Once Upon A Present Shock

In Present Shock, Rushkoff describes today’s technology creating a dictatorship of the present in which everything happens now. People don’t think about what will happen in the future, but rather, they want everything to happen now. One show I used to watch was Once Upon a Time. This show tells the story of a new world, in which modern life and fairy tale legends come together. There were characters such as Snow White, Hook, Peter Pan, and, of course, Elsa. In the beginning, the fairytale world is “frozen” in time and all of the characters live in the city of Storybrooke, Maine. One of the main characters, Emma, didn’t know who her parents were, and only finds out when the son she gave up years back comes to her and tells her. The show is filled with drama and a romantic atmosphere, in which many of the events are out of order and the audience has to keep up with the show, otherwise it will get very confusing.

This show can be an example of Rushkoff’s “Narrative collapse”, in which, “…like a fantasy role-playing game, the show is not about creating satisfying resolutions, but rather about keeping the adventure alive and as many threads going as possible” (Rushkoff 34). There is no specific plot and the story keeps going, with more characters being added. The directors of Once Upon A Time have been keeping the plot going for 5 seasons now. Season 1 itself had 22 episodes. Their story line, like Rushkoff says, isn’t about creating a good ending, but it’s about keeping it going and adding in more and more episodes, to keep the audience interested. After one show, many of the audience will focus on what will come in the next episode, and to be honest, anything could show up since the point of the show is just to keep it going and not actually to keep the plot from confusing the audience.

According to Rushkoff, “There is plot – there are many plots – but there is no overarching story, no end. There are so many plots, in fact, that an ending tying everything up seems inconceivable, even beside the point” (Rushkoff 34). Now that the show has so many episodes, they couldn’t tie it together and end the show because they would be leaving the audience in the middle of the show. Each episode does not stand on its own and depends on the next one to finish it, and that one depends on the next one, and that continues. There won’t be a set ending until maybe even Season 14. Shows nowadays are so hard to end because there are so many plots that ending just doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. The directors just have to keep it going until an ending seems convenient for the show.

Like Rushkoff describes in Present Shock, people are more focused about cramming everything into the present that they don’t think about the future. If someone misses a show, or even an entire season, they could always just binge watch it. However, they are only thinking about the present and how much fun it would be to sit there and just watch their shows. They are not thinking about the future and how much time would be wasted while they are binge watching.

There is also the “now” aspect that Rushkoff mentions and how everything is happening now. The present is more full of interruptions and there are so many things going on at once that it often leads people to cram everything into one time period. In one episode, two characters are stuck in a time portal, and have to be careful to not change anything otherwise they could alter everyone’s lives. At the end of this episode, Elsa is “created” from this blue ice that comes from the time portal, and that’s where the season ends. So, they could not have just ended the show, as a new character joined in, which means new plots for that character. More and more plots are being added, which makes it confusing, and crams in everything into the present.

 

Works Cited

Rushkoff, Douglas. Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. New York: Penguin Group, 2013. Print.

Yay for Hemingway!

Hemingway uses a specific style in A Moveable Feast. The story is written in first person, which shows us his perspective and how he felt towards the different characters. It helps us understand how each of the writers made an impact on his life.  He uses many specific details to describe the streets and the different places he visited. He also recalls on what café he went to and what he specifically ate in each place as well.

His use of time can confuse the reader. He goes from talking about the next day to talking about years in advance. However, his use of seasons to describe the time adds more symbolism to the book and compares the seasons to the stages of a person’s life. He talks about spring being the children and that, “…there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen” (Hemingway 52). Fall would be used to describe the end of someone’s life and how, “part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold…” (Hemingway 52). Something good always happens that will lead from fall to spring, and from a bad time in life to a happier time.

