post-it note, 2/8/2009

Our conversation in class was thought provoking and is the first time that I have thought about CMC in terms of the big picture. Educating the American population on the impact of media on our lives is important why? For one, I believe it is important to understand the processes that occur in our world. Whether political or social, understanding these ideas create educated people capable of manipulating the very thing set in place to control them. It is also important to understand the origin and reason for the media’s controlling nature in order to remedy this behavior.

We can only speculate as CMC majors at Rollins as to what would happen if the media did not fill as much or any of our lives with information, useful or useless. This reminds me of economics, as far as the speculation goes. In economics, theories are studied. But these theories only work within the law of ceteris paribus: all else equal. And considering that all theories are only speculation, we only have reason to believe that the theories will be partially true; that other factors will play into them due to the ever-changing landscape of life in the 21st century. How can we expect that parts of some theories will be correct, that a hodgepodge of contemporary and classical theory will be created? This would mean that all the theories that each theory we are studying is irrelevant as a whole, but might become relevant in parts if a media revolution were to occur.

Not to say that what those in history had to say is unimportant. This is not my statement. My statement here is that the theorists that we are reading are important to understand and learn from, but we must look beyond their thoughts in order to understand where we have been and thoughts on where we might be going. All of these ideas are windows into the minds of media geniuses. We should not feel as if we have a right to their ideas, but we should consider them important in perspective building on this journey of understanding and change.