Exam 2: Middle Media

Kristen Donahue

26 November 2012

A Shadow in the Midst?

            Much of the media are not new, but have grown over time.  Over time new ways were discovered to communicate to another by means other than word of mouth or a letter.  From speaking face to face, to sending and receiving mail by a bird or a post man, to Gutenberg’s printing press, to the radio and television, communication has evolved.  Because of this evolution, some of these older means of media may be becoming obsolete, becoming left behind by the shadow of new technological advancements. 

            The era of the Roman Empire was known as the Classical Era, where much learning and knowledge was gathered and kept.  After Rome collapsed, Europe experienced what scholar Petrarch referred to as the Dark Ages.  A big characteristic of this time period was the lack of literary records that could define the era after the "extinguishing of the light in Rome."  It is a dark period in history because of the grim events associated with the time (plague, smallpox, superstition), and also because of its dark "hole" in what we know because of its lack of documented records. During the Dark Ages (6^th-13^th centuries), much of the media disappeared due to lack of the spread of knowledge and ideas.  Books, essays, theses, and new ideas that generated during the time period were not documented for us to read centuries later, as has been the case with the centuries preceding and predating the Dark Ages.  Even centuries ago, a world where knowledge and literature were not documented, a world with few media, was a dark time.  It was not until the Renaissance and later the Enlightenment that some of the light of Rome brought the knowledge and flow of ideas back into the world.  These “lights” are directly associated to the media.  The more the media, the brighter the world; and the invention of the printing press brought knowledge to light, and made the spreading of knowledge to the masses easier and much faster. 

            Since the printing press, there have been several new ways of communication that have made easier the ways in which people spread knowledge and ideas.  The big five are print, film, radio, television, and the personal computer (PC).  Print has been around for centuries.  Words and symbols have been recorded to advertise events and sell products, and as a way to communicate the news, what we now call the press.  Film, or a movie or motion picture, may not feel like something new to us, but is actually still a bit new development to the media.  Despite that plays and dances can be traced back hundreds of years, in the late nineteenth century, a series of many images was first able to be projected onto a screen.  By the 1920s, the screen became a television, allowing many images to be transmitted electronically into a mechanical box.  Along with these developments was the radio, the transmission of electromagnetic radiation through the frequency through space.  Finally, the personal computer came about in the 1960s.  Today, it would most likely be considered a programmable calculator compared to the many different kinds of computers available today.  All of these are media we still use today to communicate many different things.  We still see newspapers, books, magazines, comic books, and many other forms of print.  The radio is widely used as a music channel, but still communicates news and information relevant to the kind of station it is.  The television and PC are both the most recent media of the five, and are very influential tools to communicate to the masses, as they are now commonplace objects in nearly every home.  All of these give news about politics, advertisements, local events and news, and much more.  They are used daily, and have a very strong influence on every person who listens.

            Despite the fact that all of these inventions are still present and very relevant to our time, one invention has become so powerful that it has cast a shadow on several other media: the internet.  With the internet, things like print, radio, television, and even film can all be accessed on your PC at a faster, more convenient rate than ever before.  It also gives the individual the power to choose what they want to watch, listen to, or read, without being crowded with other options or forced to sit through commercials and songs you do not like.  Now, it is easier to simply find what one likes and access it with the click of a button.  This one invention has been able to combine all media into one portal, or a gateway to accessing many different media simultaneously.  One way of suiting a portal to your needs is through cloud computing.  The cloud allows for easier access to applications and information by the masses.  With the cloud, a company could provide all of the software and applications via the internet in one place, which is easier than having to install each software program on every computer individually, for example.  Although the internet is a relatively new portal (become popular in the 1990s), it has had the power to transform the media into a one-dimensional archive.  Nearly everything can be accessed online, from your favorite TV shows, to the latest news story in Egypt.  It has all been combined by the advances of technology. 

