silent outlet of expression.

Sad day for humanity….

Within our current modern day and contemporary society humans are becoming way too lazy. Throughout recent technological innovation and the dominant role technology plays in our daily lives, humanity is being lead farther down the path of laziness than ever before. Humanity has a reached a point so lazy, where sometimes even recalling or attempting to remember a specific thought or memory is considered too bothersome and instead of thinking back and remembering we, as humans instead ‘google’ the answer to a question we’re too lazy to answer ourselves without our technological assistances and sidekicks. It’s become completely and utterly pathetic. Instead of actively using our brains to their full capacity and using memories to recall knowledge we instead rely instinctively on technology and search engines to provide us the answers to all of our questions and concerns within our life, and therefore completely eliminating the usage and purpose of our memory and brain. It becomes a dark day for humanity when we seek a piece of handheld technology to be our primary ‘go-to’ person and assistant for when we need help with something, for example the newest and latest app on the new iPhone 4S, her name is Siri and she does almost absolutely anything you ask of her to do, it’s crazy. She not only schedule’s and reschedule’s your calendar, she calls and texts your friends, she knows your music, she google’s everything and best of all she’s completely hands free, all you need to do is tell her what to do and she does it.

Siri is Apple’s latest ploy to not only attract customers to their newest and latest overpriced product, but she is available to construct and project a very simple and easygoing lifestyle with a piece of handheld technology to consumers. Where buying into this product makes your personal and professional life and the lives of those around you so much easier, leaving you time to do what makes you happy. Where I see it as a marketing ploy and effectively manipulating the laziness of humanity as a ploy to buy into this seemingly useless product of Artificial Intelligence, even by giving the app a name and a computerized feminine voice depicts how fast and easily influenced humanity is letting these overpowering systems of computers, cyborgs and robots to control our lives, and thus live for us, taking away whatever little piece of humanity we have left in this highly industrialized and materialistic world we are living in. Relating directly to class discussion on how the Material culture of today has such a strong influence on humanity today referencing specifically towards Professor Moore’s Theory on Material Culture Today. Where material objects contain traces of their own cultural importance and therefore associating material things and objects with socially meaningful use, purpose and significance to the consumer within our culture.

After watching the hilarious video above from College Humour, it was an obvious attempt at depicting how Siri’s function would play out in the lives of humans. Although a very extreme advertisement of the Apple product, questioning the actual purpose of Siri’s function inside of the device proves to be useful in showing humans how pointless this app truly is.

So please tell me why this phone is still ‘temporarily out of stock’ and the back-orders are ridiculous. It just goes to show how easily humans can be manipulated into buying something and wasting their money on a product, or a tool as they may interpret it, they absolutely do not need caused by effective advertsiments of Apple. I feel that is functions like Siri who are taking humanity out of the hands of humans and placing them into computers and technology, and playing with the laziness of human consumers. It becomes a sad day for humanity when, people can camp out overnight and sleep in the streets for an opportunity at this device, it completely shocks and boggles my mind.

1 year ago

Over-Commercialized Bullsh*t vs. Intellectual Quality

It’s that time of year again when everything from commercials, magazine ads to billboards begin to advertise all the flashy must-have gifts for the holidays. Hot consumer products like the new model of the iPhone 4, the iPone 4s, which have recently hit the shelves of stores and people can’t get enough of new, innovative ‘techy’ toys. One product being pushed by book chain stores like Indigo are the ebook readers; a device that allows you to purchase books digitally and read them on an electronic tablet instead of reading from the now ‘old fashioned’ regular books that almost all of society has been born and raised on. Ebooks are the kind of irrelevant technology that is slowly corrupting our society; not because they are ‘evil’ or unnatural to the ways in which we first learned to appreciate literature, but that they are slowly eliminating a part of culture that may cease to exist due to the overwhelming increase of technology. Arguably, ebooks reach out to a different kind of audience, ultimately promoting literature and literacy, but the idea of having children glued to another computer screen all day seems a little unhealthy, and more so anti-social. There’s a greater appreciation to be gained from reading a book in the flesh as well that gets lost between the digital screens of a tablet device. The shift between Oral-Aural culture to written culture only becomes more recognized and acknowledged within these new forms of literacy and print discussed in class lectures. Where information and intellect has completely shifted away from a previous tradition of an oral culture humanity was rooted upon and instead has progressed towards a society based distinctively upon the importance of print and text. These new Ebooks and electronic tablets or reading devices depict the importance of our changing culture and with the influence of technological advancements, these pieces of innovative technology are making reading text more important and significant to us, by providing an easier method of reading and engaging in literature. Where through these advanced toys that are all the craze they provide and lead humanity into a more standardized, mono-culture where the power of meaning is externalized within the text.