We read this book so we could discuss the elements of style used, and not just the plot of the book. He describes how he feels towards each of the writers he mentions and throughout the book, we get to see how his writing evolves with the help of these people. He places an emphasis on food, saying how he has to be full and content in order for him to write better and cannot write when he has an empty stomach. So, he prefers to write in a café so he can eat while writing. He describes in detail what food he eats and how it tasted, providing some sensory details for the reader to imagine the food item as well. This book would be an autobiography because Hemingway recalls on the event of his life and how his writing progressed overtime, thanks to his different writer friends.

Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernest, and Sea Hemingway. A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition. New York, NY: Scribner, 2009. Print.

What Did You Get?

Neil Postman, author of End of Education, describes public education as it not serving a public, but it, “…creates a public” (Postman). Dr. Ravitch brings up an idea of how if “Little Eva” cannot sleep, she will study Algebra instead. No child will do algebra instead of watching TV, and thus, Postman says that Ravitch’s idea is, “…not a new technology but a new species of child” (Postman 39). Public education today has created “new species of children” because the higher value is placed on the grade point rather than what the actual information means.

            Children in school are taught that they have to receive a certain score or have to do a certain event in order for them to pass the class. So, their minds are solely concentrating on how they can get that specific score so they can pass. After the exams are finished, they do not record any of the information and instead are just reading for the exam. There is a “new species of children” because of the emphasis placed on getting the grade point average so no information is actually being remembered and the students don’t know what some of it means.

Today, there is more information available outside of school than inside because of the technological abilities students have. However, technology has altered, “…the psychic, let alone the sleeping, habits of our kids” (Postman 41).  Technology has allowed the students to learn more about the topic, but, they don’t know what to do with that information afterwards. According to Postman, “schools are not now and have never been chiefly about getting information to children” (Postman 42). Students have moved away from the idea of knowing what the information means and going towards how they can achieve that grade point, which will help them in the future as well.

After finding out their grades, many of students go around asking “what did you get?” But, rarely do some students ask why they got that or how. Many of them support their answers with “because the teacher said so” because they don’t know what the information actually means and they can’t support their claim. Students have become “a new species of children” and care only about achieving a high GPA, rather than trying to understand what it is that is being taught to us.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Postman, Neil. The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School. New York: Knopf, 1995. Print.

 

Ceci n’est pas une pipe

S. I. Hayakawa, author of Language in Thought and Action, gives language a new meaning overall. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who believed that, “all our thoughts and ideas have come into our conscience through what we have heard and seen” (Gaarder 108). This statement is similar to the point that Hayakawa was trying to make in his book. He taught that the symbol is not necessarily the word itself (Hayakawa). So then how do you explain a “word”?

Aristotle, like Hayakawa, explained a word by referring to the “idea” of it (Gaarder 107). For example, if Aristotle was trying to explain a horse, he referred to it as the idea of a horse. Hayakawa repeatedly explained that the word is not the thing, and the map is not the territory it stands for (Hayakawa 29). A map may have a similar structure to the structure of the territory but it doesn’t mean that the map is the territory. The concept of the symbol not being the word can be shown in the Belgian artist René Magritte’s painting, Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe), even though his painting is of a pipe.

 

Aristotle, along with believing that all ideas come from what we have heard and seen, thought that we have an innate power of reason, which is the ability to reason that you were born with. Hayakawa said that human beings have let various noises stand for specific words (Hayakawa 26). For example, if we saw a certain object, we may say “that is a book”. However, it is not actually a book but rather a picture of a book. In Sophie’s world, Hilde is reading from a book called “Sophie’s World” but her “Sophie’s World” is simply an idea, whereas the book we read is an actual book…or is it.

Works Cited

Gaarder, Jostein. Sophie's World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. Print.

Hayakawa, S. I. Language in Thought and Action. 2d ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964. Print.

