"So by the way, it's due in a week." (yikes)

So about five minutes ago we learned that the junior theme is due next Friday, May 7th. This means that we have exactly seven days to put the final touches on our papers, annotate our bibliographies, and dream up creative titles. I am personally feeling a little bit pressed for time, but my intro revisions have finally fallen into place and I think that I am nearing the conclusion of my research.
      In the time that we had off of school yesterday I called Lenore Skenazy, my interview subject, but she was unfortunately not around. Hopefully I will be able to talk to her over the weekend. On a slightly more successful note, I just completed my "fellow scholar" interview with none other than Nick Steen. His topic is American cars and the auto industry, which may not sound very similar to the topic of internet privacy. But we did find a connection that served both of us well. Part of his topic has to do with bumper stickers and the tendency of Americans to broadcast themselves by means of their beloved automobiles. We talked about why Americans feel the need to do this, and the effect on interpersonal reactions. I have a few good quotes from him that I will be including in my paper. (Although it just occurred to me that I might want to give him a copy of the paragraph that his quotes will be included in, just to make sure that I am not putting words in his mouth.)
      The one other thing that I have to do is annotate my bibliography, which shouldn't take way too long. I do have to make sure that my annotations are not too generic and "cheesy" though, since that seemed to be the main concern of our teachers.
      I have quite a bit of work to do this weekend, which will be challenging, seeing as I am going to Grosse Point for a regatta. I am going to have to put in some serious work during the five hour car ride there and back.....and probably after racing on Saturday night. I am confident, however, that I can get it all done by Friday.
    

"There can be no success without failure" --The Junior Theme Story

A brief update on my junior theme progress:
    I have emailed Lenore Skenazy requesting an interview and she very kindly responded promptly and positively. I am in the process of narrowing down the actual questions that I am going to ask her. Doc Oc helped me with that during class today. Almost all of my questions were way too broad and therefore would not have helped me learn information specific to my topic. I also spent a long time today grappling with freeconfrerencepro.com, which is a service that is supposed to allow you to record an conversation (in this case, an interview) online. I am not sure that this will end up working, so I may have to resort to asking the questions over email or finding another way of recording the exchange.
     Today I also finished up my very, very rough first draft of my introduction. Since I will not be in class tomorrow, I am going to meet with Mr. Bolos second period to discuss the intro. Hopefully I will get some good tips and insight from the meeting. 
     All in all, the stress level regarding the paper is not way too high. Maybe I would call it about a code yellow.
    I wonder what our final due date will be?

Junior Theme Update

So it's a bit after three on a beautiful Friday afternoon. As might be expected, the old work ethic has been somewhat hard to find today. I am going to plan out my research via blog to direct myself and budget my time over the weekend.

     The first order of business is to lock in my interview subject. I think that I am going to try to get an interview with danah boyd, as I have been reading her blog and latest book, but according to Mr. Bolos and common sense, she will probably be a difficult person to get an interview with. One of my friends suggested the founder of the website Zillow.com, which is a site that helps the owners or prospective buyers of homes check how much the home is actually worth. This ties in to my theme of privacy very well. One other candidate is Jesse Schell, the speaker in a DICE conference video that I watched. The video had a lot to do with gaming, privacy, and the future of technology.
     The next thing is to finish reading my book and pick out the most important passages and sections to use in my paper. (This task takes much longer to complete than to type out in my list.)
     After that I am going to finalize my thesis and write my introductory paragraph. Neither of these will be in their final form, of course, but it will be good to finally get something written down on paper.

The Jr. Topic Search

After a few weeks of trying to pick junior theme topics, I think that I finally have narrowed it down to three general areas: ageism in America, the evolution of privacy in America, and the use of sex in American advertising. I am very interested in all three of these areas, so I am having a lot of trouble deciding which one to go with (the burden of choice).
      The topic of ageism is really a problem of whether or not I will be able to quantify it. I suppose that I could quantify a housing trend, such as if families welcome their grandparents into their homes or if they chose to send them to a retirement home. I might also be able to explore the value of youth in celebrity and in popular culture.
     In terms of privacy and the internet, I was thinking that I could explore the seemingly recent trend of Americans not caring about their personal privacy. This is very closely tied to online networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. Mark Zuckerburg, the founder/inventor of Facebook recently said "privacy is dead" in an interview about the changes in privacy settings on his website. In a rebuttal, danah boyd argued that privacy is in fact not dead. I think that this would be a particularly interesting topic because it very directly affects my daily life and is a raging debate in today's world. It would be cool to go back in history and see how Americans protected their privacy back then.
     My final option is the use of sex in advertising. I have actually already written a blog that is similar to this topic, but specifically about the Go Daddy commercials. (See the blog here: http://lizzyinamerica.blogspot.com/2010/02/superbowl-commercials-and-feminism.html) For this topic I can research the evolution of advertisements over the years. One question that this raises is whether this type of advertising is a result of our male-dominated society and culture, or if it is actually just a result of the way the human brain is wired. This subject could also be particularly hard to quantify and find some concrete evidence about.

Writing this all down has actually been surprisingly helpful. I am now leaning towards exploring the evolution of Americans' views of personal privacy.

