Black Friday...Online

As you all know, this past friday was one of, if not the most busiest shopping day of the entire year. The infamous....Black Friday. The stores open at ridiculously early hours of the morning, where they give out great deals on almost everything. It’s been a tradition for many people, to wake up early, and brave the crazy crowds of holiday shoppers in order to get 40%, 50% or even higher percentages off holiday purchases. However, this black friday tradition is changing. Why? Because of the internet. I noticed this while I was watching the news one day when there was a segment about online black friday shopping. Big name stores, and other smaller websites are now offering black friday discounts online; where people no longer need to bare the long lines and crazy crowds, but rather can shop in the convenience of their own home yet still receive generous discounts. I find this very interesting, that the famous black friday is now going web, and it makes me question the future of black friday shopping. It seems smart though, to widen the range of black friday shopping possibilities to customers who either might not physically by able to go out early friday morning, or to those customers stores would have lost because they didn’t find the need to stand in long lines and fight off crazy competing customers. Now, stores can grasp a lot more people and give out more discounts to a greater amount of people; turning an even greater profit. But at the same times, I feel that online black friday shopping could cause a problem to the traditions and thanksgiving celebrations. In the news segment I saw on TV, they said that some online stores were starting their online black friday sales the night before friday (thanksgiving evening). So that means customers would have to pause their thanksgiving-family-get-togethers to go shop online... This seems somewhat impolite to me. That now because of technology, we are focusing less on “family” time because of things happening on the internet. Also, I’ve noticed a trend in the times stores are becoming open on black friday morning. When I was a a young kid back in the late 90’s, stores opened at 7 am; which seemed really early at the time. But now stores are opening at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, or even starting their sales at midnight. Slowly and slowly the time is creeping earlier and earlier. Which makes me think, that soon, online black friday discounts and promotions will begin to creep earlier and earlier as well; encroaching on Thanksgiving (a time when we are supposed to be focusing on the things we are thankful for, not shopping.) I wouldn’t go as far as to blame the internet for causing this new phenomenon, but at the same time I do. Because the internet has indeed encroached on the way we live our lives; affecting our relationships, culture, and traditions. So I think it says a lot about our society if we begin online shopping on Thanksgiving evening; just so we can save a few dollars on a TV or toaster oven. What does this say about us. That we place higher value on material things such as technology over our family and friends? Or is this relatively newer approach to black friday shopping a social change that will benefit all. 

Media Consumption

Thursday: TV for an hour and a half. Facebook for 30 min-ish, listening to music while hanging out in my room. No reading.

Friday: Facebook for a little bit- no longer than an hour total throughout the day

Saturday: none besides using my cell phone

Sunday: Watching TV- 90210 (online), a little bit of reading, some movie watching, lakers game on TV

Monday: 2 hours of movie watching

Tuesday: movie watched Harry Potter 2 hours, facebooked, searched the internet for necessary information for an hour

After recording my media consumption for six days, I have realized that at college my media consumption is a lot lower than it is if I were at home back in Minnesota. For one, I watch a LOT less TV at college than I did before I came to college- partly because it was a lot easier at home to watch TV while doing homework because a lot of the time there wasn’t much better to do- since my friends all lived at least 25 minutes away from me, hanging out wasn’t always an option. But at college, all my friends are under a mile radius so why spend time watching TV solo, when you could be hanging out with friends, partying, or going/doing other social events with people. The time I spend watching TV here at Santa Clara is either watching shows/movies with friends, or the occasional online TV watching when I have some time to spare when friends are busy or my homework is done or I just want to relax. At college, I never really have time anymore for my weekly favorite shows like 90210, gossip girl, or any other show I would regularly enjoy at home. There just isn’t time for them anymore to sit down on Monday night at watch new episodes. It’s a bummer, but maybe it just means I don’t care enough about TV to schedule my life around it. Although, I would love to be able to consistently watch new episodes, when they premier, instead of catching up online or waiting to watch re-runs later when I go home. College has definitely impacted my media consumption when it comes to television. I have found time to watch movies at college though, and at least every other day or two days find myself watching at least part of a movie on TV with friends. At college I’m more likely to be found watching movies, than at home where I’d be more likely to watch TV. I think that might mean that at home I have time to watch hours of mindless television, where at college I am more selective and watch interesting movies instead. Like most people my age, I go on the internet to Facebook a lot. Even when not on my laptop i’ll find myself checking my facebook through my phone to stay connected. And when I’m bored can spend a lot of time mindlessly zooming through facebook to pass the time. With a lot of homework though, other events, and time spent with people, my time on facebook is definitely a lot lower than it would be if I had more free time or less things to do. I honestly use it when I’m bored, need a distraction, or feel the need to be updated on my friends/other peoples lives...so I think that might say that to me, facebook doesn’t have real importance aside from entertainment and a way to stay connected with people-- its sole purpose is to spend some time. I think my media diet might say that American society finds time for media proportionate to the amount of time they have to give to it. I’m sure it greatly varies depending on the people, but as a whole, I think a lot of people watch TV, or movies, or “creep” on facebook when they have time to waste or as entertainment (free time). But when people don’t have time, it’s not always important. For example, my mom works sometimes from 6 am-8pm and is gone all day- when she comes home, surfing the web or watching TV aren’t always a priority to her if she doesn’t have the extra time for it. If I had a crazy schedule and only had an extra hour or two to spare in the day, I don’t think I would spend it watching random TV shows or surfing the Web. I would probably want to catch up with friends or sleep. 

