For this project, I chose the song “Stronger Than Me” by Amy Winehouse. I knew and admired Winehouse’s music when I was younger, but it was not until I recently watched the documentary “Amy” that I gained re […]

Title: Listening Log #5

Name of recordist: Melika Zand

Date recorded: 11/14/16

Place recorded: Outside of my apartment on Broad St

Distance from source: A couple of yards away

Airplanes- 0

Car […]

Title: Listening Log #4

Name of recordist: Melika Zand

Date recorded: 11/08/16

Place recorded: Outside of my apartment on Broad St

Distance from source: A couple of yards away

Airplanes- 0

Car […]

No. 3

Title: Listening Log #3

Name of recordist: Melika Zand

Date recorded: 10/31/16

Place recorded: Outside of my apartment on Broad St

Distance from source: A couple of yards […]

Photo URL:

Link for Music:

Musical Element
What you hear (music)
What you see (photo)

Melody
Dance-like movement,

Shift in mood as the scale goes from C major to C minor
The various […]

No. 2

Date Recorded: October 24, 2016

Title: Listening to the Soundscape Week 2

Name of recordist: Melika Zand

Place recorded: Outside of my apartment on Broad St

Distance from source: 3 or 4 yards […]

At first glance, the image is exactly what you think it will be. After taking a closer look, I see that the dinner conversation upstairs isn’t so innocent. The woman standing up is holding an object in her hand, a […]

No. 1

Name of recordist: Melika Zand

Date recorded: October 16, 2016

Place recorded: W Broad St (in front of my apartment)

Distance from source: Several feet away

Atmospheric conditions: Early […]

As this week has begun, I have made immense progress in my Inquiry Project. I scheduled an appointment with the writing center, which I surprisingly have not utilized until this course, and they helped me […]

First I’d like to apologize for not posting recently, I became ill (who even gets sick in the summer?) and have let my sickness foolishly effect my work.
 
This nugget assignment was particularly surprising because I had just recently been contemplating the uses of personal computers and tablets such as the ones discussed in the paper. Two particular passages stuck out to me, because of my train of thought lately. I often ask myself multiple questions throughout my day, most of them concerning insight about the world around me. I always tell myself I am going to record them somewhere, because these thoughts are meant to be contemplated in further detail.

Anyway, the first passage that stuck out to me was on the first page.

“Devices” which variously store, retrieve, or manipulate information in the form of messages embedded in a medium have been in existence for thousands of years. People use them to communicate ideas and feelings both to others and back to themselves. Although thinking goes on in one’s head, external media serve to materialize thoughts and, through feedback, to augment the actual paths the thinking follows. Methods discovered in one medium provide metaphors which contribute new ways to think about notions in other media.”
The internet is a pool for thousands of ideas discovered by thousands of different people. Within this pool, people discuss, debate, and argue these thoughts, that ultimately lead to more intricate, intuitive thoughts. Communicating with other people allows for diverse conversation, and opens our eyes to the ideas of others. Without talking, nobody would know the stream of consciousness of their peers. We enrich our thoughts and further our education when we are given the opportunity to expand our ideas by collaborating with different people. These “devices” discussed in this paper make all of this possible. Paper and pencil are sufficient means of communicating, but as time has progressed, we have gained interest in using quick, efficient forms of technology to interact. The simplicity of converting our thoughts into words has become accessible with a click of a mouse, or keypad. When we “materialize” our thoughts, they become rich, and more importantly, real. I compare our brain to an ocean; a vast, cloudy area of unidentified thoughts. The internet, is comparable to a pool; a clear, enclosed area of identified thoughts. When we are able to take the thoughts from our “ocean” and project them into the “pool”, we can better understand and see our thoughts for what they truly are. We are able to expand, separate, and remove parts of them to reach a concise conclusion.
In relation to this passage, another one on the same page stuck out to me as well.

“Every message is, in one sense or another, a simulation of some idea. It may be representational or abstract. The essence of a medium is very much dependent on the way messages are embedded, changed, and viewed. Although digital computers were originally designed to do arithmetic computation, the ability to simulate the details of any descriptive model means that the computer, viewed as a medium itself, can be all other media if the embedding and viewing methods are sufficiently well provided. Moreover, this new “metamedium” is active—it can respond to queries and experiments—so that the messages may involve the learner in a two-way conversation. This property has never been available before except through the medium of an individual teacher. We think the implications are vast and compelling.”
As I have said, communicating with others through these “devices” is vital in stimulating thought and conversation. At the end of this paragraph, they mention that the property of two-way communication has never been seen before, except through a teacher. We are experiencing this shift first hand. We no longer have a teacher that is directly in front of us and communicating with us face-to-face. This class is the “metamedium” allowing students to learn and expand our thoughts through the blogs of other students. We teach each other, and we expand our ideas off of the thoughts and comments of others. That is truly one of a kind, and experiencing this class has made me realize the immense amount of information that can be disseminated between classmates.