9/11 Essay

Bush and Chomsky use different methods of rhetoric and different tones to get their points across to the audience. Chomsky uses harsh language and is very straightforward with his points, while Bush has a more uplifting tone which helps the audience engage with the topic. Bush is writing his speech only a couple of days after the event had occurred and wants to present the topic in a calm manner without scaring the public. He uses anaphoras when he thanks the public, helping them understand that they also have a part of bringing the country back together after the attack and finding a way to stop terrorism, “eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows” (Bush 5).  Chomsky, on the other hand, is writing about the event ten years after it happened, so he is harsher with his ideas and believed that Osama should have gotten a trial.

According to Chomsky, the actions by the United States constitute “American exceptionalism”, which is the idea that the United States is inherently different from other nations. The US, after capturing bin Laden, killed him, and threw him into the water. Chomsky believes that he deserved a trial and an autopsy, whether he was a terrorist or not. If Osama was given a trial, Chomsky explains that we would have known for sure who committed the attack and who was innocent. It was an act based on American exceptionalism because America is accepting the acts from the laws.  Chomsky gives the example of what would have happened if the Iraqis were the ones who had assassinated Bush and dumped his body in the Atlantic. They would have done it after proper burial rights, which did not happen for bin Laden. In his case, the American’s violated the law by not giving him a fair trial. A few days before the assassination of bin Laden, Orlando Bosch, a terrorist, was granted a “presidential pardon by Bush over the objections of the Justice department” (Chomsky 6).  This trial did not also follow the laws of a fair trial.

In Bush’s speech, Bush tells the public that the US will pursue nations and will give every nation the option to choose the side of the terrorists or the side of the Americans. Every nation that supports terrorism will be considered their enemy (Bush 5). Unlike Chomsky, Bush doesn’t really go into details with what actually happened or if their actions were wrong. He wants to keep everyone supporting the government so continues to talk about what they will be doing to stop terrorism altogether. Bush also mentions how he isn’t going against any group as a whole but just terrorism. He calls it the “world’s fight” and says how everyone needs to work together to bring terrorism down.  The American exceptionalism entitled us to start a war and was practiced because Americans accepted the acts from the laws. They created laws that would sometimes not be enforced and was also accepted if it wasn't enforced. 

i rlly think lang is like dvlving

Technology has become a big part of our lives in today’s world and as a result, it has affected the way we speak and communicate. For example, teens and even some adults nowadays use shorthand methods and words such as “brb” or “gtg, ill ttyl”. From looking at this example and the warnings from authors, the conclusion can be made that language is devolving.

            George Orwell, in Politics and the English Language, explains how, “…the writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not” (Orwell 2). Often times, writers may have and even students may have concepts that they want to portray but cannot get their word across. They just speak the language and don’t think about what they are actually speaking or what meaning the words have. Orwell also explains how many metaphors have been twisted out of their original meaning, often for us to understand (Orwell 3). Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, described how when Lincoln and Douglas would debate for hours upon hours, the audience would not be lost but instead would respond to the debates with applause. On the other hand, not that many people would be as engaged into the debates as they were while Lincoln and Douglas were debating.

            According to Orwell, language has become very vague so others can understand. Language has devolved to fit our needs in the 21^st century, where almost everything is done in the form of technology. Shorthand versions are being used to quickly communicate and while communication is still going on, what is being said isn’t really being thought about. The telegraph had allowed more people to communicate. Neil Postman describes how people had started to write about irrelevant public events that were happening all around the world. Photography has also become a language, according to Postman. He describes photography as, “…a language that speaks only in particularities…unlike words and sentences, the photograph does not present to us an idea or concept about the world” (Postman 72). Photos created another way to communicate instead of communicating with words. Words weren’t required to describe pictures since the image had a set meaning to what it was trying to represent. Television has also led to the devolving of language. Advertisements try and use fewer words and more pictures so it is appealing to the public. As time went on, more shorthand versions of communication were developed so the public would often get stuck while talking to someone in person and would have to think about what they were saying.

 

Works Cited

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking, 1985. Print.

Orwell, George. Politics and the English Language. N.p.: n.p., 1946. Web. 27 Aug. 2015.