ABOUT MY ESSAY

I just posted my final essay. I changed the introduction that was already posted in my blog. There are many other things that could be add to the essay ( for axample that our decisions on voting on a particular president is also manipulated thru mass communication), but since it has to be a maximum 1000 words, I had to leave them out. I spent a lot of time finding good examples and references for my statements and trying to make it an easy text to read. I hope you enjoy it!

Mass Communication = Mass Manipulation

This essay is going to talk about communication technology. The first paragraph explains mostly WHY communication technology has such a powerful influence on people. After that, the essay focuses more on HOW that technology helps us to be who we are and how much of us has been influenced by the technology. Because it does not matter if you are going to navigate in the internet, watch TV, watch a movie, a commercial, read a newspaper or even walk on the street an go thru an outdoor. The mass communication technology is there, telling us what to do, what to wear, how to behave, even what to eat. The documentary "Mass Manipulation" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWQc0e9toys ) shows us that. And if we think about it a little bit further, why is it that we grow up with the idea that when we get older, we will get married, have kids, a nice job, a nice house and a nice car? That is everyone's future, everyone's dream. The dominant class society built that dream for us, it is not ours, it is societies dream. Like Karl Marx said: "The dominant ideas of a society are the ones of its ruling class ".We have to live to procreate, to work, and to consume, mostly technology. It becomes a vicious circle. The mass communication (or mass manipulation) technology is used to make us believe that we are happy, or that if we want, we can be happy. "All this communication imposes a standard of living and happiness to be reached"(Wikipedia). It rapes our minds, and there is nothing we can do about it. Communication technology is power. Finally the conclusion will talk about the negative impacts that communication technology has on us.

Explain WHY communication technology influences our being is not hard. There are two things that make us who we are: our culture and our genetic. To what point each one influences us, is hard to tell. However we know today, that both of them influence our personality, our being, and therefore also our actions. It defines who we are. What has communication technology to do with that? Well, it is our culture! Cultures may vary a little bit around the world, but now a days it does not matter where you are, you have access pretty much to the same technology.

Communication technology is helping to make the globalization come thru and that is why the world is sharing the same dream now. Communication technology is there for everyone, and today it is impossible for us to live without it. It can be considerate a powerfull instrument to control people's minds and it controls "society through the manipulation of information" (L, Neumann Educação e comunicação alternativa). I want to explain that using examples. I wanted to make clear first, that instinctive human desires, like food and sex are one thing. What I am going to talk about is a will we were not born with, that we gained later on mostly thru communication technology.

I am going to start showing how movies, and even cartoons influence us. All those movies: Bethoveen, Monster in Law, Shall We Dance?, The Wedding Planne, Legally Blond(and a monstruous list could be made here) have this idea of a perfect and happy life with consumism, a nice family with wife, husband and kids, a nice car and a nice house. I am going to use the movie "The Simpsons" to explain it better, because they have the perfect image of what I want to show. Bart and Marge are married, they live in a nice house with a nice car. And of course, they have children. This family is a "dream" family. They are consumists, fall in love for nice cars, spend more than they can afford with futile things. The accomodiation that technology gives us is another aspect. Bart sits in front of the TV and moves only one finger to change the channels. "The Simpsons" shows accomodation in such a way, that you start to ask yourself weather it is accomodation or lazyness. Even cartoons influences us. This can be seen in the "Manifestoon" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaVbYyky-Bw). The images show us the society that we are, and that we are supposed to continue beeing.

There are only two examples of commercials, because it is hard to find examples with easy access to anyone. The first comercial I am going to talk about can be found on this adress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXYF1TTJ5uE&mode=related&search=(Unfortunatly there is only the portuguese version) The name of this commercial is "The Clip of Your Life".It talks about a guys life. People that were part of his life sing a music remembering him that he was born, went to school, had his first kiss, had his toys, went to university... The refrain says that he was born, grew up, and now he is evolving, because he's first nice and big car is comming." Your life brought you here" they say, "you conquisted in your life the best thing, yes, your big car is here." The commercial is telling you that it is part of your life to get nice cars! The other good example is I would say the best one. It is in Spanish, and it shows a perfect family, wife, husband, a nice house, even a dog. And the dream to have a complete life: only a nice car is missing out. When they get the car, their life is perfect. Those are images that are daily being brought to us, that are making us believe that this has to be our future, that this is what we want. (You can check it out your self: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-NTs2LKe-U)

I think those examples show in a precise way how mass communication technology is in fact mass manipulation technology. Of course like everything, we can not generalize, but mostly the final impact it has on us I would say is negative. Because we believe that material things will fill the emptyness we have inside of us. But it does not, it only makes us feel emptyer and emptyer. Everyone probably heard that already, but people do not realize how true that is: happiness can not be bought. So, let's not forget that that thru happpiness is in simple things!

REFERENCES

Drew, Jesse (2006) 'Manifestton' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaVbYyky-Bw (accessed 10 May 2007)

'The Clip of Your Life' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXYF1TTJ5uE&mode=related&search (accessed 10 May 2007)

'Mass Communication' http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comunicação_de_massa (accessed 10 May 2007)

'HONDA ODYSSEY - MANEJAR' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-NTs2LKe-U (accessed 10 May 2007)

Neoavan (2006) 'Mass Manipulation' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWQc0e9toys (accessed 10 May 2007)

L Neumann Educação e comunicação alternativa

Karl, Marx & Friedrich, Engels (1998) Manifesto do Partido Comunista Sao Paulo

José, Arbex (2001) Showrnalismo São Paulo

Chauí, Marilena (2006) Simulacao e Poder Sao Paulo

Edward, Herman & Noam, Chomsky (2003) Manipulação do Público: Política e Poder Econômico no Uso da Mídia Sa0 Paulo

OUR WORLD IS FALLING APPART

This is the picture I did with the photoshop. I had a hard time to make it be readable in that normal size. I tried to put drop shadow and outer glow, but it is still hard to read. To see the picture in a larger size go to: E:\mundo.html
OUR WORLD IS FALLING APPART
-Only 1/10 of world's population has private property
-The Americans produce 212 million tons of garbage per year
-Only 0,007% of the water around the world is from easy access for humans, and we -are wasting it!
-80% of World's money is in the hand's of only 15% of World's richest people
LET'S SAVE OUR WORLD!

