Many people think the 18-30 demographic age grooup is getting it’s news and politic idealogy from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.  Based on Nielsen reports, this may be true.  Some might say getting your news from “fake” news shows is probably the number one most uninformed thing you can do as a college student.  Others might argue these “fake” news shows are the only place one might actually here some real truths through the use of irony and sarcasm by the shows’ hosts.  What do you say?

 Here’s the picture (R. Winslow via Smugmug.com):

 Post your comment with your best opening line for an extended paragraph narrative about the situation shown in this photograph.  The winner gets 5 extra points on their own personal narrative!  Be creative…write on!

It, plus the rest of the songs on the CD,  is the “music” project brainchild of former Aqua member Soren Rasted, who refers to the genre as Rhythm’n'Speak.  The project was created to be part trivia, part comedy, and, as you will see, part social commentary.

The single here, oddly named “Underwear Goes Inside the Pants” debuted at #33 on the charts and was played on MTV repeatedly. 

Though this is the original song and lyrics, it is not the original video.  It is a YouTube.com upload by a videoblogger named Chris Knight.  Wouldn’t you like to know his thoughts?

(Explicit lyric warning for any readers under 18 wishing to use this video…)

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn52Px_h7_8]

Kind of makes an impression, doesn’t it?

LazyBoy had his say…

Chris Knight had his say…

What do you say?

According to several published research reports (Pew), teens and young adults’ are changing the way they live their lives due to technology. “‘With information and accessibility lying effortless at my fingertips, I have grown accustomed to juggling multiple tasks at once, at lightning speed. In the average online conversation with a friend, for instance, I am likely to be talking to two others, shopping online at Barnes & Noble, laughing out loud at Friends  reruns, and printing off notes from a chemistry lecture’” (Wyndam 4).This population group, often referred to as the Net Generation, Generation Wired or Wireless, or Generation M (Multitaskers), have never known a time when access to goods and services weren’t available 24/7.  Whether they shop, pay bills, or collaboratively write essays with college students from countriese half way around the world, advances in technology have made the world accessible from anyplace at anytime. This micro-society has changed due to the portability of their technology as well.  For Gen M’ers, computing is a shared experience – not only on social networking sites, but in the physical sense as well.  Walk into any coffee house, library, or student commons, and undoubtedly you will find clusters of the Net Generation pouring over laptops, game consoles, sharing ear buds of iPods, or texting each other with cell phones while still in the same room.  Sociologists missed the mark when they predicted this generation would isolate themselves with technology, on the contrary, this generation collaborates more, and in more diverse ways, than previous generations could have imagined.

 References

Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved August 17, 2006 from: http://www.pewInternet.org/PPF/r/67/report_display.asp

Windham, C. (2005). The Student’s Perspective. In Oblinger, D.E. & Oblinger, J.L (Eds.) referencing Educating the Net Generation. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research. Retrieved August 17, 2006 from:  http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?PAGE_ID=5989&bhcp=1=5989&bhcp=1

Others Say:

This is a clip of a recent Time magazine article by Claudia Wallis regarding the issue of Generation M and how its ability to multitask may not be as productive as it (they?) think. (Only the portions of the article focusing on multitasking are included here – for the full article, please click on the link at the end).

Every generation of adults sees new technology–and the social changes it stirs–as a threat to the rightful order of things: Plato warned (correctly) that reading would be the downfall of oral tradition and memory. And every generation of teenagers embraces the freedoms and possibilities wrought by technology in ways that shock the elders: just think about what the automobile did for dating.

As for multitasking devices, social scientists and educators are just beginning to assess their impact, but the researchers already have some strong opinions. The mental habit of dividing one’s attention into many small slices has significant implications for the way young people learn, reason, socialize, do creative work and understand the world. Although such habits may prepare kids for today’s frenzied workplace, many cognitive scientists are positively alarmed by the trend.

“Kids that are instant messaging while doing homework, playing games online and watching TV, I predict, aren’t going to do well in the long run,” says Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Decades of research (not to mention common sense) indicate that the quality of one’s output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks. Some are concerned about the disappearance of mental downtime to relax and reflect. Roberts notes Stanford students “can’t go the few minutes between their 10 o’clock and 12 o’clock classes without talking on their cell phones. It seems to me that there’s almost a discomfort with not being stimulated–a kind of ‘I can’t stand the silence.’”  

Gen M’s multitasking habits have social and psychological implications as well. If you’re IMing four friends while watching That ’70s Show, it’s not the same as sitting on the couch with your buddies or your sisters and watching the show together, or sharing a family meal across a table. Thousands of years of evolution created human physical communication–facial expressions, body language–that puts broadband to shame in its ability to convey meaning and create bonds. What happens, wonders UCLA’s Ochs, as we replace side-by-side and eye-to-eye human connections with quick, disembodied e-exchanges? Those are critical issues not just for social scientists but for parents and teachers trying to understand–and do right by–Generation M.
 

ALTHOUGH MANY ASPECTS of the networked life remain scientifically uncharted, there’s substantial literature on how the brain handles multitasking. And basically, it doesn’t. It may seem that a teenage girl is writing an instant message, burning a CD and telling her mother that she’s doing homework–all at the same time–but what’s really going on is a rapid toggling among tasks rather than simultaneous processing.When people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer–often double the time or more–to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially, says David E. Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan: “The toll in terms of slowdown is extremely large–amazingly so.” Meyer frequently tests Gen M students in his lab, and he sees no exception for them, despite their “mystique” as master multitaskers. “The bottom line is that you can’t simultaneously be thinking about your tax return and reading an essay, just as you can’t talk to yourself about two things at once,” he says. “If a teenager is trying to have a conversation on an e-mail chat line while doing algebra, she’ll suffer a decrease in efficiency, compared to if she just thought about algebra until she was done. People may think otherwise, but it’s a myth.

