About My Blog

Purpose: to redefine our conceptions of music and racial issues
Audience: People familiar with Jazz and the culture that surrounds it
Author: Nicholas Payton: modern musician, African American

The author's aim is to challenge American culture (particularly Jazz and racial tensions). His materials are often musician's opinion's through interviews, historical documents, videos, pictures, journalistic articles.
His method is posting these materials and then responding to them by usually disagreeing with them. Key words: J***, #BAM

The Blog I Will Follow

 I will be following a blog by the acclaimed trumpeter, Nicholas Payton. I chose it because it is controversial and open minded. It will also be interesting to read a blog that brings up racial issues from the standpoint of an African-American man. http://nicholaspayton.wordpress.com/

New York Times and Empathy

New York Times has been mostly a joy to read. When I say joy, I do not mean the kind one gets from zooming down a hill on a bike, rather the kind deeper joy that comes from riding slowly through nature, musing at the intricacies of surrounding nature. New York Times definitely seems to lean towards a human-interest focus, contrasting the business focus of competing news organization. I believe that focusing on the welfare of human gets to the core of news. Business and political issues are still relevant. I just have a problem with journalists treating corporations and politicians like they are above the sanctity of raw human life. But I digress in the direction of this human’s relationship with the New York Times. I have a warm place in my heart for picking up a tangible newspaper, folding it up in awkward ways that only a news newbie could do and sipping on a cup of tea. On this paper I try to resist only reading the articles that I feel particularly attracted to. I feel that news is about humbling myself. As I read all these articles about the failings of people, I realize that, as intimate companion of the human race, I have a long way to go before I can deem myself a peaceful person. New York Times’ empathetic view of the world serves as a great way to start off the day. It is a call to action for us lazy people, comfortably sipping on our tea.

News On the Internet? For Breakfast?

            Well, how do you think my classmates got the news? THE INTERNET! Sites like Yahoo, Google News, New York Times, CNN, StumbleUpon, and not surprisingly Facebook came up. Mostly people decided to read articles based on if the headline looked interesting or not. One could say this is dangerous. A pessimist would say that my classmates might get interesting mixed up with entertaining at times, but I want to think positive.  It actually seems as if we are not becoming increasingly subjective pertaining to news awareness, but rather the internet is yielding a greater opportunity to be objectively opinioned (if that’s even possible). One great example of the more rounded view that the internet gives us is the news searching ability of StumbleUpon. On this site, the visitor can “stumble” through multiple news articles of varying viewpoints. So, instead of reading mass amount of articles by one organization that follows one decree, we are enabled to broaden our perspective through the varying ideas of others. Even Facebook, which celebrates subjectivity and individualism is a haven for the development of an open mind. My classmates reminisced on their use of Facebook statuses to learn about the events and issues in the world. Without the social networks we have now, there was a minimal opportunity for a news savvy person to express their beliefs on the matters they have been exposed to. Next to one status  could stand a completely conflicting concept on the current events. And that, my friends, is the internet at its best: there are so many ideas living in one source that contrast in such definitive ways, the only choice the audience has is to see these ideas as different puzzle pieces fitting together to make one bigger picture.

and this is what I listened to when writing this blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6F-36G9avk&feature=related

Final Draft of Essay

            I have tailored this essay to fellow college students of my generation. I did this by not focusing on describing the situation, but focusing on appreciating and accepting our current condition of writing and reading as young people in this age of technology.

A New Dawn in the Age of Words and Technology

We have come a long way since the age of paper and pencil. Writing used to be done by hand, from the imperfect, yet personal tools we called pens or pencils. In the seemingly far past, paper and pencil were not only mediums to expel one’s ideas, but an art that one perfected. The art of script was something that brought a humane beauty to writing, but also made it something that could only be done by the masters of scripting. Technology has globalized reading and writing, making the task of creating a word merely pressing a button. This new, effortless medium has allowed anybody to spit out his or her deepest thoughts in a matter of seconds. Reading used to be only affordable to the aristocrats of society. Books were not mass-produced. A book would be written one by one and usually the audience would be limited to whoever was lucky enough to live in the region of the book’s origin. Now, we have Google. As you know, pretty much any book worth reading can be read through a quick purchase to Amazon.com and shipped in a matter of days. As a lover of writing and reading, I will use this essay to express a deep appreciation for the good and bad that has come from the globalization, digitalization, affordability, accessibility, efficiency and overall effortlessness of modern day writing and reading.

