Too Much Time, and Finding Things to Do With It.

The article, Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus, is about just that, how alcohol, sitcoms, and the theory of cognitive surplus are all linked together and how they have affected the advancement of society throughout time. This article pretty much defines literacy as the ability to do find things to keep our brains occupied and being active as opposed to strictly watching things. This is where cognitive surplus is defined: cognitive surplus is the free time that we have worked into our daily lives and have to choose what to do with it. This article shows a pressing point about the media and how the experience of cognitive surplus is rapidly evolving through time. In the beginning, it was urbanization and the shocking change of urban life that led humanity to drinking. When we all collectively came out from that, we ushered in a new era of major advances to the world. The writer of this article then compares that alcohol to television, as we dump so much time into that a year. He thinks that when we wake up from the common media stupor the same as we did with alcohol so long ago, we will begin to create more than we ever have in the past, and that we have maybe already begun to do this. We are moving away from merely watching and, through the power of the internet, we are beginning to create and share on our own in ways that we could've never imagined 10-15 years ago. It shows us that we need to break the cycle of mindlessly watching what other people are putting in front of us and making things on our own and exercising our minds and our creativity to keep up these things rather than to just get consumed in doing nothing. We need to take advantage of the excess time that we have in our hands to stop from becoming mundane and dull, and to bring in all kinds of new advancements after all of this stagnation, which the author stresses very firmly throughout the article.

A Paper with CoCo

For my Unit 3 paper, I think that I will use Conan O'brien's Twitter feed to analyze. He maintains a pretty steady presence, puts for a sort of comical identity, and I really enjoy him as a comedian. He makes alot of political and social commentary jokes, and he puts himself on as somewhat self-loathing man, often making jokes on himself. I think this is alot like what Twitter was designed for, for this sort of wit and anecdotes, so it should work well for this assignment.

Of Media and Men

If you were to take a glance at my social networks, you would see a car-loving, music-hound guy who occasionally gets out into nature and uses media to ask for help in these areas. I have never posted much, but what is there shows me working on my car and how she looks after a good wash and wax. You'd also see pictures of me out with my friends and girlfriend. And this is pretty accurate of me, I don't do terribly much, but what I do, I'm very proud of it and want to share it with my friends. The more that life goes on and social media goes on the rise, I feel like I should hold more of a presence online. It's become very prominent for teenagers, and even more so for the 20-somethings of America, to host blogs and write about what's on their minds or to be very active in sharing their projects and ideas. We are even being deemed as the Internet generation, and this can put some pressure to hold more space on the web. As far as censorship goes, I just know it's best to be respectful online, as if you were talking to someone you don't know, because all too often this will be the case. I would hate for someone to be looking to hire me, look online and see me at my very worst, I'd lose so many opportunities that way. Just keep it clean, keep it nice, and nobody gets hurt. So far, I've been able to uphold to that, and I hope to keep it that way.