Ear Candy

From the early generation instruments played by famous idols of the 1400s, to the hymphs that African Americans hummed through their restless days in slavery, the Elvis Presley concert that packed thousands for his voice, and even to now where I play rod wave through my air pods as I make my way around campus; the use of music affects many and does so very uniquely from person to person. This week in class we broke down the history and effects of music and also how important it is economically, not only to the consumers and artists but also how it affects the people who create the apps for these songs to play. The first two days revolved around the legend of napster, which is ironic pertaining to the fact that this incident was only two decades ago. College teenagers with a smart plan and positive drive quickly find the importance of copyright laws and essentially start a war between consumers and producers of music. The importance on music would never doubted after this. 

This napster presentation was displayed through the documentary “downloaded”. This documentary showcases the real struggle of business and the hardship of making money from a company, even after its success. The story takes place in 2001 where two college roommates explore the use of a new technology in their time, internet. The technology advance was foreign to the eyes of the world and with such technological enhancements came enhanced opportunities; Napster capitalized. The roommates designed an app that allowed for trade of music and therefore a connect through music. However, negatively for artists this app gives consumers free music that they produce. Up until this time music was served through radio stores and revenue for their music was sold and artists-maintained control over the money they made in comparison to the people who owned their music. Napster created a system that allows consumers to have these artists’ music for free. This created massive revenue cuts in the music industry. This stirred up a plethora of controversy in the media. What the two teens, Sean Parker and Shawn fanning, along with their gradually increasing crew failed to realize was the policy of copyright and the power and importance of the law against policies such as copyright rights. The app tries to undermine the problem with the artists through consumer surveys along with not paying much attention to the problem. This seems to work with their rapid growth in their consumers, reaching to 20 million consumers. This excitement is unfortunately met with their ultimate battle between a popular band, Metallica, who arrived at the Napster office of all the people on Napster who illegally acquired their music through Napster. This put Napster back on the chopping block because it showed the media how many people were able to pirate hard working for no cost. This media brought enough attention to allow a landslide in the court case between Metallica vs Napster. This suspended the app and eventually forced their file for bankruptcy. With this Napster’s associates gradually dispersed from not making money they once hoped to be rich from.

This event however, has shaped the creation of the big music powerhouses in the world, creating legally modified music apps that focused n more subscription based monetization for their customers. This app changed lives of the current generations and many don’t even know anything about it, this pertains to me a week ago though, but the sacrifices that these two sean’s took for the creation of music apps and the destruction of radio stores will always be appreciated by me personally; as a person who is subscribed to apple music and religiously has an airpod in my ear to listen to music and owns over 1000 songs on the app. This class, as always, was very informative and makes me thankful I live in the generation im in. 

The Biography of Boredom’s First Therapist

Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com

This week we were introduced to the history of video games. We had a quick discussion followed by a documentary on the video games. The video focused on the history and origins of video games. The video was educational for me especially with no prior knowledge of classic video games, in fact, my knowledge with modern technology within the field of video games is also slim. This week was filled with origins of entertainment, hence the title. With the overly abundant use of technology the world experiences now the classes this week have showed me the real world before advanced technology. 

In the video the documentary focuses on a familiar game: Pacman. This game is widely known but what is overlooked is its evolution to adapt to what consumers want for their money. The constant reforms and tests they needed to achieve and retain a. globally known classic that can played for past present and future generations. The use of media and studies really allowed them to analyze and dissect enough information to be successful. What I did learn from the document was the use of media and how to manipulate it for companies’ benefits such as the Pacman’s business. This was interesting to see how old technology used modern tactics for economic benefit. Matter of fact, this evolution of gaming has shaped the source of technology in the video game industry that we see today.

Next, we took a dive into the ore scarce side of entertainment in comic books. This source has died down during the years of growing technology due to the lack of excitement it brings matched against its competitors. To many, including myself, comic books are seen as a thing of the [past and foreign to modern society, however, the enjoyment it dispersed back in its origin shaped a lot of sources of entertainment today. Since Before world war ll, the use of comic books had been born. Making action packed scenes from a drawn picture containing dialogue was a big contributor to the superheroes we see today in the films and novels. The video we watched further explained how comics were used politically as well. America provided surviving soldiers with a care package containing a comic book for them to past time and entertain them before their next battle. The comics also were used as advertisement to a political stance and situation in the world. These tactics sparked interests and clever campaign strategies for politicians in order to build a fanbase to ultimately help establish their power in election voting. The establishment of superman, batman, shazam and many more were created through the use of comic books. It was effective because you didn’t need an avid reader to become hooked on the comic books they provide. The entertainment eventually prospered from these novels and were turned into shows and film as technology and media increased. 

The love for classic media is enjoyed by some directly, but many fail to realize the origin of their favorite tv shows, movies or even books came from the roots of old technology and media. The media has evolved but hasn’t grown away from its roots, it only grw smarter and easier for people to enjoy.

