Over the weekend I used the internet a lot, from twitter to tumblr, facebook and plurk. I used it every day from Saturday to Monday, so I guess it was a lot of times. Technology is a important facet of modern life and it has become the new television, which was the last timewaster.
It seems that the more controversial, and more troll filled videos usually have the user disable the comments because the comment section is filled with hate and the user doesn’t want to be linked to all these inappropriate comments. The youtube site has strict rules on what you can post in the sense that it can’t be too inappropriate and must follow the guidelines that youtube lays out. Less controversial popular videos usually have their comments open while more controversial videos are more likely to have comments disabled.
Its the top viewed Entertainment Youtube video, but its comments have been disabled? Why do a lot of the videos in the Entertainment section have their comments disabled?
I’ve found that when searching for the most popular youtube videos, its the entertainment section that contains the most popular videos that people have probably seen. The silliest and most individual videos are in the entertainment section while all the other sections have videos which aren’t as well known and arent as famous. The most popular videos have such a active fanbase and the comments prove how devoted they are to these videos. Its almost like a separate community on some of these popular videos, and this proves how devoted they are to random clips of film.
I’ve looked at more of the top viewed Youtube blogs and I’ve found a common theme. Babys laughing, and oddball videos about various artists. Also I’ve found that not many of them have advertisements or commercials that interrupt the video so I guess thats a positive. Also some of these blogs are just people talking into the camera about something happened the night before. Example, someone has a video blog where they discuss the incident when Miley Cyrus pole danced at the Teen Choice Awards.
They share their opinion about the incident or event, but a lot of the time they’ll never show footage of the newsworthy event. People like new music videos from popular artists and funny/silly videos about somethiong, ex. david goes to dentist. 20 minutes of philosophical debate don’t break into the top 10 and mostly just short, silly videos are able to explode into the top 10.
Corporate advertising is most prevalent in the “official” youtube videos which are posted by a company or studio. The video quality is always the best because it can go up to 1080 HD and the cameras are high-end. “unofficial” home youtube videos usually arent as high of quality and have a more indie quality to it. You don’t pay for these corporate videos, but the commercials and advertisements distant themselves from the rest.
WHY DOES THIS HAVE SOOOOO MANY VIEWS? This is also the TOP viewed youtube blog also
Ive watched 5 of the top Youtube blogs of today and ALL 5 are about lipstick and how to correctly apply make-up. Some of the others I’ve watched are about sad or uplifting stories about life and personal stories about themselves. They’re boring but most of the comments are full of “Your STORY IS SO TOUCHING” and others like “WOW, YOU”RE SO INSPIRATIONAL”. Research still following…
Metropolis is a landmark film in special effects and set designs that still impresses modern audiences today. The towering skyscrapers, the strange looking robot, and the German expressionism make the film seem foreign and strange and all the more interesting for it. I think the art direction is the most striking thing about the picture because its so stark and vivid and the modernism and Art Deco style makes it seem like they really are in a strange distant land that is unlike are own.
You can tell the budget had to be enormous for this film because the scale of the film is gigantic and its a long film for the 1920’s. The flood scene and all the sets must’ve taken months to construct and I like it when theirs a grand, epic vision that permeantes a film. After watching this film its evident that Blade Runner was just a knock-off because the similarities between the two films is enormous!
The conflict in the fim between the workers and management reminded me of communism because the workers were tired of being used by the “bourgeois” and wanted to do away with the dictator/businessman. The role of the “meditator” was strange because management doesn’t care about any middle-ground and will crush the workers/slaves regardless, so even though the hero becomes the “heart” to the two parties’ “hands” and “brain”, I don’t know why peace will last long. Though I did like that it was an indictment on capitalism and how business is like a cold, sterile monster.
The director had stated that the theme of the movie was that non-violent cooperation between the various sectors in society was the best idea, but I also saw that a major theme was that machines were increasingly taking over society, and that everything was metal and electricity in the movie. When the robot takes the girl’s form, I see it as loss of identity and the machines increasing ability of taking over our lives. Maybe this is why the Nazis loved the movie because it was a corporations dream come true where everyones serves the state/corporations and because of that the city is grand and powerful. The scale is certainly impressive, but the workers are treated like slaves and no hope lays in their future.
This movie is the archtypical dystopic future where machines and technology have taken over but the spirits of the people have been broken and the lifeblood of the people has been drained.
Chapter 7 is about the trade-offs that comes from smarter and more widely available internet technology. These new technologies can be exploited to spy on user’s personal information, from email to using the internet, companies can track you using cookies and other spy ware. The Internet and the cyberspace was created to help all of the human race, not the few elite, but in reality a small elite has formed which can subject all other users to their inspection, and judgement. Large corporations, and the government can trace your email and can ruin someones career when they find something on some one’s post that shouldn’t have been typed.
Another fear about this new human-machine symbosis is that we’re losing our humanity, and our morality as a consequence. This cuts both ways because we also gain a lot more control in the process because we can take care of our everyday problems with increasing speed and efficiently through cell-phones, computer.
Another potential problem is that we can experience overload, and we simply drown in a sea of information and messages. I find this the most ridiculous because why would we suddenly combust? Just because we become lost in it and we lose our humanity to the machines? This sounds like something out of the Matrix and we can’t become disconnected from machines entirely in the modern world.
Another worry is alienation, and the fact that learning agents might confuse our children into thinking that robot friendships are just as good as real friendships. I understand this one because once machines get to the point where their mimicry of human social actions is pretty good, it could have a profound effect on the learning mind. Though I’m sure these worries were present when the TV was invented, but no child thinks the TV is a substitute for real social interactions.
I think the downsides and fears from an increasing presence of cyber technology is not unfounded, but humans are hybrid creatures and we crave new experiences. Culture, technology are important things which builds the human character and we’re constantly thinking of ways to become more social and communicate with each other, so this new technology will become a part of us sooner or later.
