Ideology

We discussed the topic of Ideology in class last wednesday. After attending that lecture it gave me a better understanding on what ideology is and how it is applied to the media. The mass media can be viewed as the dominant class in society. They shape the way we view society in our culture. For example, if imdb.com (internet movie data base) critiques a movie and gives it bad reviews most people are not going to watch it. This is because people tend to agree to the social majorities opinion because its a typical culture dominant norm to do. We can look at this model demonstrating our society as we are the sheep and government could be labeled the herder. Ideology creates a set of values that we usually are blind to since they are just so common in our culture. For example, answering a question in a classroom you are usually suppose to raise your hand and wait for the professor to call your name to speak. This would be a norm in our culture but could have a different meaning somewhere else since other cultures don't have the same ideal values as America.

Betting on Injuries?

Football season is back and you know what that means! Another new release of the popular video game Madden 10. Even though it is one of the hottest football games out there today the game is cursed. Ever since they started putting pictures of players on the cover art everyone of those players has been injured(with the exception of Marshall Faulk in 2003). This years game features Troy Polamalu and Larry Fitzgerald for the cover art. Polamalu has already been sidelined for 3-6 weeks after spraining ligaments in his knee in the first week of the season. This injury just fuels the fire that the cover art of this game strangely leads to injuries. But theres still hope because Larry Fitzgerald is still playing and remains healthy now. Playblackjack.com is having bets on if Fitzgerald will get injured or not the rest of the season which would be yet another madden injury cursed year. There has been some pretty crazy gambling events in sports but betting on whether a player stays healthy or not because of a supposed curse is one that sticks out there.

kurzweil post

I thought Ray Kurzweil made some very shocking and interesting points in that presentation on the future progress of technology. He stated that how smooth of a process technological advancement is and also how predictable it is even with outside chaotic factors like bankruptcy, dumping products, countries accusing others, and marketing products. He showed many graphs proving this point that they can predict most technological advancements. Its obvious how many technological products have shaped the way we run our lives in today’s world; Ipods, cell phones, computers but technology has had a great advancement in science as well. I found it very interesting when Kurzweil was discussing the robotic red blood cell and how they have technology to make a super human. He states that “If you could replace 10% of your red blood cells with the robotic versions you could do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breathe or sit at the bottom of your pool for 4 hours.”
“Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man.” A quote from the classic television series, “The Six Million Dollar Man” But that quote with the advancement of technology may become a reality sooner than we thought.

Two Models of Communication

Communication can be separated into two models: The Transmission and the Cultural Model. First, the transmission model of communication relates to transportation. In this method the source communicates a message which is then interpreted by the receiver. Harold Lasswell described this model as a series of questions: who/ says what/ to whom/ through what channel/ and with what effect? An example of this would be listening to the radio. The source (a song being played), the message being presented is the lyrical meaning, the channel is the song file or radio station, to whom is you the listening, and to what effect is what you personally can relate or understand about the song.

The other model for communication is the Cultural model. In this model communication tends to vary because all cultures are diverse in different ways. The model shows a connection in social communication and common cultures. For example our American culture view on the war on terror is completely different from those in Iraq based on the way our culture's media and our values project it.