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Theme 1: The early electronic media led to the idea that the audience would be an undifferentiated mass. Trace thinking about audience from mass to "the long tail".Include discussion( And illustration) of how demographics and media genres created media audiences ,and the ways in which social media can create, in theory , an audience of 1 for many media experiences. In early media the audience was viewed as a mass that could be manipulated. But as technology has changed, so has that image. The mass audience works for media business and advertisers who need this theory for marketing and publishing and trying to reach the largest amount of people possible. The dis-agregated audience was the audience that was in all different locations- some at work, some int he suburbs, some in the isolated countryside. This concept was important to advertisers who were trying to sell to the audience. In the 1920's and 1930's the radio was better than the newspaper because the audience didn't need to be literate, didn't need to pay for usage, and they could use celebrity voices to advertise their products. Then the audience became a commodity that could be bought and between networks and advertisers. The audience is separated into demographics in which statistics are used to describe a population of viewers and/or listeners. Now in this digital age, the audience refers to more than just radio and newspaper, and includes the internet and television, as well as any other media that can measure its users. In the concept of Demassification the audience is separated by the long-tail effect. Websites such as Netflix, which rents out movies to users, uses an application to suggest movies to users based on previous rentals. In doing this, users can be separated from the mass audience based on their taste and suggested less mainstream movies and more obscure titles/writers/themes until they develop a very specified taste and become and audience of one. Then there are websites that works to separate users in a negative way. There are niches for people with eating disorders, suicidal tendencies, or those who commit hate crimes, etc. where website users encourage each others damaging behavior. This polarization is protected by the first amendment freedom of speech and can sometimes gain a rather large audience with a common goal. More commonly though, the audience masses together for a good cause such as raising awareness and support for autistic children or a breast cancer walk. The audience can diverge or converge, for good or for bad, and can also be manipulated by advertisers or site hosts. Measuring the audience has proven tricky but with the assistance of Nielson and the internet which can actually measure the number of IP addresses and clicks coming into their site, it has become more strategic and successful.

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Theme 4
Starting with MacLuhan's ideas about how media create new environments and new ways of thinking,as a special case of technological determinism, explore the idea that we take on the qualities of the " intellectual technologies" we use,or, to put it another way, that media shape out thought processes.What are some concerns that have been expressed ( in articles such as " Is Google making us stupid?", "In Defense of to Distraction", and " Old fogies in their 20's") in relation to new media for our thinking attention and memory? In particular, discuss concerns about the decline in reading- especially the reading of books.
Macluhan believed that the medium is the message; that it's not what we get off the internet that matters, but the computer/phone/iPod we're accessing it from. He believed very much in the ideology of technology, or the belief that technology brings improvement. His thinking was that people change around technology and so under the idea of technological determinism our society changes to support and develop the new medium. There have been many arguments such as the of Nicholas Carr in "Is Google making us Stupid?"
"As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of inf ormation. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski."
Many educators feel this way about today's youth. They feel that students have lost their capacity for learning and studying the way students had before there was such an influx of hand held technologies. Many adults seem to be against the advancements made in technology, they see it as interruptions in their daily life. They believe that children are becoming dumber and dont have the good old fashioned values that they should. This is due to the fact that children are being educated by the internet and merely skimming across a vast number of topics. They now learn only topical information as opposed to delving deep into a subject for an extended period of time, which isn't entertaining enough to keep their attention. Children need to constantly be stimulated and this works against them in today's educational system. There are some teachers, however, that don't hate technology. They say that we teach kids to be quiet and sit in chairs, but in the future no job will require people to sit in a seat and be quiet. Technology is like oxygen and by giving children more access to technology you are giving them more opportunities. The world has sped up in many ways but education hasn't. The reason today's students aren't as successful in school is because they are multitasking 24/7 and the human brain is not meant for that kind of stimulation. What really happens in the brain is that it switches its attention from one subject to another, so reaction time is significantly lower that the multitasker would believe. This multitasking serves as entertainment in many ways. Communicating with friends, listening to music, browsing social network sites, trying to do homework is keeping kids entertained but they aren't being efficient at any one of those things. That is one very strong reason for the decline of popularity of book reading. People can no longer keep their attention focused on the small lines of words across hundreds of pages. There are no colorful advertisements or instant messages popping up to keep their neurons firing. But is that really making us dumber? Some believe that that is just the price of gain and we must move forward with an open mind and explore.

