"The World (Wide Web) is Flat"

Dear World Wide Web,

I was driving back from the American Cancer Society Breast Cancer Walk in Monroe, N.Y. with a bunch of friends this morning. It was way too early and everyone wanted to listen to come music that would wake us up. I turned on the radio and the song "You're a Jerk" by New Boyz came on. We listened to it for about 35 seconds before we changed the channel. The next song that came on was called "Whip My Hair" by Willow Smith. I listened to this for about 15 seconds before I wanted to pull over so I could puke.

My friends and I, who do not listen to the radio very often (usually only when we're in the car) began to seriously talk about the direction in which music has turned. Only a few years ago, it took talent and devotion to be a musical artist. It took years of training and you had to stand out among the crowd in order to be considered an artist. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen (who i love). All of these people had talent, practiced and excelled in their musical field. And now look at today's artists.

I can use a voice changer, play some beats from the computer, throw 4 words into it and create a hit that plays on the radio. Anybody can become an artist! The standards of our musical taste have hit an all time low.

This is what I also thought about when I read chapter 1 of The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen. He used the phrase "flattening our culture" to describe the loss of a cultural hierarchy. I think that this scenario is a perfect example of what he talks about. I don't know if it is possible and if it is I do not see how we can get back on track and someday have quality music and artists. But what I do know for now is that I will not be listening to songs that someone without a brain put together on the computer.

It is pathetic and makes me feel as though society is being dumbed down in such a large sense when songs such as "Whip My Hair" and "You're A Jerk" are being played on the radio regularly. If someone went back in time and sang these songs, people would think they were stupendously dumb, or should be in a mental hospital,

Here are the lyrics to these songs in case you want to see for yourself.
http://www.metrolyrics.com/whip-my-hair-lyrics-willow-smith.html
http://www.metrolyrics.com/youre-a-jerk-lyrics-new-boyz.html

Kiersten

Distraction

It seems that every time I leave my 10:50 class on Mondays and Thursdays, my heart is beating out of my chest and my anxiety is through the roof. I cannot believe that our society has really gotten to the point it is at now. It is both terrifying and mystifying that a person such as Ted Kaczynski sees blowing random, innocent people up in order to get his point across, his ideas noticed. Why are humans so distracted? Why are all of our ideas simply blended together?

We as a society have been come distraction driven. Klosterman says “works of this variety sometimes experience massive spikes in popularity at the time of their release, but the shelf life is short.” I can relate to this. When I am sitting in class, I am flabbergasted at what our world has come to. I scribble side notes in my notebook saying “read newspapers”, “stop watching jersey shore”, “tell people to stop giving into technology and letting it dumb us down”. While I am in the moment, in class, with a Professor there to stimulate my mind, I am pumped. I experience this sudden feeling that I have to change something in my life. Yet, as soon as I walk to the library after class, it is erased from my mind. The shelf life of those ideas is indeed short.

A mere forty five minutes ago, my class was talking about how Facebook is used as a distraction. How the desire to get away from doing our work results in us finding out what our friends, peers, even strangers are doing while we should be doing work. While I was sitting in class, I thought to myself, “Wow, that really is crazy that that is what we look to do. I can’t believe people can’t control simply not typing the work “facebook.com” into the URL.” Yet here I am, in the library, about to post a blog and what do I type in? Not blogger.com. No, instead I type in Facebook. It took me a good five minutes of browsing through my newsfeed to realize “Holy shit, how is this happening?” It has almost become an instinct. I do not even think about what I am typing, or looking at. Distraction has become the norm.

Klosterman also says “Technology is a more powerful force than the desire for freedom.” I am really starting to see the truth in this statement. Rather than using my freedom to go to my blog and express my own feelings towards something I read. I chose to use the internet to do what everyone else is to, to see what everyone else is to, and to give in to the one thing I was criticizing less than an hour ago. It seems absolutely crazy. I lose my head in the technology. I think one thing then act upon another. I lose my track of thinking. And then what?...I guess it’s time to go back to Facebook.

journal

Dear World Wide Web,

For a class assignment, my professor has assigned us a project to create a blog about our experiences with the media. The professor told us to treat the blog as a journal. A journal used to be something that was intimate, personal, and self reflective. Now, suddenly a journal is something that is accessable to millions of people in all different countries. It is locked in the eternity of the internet. This is a simple metaphor to many other aspects of our lives today. The internet has turned many encounters that used to be intimate and personal into something that virtually everyone can interact with. It is sad to say that we have turned into this kind of society and have let strangers into our lives.