Blog Post 10

Technology today is second hand to most of us, we have grown up with it and it has molded us. But when technology first came out it was a bunch of machines that were built by hand, and not everyone had them. Now it has advanced into a huge entire industry where almost every single person now can afford to purchase different things. For example, now everyone can purchase a microphone, computer, video camera, etc. Although these inventions and the new technology has been great, it has created a lot of controversy as to whether or not this constant creative expression that is occurring on the internet is truly a good thing.
An argument against mass sharing is that people believe eventually all performances will fade into each other and be classified as all the same. Every thing will be looked at as average talent because everyone has the tools and ability to create something: Mediocrity, it’s argued that true talent will be harder to find when it is surrounded by millions and millions of average talent. As a result, people will stop searching for next level talent because they will be satisfied with the mass amounts of average. It used to be that only the most talented people could make a movie, or record a hit song. Now, everyone can. The movie press pause play does a great job of showing this “If everyone is making mediocre music then the world is going to be covered in gray goo. If everyone is making mediocre music then the world is going to be covered in mediocrity and people become comfortable with that mediocrity.” (Dworsky, Kohler ). The video I posted below shows mediocrity at its finest, this video about a baby biting a finger has almost a billion views and yet it was such a simple thing to create. The fact of the matter is, people are only seeing average stuff. “People pay attention to only a small amount of information available to them” (Wilson, Wilson),it would just be impossible to look through millions and millions of songs to find a truly amazing artist or producer.

Regardless of all the media being produced, and all the average talent and videos out there, people still have the chance to shine and some of it is still art. In the video below, this musician named Trevor Hall shows how artistic he is, not only with music, but he is a passionate person who makes art in many different ways. So regardless of the advances made in technology, he has found a way to break out from the rest of the crowd. But this does not mean other stuff on the internet is not art just because it isn’t as complex or doesn’t have as much views as another video, in the movie press pause play, it talks about how “the human spirit when it is allowed to express itself, will usually make interesting things. When human make stuff, they tend to make interesting things. Give a human a hammer and a piece of wood, or a computer and broadband and they are going to make something interesting”.  (Dworsky, Kohler). Obviously, we do not use hammers and nails anymore, we humans use the latest and greatest electronics. But you can argue that things are improving, and this would not be considered mediocrity, but democratization. Overall, the entire intent has evolved and reached democratization and now almost everyone has an opportunity to share their specific art with the entire world. Essentially, we reached that point in our EPS cycle,  our “nations has broken through the barriers of poverty and illiteracy, the media enters the popular stage and can be enjoyed by the mass culture” (Wilson, Wilson) this explains that what we see every day is art, not a average video or movie, but art expressed in many different forms. This video has very little views on youtube, however, it gave this amazing young artist a chance to take the spotlight.

Blog Post 9

In the first youtube video by Trudell, he talks about guilt, blame and intelligence. These are very heavy topics, he believes. He uses guilt to say that it is about life experiences and that most people will be guilty about something, and not try to learn from the mistake they made. They keep on doing things that make them guilty. This can relate to ceremony in the way that Tayo is very guilty about Rocky and his death. He holds onto that and believes that it was all his fault and that he should be the one who is dead instead of Rocky. This really gets to Tayo and he stays guilty but proceeds to do things that result with him feeling guilty or him taking the blame.

In the second youtube video, Modern Humans are Walking Dead, Trudell points out his thoughts on what he would say to someone who just came to this world and how the people are and how they act. He believes that everyone has ditched the idea of any spiritual relationship to their ancestors. “Nobody remembers anything of their ancestry,” which kind of relates to the idea of stories in Ceremony (Trudell). I believe this relates because the stories are from the people before and the Native Americans really care about the stories and history of the past because it means so much to them, but then the white people come in and completely destroy that idea and tell the Natives that these stories are not real and to leave them behind. This relates to Trudell because he is saying everyone isn't caring about the past and how their ancestors came about. He believes that this leaves a huge impact on the society as a whole.

Trudell also wrote a poem about his thoughts and ideas. In this poem he states the idea that Native Americans were looked at as not “human” (trudell). People would come from Europe and say that the Natives were not human they were savages, people who lived in the wild and who were deprived. He talks about the idea of keeping the identity of the Indians alive even though when we all learn the history of them it comes off as they were savage and just being killed by the so called “humans”. This can relate to ceremony in the way that the white people are like witches taking away the identity of the actual Indian.