dmariel, 2/4/09

After our Tuesday class session, Benjamin became much more enticing to me. I didn’t engage as much into the reading as I did with others, possibly because it was much longer and not as dense. I definitely grasped the idea of what Benjamin was getting at, but our lecture in class helped immensely. I found it interesting when we talked about how we are mass producing things that people don’t even know that they want. The Ipod was a great example-before it came out, there was nothing like it. As soon as people got their hands on it, it became the hottest and most wanted item on the market. With the invention of the Ipod, numerous other companies began to recreate it in different forms and styles. I don’t always agree with the fact that a recreation or modification of something takes the authenticity away, but in this case-the Ipod definitely wins for originality, considering they were the first company to produce the initial idea. In this case, the value of the Ipod came from the fact that everyone had one, and if you didn’t you wanted one.
When discussing the idea as humans being passive and absent minded, I began to think about how this is being exacerbated by introductions of new technologies. More and more I feel that people are looking at things mindlessly. Movies, pictures, music, news, different types of media, etc... We take what we are given, most of the time not even questioning it. News, for example, usually goes in one ear and out the other. This can become dangerous--absorbing things like a sponge without critically examining them. For example-Fox news has polluted the minds of many of its viewers on topics of the utmost importance- the war on terrorism. They are educating their viewers with statistics, opinions, and statements that most of the time are completely biased. Their viewers have become filled with misinformation and begin articulating ideas about the war on terrorism with the information that has been absorbed into their mind. This can definitely lead to what Benjamin was talking about when he said “Mankind's self alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order” (pg 34). I would have to say that I think human mindlessness is increasing with time and technology and I am skeptical of what the generations to come will be like.