The Argument...?

Despite the fact that it's been over a month since we tackled The Argument, I still find myself asking, "What exactly was he arguing, other than the fact that he is a well-informed political observer who knows how to name-drop like nobody's business?" Okay, so I know that he was following the progressive movement to remake Democratic politics, but I can't help but have the feeling that his argument was not particularly helpful to further my understanding of the issues we discussed in this class. Which is why I think that this book shouldn't be included in the required reading for the next semester of this class.

Your Design Here

Yesterday I bought a buy one get one free cigarette deal on Camel Infused, and one of the two boxes was completely white, with the words "YOUR DESIGN HERE" on the front of the pack. When I turned it over, it told me, "This is not just a pack of smokes. This is a chance for you to tap into your creativity. We're inviting you to design one of 100 original signature packs that will be created each year." So, apparently we have taken design to a whole new level. Now, not only are we afforded the chance to design our own pair of Vans or Nikes, but our own cigarette pack. This left me wondering, "Does the RJReynolds Tobacco Company know that their target audience/consumers are likely to be creative types?" I'm not sure what the correlation is between creativity and smoking cigarettes, but I thought it was interesting that Daniel Pink's theory even extends to a product that less and less people are convinced to buy (what with all the anti-smoking campaigns, and smoking bans in many counties and cities).

Internet Regulations

I do not think that the government should regulate internet content. As of right now, the internet serves as the only means of locating unbiased information on practically any subject. I realize that things like pornography are objectionable to many people, but I think it's better to be able to view material with strong sexual content in the privacy of one's own home than elsewhere. I think that parents should be in charge of what their kids come across on the internet, and so should take on the responsibility of installing filters to block unwanted content from entering their homes. When it comes to content that in and of itself is illegal (child porn, human trafficking) I do feel that the government should intervene and find a way to put a stop to such terrible activities.

The Eggplant Fiasco

Write a Mini-Saga was the topic for the first Portfolio activity in the Story section of Dan Pink's "A Whole New Mind", so I decided to take a whack at it. Here's what I came up with:

She excitedly sampled the fresh eggplant everyone raved about. As the hours passed, her stomach began to rumble in dissent. In the eighth hour all hope was lost as she ran outside, flushed and queasy. It was mighty tasty going down, but coming back up resembled a hideous, slimy concoction.

This happens to be a true story. I was working a job and was coerced into taste testing the eggplant, which I had eaten many times during my childhood. As you might have guessed, it did not turn out as well as I had hoped. Such is life.

Hi, A/S/L?

I was thinking about the whole phenomenon of people pretending to be someone other than who they really are on the internet, and was reminded of an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit I saw last year. The episode revolved around an internet-based virtual world, clearly meant to resemble Second Life. The detectives were brought in to investigate the kidnapping of a woman whose character in the virtual world was a stripper who had gathered a sizeable internet fan base. I began to consider the different reasons why someone would want to portray themselves as something they are not, especially a stripper of all things. I think that this has something to do with the phenomenon that we see in various places on the internet where people feel that because they are behind their computer screen they can do or say anything they want.

I have definitely felt that security that is lacking in real life before, which is not to say that I have portrayed myself as someone else. I have merely felt more comfortable being frank and honest about things that I would probably not have been willing to talk about in real life. The fact that the internet is this intangible "place" where many things are not as they seem is probably liberating for a lot of people, but sort of scary for others. I know I am very aware of the fact that many of the strangers I might encounter while playing games on Yahoo! or checking my MySpace could have unterior motives. No way am I going to give out my real name or location to someone when they are nothing more to me than typed words on a computer screen. If you are taking the time to create an alternate persona for yourself on the internet, you clearly have some sort of motive in mind, and what you're selling I ain't buying!

Googled

I have Googled my name before and never come up with anything interesting (or relevant) about myself, but tried again for this assignment. What I have found is that any variation of my full name pulls up hundreds of thousands of results. For example:

Searching Susannah L. Parker brings up 123,000 results.
Searching Susannah Lauren Parker brings up 252,000 results.
Searching Susannah Parker brings up 1,550,000 results!

Basically what comes up has nothing to do with me. Mainly, the results have to do with geneaologies of various families from the 1700 and 1800s. Another page showed that someone named Susannah Parker is a spokesperson for Save the Children UK, an independent children's charity that works to get every child proper healthcare, food, education and protection. There is also a book called Elusive Love by Catherine Lanigan in which one of the main characters is named Susannah Parker. I was not really feeling up to the task of looking through countless pages of search results to see if any of the websites were actually about me, so I stopped looking after ten or fifteen pages.

I definitely think that this means my name does not Google well. I was expecting at least to see my Facebook page pop up in the search results, but it didn't. Then again, this might have something to do with the security settings I have set for my profile. I realize that I do have an extremely common last name (which is obvious from all the ancestry-type websites that popped up), but I thought my first name was at least different enough that there would not be so many others who shared my full name. Maybe one day I'll become important enough to appear on various websites for all the good deeds I will have done. Hey, I can always dream, can't I?

These are the Days of Our Lives

I was reading the Washington Post article about social networking sites and was struck by the comment Nicholas A. Christakis made about Facebook serving as a way to watch soap operas of people we know (or sort of know). I've definitely used Facebook in this way on multiple occasions. Just recently, I was browsing the new photos that my Facebook friends had posted and came across an album entitled "Marriage" by a guy I went to high school with. Out of curiosity, I opened the album and was surprised to find pictures of him and a girl, appearing to have just been married! Now, this guy and I were by no means close friends in high school, nor are we now, but there's just something so juicy about knowing info like this about people you knew and no longer see. Immediately after finding out that this guy got married, I texted one of my good friends from high school about it (who happens to be in Ohio at Oberlin College), wanting to know if he already knew or not. We then proceeded to have an in-depth conversation about how we just can't fathom being married at this point in our lives and how unexpected it was that that particular guy was the first (well, second) from our class to get married, etc.



This phenomenon may have something to do with the high school community that we both were a part of. There was almost no room for secrets among classmates when we were in high school. If something interesting happened to you, it was almost guaranteed that the whole school would be gossiping about it within the next few days. From my reaction to finding out this tidbit of information about someone well after high school ended, I can see that somehow that tendency to gossip has travelled with me and probably my classmates as well. Facebook serves as a way to make it easier for us to fulfill that need to gossip. With the click of a mouse, we have access to whatever is going on in the lives of our former classmates who are spread out across the country. Personally, I make use of the website to keep up with what's going on with people I may not get the chance to catch up with regularly. As for the other people I'm Facebook friends with, sometimes their lives do transform into something of a soap opera that I can turn on or off at will.

Daily Kos

I actually began reading the Daily Kos last semester while in Professor Snyder's Intro to Media Studies class. We were each required to follow a political blog for the course of the semester to keep up with the goings on of the world. The Daily Kos is "the largest progressive community blog in the United States." It was founded in 2002 and is still published by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, a veteran "offended that the freedoms he pledged his life for were so carelessly being tossed aside by the reckless and destructive Republican administration." The Daily Kos features blogging from upwards of tewnty different contributing writers, and is thoroughly liberal (obviously).

The maority of recent posts on the site pertain to the presidential race. For example, one of today's post is titled, "Obama the New Jersey Favorite", and many of the posted comments seem to be by loyal, liberal readers. Most of these posts focus on the democratic presidential candidates. Markos Zuniga, the site's founder, was also mentioned extensively in The Argument.