            There have been several key inventions that have dominated the mediums of communications over the last one hundred and fifty years.  However great they may have been at their inception, they seem to now be becoming lost in the shadows of a new technology that is narrowing down the ways in which we communicate.  Despite the many ways and networks to communicate with another, the internet has become the main portal of communication in the twenty-first century, leaving behind the technologies of old, and making room for new possibilities for faster, cheaper, and more convenient means of media.  Where can we go from here?  I wonder… 

Exam 1: Media History Narrative

Kristen Donahue

12 Oct. 2012

Medium of Change: Time

            Today, we have many different ways in which to communicate with others.  We have cell phones, paved roads, electrical lines that run throughout most countries in the world, satellites for TV and radio broadcasting, mapping, and forecasting our weather, along with many other media.  These are all ways in which we can communicate now.  But what about in the 1800s?  What about the 1300s, or 10,000 B.C.?  People have been communicating with each other for centuries, but how?  I have created a timeline that documents over fifty points in history that media has been used.  We are so used to the technology we have now that we forget or ignore the carvings and paintings that led to what we have today; this is the medium that has advanced the media: time. 

            Rewind forty-seven thousand years…

One of the oldest known relics of media is estimated to be created around 45,000 B.C.E. in the Prehistoric Era.  In the area that is now Hungary, a carving was made on the tooth of a woolly mammoth.  This one carving presented itself in an art form, a historical form, and could have described a certain culture. 

Fast-forward:  December 18, 1994…

The Chauvet Cave in France was discovered.  This is one of the earliest known depictions of cave paintings. Estimated to be from around 30,000 B.C.E., it is a major art site of a prehistoric time period that we once knew nothing about.  The cave depicted paintings, prints, and fossils of animals that are now extinct.  It gave historians, archaeologists, artists, and geologists new insight into a culture that existed many years ago; it was survived and revived because of what they left behind. 

Rewind five thousand years to Ancient Egypt…

Ancient Egypt is estimated to have begun around 3100 B.C.  We know that they developed their own system of writing known as hieroglyphs, and created statues, tombs and pyramids that historians suggest they didn’t even have the technology to create.  How do we know this?  It is all made possible because of what they left behind.  The Egyptians kept a strict system of art that lasted nearly throughout the entire era of flat shapes and figures that were all drawn to the same scale for thousands of years.  The drawings and text that was engraved throughout the civilization tells stories of the pharaohs that reigned, the burial practices, and the religious beliefs of the culture, such as the Book of the Dead, which the civilians had access to in order to save themselves in the afterlife.  Some historians believe that this strict system is how they survived for so long.  This system was strict and did not allow for foreign change or innovations of any kind.  By simply (or not-so-simply) building a large piece of architecture (a pyramid), they defined and preserved a civilization long past because of their effective ability to communicate their culture and ways of life that historians are still learning about today. 

Fast-forward about three thousand years…

I have talked about what we know because of what was left behind, but what about the times when media was lacking?  From about the sixth-thirteenth centuries, Europe experienced a “period of intellectual darkness.”  After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Europe saw a decline in literacy and learning altogether.  Eventually, this knowledge was predominately only preserved in the church teaching biblical studies, with Latin or Greek still being used as the primary text.  Many people stopped studying the classical texts or, over time, forgot how to interpret them.  This period in time is known as the “Dark Ages” because of the lack of “light,” or intellectual and cultural output, that was achieved in the era.  The lack of researching the classical texts that were written down by scribes in the Classical Era led to a halt in research in science, and in turn medicine.  It is a dark period in history also because of the plague and smallpox associated with the time.  The era ended when people renewed the classical texts and research that was left from the Roman Empire.  Once the media was renewed, people began to culturally, medically, and scientifically advance again. 

Fast-forward two hundred years…

The printing press was invented in the mid-fifteenth century by German Johannes Gutenberg.  His printing press enabled knowledge to be printed and made largely available to the masses.  Ever since then, the human quality of life has largely been based on one’s level of education.  More books were printed, more magazines were published, and more people were able to access this information and modify or create new theories off past scholars’ research. 

These are only a few examples of how media, or lack of media, have impacted history.  The small achievements of the caveman and the large-scale impacts of the Egyptians leading up to the printing press, and everything in between, has paved the way for the technology of what we know today.  There are many different forms of media that we now have, but also what has been preserved.  Just because it is an old form of media does not mean it has died.  People are still creating architecture, art, and literary media every day.  Of course, we have a few modern technologies that have made communication and media able to spread even faster to a larger audience, but there is pride in our species to know where this knowledge has all come from.  I think it can be crucial to consider time as an important piece of media as well.  It is a medium of change.  

Pandora's Box?

