Media Rabbit Hole!

 

Welcome, to the timeline of mass media! This is an analytical, or rather, an attempt at trying, to show the timeline of media, technology, and the Internet.



So, let's take a stroll down the media worm hole....

 

It all started in 1971: The year computers were able to speak their first words to each other. Yes, you got it! Email! It was through Email, that we were now able to communicate in a different way, no longer did we have to fully and completely rely on speaking over telephones and news graphs, we could now send an email within 2 minutes and get it to its destination, as if by magic! Which we still do today!



1979-1980: Along with emails, you were able to read your news via the local newspaper. Those inky papery textured, fold-able, neatly accented papers where you could indulge in cross word puzzles, word searches, the funnys, and what the nation was doing as a whole, along with your local city gossip, and then add a touch of the personals and advice to the mix, and....voila, the NewsPaper! This is how celebrities were announced deceased, not through Twitter, Facebook, or other social media means. It was more provacative, in your face, to the point. I mean, look at that picture of John Lennon, look at the headline, it is so strongly in your face that you cannot miss it. It had a very odd appeal to it, to where you would actually want to pick it up read it. This is how mass media, which is now our mass social media, was presented to the entire world. Through inky portraits of our beloved musicians, artists, novelists, and every person who encountered the public daily, like Big Ang, who is now shown via videos, Facebook clips, and tweets about her existence.


1994: Oh, let's not forget Yahoo! Messenger. This was how I spent majority of my nights. Cuddled around my bulky overweight desktop computer, messenging my coolest and closest friends. Not to mention those really fun chat rooms, with different catagories on music, love, politics, gossip, and news. You name it and it was there, I mean you could even create your own Yahoo! Room, it was like whatever you wanted to discuss you could just make a room for it. Then, the show, To Catch a Predator, came along, and somewhere along the way, Yahoo! was no longer a world wide instant messaging platform, it changed into mail and news, oh and a search engine that many do not use as much as, Google, now-a-days.

Oh the fun many have had with Instant Messenger, which has now turned into Facebook Messenger. It seems the things some have grown up with are still around, only in different forms. For example, do you remeber the website, Classmates? Ha, I do, I acutally tried it for a split second, it was a mediocre version of what is now MySpace and Facebook. They tried, and there are few who took to its trend, but many have forgotten their email and password in order to log in, or they just plan out deactivated their account. Not a bad idea...

Oh and you cannot forget AOL Messenger. Well, to be honest, I did, but then I remembered my email account that has an instant messenger on the sidebar and then I thought oh yeah, they did the whole Yahoo! thing, only, AOL!


2003-2004: Then, bam, bang, boom! Along came MySpace and LinkedIn all in one year, with Facebook following close behind a year later. All three have grown into pretty big deals, only Facebook tops the cake. It just so happens that Facebook seemed to have waited long enough in order to get it right, and capture the audience with a something exciting, simple, and a lot easier platform and web set up. With MySpace you had that strange 80-90's feel, that many actually liked, but then Facebook and LinkedIn brought a new standard to the table that dealt with the modern, new, and hip outlook on how to share, "you", to the entire world.


2005: Saturday Night Live! Over the years we have had shows that stick with us like In Living Color, Full House, The Cosby Show, and so forth, but with Saturday Night Live, you have the idea of going viral and it being a thing, that is considered cool. Thanks to SNL, we now have virals day-in-and-day-out!


2006: The lovely Tweets, come to play with their counterparts, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. A new competition, social platform, and to top it off, it has a Bluebird logo! How can you pass that up? Hashtags, and now Periscope, oh my! Varitey sets in and the exploration begins! We now have Four pretty major social media platforms to look to in order to expand our businesses, schools and the work loads we have, staying in touch and connected, following gossip or events and news, and just sharing, liking, loving, hahaing, wowing, and angry facing, emojis to show our disgust and exitement about posts, photos, and ads. How overwhelming, right?

2007: You have Tumblr! I tried Tumblr once, but it never stuck with me, although I do believe it was for those who wanted to have a blog, but then they would gradually over time get tired of the upkeep blogs demand. The daily, weekly, or monthly updates on topics and the media and context you have to keep up with, where instead you can freely post whatever it is you desire and not have to keep it up. A blog here, a gif there, and photos galore. Tumblr was for the hip, the now, and then it gradually faded a litte in the background, with those who really want to stick with Tumblr, me I will just stay mainstream, I guess...

And then, YouTube, the search engine for how-tos, videos on do-it-yourself, music, and funny fail compilations, that I personally thoroughly enjoy! You also have the first CNN-YouTube debate broadcasting and it makes YouTube something to remember.

