Rewrite #2 - Week 9

Rewrite #2

 Week 9, Rewrite #2


In the first video I watched, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OseOb_wBsi4) “The Medium is the Message”, Dan Olsen gave us a better understanding of what the phrase “the medium is the message” actually means. 


Dan firstly starts off by referencing McLuhan’s own words “This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves…”. Initially to me, this meant that we don’t actually look at the real meaning of a medium, we use a projectile of ourselves to form a message for the medium. Dan explains that the mediums have a far greater impact on the fundamental shape and nature of society than any message that is delivered through that medium. Dan then gives us plenty of examples and I can see understand what he means. For example, Dan states that trains, cars, and airplanes build and structure our ideas of what cities should look like. This makes a lot of sense since it has been years and years of only knowing this idea, we are so used to it.


In the second video, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q91nvbJSmS4) we look at “What is the Cambridge Analytica scandal?”. I have never heard of this scandal before today but after watching that video, I, unfortunately, am not surprised. This was about how a large company was gathering private data from people and many people didn't realise how much they were really getting.

The scandal seemed to occur in 2018 which was a couple years ago and a couple year ago, society and the internet was very different. I think that over the years, we have all learnt the privacy of the internet which is very small to none.  


Although I am not surprised, I definitely think it should have been dealt better and I also think that society should now at least be aware of themselves on the internet. 


The third video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkrdLI6e6M) was quite interesting to me. The video talked about “How Dark Patterns Trick You Online”. By just reading the title, I didn’t fully understand what it meant. 


The definition of dark patterns is “features of interface design crafted to trick users into doing things they might not want to do, but which benefit the business in question.” This was quite interesting and new to learn about considering how much time we spend on the internet but probably don’t realise how we are basically being manipulated someway. I can definitely relate to the examples used in the video like trying to unsubscribe to an email but the font size and colour are almost identical to the main text.


The fourth and final video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj_UWbifM2U) was very insightful. I find it extremely fascinating that a single person could make such a large difference without directly saying anything. 


His campaign for more women to start smoking may have bad intentions but his entire process and planning was very smart.

This image was taken from an article by Baloch Khan
https://bolanvoice.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/universal-media-ethics-and-modern-media/

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