the persuaders

"The Persuaders" begins by questioning the increase in the amount of advertising we typically encounter in our daily lives. How would you assess the amount of advertising you see? Too much? Too little? Just right? In your view, what difference does it make to know that people today see much more advertising in their daily lives than people 20 or 30 years ago?

I think we see a lot of advertising every day. Personally, I think it's a little too much, however considering the amount of television we watch, and radio we listen to and time we spend on the computer, it's probably a decent proportion. I think we are a little too involved with media and technology - we are too attached to our phones and laptop.
I think today compared to 20 or 30 years ago, we see a different kind of advertising. I think it's all proportionate considering our resources now compared to back then. Advertising was competitive 20 years ago and it is still competitive today, more or less I don't really know because I don't really pay too much attention to this kind of stuff.

Digital Nation

So far I think this video has been really interesting. I agree that our world is becoming so dependent on this technology and it might not be turning out to be a good thing. It's scary to watch 12 year old kids become literally addicted to these computer games. It's really not good for you - their grades will slip, their vision and hearing gets worse, and I think they just miss out on the experiences of a kid. I never grew up with video games, so I'm really not into them or computer games. I'm glad to say that I'm happy I didn't grow up playing in a virtual world so I don't have the urge to be addicted to the computer, or T.V. for that matter. I completely disagree with staying inside on the computer on a beautiful, sunny summer day.
In the video, when they visited that place where people can just go to play computer games and some of the kids said they stay for hours, some even for the whole day, that really scared me. Especially when they said people have died there because they had a lack of food and water!!! How absurd to sit playing a computer game for days to not realize that your body needs water/food. To me it's stupidity. I worry for the next generations to come because if it's this bad right now, then how is it going to get any better?
Also, when I saw that the MIT students were always on multiple means of technology at once, it just made me realize how dependent those students really are on their technology rather than their school work. Sure, I check Facebook like a regular college student, and I text my friends, but I know I could go a full day without looking at any of it. I have before, and it's scary to think that some of these students don't know what they would do with themselves if they didn't have their Blackberry.

definitions

User-generated content: different kinds of media on the internet produced by the consumer. such as youtube or wikipedia

Long tail: selling a lot of something, but selling it in small quanties. it is the total sale of the "non-hit items"

Network as a platform: media created on the web

Folksonomy: a system of classification that explains the categorized content

Syndication: material on the website is made available to other websites

Hosted services: a business that delivers many IT functions (ex: security, monitoring, storage, etc.)

Web applications: application accessed through a web browser over the internet

Social-software: software systems that allowusers to share data

Video-sharing sites: youtube, yahoo video, Flickr, etc.

Wikis: web pages that friends and family can edit and share things together

Blogs: website maintained by someone who comments/posts things regularl

Mashups: song created by blending 2 or more songs