"The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had."  -Eric Schmidt

Technology is constantly evolving to create for us a newer, faster, and better way of life; at least, that's what many people have come to believe.  And there are so many different kinds of technology out there, that it becomes hard to tell how much of it we can control.  The internet, for example, is something that I believe we truly do not understand, as executive chairman of Google Eric Schmidt said.  Once you put something up on the internet, it cannot be undone.  Is this something we should be happy to have created?  We keep talking about the future; how one day we will all be implanted with chips and how our bodies and minds will be digitally engineered in a way that goes beyond what we now know.  Many people see this as innovative thought, but is it?  Have we opened a Pandora's box that cannot be taken back?  How much of this stuff is already happening right now, or may have already happened?  It might seem like a bunch of crazy ideas, but some people are undertaking these kinds of ideas and believe they will be a reality in our near future.  So how crazy is it, really?  I guess I don't know.  Throughout history, technological advancements have changed the world around us so drastically, but have not actually altered our physical being to such a large extent (some people might argue differently).  Are you nervous...?  I am.

Wiki: Blog

A blog, or weblog, is a website on which a person, or group of people can write their opinions, information, reviews, etc. on a daily basis.  The term weblog was coined in 1997, but the act of blogging was taking place in the early 1990s.  Some popular blog sites include Blogger, WordPress, Livejournal, Blog.com, and Tumblr.

Wiki: SOS

The SOS signal is a form of Morse Code.  It originally did not stand for anything, but has popularly been associated with the term "save our souls."  It was SOS because of the simplicity of the message that could be understood by many, whether or not they knew Morse Code.  Morse code consists of dashes and dots, so the simplicity of three dots, three dashes, and then three more dots was the reasoning for the choice of letters.

Wiki: Morse Code

Morse Code is a form of communication in which an alphabet is used to send coded text information using light or sound.  American Samuel Finely Breese Morse (1791-1872) invented the telegraph and Morse Code in 1836.  The code was successfully tested on 24 May 1844, when Morse himself sent the first message between Washington DC and Baltimore: "What has God wrought?"  The messages consist of dashes and dots, which signify the corresponding letters or numbers.  

Wiki: 3D Printing

3D printing is the process of using a digital machine to construct a real object.  Lisa Harouni explains on Ted Talks what 3D printing is all about, and that we are close to having these 3D printers available to the masses.  She explains that the reason they are not in every household right now is that most people do not know how to program what they want to create into a computer before sending the design to the machine (she is correct!).  Eventually, this process will become easier through the growth of technology, and the machines will become cheaper and more readily available to the public.

Wiki: Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects

The SIDE model came about as a critique of the deindivuation theory, which explained that people, when thrown into a crowd, behave differently than a rational person would.  This theory was applied to the computer media in the early 1990s.  The idea is that, due to the reduction of face-to-face social interaction, people behave on websites in ways that they would not engage in otherwise.  This is possible because of the anonymity that the internet provides.  People rely on anonymity in order to feel safe and protected at times.  However, this anonymity can go too far and can have profound effects on one's social identity.

Wiki: Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a type of computing that relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle applications.

In cloud computing, the word cloud (also phrased as "the cloud") is used as a metaphor for "the Internet," so the phrase cloud computing means "a type of Internet-based computing," where different services -- such as servers, storage and applications -- are delivered to an organization's computers and devices through the Internet.

The goal of cloud computing is to apply traditional super-computing, or high-performance computing power, normally used by military and research facilities, to perform tens of trillions of computations per second, in consumer-oriented applications such as financial portfolios, to deliver personalized information, to provide data storage or to power large, immersive computer games.

Wiki: Moore's Law

Moore's Law is an observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore in 1965.  The law states that the speed of a computer's transistors will double approximately every two years.  This trend has continued for almost fifty years; however, it has almost hit its peak, and by 2013, experts expect the growth rate to be once every three years.  Moore's Law describes the social and technological change that has taken place in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Wiki: Political Cartoons

Political cartoons are images or illustrations portraying government programs, policies, and personalities in humorous ways. Although occasionally used to elicit praise, political cartoons more often employ satire and parody to criticize opponents during election campaigns. Political cartoons also manipulate well-known cultural symbols to enhance the cartoon's comments about newsworthy situations. Political cartoons are the legitimate offspring of graffiti, and they retain the salacity and naughtiness of their parent. Political cartoons have become more pervasive with advances in communications technology.  Dr. Seuss was a famous political cartoonist as well. 