As this week has progressed, I have finally caught up to all my late work. I fell behind for various reasons but it made me realize that I must stay on top of my accademic work.
In the process of catching up on […]

Could not agree with this post any more. I think this class has effected me in my personal life, because I think more intuitively, and I am more willing to discuss things because I am constantly conducting […]

Wow, never thought about math in relation to art. I think thats a really abstract way to think about it, and I completely agree. The teacher definitely plays a role in the interest students have in subjects, […]

I also am using the effects of social media, except mine is related more towards the negative impact it has on us on desensitizing us from tragedies around the world. I had not even thought about its effects on […]

As my inquiry project recites over and over again, social media has desensitized us from the tragedies around the world. I know I keep reiterating this, but I cannot sit back and watch people my age around me […]

Social media.
Facebook. Twitter. Instagram.
All three of these sound familiar, but do we know what impact they actually have on us?
As I thought about a topic for my Inquiry Proposal, I thought about something that effected (thank you Google for allowing me to search the correct use of effect and affect) the majority of people. I thought about the world as a whole, and something that impacts us tremendously. Social media and its effects on global disasters and tragedy intrigued me the most. Everyday we, specifically teenagers, scroll through our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds, mostly inattentively, and we stumble upon posts that have to deal with tragedy. Whether it be a starving child, a homeless person, or a natural disaster, these posts have intentions of spreading the word. Unfortunately, they do just the opposite. Some of these posts have requests such as “liking” or “sharing” in order to spread awareness, but in reality all we are really doing is simply “liking” and “sharing”. We have become so accustomed to “retweeting” and “favoriting” things, that they have made us numb to the vital importance of the actual post: to actually invoke reactions and instill change. I admit I have fallen victim to this major trend of “sharing” occurring all over social media accounts. In some sense, I feel like I have done my part as a citizen in raising awareness, but the more I think about it, I have done more damage. When we share or like these posts, we are desensitizing ourselves from the actual chaos that is occurring in those posts. Social media creates a blanket that shields us from the real commotion in the world.
As my research has continued, I have found many sources on the effects of social media on tragedy, but mostly have been about teenagers and its impact on them. I figured this would occur, because we are the social media generation and the people being effected by this are younger. As a result of my research, I have modified my question to target the effects on the younger population. Surprisingly, a majority of my sources I was sifting through specified the effects of media violence on teenagers, but as I refined my search I began to dip deep into nonviolent media. In this article, a study by the University of Arizona states that we have indeed become desensitized to the graphic images found all over the internet. A doctorate graduate front he University of Arizona “…conducted an experiment to examine whether the manipulation of the graphicness of visual images of war impacted policy beliefs, attitudes and moods of individuals. They found no significant differences in higher compared to lower levels of graphicness in perceived severity of war or stronger policy perceptions. There also were no differences in mood across graphicness conditions.” These results indicate that we are no longer effected by the level of graphicness in images of tragedy, and that the Internet had put a blanket over the true level of chaos.
“Perhaps it is time that the media should not visually downplay the events of war and start running graphic visuals depicting conflicts as a terrible alternative to peaceful negotiations,” says the conductor of the experiment. 


The use of social media is high and will continue to increase as we create more innovative technology. With so much time spent on these media pages and sites, it is inevitable that a glass wall develops between us and the real world. The real world, as in all the tragedy and commotion that occurs that we are not directly exposed to.
As I continue my research, I must be careful of the sources I stumble upon, because this issue is so current there are not a great amount of sources that are reliable. Because this topic relates more generally to the younger population, I think a majority of my resources will be from teenagers directly. While this may seem unreliable, we must remember that we are the social media generation, and how we are living now will someday become statistics to study in the future.
Sources:
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/teen-social-media-infographic
http://web.sbs.arizona.edu/college/news/has-new-media-desensitized-consumers-graphic-images
http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2012/04/05/age-desensitization