Media technology

Summary assessment on media technology

Media technology hold an important impact to our social and productive lives. Media technology consists of varying platforms, but their purpose remains relative. We have designed media technology to match our wants and needs in our daily lives, for connectivity and for business management. Connectivity with one another is an essentially need as social creatures. But what it means to be connected has evolved with us through our technological understandings of the world. Television, blogging, social media, and email are just four types of mainstreaming media technology that have become something that people use frequently.

Television is my favorite media technology because of its wide diversity and unique platform. Television mixes audio and visual technology to aesthetically communicate to people. It has become one of the most important media technology in our modern day. People all over the world are connected around the clock by the updating media released in television. New broadcasting has become more powerful than when it was strictly in news print and radio formats. Newspaper has delayed content and cannot be relied upon to update the world so quickly. Radio is a good way to deliver the message. But in combined formats, the television allows for the receiver to regard the message with some skepticism. It allows the audience watch, listen and consider.

In continually updates available on the television the world is able to stay updated immediately on anything happening in the world. We are able to become more connected and unified as a global people when we can regard what happens to others in different countries. It helps to acquire an understanding of what makes for a better world and a stronger people. When we can watch how the world works on television we can learn from the progress and struggles of others and adjust for progress of our own civilization. Even as multicultural and multifaceted entertainment, television offers a “something for everyone” mix of programming. Because of its many channels offered the information gained on television is categorized into interest and purpose. The channels themselves hold more programming from which to choose. Television provides for the people in its diversity to match the diversity of minds and cultures of the people.

Blogging is an interesting form of media technology. It allows a user to create a blog, a collection of snippets of information or articles, for an audience to peruse. Sometimes this blogs are purely personal, reflecting on the life and thoughts of the blog creator, or blogger. Sometimes the information on the blog is created and assembled in order to create a connection with others because of the interest. I enjoy looking at cooking blogs, for instance. As someone who takes interest in the culinary arts but is not in professional culinary standing I consider people who take the same interest as I, but who have tried to foster their own professionalism in the field by publishing a blog of recipes, information and pictures. Checking out these blogs gives me insight into cooking I have not been able to create myself, or to see the use of ingredients and flavors I have never worked with.

In moving to China I found it difficult to make friends with other foreigners just for reasons of scarcity. I took to looking online to acquire a blog about someone living abroad to help me learn something about how to do it well, learning communication tactics, finding Western good and food stuffs, getting used to customs, and commiserating over the shear difference of the environment. These are all things I would have discussed with a peer who had the experience of living abroad, but since I did not have that relationship with someone looking to blogs was the next best thing. I was able to acquire important information from another’s experiences which fed me confidence and encouragement. Blogging can make connections with people in all corners of the world to share information. Each blog meets a different audience, and with the great diversity of blogs in subject matter it makes it easier for all people to find something.

Blogging can be used in a business setting as well, indeed all types of media technology can be used to progress business, but social media started as strictly social atmosphere. Social media is an interesting and young platform for creating connections between people. Social media like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have created big names for themselves about the entertainment and social circuits. Facebook allows users to create profiles to show something of themselves and keep updates about their personal lives. On Facebook the user can post media, like pictures and videos, they can even play online games and keep in contact with chat capability. All of these things are a great way to keep updated in friends’ lives. There are many celebrities and organizations that have chosen to become a part of Facebook in order to stay close to their audience. Maintaining a business profile on Facebook for instance allows general people to become involved in the things they enjoy—for the organization it is a means of marketing and public relations.

Because of strict online censorship Facebook is not available for me while I live in China. I used to be on Facebook constantly always keeping my updates current, posting photos of my daily activities. Frankly, I thought I would miss Facebook, but in China, Facebook is not the culture so I have lost the interest. WeChat and QQ messaging, then Weibo have made their place in Chinese social media. Weibo is akin to Facebook in its profile making, and function of keeping updates and posting some media. It is used well for business as well as social. A friend of mine has started a wedding planning company and she uses Weibo to check out other wedding planners and keep a business profile for prospective clients.