WARRIORS REALM

Japan and Australia are fighting MIXED MARTIAL ARTS.

For more info visit the site http://warriorsrealm.tv/

FIRST ROW $100

SECOND ROW $85

THIRD ROW $65

FOURTH ROW $55

Standing Only Adult $40

Standing Only Child U15 $25

Standing Only Pensioner $30

Saturday, 12th of May. If you want tickets, talk to me!

Larissa

mob:0432108344

house:07 55262635

larissastocker@hotmail.com

ESSAY

I already know what I am going to write about in my essay. I am going to talk about communication technology, and how it influences us. I will post my first paragraph, that explains what the essay is about:
"Communication technology is so powerfull, it is the ONLY way mass communication is possible. It is part of our culture. And our culture along with our genetic is what influence our personality, our beeing, and therefore also our actions. It defines who we are. And this mass communication is the main factor I would say, that influences people, that make us who we are. And it does not matter if you are going to navigate in the internet, watch TV, watch a movie, a commercial, read a newspaper or even walk on the street an go thru an outdoor. The mass communication technology is there, telling us what to do, what to wear, how to behave, even what to eat. If we thing about it a little further, why is it that we grow up with the idea that when we get older, we will get married, have kids, a nice job, a nice house and a nice car? That is everyones future, everyones dream. Society built that dream for us, it is not our dream, it is societies dream. We have to live to procriate, to work, and to consume, mostly technology. It becomes a vicius circle. The mass communication (or mass manipulation) technology is used to make us believe that we are, or that if we want to, we can be happy. It rapes our minds, and there is nothing we can do about it. Communication technology is power."
I will be working in this essay, I will provide examples of movies and commercials, and do my best. I hope you enjoy it!

PHOTOSHOP

We are learnig to use photoshop. On the left is the original picture. On the top we have the same picture after a simple modification with photoshop. It is my team in McDonald's in Hawaii, after a game. I put a nice sky and a sun in the picture, because this is how I remember this time: perfect.

HOW I USE COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

This week I am supposed to write about how I use new communication technologies to communicate with my friends and family.This is an interesting sbject for me, since all my best friends and my family live in Brazil, and therefore I depend on technology communication to talk to them. New communication technology makes part of my life. Every day when I sit in front of the computer I check my e-mail. After that I go straight to my orkut. Most of the Australians probably do not know what an orkut is, and I will try to explain briefly. It is an on-line community that connect people thru your friends. Only invited people are allowed to join. Once you accept the invitation, you create your orkut page. There you can write about yourself, you can post photos, join communities and do lots of other stuff. But I what I most use it for is to talk to people. It is really hard to explain it if you never used it. If someone wants to know more abot orkut or join it let me know and I can help you.
And all the time I am connected to the internet, I am on-line on the MSN messenger. Right know while I am typing, I am talking to a friend of mine in Brazil. I have the audio on, so I do not have to type, and we have te cameras on, so we can see each other.
Another technology that helps me a lot is the skype or the voip. With that I can call overseas for a really cheap price. I use it every to talk to my friends and family.
Without the communication technologies I mentioned above I would not be able to talk to everyone in Brazil so often because the telephone bills would be to expensive, I would not be able to get written communication instantly (thru the post itwoud take ages), and I would not be able to see them thru a web cam. So I am really happy about the new communication technologies!

Week 2

In the second week of lecture we had a little bit about the history of technology of communication. We saw the explosion of mass communications an dlearned about Ferdinand de Saussure. We learned about the communication studies in USA, about minimun, mixed and maximum effects. We went thru the media studies in UK, where the part about the moral panics caught my attention, because it is an important issue that will always exist while the media is there. And we also had a look in the culture studies in Europe.But the best part of the lecture from far was the movie "La Jetee". This movie came with the explosion of the French cinema, that used simple methods to make their movies, and combined them with complex stories.. "La Jetee" is about the almost extinction of the human beeing, where the only ones left where hidden in the underground. Hopping to find something that would allow the repopulation of humans in the earths surface, random people where chosen to go thru painfull experiments to visit the past. From there a chllenging story follows. The end is exceptionally surprising. Ironically "La Jetee", that was supposed to overcome the hegemony and non creativity of the Hollywood movies, was also used as basis for the famous Hollywood movie "The Twelve Monkeys".

Week 1 Tutorial 10 to 12

In todays tutorial I opened my own blog. I am supposed to post around 300 words every week, writing about what I learned and did. Today is my first day in this tutorial. When I was opening my blog my e-mail address was already beeing used for a blog, and I did not know the password. I had to give my e-mail address, and create a new password.

Everyone in the class had to talk a little bit about themselves. I am not the only one that does not now yet what to do after finishing University. There is another international student in the class, and a guy doing psychology. Most people are doing communication and journalism.

I am taking this class because the technology is changing the world. It is influencing people and their behavior and social relations. Now a days people do not have to see each other that much anymore, because they have other communication options. Getting to know and umderstanding them is important. And it helps to understand and predict the future of our world.

So I hope I can get the most out of this class, learn as much as possible, and finish the semester more familiar with the communication technologies from today.