It’s really hard to escape media consumption though, because it seems like everything we do or have to do involves some form of technology. I need to use the internet to search things, or submit homework assignments and don’t always realize that I’m using media to do those things. I constantly text with people through out the day to stay in communication and even that to me doesn’t always seem like a media consumption, but it is. I focused most of my blog on the entertainment forms of media consumption like TV, movies, and the internet- and not as much on cell phone usage, my computer, and the other little medias I encounter every day, but they still add time to my day that i’ve spent engaging with media. It would be really hard to track every encounter I had with media in one full week because there is soooo much. 

Remixing

This week I thought it might be relevant to write my blog on the concept of remix culture: how the technology and the internet is making remixing a growing trend and how its actually really neat. Firstly, I think technology has created this concept of remixing because of the vast amount of tools it gives us that allows people to create a remixed version of a cool book, movie, song, or other art form into something even more unique and creative- a collaboration of ideas. It allows for the consumers to become creators themselves, and take something made by someone else and add their own ideas to it. Since the internet is able to connect people from all over the world, it allows the concept of remix to really grow, because it gives people a place to share remixed works. Someone in the United States could create a song, and someone over in Japan could take that song (when without the internet they wouldn’t have as easily been able to) and put their own spin to it--ultimately creating something else potentially really creative and cool. The allowance of collaboration that remixing brings I think is really going to widen peoples creativity and produce some really neat stuff that copyright laws would have otherwise hindered. 

In an english class I took last year (Writing in New Media) we focused the end of spring quarter on this book Little Brother written by Cory Doctorow. The book is unique in that it is under the Creative Commons License (meaning producers waive some of the rights that come with copyright laws in order for other people to creatively build upon the produced material). This allows for people to remix the book-- which is exactly what we did in my English class. We had two different remix projects (which we then posted on our individual class webpages)

1. We wrote an alternative ending to the book and turned it into a screenplay that we would film in groups on Second Life, and turn into a movie. (click here to watch the movie)
2. Create another remix piece based off of the themes in the book (click here to see my remix project)

**Disclaimer on the movie-- haha its pretty bad. It was really hard to make the filming in Second Life work, so the movie kind of sucks. But you get the point that it's a remix (regardless of how good it turned out)

Having personally remixed something, I can say that it’s actually really fun (at least if you have a creative side to you). Because you can take something that already exists and turn it into something unique that you are the producer of. It gives you the freedom to use your imagination while at the same time using something created by someone else and fuse it into a cool new thing. Without the benefits of technology however, it would have been a lot harder to remix the book. Sure we could have written out a screen play by hand, and acted it as a presentation to the class. But the array of media tools we had made it so much better than if they weren’t available to us. We could use iMovie, Second Life (an online virtual world), Microsoft Word, different music-creating tools, etc... Technology made it possible for us to remix Little Brother. 

I honestly had never heard of remixing before my English class last year, and I think there are a vast majority of people out there that have no idea what it is. But with technology increasing, it’s becoming a really cool thing and something that will be likely to become more and more popular as it gains recognition. 

Technology and Social Interaction

I think technology has really impacted the way we socially interact with people. I feel like I rarely spend that much face-to-face time with some of my closest friends because I’m too busy to go visit their room, or walk over to their house. Its way too easy to text and facebook each other that I lose a lot of face-to-face interaction with people. However, there are definitely a lot of positives but also some negatives to how technology has impacted social interactions. For one, technology has made talking and connecting with many people soooo much easier by giving us different mediums to use that save us a lot of time. Although facebook, texting, and other social medias take away our face-to-face time with people, I personally would find myself hardly staying in touch with people because I don’t have the time to go visit every single friend I have. Even though my social interactions a lot of the time come to texting or facebook, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing because otherwise I would probably NEVER have time to stay in touch with a lot of people. It’s too bad face-to-face interaction can be so difficult to arrange sometimes, but technology has become a positive in the way it still allows us to connect with people we can’t see in person at the moment or all the time. I think for a lot of people though, technology has become an easy way out of having to spend time with people in person. It’s so convenient that people take advantage of it too much and use it as a way to communicate when they could just call someone up and meet them in person to chat. Instead of visiting a friend, people just facebook chat them on facebook, or sent them a text message. It’s made some of our social interactions so impersonal.