The first assignment of my writing class was to create a blog, a completely new writing invention due to technological leaps. As a nice timeout from YouTube and Facebook, I jumped on Blogger.com and whipped up a blog in a matter of minutes. “This blog has been created and is now the answer to all my reader’s problems!” is what the sarcastic part of my mind wanted to say. It was too easy; easy in such a casual way that I felt as if I was jipping my future readers. The creation of a medium that gives the world my emotions and thoughts should be harder. Right? Jewish people, for instance, take several years to prepare one Torah. One congregation populated by no more than 200 people will purchase this holy book. My blog is open to, to an extent, any age, nationality, gender, or religion and it took me less time to start my blog than it takes to scribe at most, half a page of the Jewish people’s connection with God. At first this incongruity annoyed me, but then I realized that the blog’s beauty comes from its casual and unassuming nature. Whereas sometimes bringing to life a means of communication can be a ceremony that puts the medium on an unnecessary pedestal, a blog is the kind of communication that does not come from a pedestal or higher power. The blog comes from the surf kneeling below royalty.

Although the idea of a blog can be easily romanticized, it also has its faults. The accessibility and roughness of a blog gives it its charm, but this humane imperfection could make the reader feel that the writer is unworthy of deep interpretation. People want to listen to authority. The Milgram Experiment proved this to be true. In the experiment, the participant was told to deliver shocks to another participant (which was actually a trained actor) in the next room if he or she failed to learn a sequence of words. The participant would hear screams of pain from the actor after delivering the shocks. Participants asked to stop the experiment after hearing these cries, but the experimenter would prod them to keep shocking (Cherry). The results of the experiment were shocking (no pun intended). 65 percent of the participants finished the experiment by delivering what they believed to be a 450-volt shock to the other participant. The reason these ordinary citizens felt right delivering fatal shocks to a stranger was due to the authority that the experimenter exuded (Cherry). People’s willingness to obey authority can outweigh anything. I believe the antithesis may also be true. A blog, created in a couple of minutes, with each article being roughly jotted down and the writer not even belonging to a credible organization can be at serious risk of the unimpressed audience reading shallowly and lazily.

 The blog’s roughness is not its only possible risk. The shear number of blogs could also lead to negative consequences. A study composed in 2010 found that there were about 152 million blogs in existence (Pingdom). This daunting mass of writers is amazing and shows that many people want to share their ideas, but this popularity of the blog can also be its downfall. It is difficult to think of each web source as special when there are just so many. It’s like walking around a city and seeing five “World’s Best Coffee” signs. With so many people saying, “Look over here! No, wait, THIS is important!” how am I supposed to truly commit to one at a time? I sympathize with the worries brought up in an article titled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr. In the article, Carr talks about the dangers of the Internet’s blistering efficiency and vastness. He brings up the point that as the Internet becomes more and more efficient, its users may become so “efficient” that they lose human depth. Carr says that nowadays, he has trouble reading one piece for a long period of time because there is so much to read. I have had that same problem for as long as I can remember. I have always had trouble reading something on the Internet that is more than two paragraphs and it is for that exact reason: There is just so much to know at my fingertips, I am always tempted to move on to the next source.

             If I give in to this tendency to constantly move on to the next source, shallowness may take over. If my brain is always seeking a new stimulus then it seems only logical that I will go to the next, most immediately enjoyable thing. I do believe that education and cultural endeavors yield a more profound, lasting sense of happiness, but when a constant stream of shallowness is given to us, it seems to be dangerously comfortable to live in a constant state of moving from one visceral reaction to the next. A perfect example of this sampler of ideas that we are thrown into is the experience of highway advertisement. As I speed between the billboards’ blur of smiling faces and phone numbers, all I get is short shallow responses that have no true middle or end.

The other mental threat that is brought up by this highway billboard analogy is the fact that any person, of any intellectual status, can interpret a happy picture. Because of this universality of the picture, pictures seem to be taking priority over words. As technology advances, movies make less money from profound scripts and more money from big explosions that give the audience that immediate adrenaline rush. This rush is invigorating, but remember, it is equally fleeting. As this feeling of shallow happiness leaves us, the vicious cycle begins: we want more, now. And the Internet gives it to us. Stumbleupon.com is a perfect example of the aimless gluttony of web surfing. Once we’re done with one page, we can simply press the stumble button and the endless stream continues. With a button as taunting as this, I can’t see the average web surfer having an easy time reading a long article (at least without pictures).

