin’s introduction to Media Unlimited to the New York Times article, at least not in the sense that I can account for Gitlin’s opinion of the article or his answer to the question. The last two or three pages in Gitlin’s intro sort of lost me, but I was intrigued by his discussion of “the media are, in relation to social reality, fun-house mirrors, selective in their appetites, skewed in their imagery.” “The news,” Gitlin continued, “is a conduit for ideas and symbols, an industrial product that promotes packages of ideas and ideologies…The news is a cognitive warp.” I also found Gitlin’s discussion of “feeling” in relation to media usage and attention a very interesting explanation. He seems to suggest that many people use the media to “feel” whatever way they want to or think they should. Samuel G. Freedman’s article in the New York Times does not so much relate in my perception. To be honest, I think Freedman’s article has some good points, like his parallel of spit balls to Blackberries in the classroom, but overall it is sort of a weak cry from teachers who think they need to entertain students in their classroom. I won’t “blame it on boring lessons” like the article mentions, but I will say that if your curriculum is stimulating through demanding requirements and attention, there should be no ability for a student to academically afford to check their Facebook account…which I usually do while my professors read power points word-for-word that they later post on blackboard. Technology doesn’t have to be the problem and shouldn’t be if education was a more valued system…
After reading Gitlins’s introduction I believe that he would neither agree or be appalled by the professor shattering the cell phone. It would make no difference to him either way. “To a hammer, they say, the whole world looks like nails,” he writes. The professor can go around all day smashing phones but in the end it won’t matter because the academic overflow is everywhere. Gitlin also writes, “Who in his right mind could be against information or want to be without it?” While the professor might agree with that statement he was proving a point that technology should not be used for socializing in the classroom. Gitlin also goes on to write, “Spending time with communications machinery is the main use to which we have our freedom.” Most people don’t use technology for education but only faster and easier communication. In the end we really have no choice of our media exposure because it is all around us. But we do have a choice of how to use it and at times being able to turn it off.
I don’t think Gitlin would necessarily like the way the teacher handled the situation because he surely gave into the “wowie zowie” of an entertainment media based culture. He fought fire with fire, because water just wouldn’t cut it. But I think Gitlin would recognize the defeat of Nazemi that comes about because of our complete submersion in this culture. Gitlin would agree, I’m sure, with several of the points used in the article however. Things like using these technologies to enhance life in stimulating and yes, mentally challenging ways, as opposed to just creating easier communication and broader bases of information that can simply be regurgitated and not processed.
Professor Bugeja said “The fact is, we’re not here to entertain. We’re here to stimulate the life of the mind.” And stimulate Nazemi certainly did—but perhaps not in the way an educator should and could. You can’t tell me that every kid didn’t leave that class talking to someone else (probably on their cell phone), creating a story that was acted out later on, and morphed into another form of entertainment. The lesson was lost, I’m sure(I mean, just think of all the kids who will still whip their cell phones out in class after reading the article) and the means by which it was applied turned it into another gimmick, another joke in the long, rather sad story of media based education.
After reading the introduction to Media Unlimited I would have to agree that Gitlin would be happy with smashing the cell phone. I feel a big part of Gitlin’s tone is that he is not against technology, he is against the way many Americans are using it. I carry a cellphone, but its not like an addiction to check all the time. I definitely agree and see how teachers get upset with hearing those loud annoying ringers right in the middle of when they are making their point during a lecture. It can make you lose your train of thought and the focus of their students. I feel that people need to take more respect when it comes to learning. Cellphones should not be used to help pass the time when you are in class. If you are uninterested and board by the subject material then maybe one, you are not caring enough about the class or two, maybe you chose to study the wrong subject. Either or there is no reason why anyone should ever hear a ringer in class that’s why phones come with an off button.
