Reflection

So, it’s been a while since my last blog. (It’s been a while since we’ve had class…) I thought I might close out this month with a little reflection blog. Now that I’ve had time to relax and de-stress, I’ve also been able to think back on the past few class presentations. Initially, our group had a little bit of trouble narrowing down the content that we felt needed to be incorporated into our presentation. The history of film covers so much and with only forty minutes to present, we needed to pinpoint milestones. The only problem with this was that we tried to split up the presenter times by time period and some of these milestones overlapped or derived from each other. However, in the end, I think we did a good job with transitioning from presenter to presenter. I found our information to be applicable to our class because the film conglomerates paralleled the earlier discussions about media conglomerates. I also thought our discussion questions went well and that people were engaged in the conversation.

So, moving on to reflecting about Steven Levy’s “The Perfect Thing” I really disliked this book. In the beginning, I was just annoyed at the tone of voice of the author and how bias he was. His close connection with Apple and Steve Jobs had an overwhelmingly presence and was a little distracting from his overall argument. It’s hard for me to personally believe that the iPod is the greatest invention/thing of the 21st century. No doubt, it is a remarkable piece of technology; however, I do not think the craze is as ridiculous as Levy makes it out to be. I found myself trying to place myself in many of his situations (i.e. only seeing white earpieces in people’s ears) and I didn’t believe him. From my own experience, I do not think that people are obsessed with their iPods. Yes, it is sad when they lose them or scratch them or whatever; but, I do not think that “it gives you the feeling you belong to a tribe” (Levy 88). I think that is just going too far. But then again, I’m not a huge music downloader or obsessed-with-music listener. I do think it’s cool that one can “walk to their own soundtrack”; however, only to a certain degree. I strongly believe in the sense of community and I do think that technology can go too far one day and ultimately remove individuals from that. When individualism overtakes society, it creates self-absorbed people who forget that it is the relationships one builds with others that can truly render happiness.