Response1- JimmyB
One thing I’ve noticed about the concept of new media is that a lot of technologies that are often considered to be a part of this concept such as the Internet, VR, among many other technologies, generally have one major thing in common. They’re all technologies that cause a disruption of sorts in the modern world whenever they are put out to the public. What I mean by this of course is that they create new possibilities for how people learn things, do things, or even go somewhere. For example, when the Internet became public in the 1990s it opened up a whole new world of opportunities for people. Not only did this open a door for people to have an unlimited amount of information available to them at their fingertips, but also things like social media came along which made it possible for people to stay in touch with each other even if they’re living on opposite sides of the world. Even old media has similarities in regards to how they were adapted by the public as well, after all even media that’s old now was at one point in time new. Take for example when VHS tapes came out. Before then, if you wanted to see a movie, you would either have to go to a movie theater to see it(if it was even playing), or wait for it to be on TV sometime. Until VHS was a thing, there was basically no way one could watch a specific movie at any time they wanted to. Then VHS was released to the public and all of a sudden you could actually own a movie and watch it whenever you wanted to. Even since then, we’ve seen VHS go obsolete because of DVD’s having higher audio and video quality and so on.
As for things in new media that I’m not a fan of, I can easily say that I’m definitely not very keen on this whole online shopping thing. I will admit that I think it’s great if I’m looking for something that I can’t find at any store in Bangor, Portland, etc., but if what I’m looking to buy is something I can buy at a local store or something, then I really prefer doing that. Sure it can often be less expensive to buy something off of Amazon than to physically buy something, but when you buy something physically, you have what you want right when you buy it, which is fantastic. Last semester I bought a lot of components I needed for my New Media Strategies projects online and had to wait days for the items to show up at my house, which means that I had even less time to work on certain big projects than I would’ve had if it were possible to buy these things locally. It was especially aggravating because there if there was still a Radio Shack in Bangor, where I live, I could’ve been able to buy all these components the day I found out about a new project which would’ve taken way less time. That brings me to another good point, I feel like online shopping is killing businesses. I work at the Hot Topic store over at the Bangor Mall, and I gotta say that place is getting a lot deader than it was when I was a kid. When I was a kid they had at least 10 stores over there that I liked, but now there’s only 3. One of them being one that I already work at. Why did a lot of these stores close down? They closed because everyone started buying things online. I really hope there doesn’t come a day where going out of the house and going to a store to buy something becomes a thing of the past, because I’m terrible at coming up with excuses to get myself out of the house, and I still really enjoy going to places like Hot Topic, Bull Moose, and certain local places in cities like Portland that sell a lot of cool things I like such as video games, CDs, movies, etc. There’s something nice about going to a store to look at things like that and just looking at things like that online really isn’t the same to me.
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This is an interesting look at how technologies change how people organize their lives–government, economics, shopping…
At one time the downtown of cities and towns was the shopping and culture center; then the technology of cars and cheap fuel moved them out to the Mall; now the malls are losing to online shopping. Which of these is the most sustainable? lowest energy? most social? most community building? Does tech push ham cultural choices or do people? Do people use tech in ways they can’t see will change their lives?
Good questions…