The Revolution

Facebook, MySpace or Twitter, these online virtual societies where the Internet consumers are taking part of, seem to be highly addicting and maybe unpredictable. Ninety percent of the youth living in the US are, according to the authors of Frontline, growing up online. Gaining and publishing information on the Internet turned out into sharing a second cyber-life. It is a media-revolution, which causes friction along the two generations; the parents and the children. It’s a new tool and a new weapon, the Internet!

 Though the youth is constantly and unconsciously being encouraged to form their own world online through media and by the their curious thoughts, cutting through the consumed media is nearly impossible for parents and teachers trying to control children’s education. While parents are concerned of the stalkers or ‘predators on the internet’ the teachers simultaneously worry the way students use the Internet to write an essay or to read a summarised book, which is according to some teachers called ‘cheating’.

This aspect of the Internet, however, is, in comparison with cyber-bullying, said to be of no importance concerning children who gave up their lives partially due to an acceleration and amplification of the hurt and pain these kids undergo by the bullying on Internet. Though the kids’ emotions are merely amplified Internet seems to take a role in the suicides of several Internet consumers.

The amplification of emotions which children often get from school can not only lead to suicidal acts but also to, for example, anorexia. Whatever hurt people feel in real life can be expressed or amplificated due to the connections and subjective information on the Internet.

Simultaneously children embrace interactive My Space and Facebook as if it is there everlasting second life, trying to get an improved and more successful cyber-life compared to their ‘real’ life at the ‘boring’ school or at home.  Children even use the Internet as dispel to forget or fill their leisure time. If your friends are on the Internet what else can you do when you want to stay connected to you friends than go on the Internet too. Trying to compete with your friends by playing games on the streets, such as soccer on the plaza in front of your home, has nowadays turned into cyber-gaming on the computer.

The parents, however, still do not see the Internet as a privilege that their children got in this century. It’s merely a world in which children are exposed to all kinds of information and people from which some parents get the ‘chills’ if they even think about it. It’s an open and private less contact place without any boundaries concerning social, political and economical issues.   

The Internet that is first of all a threat to several worried parents, which in several circumstances seem to be logic or predictable, the younger generation growing up online seem to treat the Internet as if it is their best friend which could every now and than provide them even more friends whenever they want and on every place.

We can state that the generation gap has become huge due to the Internet. It’s a new tool and a new weapon, the Internet!

Rationale IOA1

Whenever the phrase ‘Media and Culture’ would sound the word Propaganda would follow. Propaganda, a subject openly and elaborately discussed in school, not only in the English class but in Social Studies and History too, can be labelled as known to my fellow students and me. The read prose such as 1984 or just some study books about propaganda proof our vast knowledge about this interesting subject. This is why we, a group of four students, chose a broad subject as Propaganda to be the topic of a discussion.

Nowadays, we are often confronted with media in the form of discussions on the television. So whenever we thought of a discussion and media, a television show was the first thing that came up in our minds, taking the Inter Active Oral activity into account.

And thirdly, today’s news was filled with information concerning the election of Italy and the presidency of Berlusconi, would it be negatively, positively, neutral or subjectively. Although being informed about the way Berlusconi took the ruling role of presidency into account, nobody had already had the time or the right perspective to form a severe or extreme opinion on this issue.

Therefore our clear and neutral minds had the capacity to change or switch from a subjective point of view to a neutral point of view immediately. Taking this into account and trying to balance the information transferred to our audience we tried to divide different roles on different students. We agreed with a situation having two extreme subjective roles, one against Berlusconi’s way of ruling Italy and one for. A neutral, expert would be a great role to balance the twos. All three guests of this television show encountered the situation in Italy and the presidency of Berlusconi to get a more reliable view on this situation. Najade coped with the role of being a host. Our roles were realised according to the type of language they use, the amount of knowledge they capture and their point of view.

Though we held on a bit to close to our text, which made our presentation a bit to structured, the flow simultaneously balanced the presentation of our television show. And besides that, the roles perfectly suited us, according to me.  

Wikipedia; the web of knowledge or the web of doubt

Is Wikipedia just a reflection of people’s subjective minds or a road showing the way to the truth? The word truth makes me think not only of facts, but also of something that can never be adapted. According to many worrisome teachers the Internet site, Wikipedia, can be considered doubtfull or unreliable concerning the truism or objectivity of Wikipedia. These teachers in some situations ask their students to not use Wikipedia doubting the reliability and the truism of Wikipedia.

