"My Media, Myself"

Todays society is obsessed with new media. Everyday we are surrounded or use technology. This technology has gotten to a point that it keeps people connect basically at all times. This revolution started with the cell phone and the internet. When the cell phone came out it was no longer a problem trying to reach people when they were not home. Now we can call someone, and no moatter where they are, as long as they have service they can speak to you. The internet made this even more accesible. There are websites that can reunite us with old freinds and also help us meet new ones. There are also programs like Instant messaging that keep people in touch. I personally use the internet to get most of my information. I do watch some T.V but i do not watch the news. When i find out about new important things it usually happens on facebook. I usually go on and i see that most people have a statment on their status about whatever the pressing matter of the day is. For example when Michael Jackson died i did not find out from the news or the radio, i was on facebook and i realized that many people had R.I.P Jacko. At first I didnt know what this meant but as i saw more and more statuses i realized that Michael Jackson had died. In a way this is great because it makes information and people extreamly accesible and easy, but at the same time i feel this is a problem because to many people are becoming lazier and lazier because things are all at our fingertips. If a person were to choose to stay home all day they could probably get away with it. Today we can pay bills online, take classses online, even work at home from your computer. If technology continues to progress i am scared for the ext generation that grows up not knowing how to do things for themselves, rather they rely on a computer or another product of technology. In a way i am scared that computers will take over. Not in the sence of the Terminator but in the sence that it consumes our lives and we no longer know how to interact with real people.

"Soldiers Without Swords"

In class we viewed the movie "Soldiers without Swords." This documentry was about the black press in the early 20th century. These were newspapers established by black people for black people. The film takes you from the very beggining to the end of the black press when african americans were able to join the bigger more established "white" newspapers. The black press was needed at this time becasue it was after the civil war and althought black people were free there were no civil rights. No one was speaking for the black community. Many of the first black newspapers were established in the North but made their way down south. People in the south embraced these newspapers because most of these black people were from small towns and these newspapers allowed them to see how things were in other parts of the counrty as well as the World. These newspapers provided entertainment as well as hope. Many of these newspapers promoted for blacks of the south to migrate to the north where there were more job opprotunities, and better living conditions. At first the white people did not pay the black press any mind but as soon as they realized there was this mass exodus from the south to the north, and they realized the south's economy was being effected by this exodus, these white men began banning the black press. Much like many strong and important causes, the attemt to stop the black press was a failure.
From this black press emerged many great journalist and photographers. Before this time black people were not given the opprotunity to do much things because they were seen as inferior. These newspapers showed that there were black people smarter than most white people. It5 gave the black community a sence of "self" and also encouragement that they could do anything they wanted and that the steryotypes were wrong.

New York Post- "The Truth Hurts Rape Liar"

On February 24, 2010 the New York post published a story about a woman who wrongly accused a man of raping her. The supposed incident occured in 2005, the man was accused of raping Ms. Gonzalez at knife point. The man, William McCaffrey served four years in prison. In jail it is not accepted if you are a rapist. That is the worst crime to commit in the eyes of inmates. This is unfortunate because Mr. McCaffrey did not even commit this hainous crime but was treated like it for four years surrounded by violant criminals.
Ms Gonzalez will go to jail on charges of purgury. When the trial was origginally going on in 2005, she cried rape the whole time. She was even quoted as saying that she was 110 percent sure that McCaffrey had raped her. Personally i believe the two to six years that Gonzalez recieved is appropriate. That is a horrible crime to accuse someone of rape just because your freinds got angry that you left with a strange man. Injustices like these happen every day and it is important that we fix them. The justice system will never be trusted if mistakes likes these are not fixed.

Style Wars

I enjoyed the movie Style Wars very much. I am a big fan of the Hip Hop culture. This was a great visual into how this culture was originally established. Hip Hop is allot different today from what it was in the 1970's. This showed you Hip Hop in its baby stage. Break dancing was very big at this time but it did not develop into the art that it is today, yet. This movie also heavily focused on the art of graffiti. When i was younger i liked to draw and that lead to doing graffiti. For this reason i really enjoyed seeing some of the pioneers of graffiti. I always heard of this film but never had the chance to actually watch it. I enjoyed it allot and want to purchase it now. I hope we continue watching good films like this one in class.

Blog 1

This is my first post.