In "Telivision", Steven Johnson brought up good points about how digital technology is good for us. He explained how Tv shows complexity that began in the 80's have helped us understand even more complex shows present day. Mostly he talked about multithreading which is how Tv shows with complex narritive stories kept people watching, and Tv shows with single-plot narrative stories held viewers for a short while.
I agree with Johnson's point of how we can better understand multithreading in complex narritive shows and stories because of our exposure to shows such as "Hill Street Blues" that began the 80's of complex narrative plots to keep viewers tuned in. At the beginning though, many people in the 80's complained about how "Hill Street" was to complicated but they still tuned in, and because of that, Johnson explains, we can now understand even more complex shows such as the famous "Sapranoes" which made Hill Street Blues look like Three's Company according to Steven Johnson.
One thing I thought was interesting was how his graph showed a calculated complexity of a certain show, For example, "Hill Street Blues" had many scattered plots, which indeed it did because of multiple plots in had in one episode, and "Dragnet" which had a single-plot narritive story, which was plotted on the graph as a straight line.
In "Everything bad is good for you", Steven Johnson contradicts "Feed" because in "Feed" the mesaage I felt the author was conveying was that because of digital technology we would become lazy and if we went to against, we would die( in this case Valarie was the one who rebeled and slowly died). "Everything bad is good for you", thats the total opposite, he praises that digital technology has made us better, for example the constant exposure to multithreading in tv shows helping us understand complex narritive story plots.
One thing Johnson didn't contradict in "Feed: was definately the fact of people not capable of understanding complexity in shows, so we have it pointed out. For example, the movie "Student Bodies" a parody about horror/slasher flicks that almost have similar plots like a girl that leaves the front door open after checking if anyone was outside, the murderer comes in. Very common. But in this film, they have a big arrow pointing out every little plot and reasoning helping the viewer understand. Just like in "Feed" when they didn't know a word, or a person, they looked it up on the "Feed database."
I found "Everything bad is good for you" interesting because so many of us agree that digital technology is bad for us, because of "this and that and some of this" but Johnson argued that not many of us would argue, that digital technology is good for us.
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To Christian,
ReplyDeleteWhile reading all of your post, I looked at different things that you said that stood out to me the most. In the FEED B assignment, you stated “Feed's allegory was significant because it illustrated the dependence on technology that, we as people, crave. And because we crave it, we are oblivious to daily life attributions and we stick with our one way digital motion ..our fingers on keyboards.” This was a great statement, one of the best that I’ve read in regards to the reactions that people had on Feed. I don’t know if I totally agree with the statement that we are oblivious to what goes on in our daily life, but I do agree that we are sometimes stuck in that one motion–fingers to keyboard. This is probably one of the most frequent and popular motions that we Americans do every single day. Therefore this idea was great in relating the book to the lives of different individuals.
Another point that I liked when reading through your blog post was where you stated in FEED A how teens talk and how the author really used relatable language. “I thought the language the author used are similar to modern teenage phrases like "lets get shit-faced and high ".” When reading this I really laughed out loud just thinking about the number of times I have heard people say these type of things. Knowing that this is something often said, Im glad that you included it in your post and discussed what you thought about these type of phrases used. Can you personally relate to any of these phrases? Or list some of the situation that you have encountered? Overall your ideas displayed in different post are very interesting and I cant wait to read what other ideas you have!
I liked this post the most because i felt like you got the main aspects of the excerpts and i think that , that is very important . I also liked the way that you connected feed back to the excerpts as well. So your saying that the two excerpts demonstrate very different points.
ReplyDeleteIN feed a and feed b I liked what you said and thinking about it now everything you said does make sense and i agree with what your saying. It seems to me that you got a very good understanding of the book which translated into a very good post. Overall good job.
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