North.East.West.South.

In light of our recent John Dos Passos writing assignment, I have been thinking a lot about newspapers and how our means of receiving media have changed so much in the past hundred years. Traditional newspapers used to be the only way to stay up to date on current events. Now we have TV, radio, internet, and a much faster word-of-mouth network due to the rise of cell phones and instant messaging. In the future, each of us will probably just have a little transmitter in our head that beams news stories directly into our brains. (This may seem far-fetched, but imagine what cell phones would look like to someone from the 1800s. It'll happen.)
      Whereas before we had a few major newspaper corporations that decided what stories to report on and what angle to take, we now have every person with an opinion and access to an internet connection. But getting news from the internet only provides the illusion of a wider base of reporters.Those same big corporations still tell us how to think and feel about what is happening in the world today, but now they have several additional means of doing it. Now, instead of going out and buying a newspaper, the news comes right to us at home or in our pockets via cell phone. This is an even more dangerous way of being taught how to think because we are not always on our guard and conscious of it. Sometimes I just want to go online to play sporcle games, and my homepage blasts me with twenty headlines. 
    News in today's world of instant communication and sharing is an even bigger part of life than it has been ever before.

Everything's An Advertisement

What is an advertisement?
I have been grappling with the answer ever since that question was raised in class. According to dictionary.com, the word has a few different definitions:

1.a paid announcement, as of goods for sale, in newspapers or magazines, on radio or television, etc.

2.a public notice, esp. in print.

3.the action of making generally known; a calling to the attention of the public: The news of this event will receive wide advertisement

 

     The first part of the definition seemed like the most obvious to me. It is the definition that people think of as soon as they hear the word "ad". These are the conscious commercials, the ones that we are aware of when they assault our brains. When you hear or see one of these "paid announcements", you know that they are trying to sell you something because they are relatively obvious about it. Any billboard or TV ad is there for the sole and explicit purpose of raising awareness and tempting consumers to buy, buy, buy. 

     The second definition is used less and less in today's modern America, most likely due to the fact that the first and third definitions are so widely referred to. In fact, under the word origin and history section the mid-fifteenth century definition was "'written statement calling attention to' something, 'public notice' (of anything, but often of a sale)". The English word comes from the French stem avertir, which means "public notice".

     Finally, we come to the third definition, which is "the action of making generally known". In contrast to the first definition, this is the one that the average American needs to worry about. Everywhere we look, we see logos and pictures and brand names. These are the 6,000 ads that most Americans will see every day (according to Jimmy's most recent blog post). Even those who don't watch a lot of TV and don't listen to hours of radio and don't drive down billboard-lined streets will see thousands of commercials aimed at them (although most of us do all of these things daily). Each of those little images that represent a brand or company sends our brain a tiny message that says "recognize me! buy me! consume!!!!".

       This third definition most clearly captures what an advertisement is. In the article from the LA Times titled "Mapping the Mind: Searching for the Why of Buy", Robert Hotz explains why we recognize brands so quickly and easily. He wrote about a modified Coke-Pepsi challenge in which test subjects were given cola to drink without any indication of which brand it was. There was no real preference towards either brand. Next, he they were given a sip of cola while they were shown a logo, but not necesarily the one matching the drink. The preference for Coke was staggering.

     What this means is that advertising is everything. It determines how we think and creates associations in our brains. Every time we see a logo or picture or brand name, we are being assaulted with ads. 

 

    Is this a bad thing?

    Probably, but welcome to the free-enterprise system. 

The Importance of Artistic Education: Blogging Live from Piano Lessons

I am currently seated in a pink armchair, listening to my brother take a piano lesson, having just finished my own. Our teacher, Barbara Rubinstein, coaches him on the different chords that make up his latest jazzy endeavor. Musical terms that have become so familiar to me over the years drift past, reminding me of how much we have learned.

      After today’s class discussion about the way our society values the arts, I began to wonder how much different my own life would be if I had never been exposed to music in the way that I have. The first thing that strikes me would be a real sense of loss. Music seems to be the basis of many other aspects of my life. Music education has taught me how to focus and set goals, how to be creative while being disciplined, and how to keep a sense of constant discovery while learning.

        When you learn how to play a musical instrument, much of the study is self-driven and self-motivated, so the student must understand how to keep themselves practicing. The teacher is not present and monitoring all of the time, unlike in other classes that a student might take.

      A second point is that of inspiring creativity. Learning music requires a lot of rules that have to be followed at first, but most of them can be bent or broken as the student progresses to higher levels. As the saying goes, “You have to learn the rules before you can break them”. This enables students to be creative while providing them with some structure and foundation, rather than just saying "do whatever".
     Finally, music teachers seem to truly understand the value of learning for learning's sake. They have always preached to me that no one should ever stop learning or stop appreciating the journey of discovery.
     Learning music, similar to learning a foreign language, is best started at a young age. This is why every school should give their students the opportunity to experience music education. American society currently does not place a very high value on artistic education, saying that "America's business is business". But as we have seen in light of the recent economic downturn, that is not really working very well. Why not try to change the system at a time like this, when it is clearly not working anyway?