When running back into the past till the birth of Wikipedia, “Wikipedia began with a radical idea, an idea about a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to some of all human knowledge,” according to Jimmy Wales. This free accessible information has turned into free adaptable and correctable information, concerning the new Internet development, called Web 2.0 which shock some teachers who consider that this information can therefore sometimes be unreliable or even untrue.

Jimmy Wales, however, as a co-founder of Wikipedia, said: ‘There is nothing about what is true.’ Stating that this discussion would never end if we would wish to find ‘the truth’. According to Wales the ‘truth is not democratic’. “Wikipedia is a crowded version of ‘truthiness’” and “Wikipedia is informative, because Wikipedia owns many point of views and thus many truths”, are sentences spoken by Jimmy Wales during a talk about ‘the birth of Wikipedia’.

Teachers, however, still doubt the reliability of Wikipedia. Wikipedia can be considered as the collector of knowledge from people’s mind, this might still be subjective or objective. This discussion led to a conclusion that Internet is something from which you can learn more about the world and people minds, in good, in bad, in objective and in subjective ways. 

Better life, no crime

“Better life. No Crime. This is what everybody wants. ... We sometimes waste money on people that don’t belong here.” The party ‘Better Life, No Crime’ is stating in these previous quotations that all the problems of crime are actually caused by immigrants or ‘people who don’t belong here’. I fully disagree with this statement. Who are the ones that don’t belong here? Do they have anything to do with crime at all?

On the 6th of November in the dutch debating television show, ‘Het Lagerhuis’, mr. Verhagen, author of ‘Hoe zo mislukt’ (‘Why unsuccesful’), claimed  that the crimes in the Netherlands are not an intergration problem but a socio-economic issue. The problem lies with the youngsters and not the immigrants. Although we’re talking here about an issue which occurs in the Netherlands I think this concerns America too. Those in financially less favorable positions are more likely to commit a crime. It won’t make any difference if we tighten the rules in the immigration policy. The amount of crime among youngsters will not reduce.

At last, America is a ‘melting pot’, a land of plural races and ethnicities, with a multicultural context. Just a little walk in the city of New York or Chicago, for example, would make any foreigner realize the presence of people of various races walking down the street: probably Caucasians, Hispanics, African, Americans, Asian, and so on. Who are ‘the ones that don’t belong here? The britisch who colonized the Americas in the late 16th century? The ones who I think only belong in America are the Indians. We can not claim that the british are the ones that ‘belong’ in the United States of America. Africans, for example, are the direct descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States. African-American history starts in the 17^th century. These are american citizens too. Or do the African-American not belong in the United States?

African, Hispanics, Caucasians, ‘Americans’ they all belong in the United States of America, because the United States of America is a melting pot. We can not blaim the immigrants for the crimes that some immigrants and citizens commit. We can not solve crime by reducing the ammount of immigrants. This is a serious socio-economic issue and not an integration issue.  

Personal Response Romeo and Juliet

The modern version of Shakespeare’s world-famous play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by Baz Luhrmann can be considered quite succesful according to me. 

This modernized version of Shakespeare’s famous play still retained it’s original dialogue. The charming lines revealed the romantic tone of the play. But, according to me, the original tragic lines which were used by the modern characters from the movie ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (by Baz Luhrmann) sometimes didn’t match quite well. These tragic lines ensured that the emotion put into the play, especially by Romeo, was ridiculous excessive. The tragic scenes could not be taken serious by me anymore. This was for example the case in the scene when Romeo was banned out of the country.

However the background music fortunately upholds the tragic message of the story. Without the music the ‘Death scene’ for example would have been more comic than pitiful.

The costumes and props were the only things which really modernized Romeo and Juliet’s ‘world’ in Baz Lughrmann’s version of the play. Instead of using swords the characters in this modern play used guns. And another great example of the costumes and props used in this movie is in the ‘death scene’, when Romeo is wearing a beach shirt and Juliet, at the end of the scene, comits suicide with a gun.

The morals of the original play and the language used in Shakespeare’s play remained the same. Although these aspects have changed quite massively the past fourhunderd years. 

My own visualised prototype of Romeo and Juliet before seeing this movie resembled the actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as Romeo and Juliet perfectly. Juliet portraited as an innocent angelic character, and Romeo: able-bodied and still very romantic.

Baz Luhrman’s succesfully renewed the more than fourhundred years old romantic and tragic play, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.