I think using the internet to meet other people is weird. It’s a good way for people with social anxiety, or other things that inhibit them from interacting with people in person well, but otherwise it’s turning our social world to a virtual world where eventually people will have trouble interacting in person. Some things like craigslist or message boards are okay for people with similar interests or need to sell something to a mass audience, but using online dating sites to meet a partner is kind of cheating the system. What happened to meeting people in the flesh and then dating? Why do we need some website to try to match us with people based on questions for compatibility? I don’t think its a viable way to make meaningful relationships. Yeah, sometimes the online dating sites work for people.. so yahoo for them, but online gaming places or virtual worlds like Second Life are not places where I think truly meaningful relationships take places. To some extent maybe they can, like for people who need to talk with someone totally anonymous for emotional support. But otherwise I think the virtual and online world is taking away our ability to make connecting and lasting relationships with real people we can see in person. I feel bad arguing that online relationships or one that take place online aren’t good for us because I do think that sometimes they can be beneficial at times and for certain people, but as a whole I don’t know if it’s good for people to be having solely or mostly online/virtual relationships with people. I think it is going to be hard to create more “real” spaces for people to connect and talk about issues because of the internet and how much it has opened the world up to us. It offers something that public places cannot--whether that’s gonna be a good thing or hurt us in the end I’m not sure yet. People are lazy and the internet makes it easy and accessible to talk, connect, socialize, and discuss topics with people that our face-to-face communication is going to continue to be greatly affected by technology. 

Social Networking and Privacy

Social networking- it’s the fad of our generation. It’s what keeps us updated, connected, and in loop with our friends, family, and acquaintances. I find myself on facebook a lot. It’s hard to not move my mouse up to my bookmarks bar on safari and click on the little button that says “facebook.” It’s almost like an addiction. It passes the time, keeps me entertained, and gives me a feeling of connectedness to all my friends, and the rest of my community. Recently I’ve been too busy to spend a lot of time on facebook, but when I’m bored I do find myself spending a lot of time on facebook. Also, I find myself checking facebook via the internet on my blackberry to see status updates and see if I have any new notifications. It’s usually when I have a few moments of boredom waiting in line in benson, or after a boring long class, but it’s sometimes nice to still be connected to facebook even when I don’t have the time to sit down and log into my computer. It makes me realize though how multi connected we all are to facebook, whether its from the internet on your phone, to a text message alerting you of a notification, or an e-mail saying someone posted something on your wall; there are so many ways to stay informed by facebook that its totally engrained in our lives. One social network site I will never get involved with is FourSquare. I think it’s super weird and unnecessary to “check-in” to sites to alert your friends and get points. People don’t need to know that you were just at “McDonalds” or just checked-in to a local shopping mall. Who really cares. It’s so insignificant. There are much more interesting things to pay attention to and get updated on than where your friends or people you barely know are. I think programs like FourSquare and now the Facebook places are just inflating peoples egos that people actually care where they are or where they’ve been. I would be more likely to follow an interesting Twitter feed (which probably won’t happen), than play into the FourSquare or Facebook places fad. 

I’m not a huge user of Facebook status updates. I know there are a lot of people who update their facebook status’s, telling people where they are going or what they are doing, but I don’t think your entire Facebook circle needs to know stupid things like “[insert name here] is watching TV.” Don’t get me wrong, I like that people can have status’s on Facebook; a lot of the time they are funny or interesting and keep me updated on peoples lives. But it bugs me when people put unnecessary and stupid status’s up. Like expressing super deep emotions or constantly telling every detail of their life to the point where their entire Wall is just status updates. I personally think status updates should be saved for fun things, or interesting big events going on in your life. I still would much prefer to text or bbm my friends, and I spend a lot of time texting. I’m practically attached to my phone. I think it’s just become part of our culture though that our generation is so glued to our cellphones that we also expect instant responses from friends, and get offended when people have read our bbms but haven’t responded. (I know I do). I definitely do think that our culture is moving towards constant access and social networking as a main form of communication. I think overall though it has had a positive effect on society because I honestly can’t imagine my life without texting, and the different forms of social networking. I think it’s really opened a lot of doors to how we communicate and stay in touch with people. Without social networking I think we would lose a lot of communication and connection with people that we want to stay in the loop with, but otherwise would find hard to. There are some drawbacks though. Our lives have become so intertwined with technology that when we don’t have technology we freak out. If the internet doesn’t work, we get stressed out. If our phone breaks, we worry about who might be trying to get ahold of us. If we don’t have access to a computer, we feel helpless. Technology has a lot of benefits but it’s definitely spoiling us in the sense that without it we don’t know what to do. Technology is awesome, but I think everyone needs to make sure they have found a balance between too much exposure and reliance on technology, and making sure they utilize some of its benefits. 

Despite all the technology, social networks sites, and the internet I don’t really think about my privacy too much. I make sure my Facebook settings only allow my friends to access my information and pictures, but aside from that I don’t agonize over whose looking at my profile or tracking my online usage. I have nothing to hide, and nothing to be ashamed about. What some tech nerd in Washington D.C. might be doing with my internet history doesn’t bother me right now at least because who really cares what I google search or who I facebook creep on as long as I’m not doing anything illegal. I do think though that the thought of the technological footprint we will accumulate by the time we die is kind of creepy. I bet by the time we’re about to die, there would be some way to track down every single internet search we’ve done, phone call we’ve made, credit card purchase, and track where we’ve been for our entire lives. I think as technology right now is still in it’s early years relatively speaking, privacy is something we should be thinking about for the future, but not freaking out about right now (to some degree).