Saving Our World

As decades and centuries pass, cultures evolve and change as outside influences affect the interior. The changes, and some might say degradation, of these cultures are apparent everywhere, in every culture across the world. The changes can be also described as a melding of the world's cultures, in which different societies, trends, and ideas are shared across the world and integrated into the methods of the people.
I argue that this melding is not only important for the survival of our world, but a natural and appropriate evolution of society.
Firstly, the only way to combat and defeat the problems of the world, including poverty, hunger, and death, we must be able to understand how attempts across the world have worked or failed in order to solve the problems. Our world faces an unbelievable amount of problems, that are only growing.
The first way a society interacts is often through media. Media entertains, and can be universal in its message. Different societies can interact through media, and can come to common goals through the proliferation of messages displayed in mass media.
And when societies interact in a positive way, all can gain. It is worth the dissolution of certain aspects of a culture in order to save the rest of our world. Some might say that all we have is our history, but that cannot still be true in our modern world. We have come to a pivotal moment, and the melding of our media into one world media is necessary to save it.
Mass media will be our savior. The instantaneous combination of cultures through a television or the internet is an amazing thing, and should embraced. We cannot pretend that keeping a culture strong is worth the destruction of its citizens.

Interview with Mindich

I truly appreciated the tone David Mindich took in explaining his views on youth involvement in media. He seems less angry with young people for tuning out and more hopeful that a difference can be made. Although the way he communicated with us was quite kind, I believe a more hardline approach must be taken to convince young people. Considering what is at stake, and some believe it is the future of this nation, we must understand how dire the situation is if we continue to be ignorant.
There are countless ways to get involved, and I cannot believe that anything more than laziness and dispassion are the reasons for young people to become a part of our government system. There is passion, there is thievery, there is deceit, true heros, villains, and everything else that makes up all the movies, tv, and videogames we ingest. all it takes is a slightly more than cursory look at Fox News or The Atlantic or the Washington Post or CNN to figure out what makes the news fun.
So David Mindich should take a look at what he wrote, and begin preaching louder and harder to those who he seeks to influence.

Independent Radio

In San Francisco, there is one independent radio station, Energy 92.7. It's owned by a dude from SF who comes on from time to time to let the listeners know that he is not controlled by the media conglomerates, and the DJ's employs choose their own music. San Francisco is known for being independent, and following the beat of its own drum, so the autonomy of the station is a big selling point. The station does not shy away from crossing media, as they have sponsored events and broadcast their shows on the internet, but still big companies have not bought them out.
So what does the channel sound like? you can listen for yourself, on their website, but it will sound exactly like every other channel, if you replaced Britney Spears with a techno group you've probably never heard of. This channel is straight up cookie cutter, playing the same 20 songs all day. The songs that are popular at the time are the only ones that get play, and the different DJ's only say different things before they introduce the same songs all day.
Remembering listening to the channel after watching Money For Nothing brought me to the conclusion that music companies are not entirely to blame for the degredation of radio. Listeners have to shoulder some of the blame, because we love listening to the same songs over and over, and have grown to lack the patience for listening to new things. As our society becomes isolated and individual, we expect everything we know we want as soon as we ask. If Energy started playing new, independent artists, some people listening would change the channel. A similar thing happened to another Bay Area radio station, Live 105. They went from playing independent Indie Rock to horrible mainstream bulls**t rock.
As a society, we cannot pass all blame over to companies buying out stations. Our music choices need to stay varied, and support those who do something different.

Allstar Team

In our world of video games, massive sports influence, and celebrity fame bordering on ludicrous, Presidential candidate Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been slacking when it comes to going big. This may come as a shock to those inundated with the Barack Obama Music Video, his face on every magazine, his admittance to smoking weed, and his sit-down chats with rappers. He has been faltering at the most important time in this election, when he has a direct chance to destroy his opponent. Biden has also lost a similar chance. The debates of the past few days have left me unimpressed, and I want to deal with both of them separately.
Barack, against the petulant and slow Mccain, could have used all of the drama and fame he has built up to grandstand his opponent. Instead, they politely sparred over issues and neither seemed to be the clear winner. Everyone knows Obama is charismatic. That’s the point. That debate could have been a tipping point, and yet it felt like a steadying of the two opponents.
Biden, on the other hand, was exactly what I wish Obama had been: he choked up when speaking about his children, he laughed outright at the claims made by Palin, he was entertaining. I was watching CNN, and every time a question was posed to Biden, the group of undecided Ohio voters they had grouped together beginning voting positively toward what he was saying, or even before he had started.
The Obama/Biden team must embrace their popularity and demonstrate their confidence. Smarmy and secretive identify what most people think of the past administration. Obama was right to tell us that he smoked, and inhaled, because that’s the point. He just now needs to apply that idea to the rest of his campaign.
Every media medium we observe is coming together, on the internet. In that way, publicity has become more public, and everything is on display. One opinion can spawn a myriad of links, videos, other articles, podcasts, and youtube videos. In our culture, it is necessary to omnipresent and entertaining, and Obama's next appearance needs to reflect this.