Although ebooks seem to be a new prosperous technology, what we must really be asking ourselves is: what exactly are we sacrificing in order to adapt another piece of culture into the digital age? And will this really benefit us in the long haul?

1 year ago

Tragedy of Canadian Cinema.

Canada is a nation with a troubled identity, and it’s cinema reflects that. Recently, I watched a Quebec film titled Le Confessional, only to discover on a deeper level how Canada, although multicultural, is not a melting pot. The film focuses on a community/family that, although live through an imagined sense of family, destroy one another and never aim to help or aid each other as individuals. This symbolizes Canada’s relationship with most of the smaller sub-communities across the nation that add up to the country as a whole. Canadians, in theory, work together as a strong combination of communities that compliment each other. But in practice, the community (or family, like in the film) fail each other by not supporting one another. Canada’s cinema is a large reflection of broken communities that represent the country as a separated whole. I feel the need to correspond the troubled Canadian Cinema with the greater Canadian population in terms of internet usage and global innovation amongst the vast property lines that confine the people of Canada. Although technological innovation is currently expanding beyond our brain’s capacity within Canada. A strong correlation is exists between the lack of social community in Canada and the rise of technology, where meanwhile Canada as a whole is separated, and through Canadian Cinema depictions reveal that.

On a side note, another great film that symbolizes this is Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter. Definitely a must-watch.

1 year ago

THE TERRORS OF RETAIL….

Flash Robs, the latest threat to retail stores and their employees worldwide

Flash Mobs have been used as a social media tool to bring and focus great attention and awareness to a certain cause, product or project. Whether it is the promotion of a new television program that is being released, a new product hitting stores, or advertising for cancer research and what people can do to help contribute.

Whatever the message, flash Mobs are premeditated and carefully practiced usually by paid volunteers whom effectively and successfully achieve their purpose of drawing specific attention to an issue or advertising a product. Most people who have lived in Toronto within the past year have either probably seen, watched or heard about atleast two that have taken place in the ‘Times Square’ of downtown Toronto’s Dundas Square. In the summer Wipeout Canada promoted and advertised the release of their new Canadian television version of the already successful American television show, where volunteers in Wipeout Canada t-shirts in bright colors bounced around on giant exercise balls and dominantly took over the streets, where at least 100 volunteers bounced within the busy intersection and southbound down Yonge Street towards the Eaton Centre on bright and sunny summer day. Another local example of one that took place was the music video the Ryerson Univiersity Dance Program did for Virgin Mobile. Where first year dance students, danced to a synchronized piece which was previous choreographed in collaboration with Virgin Mobile in the middle of the busy intersection during the early weeks of School. Both events drew great media coverage, and the message was definitely sent across where people talked about it for days. “What a cool idea!” and “I can’t believe they did it in the streets!” Many applauses were made in the idea and thought that went behind this epic event for a plausible cause of advertising.

Unfortunately, because of the controversial effects these giant groups of people create for the purpose of their flashmobs, it also gives others a very misinterpreted and illegal method to action. After discovering and watching the ‘flashrob’ video in class, and researching and viewing a couple clips for myself, I was utterly appalled at the extents and limits people would breach in order to get some free shit. Flash robberies group of young thieves making plans to steal the social media plot to converge on a store and ransack it. They devise their plans using social media websites such as facebok and twitter to conduct and premeditate their illegal actins and mischief. The behavior and attitudes of these selected individuals who choose to participate in these selfish and illegal acts are absolutely disgusting, but at the same time, although it bothers me to say, incredibly intellectual for actually pulling it off and getting away with it. It is so unbelievably sad to say but these criminals are getting away with a crime that is feasible of punishment because they are effectively utilizing a social media tool to create a crime and get away with it, without paying for the consequences. Therefore poses serious challenges and creates problems to retail stores all over North America from these poor actions of these mobs of thieves.