2010: Instagram launches its big debut. As if Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, didn't get enough selfies, well now you have a new photo-tastic invention of a platform where you can get your face followed, or your hobbies, crafts, interests, whatever you can take a photo of, and post it quick with ease on Instagram.


2012-2016: Google+, reaches over 90 million users and is expected to grow well over 400 million. Facebook keeps changing with each year, from memories of each day, to new fun emojis, to instant messenger stickers that make any conversation feel fun and exciting. Each platform has grown, expanded, and changed with each new challenge and demand the social media masses have brought to the table. We have smartphones, when we used to have dial landlines, touch screen computers, laptops that keep getting thinner and thinner, and cameras that have gone from Polariod and Film, to digital, and our communication that seems to change with each new decade. We speak through a gigabyte screen, downloads, apps, and instant messaging. We hide our true selves in the form of an avatar, we speak our mind via a Facebook or Twitter post, and we follow our neighbours and news via social platforms. From face-to-face interaction to robotic movements, we catch ourselves doing first thing when we wake up, and after or during breakfast, and even on our drives to work.


Social media, the new wave of Communication!

 



Reference:

 

Cerulo, E. (2012). Timeline: The Most Important Social-Media Events in History | Details. Retrieved February 29, 2016, from http://www.details.com/gallery/social-media-timeline-evolution#22

Expectations of Mass Media, Oh and Culture!

With each culture you have a silent rule. It is an understanding of how things work and flow within your community, family life, and social life. With the new age technology, sometimes that can get muddled in with all the extra things life can throw your way over time. 

For example, instead of meeting Shawn for lunch via a face-to-face invite, you now have to send an instant messenger or even an invite via Facebook, just for a simple luncheon among friends to catch up on everything going on, just in case you missed all of Shawn's Facebook and Twitter updates every other hour...?

It seems that we as a culture are being reconditioned. Reprogrammed and re-adapted in the ways of media and our culture. Now we are always asking is this appropriate to post, or will so-and-so view and like my posts? How many "likes" can I get? Where is Shawn today? Is he at the mall? With Sandra from Economics Class? What is Cindy's love status? Has her and Brad broken up yet, or again, or are they still madly in love as they proclaim to be every other month? 

It seems that there is less privacy, and more airing of our dirty laundry or lives on social media. We seem a lot more prone to really obscene and proactive ways of life and how we share this life. We see more couples meeting on social dating sites and less courting to win someone's heart. We have less time to chat with people one-on-one and without distractions like mobile devices, Netflix, and so forth. Do we really and truly need all the technology we have today? We have iPads and iPhones that basically do the same thing, and we have computers that are desktop or laptop and become smaller or bigger with each person's preference. When it comes to life, we should be living it like they did back in the 60s and 70s, minus the drugs and orgies, but more vibrant fulfilling lives that do not rely fully and totally on electronics to get up by daily. Becoming drones and electronic zombies lazily walking to the gigabyte beats of the 21st century.

So, along came technology. Turned what our social media used to be, newspapers, word-of-mouth, news on the television, VHS, DVDs, CDs, landlines, and so forth, and spoon fed us to be reliant on such things. Don't get me wrong! I love technology! I have an iPhone, a touch screen Dell desktop, and two tablets, two tvs, and my car is a smart car with SYNC installed. Yes, I am a fanatic about the newest and truest devices along with fiber optic internet that can take me around the world at the speed of light, or the speed of a megabyte. Either way, I am just making a point that we should not let such things rule our lives, even though I work 40 hours a week in front of a computer and stay on the phone about 80% of my day-to-day interaction, I still find the time to really unload and let it all go. I drop the iPhone, I drop the tablets, and the desktop that I was 70% of my movies on via Netflix and Google, and I take my child and I go out into nature to return to my roots. Because without my roots, I become that zombie in the above paragraph treking through out each day, eyes clued on the phone, watching "Once Upon a Time" and "Along Came Polly". 

Now, our social media has caused us to be impatient. We want it quick, fast, and by yesterday. I know I am guilty of this, and at times I catch myself becoming a brat!

 

We don't seem to notice it at times and we end up seeing or viewing things that we really shouldn't or don't care about at times and we can become insensitive, or detached from others when they are going through issues and instead of sympathy we become harder on others and what they are going through, and then there are times we find ourselves coming together as a community on social media and binding together to make things happen, like fundraisers, or charity events, just different things from time-to-time.

So, it has become a challenge to the human race. We can adapt and grow like we have never imagined with technology and its many facets, and at the same time, keeping in touch with our roots, ourselves, our higher purpose in life and our higher interests in why we are who we are and what we are meant to do or become. So, take the challenge to not loose yourself in all the social media noise, grab hold of your ancestors and your culture firmly and take note that life can be a great mixture of both technological and cultural growth.