Goodnight and Good Luck

Who was Edward R. Murrow?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNq8LoYjG2E

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep into our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. - Edward R. Murrow. - See It Now -9th march 1954


Murrow is a symbol,a leader and the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual Communists and traitors. And I am compelled by the facts to say to you that Mr. Edward R. Murrow, as far back as twenty years ago, was engaged in propaganda for Communist causes.
- Joseph R. McCarthy- See It Now - April 6, 1954

I always felt that Joe lived in a different moral universe. He asked himself only two questions. What do I want and how do I get it. Once he got rolling, you had to step aside. It was every man for himself, sort of what anarchy must be like.
-Edward Hart - 1983 - Lawyer who worked with Joseph MacCarthy What happens next?

V for Vendetta

Study questions. Respond in your journal and be prepared to discuss them in class.

(For those of you who weren't here for the first half: Please, still answer all of the questions, discuss them with someone who saw the whole film.)

1.How do your opinions of the characters V and Evey change throughout the film?

2. Faith and christianity are not directly discussed, but, the film portrays a few characters as being religious. How are they presented, and why are they shown in that light? think particularly about the Bishop, and the Chancelor. What other referecnces to faith does the film make?

3. How do V's actions change his society, in other words what happens next?

4. How does the film show V as a hero? How is he the villain? Why is he shown as both?

5. If V is the Medium, what is the message?

Technocratic Democracy

One of the extensions that new media has provided is an extension to the volume and distance that a single voice can travel. Facebook allows users to tap (or poke) the shoulders of long lost acquaintances worldwide, and then reconnect. Through twitter networking even the most banal of activities, such as the walk out your front door, can be nationally announced events. It is difficult to wade through the volumes of noise that all of the social networkers make in order to hear the tones of culture, the message that follows the medium. It is important to see two opposing realities with regards to all of this.



1. If information is power and you allow many people, organizations, governments and marketers access to "your" information you increase their power. This can have the effect of increasing the manipulation of your world through more consumer specific marketing, or the implications of more sinister uses of power. If these others work for good than you lend your voice to theirs.

2. You are given acces to a larger, higher and louder platform of international discourse. You have access to endless amounts of information to inform your speach on that level and are therefore far more powerful than individuals of previous generations.



It is into this context of immense possibility and cultural dissemination through new media that you are coming into adulthood. And so what will you do? Where will you spend your efforts in this culture.



"I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsability that comes with his freedom" -Bob Dylan



"Tell me, what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life." -Mary Oliver

Extend and Amputate

When considering a new medium McLuhan suggests that the answers to the following questions will predict what kind of a culture it will grow.

1. What does it extend?
2.What does it make obsolete?
3. What is retrieved?
4. What does the Technology reverse if it is over-extended?

assignment:
consider facebook through the lens of these questions.

To understand what these questions mean read the following article.
Once on the page, hit ctrl and the letter F and enter the subject you want to read about.
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhan.html

The Medium is the Message

In 1895 a theatre was filled to watch the following film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cUEANKv964&feature=related

The finely dressed movie goers did not react to the feature film as you might suspect. Instead of complaints about it being short, or just responding with bored incredulity, these movie goers rose, screaming and fleeing from their seats, into the street. I wasn't there, but that's what I've read and the reason for their panic, I think, is that they expected this!

They did! They had not seen a moving picture before and everything they believed drove them to expect this result, and so they fled in panic. Having no frame of reference to deal with this new media they ran. In some ways this still happens today.

Now for something completely different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtycdRBAbXk

That was Marshall McLuhan, professor at the University of Toronto back in the mid 1900's. He came up with the idiom "the medium is the message," and it may have made him feel profound but what does it mean? Try and work it out for yourself. What might he mean?

Lights out. Watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6eJyth8Dvo&feature=related

A medium is like a substance in which things can be grown. Think of a medium in your bio lab's petri dishes growing bacterial cultures.

A message is not so much the words or slogans that make the message but rather what that slogan is supposed to do. Jesus said "Love your neighbor as yourself", not to make a popular phrase but, so that it would effect change, and people would love their neighbors.

So, a television, which is a fertile ground for developing culture, has an effect on culture, and so that is what it's message is. If you watch TV there will be other effects, social changes, changes to the way your living room is set up, changes to what you do in the evening etc. That is the message.

For a very thorough explanation of this idea check out this website.

http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm

Here are some videos that let you hear Marshall McLuhan talk about it himself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfS4HFcPJWU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7GvQdDQv8g&NR=1

The Medium is.

And you can quote me on that.
Welcome to the online Journal tracking the activities of one High School class through a year of study in the field of Media and Culture. It will be a place for myself, the teacher of said class, to share with my students the material presented in the class. It will be a place for that material to be shared with those around us. It will be a place to find out what happened while they had the flu. But it will mainly be an exercise in culture creation, a way to not be mere observers, but rather shifters of culture. This brings me to the title. It may be ill fated to call it so, for I believe that the activities of culture shaping are less defensive and more active by nature. But I desire to see students capable of holding a gaze with culture, not so as to be lulled to sleep by it, but rather that they may stare into its heart and understand its power. A power for ill? Sometimes yes; but a power of creative human spirits, made in the image of a creative God, to live out a call to create wondrous things. And the combination of all these things, cameras, gardens, usb keys, loaves of bread and dance routines, is nothing more or less than Culture.

Mr. deGroot
September 9, 2009