Email has become a very user friendly and helpful type of media technology. Snail mail, as it is called now, takes time. In this progressing and fast paced world, taking ones time means taking somebody else’s time as well. Businesses can no longer strictly rely on the time it takes to send documents in the post, and in volume, postage can become very pricey. To reduce costs and save that needed time in running a successful business more have turned to email. Email gets the mailing job done quickly. It becomes reliable for efficiency of productivity this way, while also allowing for a paper-trail of communications, which proves helpful when needing to conduct business. Having the transcript of the communications ensures that all parties are on the same page of information.

Email is not limited to text. Email can consist of mixed media, transmitting PowerPoint Presentation, visuals, and media files and even documents. This allows for security being able to manage all of these types of materials that need to be transmitted to other parties, there becomes more guarantee in delivery than in postal mail, and the lines are more confidential. Furthermore, relying on email to handle business and communications provides for the planet, reducing paper and expenses of managing such.

An umbrella for all seasons

"Eskimos have innumerous different words for snow," I have heard before. I have seen snow and would certainly consider myself to have many different words for the scene, but I cannot fathom so many words as an Eskimo could provide. It doesn't rain much in my hometown that rests on a beach of Southern California, just enough to show me the kindness of rain and its calming spirit.

Guangzhou rain is a different breed. I try to come up with many different words to describe the kind of rain that soak this region. It encourages me though because I feel capable in my rain-speak even to say drizzle, mist, a light shower, a gentle rain, a sprinkle, a downpour, torrential rain, heavy rain, a storm, a windy rain, and a monsoon, to name a few--all of these I have experienced while living in Canton for near two years time. In teaching my friends these descriptions of rain they seem baffled. I get the picture that rain is rain to a Chinese person. "Sure heavy rain is heavy rain, but rain gets you wet either way so how do the fancy words of what it look like change that fact?" seems to be a common philosophy of the locals.

It's taught that when someone stays out in the rain, or gets a wet head in the rain, it causes a cold. In American culture we've acquired the understanding that this is, in much part, an old wives' tale. We shake off a sprinkle as being less than that of a real rain and don't shy away from the moisture so timidly. Perhaps we've raised ourselves to be a hearty water people. In fact we often can't be bothered by having to be responsible for an umbrella and choose hats or hooded jackets instead. Umbrellas are for real rain not piddly drizzles. But the Chinese always have umbrellas: in the mist, in the sprinkling shower, in the break of rain, in the sunshine, let alone when it's actually raining.

I never considered it to be a philosophical argument: is it raining outside? Of course, I never considered owning four umbrellas either. I suppose that's the Chinese influence in me--an umbrella for all seasons.

Beans, beans the magical fruit

China has beans. A lot of different kinds of beans actually. Red, lima, soy, some black, some other kind of black, and so many green beans. But the point is there aren't any pinto beans. Starbucks isn't my favorite coffee, but in the least they supply me with my favorite bean. Beans are cultural, and taken for granted as I have found. They thing about beans is that you do not recognize how much they influence your gastronomy until you move continents and the beans around you remind you of the Twilight Zone.

I'm Mexican-American, among many other things, but at this point in time, this label suits my plight. I like pinto beans. I was taught that beans and rice are one word, and are to be eaten together. Living in Southern China gets me confused and disoriented; I find rice everywhere I go but without beans accompanying them like they ought. I like rice, and I love Chinese food. I miss pinto beans.

I found a place I like to go on Wednesdays, Tekila, a Mexican food restaurant. On Wednesdays they serve half-priced fajitas. It used to be that every Wednesday I would go with my buddies after work to get said fajitas, until I had a side-swiping revelation. I'm at a Mexican food place, and I'm here to buy fajitas--which DO NOT come with beans and rice?? How long have you been allowing this to happen, Annaliisa Garcia? Like one of those moments in a cartoon with a funny little conscience character sitting on my shoulder I felt ashamed I had wasted so many Wednesdays not eating any beans and rice. I learned the err of my ways; now I go to Fajita night for enchiladas--much improved.