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Theme 5
One development that is clearly of interest for the near future is the battle between Google and Facebook to dominate our activity on the web. Contrast Google,which uses logical algorithms to help us find stuff with Facebook's strategy of tapping into our relationships and encouraging us to use our friends as resources for information.Which one do you think will emerge as dominant? Explain your reasons for your choice. Include a discussion of which can be most successfully "monetized",which makes better use of our personal data to "help us" find stuff, and which has the best strategies to lure us and hold our attention to the site.

Even as I try to write this final I am struggling in my very own battle of Facebook and Google. Google has been so researched and thought out and scientifically improved to figure out the way people search things and the way we think. Google's algorithms record feedback from users to find out which links they selected and how they can help future users searching for the same thing. Google has fostered many relationships with businesses in this way. Although Google may deny it, they allow the highest paying website to be listed first on the pages of results, making it more likely to be clicked on. Facebook plays a different game. Instead of working off of our needs for information, it lures us in with promise of friendship and popularity. The reason we go on facebook is purely for entertainment purposes. There we go, log in, and just browse around to see what are friends, whether close or practical strangers, have been up to. And yet we spend HOURS on end doing just this, as well as updating our own pages for other people to browse and admire. Facebook is great at keeping our attention however. The live news feed keeps you updated every second about what one of your "friends" has just done- what they commented on. Liked, uploaded, made their status, became a fan of, or are attending. Facebook also has a feature that allows you to view something of interest between multiple friends. For instance, if somebody just uploaded a picture of that hideous face John made, and all your friends start commenting, it will come up on your home page as something you may be interested in that has gotten a lot of feedback from your friends. It now also displays people on your friends list that you haven't contacted recently or advertisements based on what you put in the Interests section of your profile.
I think that Google is probably the most efficiently run website out there, but Facebook puts up quite a competition for popularity and user-attractiveness, that is- its attractiveness to users. At first I believed that Google had way more connections, and it probably does, with all the endorsements it does and sponsoring. But Facebook also has all of those applications which stem from businesses as well that it is endorsing. As for who will be dominant... I may be on Google's side. I think Facebook is more easily monetized because it's not a necessity and people may pay to connect friends. Maybe they'll charge per usage time... But i don't believe that Google will be able to charge people for searching for information. They seem to be very successful, monetarily speaking, so I do not see where being a free service hurts them in the way that it brings in millions and millions of searches per day.

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Theme3
Every form of technology that's become digital has also been transformed by its users/audience.Explain how at least three "old" media ( Books, tv, film, radio, newspapers) have adapted to new digital media forms, and how they have been changed by the process of becoming digital. Also describe the ways people use and change digitized media as consumers. Show some examples on your blog. Which "old" media do you think have promising futures in digital form, and which do you expect will die out soon? Support your answer with good arguments
Books are probably the easiest "old" media to see adapted to today's media advances. What started out as words printed onto paper by means of inked stamps has transformed into a digital media. Books were the media of their time. Now we see them as outdated because of the lack of technology used by the reader. Today's media is inundated by screens and buttons. The book has been able to adapt into the Kindle- a digitized book-version of the iPod. Instead of a library of songs, you have a library of books, or rather stories since you are not owning hard copies of these tales but the words, which appear on the screen of the device. The user "turns" the "pages" by pressing a button or brushing their finger across the screen. Compared to the popularity of books when they first came out, the popularity of the Kindle, and other digital readers, is dramatically less. Reading takes a lot of skills that aren't taught or formed in today's generation. Because of all the technology surrounding today's population, people are less inclined to sit for an extended time and focus on reading. Reading as a pastime in general has died out due to this boredom with a subject that doesn't constantly engage and entertain the reader. However, Kindle and the likes are putting up a hard fight to modernize reading and make it more appealing to today's technology savvy generations.
Television has also changed dramatically. TV has gone from a few channels on a tiny black and white screen with a very visible image scanning to extra large, high definition, satellite receiving monsters of tv's. At first TV was just a response to the popularity of radio, and was created to engage the audience with visual stimulation as opposed to radio's audio programming. However it also limited creators at first because the sets and cast were so limited once they were made visible. Now, this is no longer a problem with all the advancements made in CGI. However, television also seems to be losing many of its users because of other media such as computers. Users who used to sit at the TV and watch their favorite show in front of the TV set every Tuesday at 9 PM no longer do that. Websites such as Hulu.com allow people to watch the latest episodes whenever and wherever they want. People can watch their favorite movie or show on their computer, iPod, or any media that has access to the internet, for FREE. The user has made structured TV programming a problem of the past. At this point on Television, the audience is viewed as a commodity. Advertisers "buy" an audience based on the show airing at the time and what the projected age of the audience members will be. They then display products that are aimed at people in that age group. I believe that Hulu usage has gone up causing tests, such as Nielsen's census or samples, to be less and less accurate. Everything we need is on the internet, so why have a TV at all?