References
Wallis, C. (2006, March 19). The multitasking generation. Time, 1-9, 3-5.Retrieved September 7, 2006, from http://www.fritzhubbard.org/words/The_Multitasking_Generation.pdf

Entire article:
http://www.fritzhubbard.org/words/The_Multitasking_Generation.pdf

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What do you say?

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Technorati Tags: Multitasking, iTunes, Online, NetGeneration, Teen habits

According the the New York Timesand just about any home page news feed of any major internet service provider on September 13th, 2006, one of the biggest stories of the day had to do with one of the newest forms of art: video blogging. ‘Bree’, known by her screenname Lonelygirl15 (LG15 to the instant messaging crowd), posted regular video “confessions” of her life as a 15 year old home-schooled teen growing up in a fairly strict religious home. She had the regular teen angst of friends, boyfriends, and a tech-savvy geeky friend “Daniel” who helped her post her videoblogs to the popular video hosting site Youtube.com.

‘Bree’ struck a chord with viewers and found a devoted audience of subscribers, with site visits, links, and comments soon reaching into the millions. Many noted Daniel’s high production qualities and the interesting variety in the clips – yet a consistent story line that unfolded over the four month period that Bree continued to blog.

Here’s an example:

Near the end of the four month, some tech-savvy subscribers began to question the authenticity of the 15 year old ‘Bree’.  The video quality was a little too good, the words were a little good – they sounded as if they could’ve been written by a Hollywood screenwriter instead of just coming off extemporaneously from ‘Bree’s’ lips.  And why, when she was getting over a million hits, didn’t she ever acknowledge the presence of the fans?  She never deviated from the script.

It only took the amateur detectives a short while to break through a few IP address barriers and Google caches to discover the truth.  ‘Bree’ a.k.a Lonelygirl15 was actually Jessica Rose, an approximately 20 year old graduate of the New York Film Academy.  Lonelygirl15 videoblogs were not the serial confessions of teen angst, but the creative endeavor Ramesh Flinders and Miles Becket, screenwriter and filmmaker respectively.  Their narrative, a new video art form blurs the lines between ARG’s (Alternate Reality Games) and self-made documentary film making.  The fictional video blogumentarians plan to continue posting their series, despite being outed as fake, as long as fans seem interested.  Later, they will turn the episodes into a full length film.  Is this the 21st century War of the Worlds reading, just over a new medium?  And will these filmmakers reap the same kinds of benefits as Orson Welles?  The buzz seems to indicate so.

Others Say:

Whether the viewer was bamboozled by the lie or perplexed by the populace’s gullibility to believe the lie in the first place, reactions were strong to the breaking story of the revelation of Lonelygirl15′s video blog as a semi-Hollywood commercial contrivance.

The following comments were some reactions posted by readers on the New York Times Online version of a front page print article regarding the story:

I don’t think i’d ever go to see one of their films, this isn’t a “new art form.” This is deception, manipulation, and bad acting from the get go. Most people recognized the farce from the start.  – Posted by G. North

Not as many people recognized the farce as G. North thought.  And when it was revealed, they were very reluctant to let their beloved alternate reality go…

This new person is most definatly not the same person as in the videos.
Without a doubt all of these newly released photos are fabricated along with her history of being a professional actress. From a behavioral stance the behavior of the girl in all the past videos is not consistant with the girl who is being offered to you in the new photos with a history as an acting student. Unfortunately it this will not make any difference to many of you who are just looking for a good story. – Posted by Kevin

 Some “killed the messenger” for bringing the message…

I never really cared if the videos were authentic or not. They were entertaining, and far more entertaining than most of what is on TV. She and Daniel alone were far more captivating than the cast of any ‘must-see’ sitcom…[edited for length by Doppelganger]…Killing the mystique behind lonelygirl15 was basically pointless. It was so obviously scripted after a while that identifying bookcases bought at Ikea or areas in Southern California where they went swimming or hiking was about as productive or intelligent as trying to find the Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield on a map of the US. No one cares which Springfield it is, or in which state it’s located. We just like watching things that happen somewhere we’re not. — Posted by Vanessa

Many mocked those who were gullible…

Haha, the geeks got played. No Feynman loving, Diamond quoting, lonely girl out there for you all to dote over.She played you all the way to a hollywood career.Suckers.— Posted by Kyle

 And plenty were able to give “life imitating art” references (or is that art imitating life imitating art?).

Someone please explain why a group of people basically being incredibly dishonest is news.

This kind of news coverage reminds me of the Scorsese movie “King of Comedy.” The basic plot line is that the crazy guy with Sandra Bernhardt’s character’s help kidnaps Jerry Lewis’s character, a Johnny Carson style talk show host. The guy, played by Robert De Niro, gets what he wants in exchange for Lewis’s character’s release: a chance to do his stand-up act on Lewis’s character’s show as the opening monologue. He ends up going to jail. But in an ironic twist, after his release, he gets all the fame and fortune he was seeking; he gets his own TV show and loads of attention.

This is exactly what’s happening here. Why is the NY Times giving these people ANY attention? Why does this story even deserve attention? Why do these people deserve any attention at all? — Posted by John K.

What Do You Say?