My Collective Mind

by Amoi Charles

In this week’s blog we revise the most informational movie I have ever had the pleasure of watching, “Collective”.  As someone who struggles to get into movies and especially struggles to get into informational videos, this class has provided me with realization on the biggest world outside of the mini world I live in. The strive for a push to better life that normal non-media educated people will never understand. This is upsetting but I’ve realized that statement is not only hypocritical but also futile. Not only have I never used this knowledge for change so I would have to add myself to that class. However, I am extremely content that I will be able to broaden my sense of education from the world that I see on TikTok to eventually the world outside my life such as out of New York and even global news in the government and economic issues. Such as the movie we watched in class, which derived from a concert fire that was poorly treated in Romania. This fire was devastating killing many however, that wasn’t the problem. The problem laid in the hospital where the media did their role to expose.

Rare sight for kids in the new generation nowadays

In an event where death isn’t the biggest problem in the situation there is an evident problem that has needs of being exposed. The truth that had to be exposed was within the hospital, more specifically the hospitals in Romania’s source of disinfectant. This source sent hospitals diluted disinfectant which is especially dangerous and morbid to give to a hospital where it is the most contaminated. This would seem like a problem that the public should know about, however this information was suppressed by the health minister. This information was only expressed by media coverage from a sports gazette. This exposure was able to produce positive reactions throughout the community and sparked protests and even a resignation from the minister of health which was a huge step forward. This documentary displayed the power of the press but also the overcoming power of the government and how press can be manipulated. Though they were able to get rid of the person relatively responsible for the lack of care in the hospital system and they were fortunate enough to replace the position with a seemingly genuine person who seemed to want a change for the better, the opposing government was able to manipulate the press to make him look as the bad guy. This strategy allowed ro the wrong side to win the elections. The winning party symbolized the decline in knowledge of the people and how it affected our past, it affects us now, and how it’ll affect us in the future without us even realizing it. This problem derives from my lack of knowledge of the world that doesn’t directly affect me personally, even though it may harm me in the future or even hurt the people I love.

The knowledge of the press is suppressed everywhere whether it’s done naturally, through people not watching the news or not reading the newspaper other than through their favorite social handles which in most cases don’t show them the information they NEED instead spitting information that APPEALS to their likes to keep them hooked. The problem lies on us to fix as we were the very generations to cause the decline in our own world awareness. If I can take anything away from this week in class is that we also must do better if we want better.

The world of the known and overlooked.

mass media week 2 by Amoi Charles

The Reading Girl by Philip Halling is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

As of the first day of week 2 starts we take a trip back in technology, through a simpler source of education, news and knowledge. That source would be books. Quite frankly as a new student and terrible time manager of my sleep and also this being my last and longest class of the day, I wasn’t truly able to maintain all the information provided from the video, however I was able to keep myself fighting my dopamine to recover enough information. What I did retain was that we watched a video on the effects of books and its history that shaped the novels and breakthroughs that books have made. Also the use of books and effects it played on the brains of people who read books as opposed to not reading books were astronomical. As the speakers discuss the role that books have made, I truly realized how far from novels I truly am and how that has shaped society for not only millennials but the future to come as the once popular idea of paper books has since regressed and in retrospect caused for businesses pertaining to books to fail. It is scary how unknowingly the exposure to books has declined at an alarming rate and how that correlates with the regression in schools pertaining to their effort of reading long book. The video also goes into the life and progress of a New York time best seller and what it took for her to get this achievement. As I try to understand the purpose of the video I realize that the common problem throughout the vid is the lack of effort that is provided from people who like to read and those who actually don’t. The generation to come has a problem that many overlook and don’t actually care about. After the video, we analyzed the concern of living with increasingly expensive media presence in the world. A good take away was how expensive it has become to live in the online world. Next, we were split into groups to come up with a pitch for a good book idea to sell to a publisher. Fortunately, our group was able to quickly come up with a rare idea in the novel world which was about the history of gaming consoles. To be able to come up with an idea that is rare to topis on novel actually opened my vision to the possibilities of new ideas of novels that haven’t been discovered as of yet. On Wednesday we were introduced to Kevin Adams. A speaker from the Alfred library, who educated us on databases.  Also the sources that were best for us to use for reliability and unbiases. Interestingly enough, I learned the importance of Wikipedia which was previously had a bad stigma over it from high school where it was frowned upon to use because it wasn’t known to be reliable. To be completely honest I was questionable over this course when I first started I was skeptical because the class did not interest me in the beginning but as I continue to learn in this class I see potential of the course to not only lern about the history and future of the media, but also as a class to overall improve my diction and further jargon in writing. My overall takeaway from this week is that I can be really be productive through this class, and to go to sleep before 2 am.