Wiki: Virtual Reality

A virtual world is simulated by a computer, displayed as a three-dimensional environment on the computer's monitor screen, and intended for its users to inhabit and interact via graphical avatar representations of themselves.   The best known 3-D virtual-reality environment is Second Life created by the San Francisco company Linden Lab. SL's more than 15 million residents create avatars representing themselves, build and create objects and clothing, and interact with each other in the setting of a user-created virtual world complete with its own economy in which they may own land. Second Life is not a game. It has no game rules, no scoring, no winners, no losers. Instead, it is a social networking environment widely used for recreation, commerce and education. Virtual reality is also widely used to train soldiers.  

Wiki: Cyberspace

Cyberspace is the medium through which online communication takes place.  The term is often used interchangeably with the internet, though they are not the same.  The internet is a system of networks connected to a computer.  Cyberspace, however, is the space in which all of these communications via the internet take place; it is not the technical device itself.  "Cyberspace is the "place" where a telephone conversation appears to occur.  Not inside your actual telephone, the plastic device on your desk.  Not inside the other person's phone, in some other city.  The place between the phones."

Wiki: Skype

Skype is a communication service created in 2003 that allows people to view others by using a webcam and microphone.  It was created for video and instant message communicating via the internet.  Skype also allows one's phone to be connected to the service, so a person can call a phone from Skype.  It now has over 600 million users.

Wiki: Conspiracy Theory

A conspiracy theory is the thought that something is happening or has happened as a result of a secret plan, usually by the government or some economic/political group, that is not revealed to the public.  There are many conspiracy theories in circulation at any given time.  For example, the New World Order is a conspiracy theory stating that the world's wealth is controlled by a small group of elitists who control the banks and, consequently, the currency.

Wiki: Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free internet encyclopedia.  Its name comes from the combination of the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning quick, and the end of the word encyclopedia, meaning education (Greek).  It was created in 2001 by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization.  As of 2012, it is a multilingual website, translating into approximately 285 languages and hosts over four million articles in the English Wikipedia alone.

Wiki: YouTube

YouTube is an internet website with which one can share, view, and upload videos.  It was created in 2005 in California.  YouTube is now used to promote music, movies, education, random acts of stupidity, advertisements, and much more.  Individuals as well as large corporations utilize YouTube to share information with the public.

Wiki: Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is widely used to influence the masses.  It usually shows only one side of an argument or position in the hopes of persuading others to join agree with their sentiments.  It is shown to the public through a wide variety of media, and can have a profound, influential effect.  Propaganda is an old form of communication that was made widespread by the invention of the Printing Press.

Wiki: Actor-Network Theory

The Actor-Network Theory is a social theory that includes human and nonhuman objects (or actors/agents). It attempts to determine how these things relate to one another similar to a social network.  ANT is used differently by different scholars and/or researches widely today.  This is a video of an interpretation of ANT by Tatnall and Gidding.

Wiki: Film

Godzilla 1998

Godzilla 1954

Films, or movies/motion pictures, came to light during the end of the 19th century.  Although dances, plays, and musicals had been performed for centuries, the technology did not exist for the replaying of such events until much later.  The film is created by a series of pictures on a plastic strip, or film, that when moved at a rapid pace on a projector creates the illusion of moving images in real time.  Over the last 150 years, the art and industry that has become film has evolved as technology has advanced.  Today, movie makers work hard to give the audience the most real experience on the big screen.  The movie industry has now become a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide.

Wiki: Cellular Phones

Charles Alden claimed to have created a pocket telephone in 1906, though these were never mass produced.  The first hand-held cell phone came out in 1973.  Cell phones have now become so much more than just a telephone.  It now serves as a phone, computer, GPS, calculator, gaming device, movie player, and many more.  Cell phones have evolved, and continue to evolve, into smarter, smaller, and capable technologies that have become commonplace items to many people, with over 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions.

Wiki: Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking service that allows users to post messages of up to 140 characters.  These messages are called "Tweets," though one is not required to have a Twitter account in order to view tweets.  It was created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey.  Since it began, Twitter now has over 500 million users, and it is among the top ten most visited websites on the internet.