Radio has completely changed from the way it started out. We've come a very long way from the programming that aired at 5 minute intervals at the time of Mary Dyck. Mary's life on the farm was lonely- she stayed in the house and did housework while her husband worked in the fields all day. Her life became consumed with the characters on the radio shows. In her personal diary she wrote about the characters in a gossip-y manner that sounded like she believed she really knew them. This was common during this time, as Myerowits taught- the radio gave her access to situations she normally would never visit. It provided her escape to Hollywood, to the suburbs, etc. Mary formed parasocial relationships with the characters who because the emotional center of her life. This would never ever occur today. The radio has changed so much once it went from AM to FM. At first it was more progressive and broke the hunky-dory mold of AM radio at the time. People began making alternative styles of music and expressing their opinions as freely as the wanted to, common topics being drugs, concerts, and anti-War rallies going on. We've seen a drastic change to more mass produced radio stations after the seventies and the rise of Disco. Radio became more commercialized and more competitive. Corporate structure demanded playlists that appealed to the largest audience. Many of the alternative DJs left because they saw that radio was selling out. The day John Lennon died was a signal of the last time radio was that popular. People came together to mourn the loss of the music legend. Radio stations had people calling in who loved Lennon just throught their experience with his music that they heard on the radio. After MTV, radio became more focused less on talk and more on music, or as the saying went, "Shutup and play the hits!" There was a rise of Shock Jocks, such as Howard Stern, who would try to say the most offensive and shocking thinks to get people's attention and bring in listeners, lowering the bar for acceptable behavior. Music became more homogenized, spontaneity was lost by the science of getting the largest audience possible at once. Then radio moved to Satellite where people could choose the genre primarily and there would be at least one station for them to listen to. Then it moved to internet websites such as Pandora that allows the user to completely interract with their music experience. The enter a song, artist, or a genre that they like and the station uses the music genome to find other similar songs and artists to make up a playlist specifically for this user. The user can react whether they like the song or not and Pandora "learns" more about this user's taste and changes the playlist accordingly. I believe that this type of radio will stay around for a long time. People are always looking for new music to listen to and Pandora allows them to listen to their old favorites as well. This interactive version of Radio is so much more appealing to the user. The only way I can see it being unsuccessful is if it is no longer free, although there may be quite a few dedicated users who would be willing to pay for the service.

