Clockwork Orange

"A Clowork Orange" was by far the weirdst and hardest to understand books we have read all semester. I did not enjoy this book at all. From the moment I started reading the book I was confused about what was going on. The language the author used was so different than anything I had ever seen before. Feed also had a different "language" but that one was so much easier to understand because you could relate it to our current language but the language in "Clockwork" was used so often that it was really hard to comprehend the book.

BNW and the video

BNW and the video that we watched really dont's correlate but I wanted to talk about both of them anyway. BNW was probably my one of my least favorite books that we had to read next to Clockwork which was by far my least favorite book. BNW presented some very interesting topics. One of the topics that I found interesting was the concept of the drug that Huxley presented. Huxley basicly created a drug for everything and this relates to our society in that we are becoming a drug obsessed society. We are on the verge of creating drugs for everything. We seem to have a drug that can fix your problems no matter what they are. I feel that eventually we will have one pill for everything just like in BNW.

The video that we watched in class on the microchips being implanted into people was really interesting. This really relates Feed in that they too had chips implanted in them. This just shows that eventually we may be able to have actual computers in our heads like they did in Feed.

A Brave New World

"A Brave New World" is defiately an interesting book. The concepts that the author presents are different from the other books we've read. He presents the ideas of cloning and the ideas of a caste system. This book relates to our society in that we too have a kind of class system but we do not have it in the extent that "A Brave New World" does. In the books caste system the people can not move up, but in our system we can. It is difficult for us to move up in the system but it is possible. Also the people are programmed into their caste system and that can apply to our system but we are not programmed. We again have the ability to move up in our sysem but we our born into a class.

Feed

Feed is a very different book. At first it was a little hard to undersand but if you related the slang that the author used to our language then it was much easier to understand. So far I am really enjoying this book compared to Culture Jam because it is an actual story rather than a fact based book. Feed and Culture Jam relate in many ways in that they both talk about the use of technology and the use of advertising. Feed uses advertising to get the characters to buy as much as they can as fast as they can so that they can controll them. The ways in which they get the technology to them is very interesting. The "feed" that they use is like our computers but inside their heads and they see everything inside of their head. When they are watching something it's like their eyes glaze over and it's like they can't respond or focus on anything. Also the way they talk to eachother through the "feed" is really interesting. It's like the way we use, for example facebook chat, but inside their heads. The sad thing is though is that it is damaging their social skills and their mental skills because everything they need is right there for them and they don't have to work to get anything. The only character that can still do this is Violet. She is basicly the only "smart" one because she still tries to use her brain the same way that we do. She uses the "feed" to a point but not as much as the other's do.

Feed

I think that Feed was by far my favorite book we read this semester because I feel that I could relate to it more than Culture Jam. Feed and Culture Jam had many similar qualities in that they both made you look at the world in a different. What I mean by that is that the books made you think about what is going on in the world and how what we are doing can affect our future. Culture Jam made you think about what is happening now and Feed made you look at what could happen in the future. The use of technology in Feed was extremely advanced but if you think about it how far away from that are we. They talk about how the "feed's" used to be outside of them and that they used to have to carry them around. Well that's basicly what we do with our computers now and our phones and our ipods. I can honestly see it happening that we will have the computers inside of us one day.

The End!

So I feel I've learned a lot of new things semester. This class has made me think about things in a whole new way. I would have never thought about how much technology affected my life and how much I need everyday to function. The books we read in this class were interesting to say this least. I did like some of them like Feed and Culture Jam but the last two Clockwork and a Brave New World were just different to say the least. I really feel that this class has opened my eyes to different ways of thinking and to look at the world in a whole new way.

Ads

For my blog this week I wanted to talk about the lecture on ads we saw and the ads we brought to class. I really enjoyed the lecture we saw in class and I think she had a lot of really good points about the advertising industry. When she said that the average American will see 3,000 ads a day that just blew my mind cause I never would have dreamed it would be that high. The advertising industry spends billions of dollars a year on ads, just for us to glance at them in a magazine or on the internet or watch them on TV. It's seems pointless to spend so much money on something that people really don't pay attention to, but the problem is we do pay attention. Whether we realize it or not, we pay attention to every ad that we see or hear even if it's just for a second. Another thing that I thought was really interesting was how the advertising industry portrays women and men. In the lecture she really goes into detail and explains how women are viewed was these perfect beings or objects, and according to a lot of the ads we see that's what women are, objects. The lecture made this point very clear by showing a bunch of ads that showed women's bodies as inanimate objects. This to me is just wrong to me. Another thing that is shocking and that I have noticed before is the way beauty is portrayed for women. The advertising industry always portrays women as very thin, tall, and well perfect. My whole issue with this is that even the women in the ads aren't perfect, let alone real women. The advertising industry pays big money to have the women in their ads look exactly the way they feel they should look and that means retouching. No matter what anyone says just about every ad you see is retouched in some way. The advertising industry is creating this perception of beauty that can never be obtained unless we alter ourselves in some way, either through diets, creams, pills, or even plastic surgery.