Wiki: Facebook

Facebook is a social networking site that was created in February 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates.  It was originally created for the students of Harvard, eventually expanding to universities throughout the country, then high schools, and now to the public aged 13 and up.  Since its inception, Facebook now has over one billion users, at least half of these users accessing the site through mobile devices.

Wiki: Marketing Semiotics

McDonald's is one of the world's
most widely known brands. 

Marketing semiotics is the study and use of signs when designing or marketing products and services.  Brand recognition and value play an important role in consumption.  Often times, consumers will choose a product or service simply because they recognize or trust the brand name.  Because of this, it is important for marketers to recognize the usefulness of creating value in the brand they are trying to sell.

Wiki: Media Richness Theory

The media richness theory was developed by Richard Daft and Robert Lengel in 1984.  It assumes that different forms of media can and should be used to communicate certain things; it determines which of these forms tend to be the most effective in terms of creating understanding to those receiving the messages.  Because not all forms of communication can be understood on the same level, Daft and Lengel introduced a hierarchy to illustrate which of these forms have more richness to them.  The richest is able to communicate more information with less ambiguity, and the least rich should be used to communicate less information in a simpler way.  For example, if a manager is making a big business decision, e-mailing his co-workers would not be as effective as face-to-face communication.  This theory was designed to help evaluate the usefulness of communication mediums within an organization.  It is widely studied for its effectiveness today, and has been helpful in aiding those trying to choose an appropriate medium of communication to understandably reach the desired audience.

Wiki: Light

Light can be used as a means of communication.  Throughout history, light has been used to communicate many things.  Mariners would use flares in cases of emergency to signal distress, lighthouses are used to navigate ships and boats, heliographs reflected light upon mirrors to signal during military operations, and stop lights are used to communicate the flow of traffic.  Light is a very important communicator when driving as well.  It is used to signal turning and stopping, as well as to signal to other drivers on the road your location while driving at night.  A famous example of the use of light communication was during the American Revolution when Paul Revere signaled to the militia the advance of the British troops, one if by land, two if by sea.  The sun, a light source itself, communicates time, morning and night.  There are many ways in which light can be utilized to communicate that can arguably be traced to the beginning of time.

Wiki: Comic Books

A comic book is made up of pictures in the form of a panel, using pictures to represent the scenes.  They also are usually accompanied with a word dialogue, usually in bubbles, that create a sequence to form a narrative.  Comic books originated in the 1800s, starting out as short comic strips in magazines or newspapers.  They tend to be made up of characters that readers can relate to.  The shorter comic strips were named because they were originally humorous; however, as the comic book phenomena evolved, the comics began to tell different stories of many different genres.

Wiki: Advertising

Advertising is a form of the media used to communicate to a target audience in an effort to get them to take certain actions.  Advertising was used centuries ago by people such as the Romans and Greeks.  Signs were posted or carved on walls or animal skin to inform the public about gladiator games, beauty products, and the like.  There are many different mediums for advertising today, such as blogs, billboards, newspapers, magazines, websites, television, and more.  

Wiki: Paved Roads

The first indication of paved roads is suggested to be from around 4000 B.C. in modern day Iraq and England, consisting of stone-paved streets.  Up to the 18th century, many of the roads found consisted of stone, sand, and gravel, using water to help bind the material together.  This eventually led to tarred and asphalt roads, with asphalt making up 96% of roads/streets in the United States.

Shattered Glass Ops: Dr Dracula: Young blood might regenerate cells

IT might sound like something from Dracula, but old brains have been made sprightly again thanks to young blood.

Giving ageing mice blood from much younger animals rejuvenated connections between brain cells and improved memory, experiments have shown.

The treatment is so effective that 18-month-old animals did as well in memory tests as those of only four months. Mice usually live to between 18 months and two years.

If the treatment is shown to be safe and as successful in humans, it could be used to stave off the ravages of old age.

Those in middle-age could be given regular jabs of blood donated by 20-somethings, a conference heard. Diseases such as Alzheimer's could also be held at bay. Researcher John Smith told the Society for Neuroscience's annual conference in New Orleans: "Do I think that giving young blood could have an effect on a human? I'm thinking more and more that it might."

"It's not a drug that will have deleterious effects. It's just blood. We do it all the time for blood transfusions."

Scientists from a big-time university in the US 'sewed together' two mice of different ages.