These ‘flashrobs’ definitely not only effect me, but some of my closest friends as well, where working within the retail industry, we obviously suspect and calculate daily shrinkage but with the quantity of products these ‘consumers’ and criminal customers are leaving the stores with, leaves the penalty and negative consequences in the hands of the store-owners and their employees. These criminal customers are targeting smaller stores in numbers and taking advantage of the store’s employees by walking in with a large group and leaving with a lot of product, where the employed staff are almost left with nothing to do but watch and fear for the life of their stores and their personal safety. Incentive and affirmative actions needs to be taken against these Flash-robberies which need to be stopped, where the potential threats can prove deadly, violent and tragic to both the retail industry and its employees.

1 year ago

innovation?

1 year ago

r. i. p.

1 year ago

My latest life motto to live by: ‘One Day At a Time.’

1 year ago

amtetpt rdaenig tihs…

1 year ago

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.” - Alice Walker

1 year ago

Smart Home Monitoring from Rogers: How Safe do these new services exclusively offered by Rogers actually make you feel?

The past weekend I had some time to sit back, relax, and enjoy myself in the privacy of my own home. I was watching some boring late night television programs, and not being an avid-television junkie, I become very bored of the television and its commercials very easily… It’s all the same thing to me. Pointless ads and companies spending too much money to sell their garbage by ‘attempting to make us as humans function more simply and easily within society and our daily lives’ is total bullshit. When all there really doing is selling us stuff, by making us think we need it toying with our insecurities in a way to target and exploit them in order for us to believe that we ‘need to buy’ their product or we will simply die.

Thankfully, people are not that stupid or are they? As I was flipping through the channels filled with hours upon hours of commercials that I have seen and have been repeated numerously throughout the same 8 different channels, I found one in particular to be very interesting… WARNING: The following ad may harm you…

The commercial started in the same way and manner that all Rogers commercials start with vibrant red backgrounds and a comfortable, calming and reassuring masculine voice informing us, the viewers, on the latest product for us to spend hundreds of dollars on monthly… I was honestly expecting a new plan with a family connecting a new family calling/texting plan for a false lower rate with barely even features including caller I.D. Instead, it was Rogers introducing the exclusively brand new Rogers Smart Home Monitoring and Automation System… The music in the background is what originally allured me away from changing channels and my curiosity reached a point of enlightenment. At first, it slowly is informing customers of the high quality technology that tricks the consumer into thinking, it’s the latest toy and piece of expensively manufactured machinery to play with. Throughout the commercial it began detailing all the features and specifications along with this new service exclusive to Rogers, and from this point on I was absolutely amazed and appalled. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. When have we as humans, ever granted or desired for the privacy of our homes to be on full public display to a mega mass media corporation, and pay for the service and protection it ‘provides.’

Not only is this service a complete and utter breaching of privacy, especially within our homes, but when did Rogers think it would be seen as a good service in means of protection… They must really be out to lunch with this idea… I also began examining the symbols and imagery the commercial presented. I found it extremely interesting how it depicts a middle class working family, living in a 2-storey, 2 car garage home, probably located on a private and peaceful street in a suburban neighborhood. The family was portrayed with two children, a younger son, and an older daughter whom happened to be off to school for the day when leaving their home, while the mother and father also went off to work that day, where the mother is seen at home setting the alarm with her children and off to work, while the father and husband appears later. Also find this family choice to be specifically interesting towards the appropriation Rogers places on which kind of families need this service the most. Clearly identified is a middle or upper middle class family with obvious exposable income to spend. The service directly speaks loud and clearly to these ‘types’ of families’ niches with overbearing and overprotective parents who only want the best in protection and apparently even surveillance of their children. In order for them to maintain this ‘peace of mind’ it requires 24-hour surveillance, which is tagged as ‘Always Connected.’ To me, that’s really creepy. Would you want some man or woman you didn’t know to have full access to your electricity, heating and cooling systems, as well as the lock to your front door, and not to mention 24 hour video surveillance of you and your family… I know I wouldn’t.

I’ve found a connection between this specific Rogers commercial and the whole notion of how privacy is only a gift, rather than under our own control, which is the lesson, we learned in class concerning how Privacy is actually part of the Commons. Although privacy is a privilege for only those who can afford it, through this ad, Rogers is attempting to rid and diminish you and your family of the only actual privacy you contain, which is inside your home, which is technically your own individual property… Although the protection and criminal aspect behind this feature is great, I’m still finding this service from Rogers to be peculiarly interesting…. What do you think? Thoughts?

1 year ago