The Simpsons is known for being the longest running show on TV, which may baffle many of its viewers (myself included.) But once you approach the simple cartoon after reading Mittell's assessment, it becomes apparent why it has managed to survive so long. The Simpsons is more than just a cartoon. Unlike its predecessors The Simpsons manages to combine two genres in one- the family-style sitcom and the very pliable cartoon. Before this, cartoons such as the Donald Duck video we watched in class used the cartoon style to create episodes about violence and physical humor that would otherwise be unable to be depicted without the characters facing serious injuries. Changes to set, and appearance of characters are relatively easy to do in a cartoon as opposed to a sitcom with real, human actors and sets that had to be manually adapted. In this aspect, The Simpsons has a lot of freedom in regards to the way they could design the lifestyle of their characters.
The Simpsons also reflected many of the sitcoms that were on TV at the time of its origin. The Simpsons portrays an animated family of Marge, Homer, Bart, and Maggie, who face typical family issues (bad grades, making money, marriage) except in the exaggerated animated fashion. The siblings dont get along, the father is the typical "dumb dad" that was a common stereotype of family sitcom shows of the time. There always seems to be some kind of moral lesson learned during the episode that emphasizes the importance of family.
The reason they have stuck around so long is because of their ability to adapt to today's media. Every episode it seems that there is a reference to today's pop-culture.

I have never been big on horror films. As a child I felt I was too afraid of them and as I have gotten older I feel as though I can't really get as absorbed in them as most people seem to. I do not see the appeal to these slasher films and if I do happen to watch one, as soon as the film starts to get scary I think about how everyone is just acting and everything is fake. I'm not the kind of person that has nightmares after seeing a horror film either, my experience is just purely in the moment, unlike my sisters who were always left with bad dreams for weeks after the latest horror film. One movie that has always gotten to me though is Willow. I saw it as a child and many times since, but still retain that completely-scared-to-the-point-where-i-have-to-cover-my-eyes-and-hum feeling. Who knows if maybe the midgets creep me out to no end or if its just the freaky monsters and wolf-dogs, and goblin/monkey things. Even now as I search Google for "Willow monster trolls" and i come across other images from the movie a shiver runs down my spine. As a child, for some reason I would have horrible nightmares about wolves. When I saw this movie the one scene that sticks out to me the most is basically the opening scene when a bunch of black, vicious wolves attack the little peoples' village and one little girl is standing there separated from her mother and father, screaming crying. I was most afraid of this part because I felt that I could relate to it. Probably one of my worst fears is getting separated from my loved ones in a time of crisis so that's why that hit me so hard as a child and still remains with me to this day. I think that movie writers do try to make their films more and more shocking by appealing to what they understand to be the current trend of fear. As we face the war in Project Desert Storm, movies have involved more "Middle-East" looking characters as villains and more soldiers as protagonists. I'm pretty foggy on the trend fear during the 80's when Willow came out, but there was most likely a pattern of mythical creatures and gory (but simple by today's standards) CGI. Although I think that there will always be a rush for teenagers, mostly boys, to see the latest gruesome slasher murder movie; to find out the newest torture method or see every detail on those dismembered bodies. Movies are more and more graphic and to me, that's way more than I'd like to see.

The Beatles & Rockband

I would have to agree with Daniel Radosh about Rockband putting The Beatles to the forefront of the evolution of the music industry. As if these music video games aren't popular enough, add The Beatles to the mix and it becomes almost revolutionary. The Beatles themselves broke many records in the music industry because of their unprecedented popularity. Rockband has also broken records for the video game industry by beating out sports games for being the second most popular video game genre after the action genre. Once you add the world's most popular band you have a recipe for success. Not only does the interactive game appeal to younger people, but the epic popularity of The Beatles reaches out to an entirely new category of people who have never bought video games before but who are intrigued by the popularity and decide to make the purchase because of their history with, and affection for, The Beatles' music.
In the article they also mention the large amount of revenue received from users who decide to purchase music played in the game, through the Rockband music store. Here, Rockband charges $2 per song (twice as much as iTunes) and users can purchase new songs to add to their libraries and learn to "play" on their "instruments." Sales from these songs have been shown to reawaken an artist's popularity and jolt their sales as younger generations are exposed to older music. In this way, The Beatles; surviving members and widowers or those deceased will undoubtedly earn continuous royalties from this kind of airplay. It's a win-win situation for both parties (Rockband and The Beatles) because both have such a large fanbase, though in different age groups, that they help each other by bringing in more users while the other brings in more royalties.
While I do agree that this puts The Beatles at the forefront, I do think that it's Rockband making the evolution of music by creating different ways for users to reach their product.