11.13.08
Posted in Excessive Media Consumption, Knowledge Fruit at 1226608192 by Sean Canton
I was going through my routine this morning, awoke, ran, about to have breakfast, but my computer turns on at 11am, so I stopped to check email. Some link opened my browser and here I am, faced with a plethora of options!
It’s like walking down the checkout isle at the grocery store and having all those shiny candy wrappers teasing the child-like part of your mind. Still on auto-pilot, I clicked on Google Reader.
Then I stopped. Wait a minute. I had all these plans and ambitions for the day. There’s a ton of stuff I have to do, including eat breakfast, and checking the latest news and information is more of a priority? Really? Chances are, it will diverge into an hour long browse / email / forward session.
I really think I’m much better off, since I’m not in the cutting news industry, to leave my feeds until the end of the day and treat it as a reward, not a necessity.
Here’s a little stanza regarding how I feel about the issue.
My book in the morning is like a cup of joe
Gets me up and ready and willing to go
Information Saturation is what I need
with over 1000 items on my RSS feedsTechnorati Tags: information overload, google reader, rss feeds, shiny
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08.11.08
Posted in Citizen Powered Media, Excessive Media Consumption, Insights, Publish Often, Stuck in the Old World, World, business as usual at 1218441026 by Sean Canton
I don’t know if you’ve had the opportunity to peruse any Olympic coverage on traditional media sources, but the ubiquity of Americans being shown at this international event almost sickens me.
I’ve watched two hours of Olympic coverage, and only TWICE, was a participant from another country identified and given on-screen time. A Chinese swimmer got 15 seconds, a French swimmer was pictured and attributed with some quote about ’smashing America’. Wonderful.
Oh wait, they did mention something about Japanese people being too short for volleyball….
Beyond the argument that this promotes a self-centered international identity, I am irritated by all this for SEVERAL reasons.
One, the whole POINT of the Olympics is for us to drop our flag waving and come together in the spirit of human achievement. By offering America exclusive coverage of just Americans completely destroys this spirit and replaces it with the mundane ‘we are the best’ competitive mentality that causes no small amount of human suffering around the world.
Two, as a viewer and a citizen in this global community, I want to be exposed to other cultures and see what I have not seen before. I have seen America, not all of it, not even a significant portion of it, but I have not seen China, I have not seen Japan. I want to. I want to know their back stories, their struggles, their triumphs. To let our national pride interfere with our humanity, our interest in the people we share this planet with, is just ego-centric.
Finally, as a student of mass communication, I was taught that it is the role of the media to provide as many angles to a story as possible, so that an informed populace can make decisions. Now today, with the right-wing and left-wing pundits serving as our major media outlets, the bias is apparent. They do our thinking for us by controlling the conversation. Objectivity goes straight out the window.
I would hope that our coverage of a world event is not as one-sided as the advertising permitted within. I would hope that in order to promote an understanding between nations, the major media would step up to their responsibility as information providers, and show us the whole story.
Not just the American version.
Technorati Tags: olympics, slanted media coverage, american point of view, it’s late and i’m tired
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06.03.08
Posted in Excessive Media Consumption, Using Experience, microadvertising at 1212513601 by Sean Canton
Remember the blink tag? Does it ever seem like you visit a website with so much going on that it’s difficult to concentrate? Today we have animated flash advertisements that strategically place themselves over the content, demanding a cognitive spurt to find the close button and overcome the annoyance. Why is it that advertisers seem to think that by annoying us, or tricking us, that we will find their product interesting and worthwhile?
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