They created connections between their veins and arteries that allowed young blood to flow into the older animal's body, and vice versa. The younger animals' brains appeared to age. But in the older animals, young blood boosted the number of connections between brain cells. The connections, which are thought to be vital to memory, were also stronger.

The older mice also did just as well as the younger ones in memory tests. The treatment is now being tested on mice with an Alzheimer's-like disease. Experts said that if the research continues to bear fruit, it could lead to treatment that brings even greater benefits than penicillin.

Other work suggests an infusion of young blood could be good for the muscles, liver and immune system. However, the work is at an early stage and it will be some time before it is tested on humans.

It may be possible to identify the compounds in blood that are rejuvenating the brain and turn them into a pill.

Professor Drew Johnson, a brain disease expert, said: 'Although this may suggest that Dracula author Bram Stoker had ideas way ahead of his time, temporarily plumbing teenagers' blood supplies into those of their great-grandparents does not seem a particularly feasible future therapy for cognitive decline in ageing.

"Instead this fascinating work suggests there may be significant benefit in working out what the "good stuff" is in the high octane young blood, so that we can provide just those key components to the elderly."

Professor Young, an expert in regenerative medicine from London, added: 'The important questions are; what is in the blood of the younger mice that impacts the ageing process, and is it applicable to humans?

"Even if the finding leads only to a drug that prevents, rather than reverses the normal effects of ageing on the brain, the impact upon future generation will be substantial – potentially outweighing other wonder drugs such as penicillin."

Dr Smith said: 'Our findings open the possibility of utilising young blood towards future therapeutic interventions aimed at reversing cognitive impairments in the elderly.

"It now becomes a promising prospect to test whether this extends beyond normal ageing towards reversing cellular and cognitive decline in those suffering from age-related neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease."


**Edited from original version**
http://www.news.com.au/weird-true-freaky/dr-dracula-young-blood-might-regenerate-cells/story-e6frflri-1226498792475

Lulu Wiki

Lulu.com is an online publishing website that allows you to share your works and ideas with the rest of the world.  The company was founded in 2002 by creator Bob Young.  The site allows you to create books, eBooks, photo books, cook books, and even calendars.  Along with these services, the publisher is able put his or her work on the market for retail, of which they receive 80 percent of the profits.  Currently, Lulu.com publishes over 200,000 works each year.




Photo from:
http://www.lulu.com/blog/2009/05/

The Media "Dark Ages"

The era of the Roman Empire was known as the Classical Era, where much learning and knowledge was gathered and kept.  After Rome collapsed, Europe experienced what scholar Petrarch referred to as the Dark Ages.  A big characteristic of this time period was the lack of literary records that could define the era after the "extinguishing of the light in Rome."  It is a dark period in history because of the grim events associated with the time (plague, smallpox, superstition), and also because of its dark "hole" in what we know because of its lack of documented records.

I wonder how we can relate this to modern times.  Currently, much of our newest information is stored in a digital archive.  Books, maps, and research are all being reallocated into this digital archive.  So if a world event were to happen that could destroy this technology, what would happen to all of this information?  We keep discovering new things about history because cultures and civilizations past have preserved them on a document, wall, or carving in the earth for us to find so many years later.  If we lose the digital, where is the archive?  I think this would be an extreme situation for the internet and technology of our time to be eradicated, but I can't help but wonder "what if?"  Is this how we have preserved our role in history?  Or was the internet our printing press?  Just as the printing press enabled people to publish their works and create new ones, the internet has created a medium in which anyone can publish news, world events, documented histories, thoughts, or a picture of your breakfast.  This has all been achieved in the approximate 550 years since Gutenberg's invention.  Where could we be 500 years from now?  

Brief History of the Media Timeline

The Prehistoric Era  (45,000-3501 B.C.E.)

45,000: In what is now Hungary, a Neanderthal carves on a woolly mammoth tooth.

30,000: In what is now France, Chauvet cave dwellers draw on walls.

20,000: In the Koonalda Cave, Australia, finger drawings on clay walls.

10,000: Notches in bones in Near East presumed to be a lunar calendar.

10,000: Writing on skin. Tattooing instruments found in Europe.

9000: Mesopotamia hunter-gatherers settle down; it is the start of agriculture.

6200: Oldest known map, a town plan from Catal Hyk, Turkey.

