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In my Media and Communication Theory class, we ahve been talking about how our society has changed significantly due to technological world of communication. This stuff fascinates me so I figured I would share it with all of you.

People seem less concerned about good sources, and no one necessarily needs to be an expert in order to be considered a legitimate source. I’m guilty of this, as I have used sources in term papers that are from other college students that they used in their term papers.  I have no idea where they got these thoughts from, but they sounded legitimate enough to me.    As we live in this digital age, we are slowly introducing a new generation of experts, and yet we do not know who is editing these things.   Who are these experts?  What is considered scholarly?   For example, Wikipedia supposedly has 1000 editors that confirm everything that is upload on to their site, and yet you only have 3 days of training in order to become a Wikipedia editor.

YouTube is a prime example of what is going on in this digital age.  We, as the consumers are now becoming the producers.  We do not have to be talented or knowledgeable to be famous anymore, and we don’t need thousands of dollars of equipment to make an album or make a movie, and we can just upload these things on to the web hoping that it will exceed above and beyond the rest.  This is why FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC, etc…are hurting financially.  People who used to watch those experts make shows such as ER are now watch Red vs. Blue on YouTube instead.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to watch the video below. I cannot think of a better example of what is happening in our consumer driven society.  It is an hour long video, but it is well worth watching as it is very interesting.  Enjoy.

A few good pholks have been working on a documentary about Phish Phans, and they released a “teaser” 24 hours before Phish officially starts their first tour in five years, starting tonight at Fenway Park in Boston.    I was excited to see the trailer to the film, “Maybe So, Maybe Not,” and even more excited to see my former teacher and good Phriend Jnan Blau in the clip.

20 more days until Alpine Valley!

After having the last class period on Thursday last week, something hit me.   Life is moving too fast for all of us.   I thought about all the things that have happened in the last 4 months….

In School

• 40+ pages of writing for various classes
• 2 documentary films made
• 3 websites designed
• Usability Project on Kayak Rolling Instruction
• Designing the layout for a literary magazine

Work

• Student Awards Banquet Publications
• Website Updates
• Accepting a new job at COMPASS
• Various table tents
• Spring Calendar Design
• Lead a Spring Break Trip
• 4 Kayak Rolling Instruction Classes
• Bigfoot Snowshoe Event
• Migrate Bay Electric Inc. and DePuydt Construction Inc. over to CMS

Personal

• Engagement/Wedding Planning
• Hard drives crashing, technology failing
• Moving into a new apartment

We all have so much stuff going on in our lives.  Sometimes we need to take a step back and realize that there is just too much going on.   I’m in need of a vacation.   I have become too dependent on technology, to the point where I feel like a nice long paddling or backpacking trip is in order.   Something where I can leave my smartphone, computer, and iPod behind, and forget about email, phone calls, text messages, the internet and music.

I think this is something everyone should do this every now and then.   Not just a simple retreat to Disney World or a city where you are still surrounded by circuit boards, but a retreat to where natural resources are the only surrounding around you.  Being in a natural environment can really bring you down to earth.  Just something to think about.

For my first post on my new blog, I’m going to talk about a class assignment.  I know…I’m a nerd.

So for my documentary class, we have to make a film of about 7 minutes in length. Our group decided to cover the student employees that work for Public Safety, Michigan Tech’s police department(yes, they are deputized state police).

Public safety

Usually you see these student employees with winter hats on, low profile jackets, looking to hide their profession from the general public. After all, if you see a person putting a 20 dollar ticket on your car(or a friends), you are probably going to associate them with a negative connotation, even though they are simply doing their job. It’s one of those jobs where people get pissed at you for what they did wrong.

We met with the good folks from Public Safety today. Thinking they were going to be hesitant in giving us any sort of information, we immediately pitched ourselves as looking at “The Ticket Guy” in a different light. It turned out that they were much more willing to talk with us about this matter, provide us statistics, so on and so forth. In fact, we will be meeting with them next week to interview them on camera and include them in our documentary.

I’ll post this short documentary (Vimeo/Youtube) once we complete the project. I think we have a good vision for where we want this to go.  I can honestly say I have never been this excited to do a class project.   In the same regard, spring is on its way and my ambition will decline.

Have a good one folks.

Michigan Tech had their annual Winter Carnival, and I participated in most of the events this year….

I did not go to the all-nighter after last year’s fiasco. By 2 in the morning, people were rocking cars in the parking lot, there were fights, and there was just too much drunken stupor for my liking. I figured the same sort of thing would be going on this year, but I guess it was much more laid back due to the temperature being -8 degrees.

Thursday I went around and looked at the statues. Not very impressive. I guess they only had 3 weeks to work on them this year as opposed to 4 weeks other years, but I still think they were lacking detail. I think the amount of snow they have had to deal with this year also was a deterrent. I took some photos of those statues that I thought were highlights of statue building…

Friday night, Stace and I went to the hockey game. Nothing too exciting going on here. Tie game, 2-2. We ended up getting free tickets from my good friend, Tom, and his brother. This was my second hockey game since I became a student at Michigan Tech. I guess it was nice to take part in something that is so big to our school, but not so big to me…

Last night Stace and I went to go see this years comedian, Gabriel Iglasias. He was pretty good, but I think the demographics of the area did not fit well for his style of comedy. For those of you who don’t know, he’s Latino, and performing at a school with 85% white midwesterners. If you haven’t saw him before, here is a clip. His sound effects are what make him good, being able to make a narrative with the ability to stay engaged.

I guess that is Winter Carnival 2009 in a nutshell…