Although the depth of literacy may be in danger, reading and writing’s relevancy is not threatened. Andrea Lundsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford conducted a study of Stanford college students’ writing habits. It revealed that 38 percent of their writing was actually done out of class (Thompson), which actually makes perfect sense. With the immense social relevancy of texting, “tweeting”, and “facebook-ing”, writing has become an incredibly important part of society. Therefore, the fear that people feel about writing’s new developments can’t be about its dearth. The uneasiness might be simply due to the change in what we call writing. Writing used to be something official, done as a voice of authority. Now, thanks to technology’s new social developments, it also serves as a way to have a casual conversation.

This relaxed attitude might sit wrong with some people, but I don’t see a problem with this new role writing fills. If writing is becoming shallower due to its casualness, we should not blame the act of writing or even the new technological tools we have, we need to put more blame on the users of these tools. For example, if a construction worker is hammering a nail and accidentally hit’s his or her thumb, he does not rationally blame the hammer or nail. He or she will put the responsibility of the folly on his or herself, remembering later to be more careful. Self-responsibility is the key to wisdom. The “problems” brought by the Internet were created by our innate intelligence surpassing our innate wisdom, intelligence being the beautiful instrument we are given and wisdom being our ability to make beautiful music with that instrument. We have created a system that has a more efficient way of connecting dots than our own brain. There are so many connections to be made that we sometimes don’t know how to navigate or interpret this complex path in a way that actually benefits our own sense of wholeness. We run the risk of becoming lost, when actually the path is right in front of us. I do sympathize with Carr’s skepticism about this new daunting instrument, but I have hope for human’s universal ability to be wise. Words are only as beautiful as we write them and if we are wise enough, no amount of confusing technology can rob us of that.

Remember, even the oldest people are still in the honeymoon phase of technological knowledge. We have time to learn if we choose to.

Works Cited:

"Internet 2010 in Numbers | Royal Pingdom." Pingdom Web Site Monitoring Blog - Everything about Uptime, Downtime, Servers, Internet and Technology. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/01/12/internet-2010-in-numbers/>.

Cherry, Kendra. "Milgram Experiment - The Milgram Obedience Experiment."Psychology - Complete Guide to Psychology for Students, Educators & Enthusiasts. About. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm>.

Thompson, Clive. "Clive Thompson on the New Literacy." Wired.com. Wired, 24 Aug. 09. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson>.

Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid? - Magazine - The Atlantic." The Atlantic — News and Analysis on Politics, Business, Culture, Technology, National, International, and Life – TheAtlantic.com. The Atlantic. Web. 30 Jan. 2012. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/>.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7__No9owGk

How and Why I Get My News?

            I mostly get my news from sites like NPR and New York Times. Both of these organizations I feel, are very focused on the welfare of people instead of businesses. I also like to read a newspaper over breakfast. I feel that a great, raw way of learning news is from people. When people talk about the news, you can see that these issues are tangibly effecting the way people live, just by the emotions that they convey when talking about the current events. John Stewart's Daily Show is also a news source I love. It tells the news while also making fun of it, which I think is needed in news. News can be mostly about the failings of people, unless your reading about the arts or science sections and I see comedy as a way to learn from people's follies. Therefore, I like to read the news from a empathetic standpoint. In other words, I like to keep in mind that issues are not matters of merely right and wrong, but are simply facets of our limited, human life to stay connected with.

            I get my news through any medium available really. I wish I could have a more structured way of finding things to use in conversations in order to make myself feel smarter but I just can’t commit to one source. If I did that I’d have to commit to one opinion and I just can’t do that. If I read New York Times, all my racist, rich, tea party friends would hate me and if I watched Fox News than all my flakey, poor, commi friends would hate me. So I just get my news wherever I’m at. I listen intently to my friends who decided to outcast themselves from half of the voting population by committing to one news source. I will immerse myself in what they are saying, trying to use as objective as a mind as possible (subjectivity just pisses people off). Maybe sometimes I’ll commit to one news source, which of course leans towards the lefties, but that’s just because they’re popular right now.  John Stewart is like, one of the most popular shows on Comedy Central. I know that’s like saying, I think the Wild Card team is the best because they got into the playoffs, but I feel like it’s cool to be liberal right now, with Osama and everything. I’ll watch a John Stewart episode and then I’ll go to parties and say things like, “Yeah, Newt’s real racist” and everybody else says, “Yeah he really he is!” and then I feel cool…