4800: In Egypt, evidence of astronomical calendar stones.

4004: Bishop Ussher’s date, accepted by early Protestants, of the creation of the world.

4000: Egyptian pharaohs listen to flutes and harps.

3760: Start of Hebrew calendar.

3500-1 B.C.E.

3000: Egypt develops hieroglyphic writing.

2640: China produces silk. It will serve as a writing surface.

2400: In India, engraved seals identify the writer.

2000: Nine Greek muses, responsible for poetry, history, comedy, song, dance.

1700: The written law code of Hammurabi, in Babylonia, carved on a stone pillar.

1500: Babylonian mathematicians figure out the Pythagorean Theorem.

750: The book of Amos.

710: In the Egyptian city of Memphis, an account of creation carved in stone.

620: Draco gives Athens a written code of laws, "draconian" in its harshness.

530: In Athens, a public library.

500: Chinese scholars write on bamboo with reeds dipped in pigment.

415: Lysistrata, comedy by Aristophanes.

250: In Near East city of Pergamum, parchment is made as a writing surface.

105: In Alexandria, the first college of technology is founded.

13: Some of the finest lyrical poems of the mature Horace appear.

1-1099 C.E.

14: Rome sets up network of relay runners carrying messages 50 miles in a day.

100: In India, Vatsyayana writes of erotic arts, the Kama Sutra.

100: Mayas adorn pyramids with wall mural painting of mythology.

120: Plutarch dies after writing of lives of important Greeks and Romans.

235: Dio Cassius dies. His extant histories cover end of republic, rise of imperial Rome.

386: Singing, including "Hallelujah" hymns, introduced into Christian church.

450: Ink on seals is stamped on paper in China. This is true printing.

595: In India, calculations done with nine numerals and zero, the decimal system.

640: Arab invaders find 300,000 scrolls in Alexandrian library.

740: Moors invade Spain, bringing learning and advanced culture.

800: Government pony express in Charlemagne’s Western Europe.

975: First airmail parcel post: pigeons each carry one cherry to Arab caliph.

1095: First Crusade is marker between Dark Ages and Middle Ages.

1100 C.E.-Printing Press

1100: Gothic Textus script introduced when quill pen is cut at an angle.

1150: Start of 350 years of Middle English.

1155: Oldest known printed map shows western China.

1225: “The Fibonacci series” introduced in his Book of Square Numbers.

1270: Syrian scholar compiles an encyclopedia.

1283: Thailand gets its own alphabet

1300: Wooden type is used in central Asia.

1305: Taxis family begins private postal service in Europe.

1333: Petrarch’s discovery of classical manuscripts helps bring on the Renaissance.

1378: In England, the Great Schism; Lollards say lay people can interpret the Bible.

1395: Improved version of the Wyclif Bible is completed.

1400: From Florence comes the Italic script, a flowing handwriting.

1430: Block-printed books published in Holland, Germany.

1436: Leone Alberti writes first book on painting to consider both theory and technique.

1446: The simplifed Korean phonetic alphabet, hangul, with 11 vowels, 28 consonants.

1451: Gutenberg’s press prints an old German poem.

Bibliography:

1. Operations: Story Time presentation and handout

2.  Group 1 Presentation

3.  My blog

4.  University of Minnesota research project 

Pigeon Post Wiki

Pigeon Post, or commonly known as carrier pigeons, was first known to be used by Noah.  It goes back over 3,000 years of history to deliver messages using a domestic breed of pigeons.  They were very useful throughout history, especially World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War.  They are still in use today by the U.S. to spot shipwrecks from helicopters, they are raced in France, and used as drug carriers by traffickers to carry ten grams of heroine between Pakistan and Afghanistan to escape detection.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/style/30iht-blume_ed3__1.html

Wiki: Message in a Bottle

A very old media used to communicate at sea was the message in a bottle.  The use of this communication goes back to the 300s B.C.  Messages of this sort have been used for a variety of reasons.  Christopher Columbus said he had thrown a messaged bottle out to sea recounting his discovery of the New World, requesting it get delivered to the Queen of Spain.  It was also used in war times to give information about military positions.  The message in a bottle was well-known to be the message of men lost at sea, sent to their loved ones as a final farewell, or to send message of location like an S.O.S.  People are still finding these old treasures today.  