I think that Gitlin would definitely approve of and agree with the professor shattering the phone. His main point is that society is saturated with media which goes hand in hand with information technology that allows us to be connected and plugged in at all times, in order to draw emotion and feeling and satisfaction. Smashing the phone was meant to set an example of how the one place students are supposed to be completely tuned in to actually learning the information and gaining the knowledge necessary to become competent members of society is in the classroom, and continuing to be connected, "distracted" as Gitlin discusses, by the cellphone is taking away from this. It is indicative of what Gitlin talks about in Media Unlimited, which is that media is a form of distraction that Americans seek to gain satisfaction in their lives, and the cellphone, especially in today's age, is the perfect example of an information device becoming portable to further accommodate the public's need for constant access to "stuff"...cellphones now do more than serve as a means of talking but have email, text messages, Internet, games, all the things Gitlin emphasizes are infiltrating our culture and making Americans take the constant media saturation and information exposure for granted.
The introduction to Gitlin's book was interesting because his views immensely contrast Andrew Keen's. I feel that Gitlin is more "comfortable" with the media as a whole, and that he knows there is some good in what it can do. Gitlin knows that our society "lives with the media" and that "media is the message," he is just worried about how younger generations classify media as "channels of information." Gitlin understands that for our generation, we see the media as something that is "fun, comforting, convenient, and pleasurable" and that through media we "indulge and serve our hungers...in a never-ending quest for stimulus and sensation."
I feel that Gitlin would agree with and be impressed by what Professor Nazemi did, only if it was not staged. If I were a student in that class, I would be terrified at first seeing that. But, after knowing it was staged, I would immediately put my phone on silent and send a text message to my friends saying what happened. I could actually see this kind of scenario being a great television scene, and before the show airs seeing the message "Based on true events." It's all a vicious cycle. We live with the media. What Professor Nazemi did makes no difference and Gitlin knows this. Although this is a problem for professors, I don't see it ever being solved. Cell phones and all other kinds of media "saturate our way of life" and it will remain to do so for years to come.
I think after reading the introduction of Media Unlimited. Gitlin would agree with the professor smashing the cell phone because it was all an act. I am sure he would understand and empathize with professors and teachers who are constantly having to compete with technology for attention. Students in today's society are glued to their cell phones and although Gitlin was not opposed to all technology I think he would be opposed by how dependent my generation is to their cell phones. He would oppose the fact that even in a classroom where students are suppose to be learning we cannot devote our full attention to the class or professor. Even in the classroom we cannot fully disconnect from the technology and media around us.
There is no doubt that Gitlin would approve of the professor smashing the cell phone, because I feel he would sympathize would the professor in his outrage to the noose the media has created for us. Although, I think he would feel that it will make no difference either way. The media is always going to be there and you cannot escape it, as Gitlin stated in the introduction. A cell phone is only a small pawn in the forest of media saturation. The symbolism of that moment strongly supports how Gitlin feels we cope with the media. In some ways, I think it might even support that the media makes us more aggressive. Surely this was an aggressive and rather "Hollywood" moment. The action and drama of smashing the cell phone surely fits into the image of what the media has created for us. In the end, though, what did the professor really prove? Maybe he at least made that classroom stop and think about their media absorption and the shear insanity of it, but I think they were more concerned with how to sue him at that moment. If the student did sue then the entertainment continues. What I have understood from the beginning of this book is that, no matter what we do, there is no escaping the media. You could stop watching TV and browsing the Internet, but it is still going to be all around you. The media is embedded in our culture and has its stamp of approval placed on the forward of our nation.
(really late response)….
From Glitin’s introduction of the book, Media Unlimited I would say that Glitin would approve of the professor’s smashing of the cell phone in class. What I got from his introduction is that Americans are part of a media driven society. We are in constant overload of ads, news, entertainment news, MTV, World Wrestling Federation and technology media such as the cell phone.
With us being wired into the media our actions can be determined from what we retrieve from the media. We consider the media as being part of a information outlet, so for us using our cell phone in class is not bad because our text messages are still informing us while we are trying to multitask in the message a professor is trying to teach us. I think it was a great act for the professor (even if it was planned) to break this cell phone in front of class to show the difference and importance of the information we gain from a college professional and what information we receive from our cell phone.
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