In this particular class our writing assignments were to be blogs as opposed to traditional essays. In my opinion this was much easier. The tone is less formal and academic, and more personal. The blogging assignment instructions themselves were clear and concise.
All of the blog assignments fitted well with the course content.
The non-text media used in the class was interesting and drew me in.
Propaganda is defined here as "a careful and predetermined plan... of manipulation… to communicate an objective to an audience." And the objective being to modify or reinforce the attitudes and behavior of an audience. From this we can deduce three simple tests for determining whether any particular message is propaganda or legitimate free speech. Does the propaganda seem to favor a particular political party or ideology, in other words, what entity will benefit the most when the objective is achieved? The objective of propaganda is essentially to gain power and followers, whether this is a political party, a religion, or a commercial product there will always be a benefactor which is portrayed in a good light, mostly undeservedly. Does the propaganda effectively alter an audience's attitude or behavior? Altering behavior and attitudes is the method by which the objective is achieved. If a message does not attempt to influence any group of individuals, then it can hardly be called propaganda. Is the propagandist aware of the distortions of the truth they are committing? Someone spreading misinformation out of their own ignorance is forgivable, but someone who spreads misinformation for their own benefit is a propagandist. If, and only if, a message applies to all three of these tests it should be considered propaganda. The rub lies in determining whether the propagandist is or isn't aware of what they are doing. In extreme cases, like North Korea, it is easy to discern. But in the American media the line between propaganda and freedom of speech is blurred. Most news outlets easily pass the first two tests, but as for the third it is impossible to know. It seems apparent that these outlets are biased to their respective contributors or ideologies, and that they aim to garner support for them. But each of these news corporations claims to be impartial and unbiased, that any apparent bias is either a mistake or an exaggeration. Ultimately, assuming innocence until proven guilty, news outlets fall under the protection of free speech.
Looking back on the things I have bought in my life I can say that I am really only 'loyal' to two brands; Valve's Steam (a digital distribution system for games) and Dr. Pepper. They are two wildly different brands and my reasons for being loyal to each are also just as different. For Steam my reasoning is very much logical. In its field, Steam is far and ahead the leader of the pack. The impending release of the platform and plethora of award winning games for the Mac operating system is expected to single-handedly kick-start Mac OS gaming. The company's products are top quality; the support is great, and the savings are comparable to or better than competing digital distribution retailers, so I've never been tempted to switch. As for the other brand, Dr. Pepper, loyalty is purely a matter of personal taste. In "The Persuaders", which I viewed here, I was most interested when they mentioned a series of BMW short films starring Clive Owen. I myself have watched all of these short films and I enjoyed them all. These films definitely altered my view of BMW as a company despite having no need for a BMW's performance or luxury, I would love to own an M5 like the one used in "Star". I cannot explain where this fondness comes from, I just like the look of BMW's cars and the films made the cars appear even more sleek and refined. If I could ever afford a BMW I would probably purchase one, so what does that say of the effectiveness of that particular campaign, which is now several years old. The form of advertising used for the campaign is referred to as branded content which fuses branding and entertainment, and was first performed in an episode of Jerry Seinfeld concerning a box of junior mints. This form of advertising is the most effective in my opinion. I have always hated traditional advertisements such as commercials; if I can't skip one I usually mute it because I find commercials annoying. They often offer little information on the actual product, and are filled to the brim with emotional appeals, loaded language, and hyperbole. I think it much more prudent to simply get your name as popular as possible and to associate it with the product being sold. For instance, I often think of Starbucks when I think of coffee, not because I like Starbucks (I don't even drink coffee) but because every time I smell coffee, I usually see someone holding a cup with the round, green Starbucks logo on the front. The brilliance of BMW's short films was that it basically equated BMW to cars, and then the rest is entertainment to keep you drawn in and thinking about the product. To me it is an unobtrusive and non-offensive form of advertisement.
Why are so many people uncomfortable with the idea that many problems don't have a single solution?
I would conjecture that this is so because multiple solutions makes the ultimate end result harder to see. Multiple solutions denotes multiple variables, and more variables always make a problem harder. A harder problem would inherently be more stressful and more worrying.
Healthcare is a good example of one of these grey area decisions. The American Republican party will tell you that the healthcare idustry MUST be a free market, and the Democratic party will tell you that government intervention will solve all of the free markets problems and provide care for everyone in the US. But both of those inferences are probably false. Many different countries have many different forms of healthcare industry, and none of them are perfect. No country has every single person given the same medical attention as everyone else, and no country has a hundred percent efficient healthcare spending. Each system works differently for each country, but the only way for the US to get to an end result is to attempt a solution. The brilliance of the US should be that if reform doesn't work, we should be able to repeal anything we had put in place, and go back to our old system or even try something new entirely.
Does technology make us smarter or dumber? On a person to person basis that is a silly question. Does a modern nail gun make one a better carpenter than one with a hammer? Sure the nail gun makes the work easier and go by faster, but any building built without common knowledge of architecture and carpentry will probably be severely flawed. The point being that technologies are the ideas and tools we use to accomplish something, and that our intelligence is measured not only by the ideas and tools we have created in the past, but also by how well we utilize or improve upon them in the present.
The most popular argument I have personally seen against technology's influence is the argument against 'txt spk'. Also known as SMS language, txt spk came about through necessity with the lack of QWERTY keyboards on primitive phones and the limited number of character a text message can contain. As such, txt spk takes advantage of pictograms (<3 for love), numbers (2 for to, too, or two), and the process of removing the vowels from a word (dctnry for dictionary). Because of this txt spk has garnered a lot of criticism for being sloppy, irritating, and lazy, and for having a negative impact on the English language. However, several scholarly studies, summarized in linguist David Crystal's Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, rescind this theory. The chief points being that one needs to know how to spell a word properly before they can abbreviate it, and that texting improves literacy simply by engaging users in language.
To point out how technology has made us smarter, simply look at our modern public education system compared to how it was pre-industrial revolution. Our school buses allow for more than 50 million children in the United States to go to school 5 days a week. The hundreds of years of teaching practices and philosophies we have built upon and improved have allowed for country-wide standardized education, resulting in the highest levels of literacy humanity has ever enjoyed and human history is full of proof that a more literate population results in more human progress.