An article in the Daily News wrote, "The oldest message in a bottle spent 97 years and 309 days at sea," Guiness announced.  "The bottle was discovered 9.38 nautical miles from the position it was originally deployed."

Cave Paintings Wiki

An old form of the media is the cave painting.  Cave paintings have been dated back to over 30,000 years ago during the Paleolithic Era.  Most commonly, the images depict animals that lived during the Ice Age, but they have also been known to contain other patterns and figures as well.  The purpose of the cave paintings is unknown, but many believe them to be a source of religious practices or a form of communication among each other.  These paintings have been found in various caves and rocks throughout the world.  

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/chauvet/chauvet_cave_art.php

Digital Adam

We are surrounded by many different media and technologies.  The advancements in technology are beyond what could ever have been imagined at the turn of the twentieth century.  We have advanced so much, in fact, that we are now at a stage where we wonder if our technology may surpass us in the near future.
There was a movie that came out in 2008 called Eagle Eye.  It is about a piece of technology, created by the government, that develops a mind of her own.  She is able to control almost everything through a series of networks of technology that are all interconnected.  Could this happen?  Could our technology surpass us to the point that we are useless to our world?  Technology has already been undertaking the project of a human computer, known as Digital Adam.  The idea came in the 1990s to take a male cadaver and turn him into a digital textbook for medical advancement, breaking down his anatomy into billions of bytes of data.
It almost seems as if something has gone too far, but do we turn ourselves into pieces of technology every day?  We create avatars and computerized versions of ourselves and communicate through several mediums of technology on a daily basis.  We created the framework for a Digital Adam.  Will this be our next evolution?  Have we gone from the Gibbon, Gorilla, Man, to Digital Adam?

What is Fiction? What is Fact?

What comes to mind when you think of a vaccine?  Have you ever really thought about what is in that vaccine that you've been mainstreamed to think is safe?  Is it safe?  The documentary The Greater Good provides a lot of great insight into whether or not these vaccines that we are given since birth are actually helping us.
It follows the stories of several individuals and families whose lives have been altered as a result of getting a vaccine.  Those opposing the vaccines are not necessarily saying that all vaccines are bad.  They simply believe in the choice, or "free reign," as far as if they want their child vaccinated or not.  The vaccine manufacturers and those who support vaccinations argue that none of these people can prove that these vaccines are unsafe or that there has been a rise in disabilities in people over the past several decades.  There is also speculation as to the harmful substances that are in these vaccines, such as mercury, aluminum, and other antigens that have arguably led to autism, brain damage, and chronic diseases.  One side says there has not been enough research done to know for sure whether or not these drugs are safe, and another that says there is historical evidence that these vaccines are safe and people should trust them.
Which of these statements are true?  Are any of them?  Who can you believe to tell you the truth about such disturbing information?  We are constantly bombarded with information every day and forced to decide for ourselves what is fiction and what is fact.
The supporters of the vaccines take on an age-old utilitarian approach.  This means choosing ethical standards that will procure the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.  What if one day we are all mandated to take all of these vaccines, as was the case in Texas?  Are you willing to believe that some evidence exists that these vaccines are, or at least can be, potentially dangerous to some or many people?

You must decide for yourself what is fiction and what is fact.

Are We Our Thoughts?

Gautama Buddha said, "What we think, we become."  Is this true?

In my Media Literacy class the other day, my professor Rob Larson asked, "Are we our thoughts?"  It would seem almost simple to just say that we can think many things, but it doesn't matter unless we act upon them.
Does it?
Does it matter if what we think can completely engross our minds to the point that we think about acting upon it?  I think it still matters, but it may or may not be such an extreme issue.  Thoughts are put into our heads every day by our friends, family, teachers, and the media.  The media have such a large influence on us all every day.  It is because of the media that we are able to learn about many of the things that we now know, but didn't before.  So just seeing all of these new issues, products, music, movies, etc. through the media make you think about them all the time.  I can't even think about how many times a catchy commercial jingle, fun fact, or even something disturbing has been burned into my mind.  In my opinion, just because you think about things, doesn't mean that they are what you believe in.

I would never have thought that I would write a blog about thinking.  It is a weird concept to think about thinking: how often you do it, why you think of certain things, etc. Maybe that's the point.  Maybe, one day, I will have understood.