This past Sunday was the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards Ceremony. The big winners of the night, like Birdman‘s defeat of expected winner Boyhood or Uzo Aduba’s defeat of Edie Falco and Julia Louis-Dreyfus for Outstanding Performance of a Female Actor in a Comedy Series, surprised many, and even disappointed some. Nonetheless, it was a night that added diversity and variety to the year’s cinematic and television winners.
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An essay by Leon Wiestelier appeared on the front page of the physical form of the Times’ Sunday Book Review and in digital form on the Books section of the Times’ expansive website. The online presentation of this article held some of the criteria of change delineated earlier this year in the New York Time’s Innovation Report. The online presentation of the essay appeared identical to the physical twin copy in both content and presentation. Despite the recommendations of the report, the essay’s digital form was devoid of interactive additions and design changes.
The essay was highly applicable to our class’s discussion of digital disruption, with an emphasis placed on the power of humanism in our modern, technologically changing world. The democratization of knowledge is approaching swiftly. According to Wieseltier we are living in the “lag” between innovation and the postponed understanding of its consequences. Writers and intellectuals, those who maintain a faith in the power of humanism, can lessen this stagnation by accepting this technology as a new means to an end. Today’s innovation has placed immense importance on keywords. The humanist’s knowledge, theories and ideas, can provide context and substance to the searches and keywords that any person with a screen can access and investigate.
Welcome to the blog of an avid lover of books, music, and movies. Truly, the pleasure I amass from consuming popular culture is unparalleled by most. I do not hold immense concern for the future of music and movies as a result of digital disruption. However, the fading presence of books in the digital age is worrisome. I fear for literature, or lack thereof, in our changing world.
As I have aged the forums by which I receive my media coverage have changed drastically. Throughout my younger high school years, during which I lived at home in Buffalo, NY, I consumed my news and entertainment coverage via the newspaper or television. My father received, and still does to this day, daily papers from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. My family utilized the media coverage offered by television as well. My mother likes to begin her early morning days with a coffee and Good Morning America while my father prefers to end his days with Stephen Colbert’s comedic reports. My sisters and I would, as a result of the familial habits, involuntarily streamlined our media consumption to these two forums.
Once I began attending college here at the University of Michigan, I wandered further away from these practices. I started utilizing more technology, such as my iPhone or new Mac computer, to access online forums and websites providing media coverage. The easiness and accessibility of the Internet works in tandem with my unhealthy subscription addiction and allows me to receive news coverage from The New York Times, CNN, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone. Additionally, I have found myself using Facebook more and more as a way to consume media coverage. Shared articles, news, and photos of international events produce, in my opinion, a higher level of connectivity and international awareness. This tighter and well-informed network is one of the few inarguably beneficial byproducts of our social media obsessed millennial generation.
Recycle the books and play the podcasts 