In reviewing the Marx reading in class and on my own, I came to some sad conclusions about my faith in modern man. I understand in full the differentiation Marx attempts to make between human, one who is able to reflect on the society which they have created, and animal, one who blindly acquires only what they need to survive. I also understand that Marx's beef is that people willingly turn their life activity over to someone or something else and it is no longer the object of their will and concsiousness, and that his ultimate goal ould be to create time for people to live human life beyond mere animal survival...

But it takes far more work for people to figure out the world around them than it does to just survive. I conclude that people simply aren't willing to do the extra work it takes to figure out their world. And the notion of figuring out the world in itself, is masked by things like entertainment media and TV news. It is more work to listen to NPR than to watch CNN headline news. Here's where I get confused though: is it more work to tinker with your facebook profile than it is to listen to NPR news? Where along the way do we become more attracted to the facebook-esque work than we do the NPR-esque work?

I think it boils down to alienation that Marx refers to. That is, people unwilling or unable to realize that the ills of the world are a result of human activity, rather they exist on their own terms and exist on a completely different plane than the one on which they are living.

So the question is, what are people supposed to do? It would to take a complete reformation of a multitude of institutions, schools, the media, the government, etc, to invoke any sort of change. I simply don't have the faith in humans, Americans at least, to beleive that this will ever happen.

I guess my pessimism and boarderline depression spurs from the ongoing disaster in Iraq and the unwillingness of anyone to admit that it is as bad as all the supposed bleeding-heart liberals said it would be. Last year I saw Seymour Hirsch speak here at Iowa and in discussing the Iraq war, it was almost as though he was looking through a crystal ball. This is one place where I get my news and I really like this guy despite that I hate u of Michigan: http://www.juancole.com/.
I especially like the Donald Rumsfeld rip found linked here: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-09-25T232516Z_01_N25287562_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-USA.xml&archived=False

Continuing the postmodern trend of bluring the line between reality and virtual life is NBA Live 07, a basketball video game for the Xbox 360. Using what they call "ESPN Integration" you can recieve real world sports news and scores in the form of a ticker at the bottom of your screen. Also, the game give you live ESPN Radio clips every 2 minutes. And, for the gamer who doesn't want to leave the gaming experience, you can watch actual ESPN content in the game, for free.

Here's what it is: http://www.easports.com/nbalive07/theater.jsp?media=videos&mediaID=105

This feature certainly caters to the sports hungry American by emersing him or her into a virtual and live sports experience. This notion contributes to the idea of the social factory. Working for ESPN by consuming its content while playing a video game. ESPN integration conflates hyper-activity and leisure time by making ESPN content available at all time; on your computer, on TV, on your cell phone, and in your videe game. It's like ESPN is an unescapable stalker obsessed with feeding you sporting news.

Why aren't sports journalists held to the same level of accountability as news journalists? Just as news journalists attempt to hold the government accountable for its actions, so should sports journalists with their governments, the leagues and the teams. Being from Chicago, for example, I want to know why the Cubs are so bad. The reasons that are given on a daily basis by sports writers are merely opinions that passes for journalism.

iTunes is becoming a monster. With the addition of movies and TV shows, they have become a more direct Amazon Who cares about owning the CD or DVD itself? Not too long ago, owning the actual disc was the commodity. Now the media file itself is the commodity. People are obsessed with obtaining music. I am guilty of it. I have 100 days worth of music. I have never listened to music for an entire day, let alone 100 straight days. But I have it, and the consumer in me loves it. If someone requests a song, bam, I got it. And, at 99 cents a pop, iTunes is a great way to fulfill the need to acquire something, without taxing your bank account too severely.

Bill Gates' clairvoyant article n seems to accurately depict the trend of consumption in our world. iTunes is just one of many examples we could use to illustrate a friction-free capitalist society. In high school, my parents gave me a Shell "speed pass." Not only did this little gizmo allow me to purchase gas with only a swipe, but it worked at McDonald's also. The speed pass heightened my generosity when it came to feeding my friends at McDonald's or with munchies from the gas station store. My parents received the astronomical monthly bill and revoked my speed pass privileges. Point is a friction-free purchasing environment will cause people to spend beyond their means.

Television and film portray friction-free spending. In any scene where people shop you never see them actually pay, it just cuts from the store to the person walking out with bags.

We talked about the possibility of integrating shopping and viewing. I think that system will be integrated into golf soon. Here's what I mean:
http://www.nike.com/nikegolf/swingportrait/
This is also an example of how producers of sport are trying to make real life seem more virtual.

The recent Facebook uproar makes me question who authorizes such amendments to the page. And is it the same mongoloid who considers my fumbling about Facebook to be “news”? Granted, a profile on Facebook is not mandatory, but neither is the gradual addition of invasive features such as the news feed. It’s as if Facebook is attempting to delegate life, specifically friendship, to its website (Mumford). When friendship is just a click away, we can scrap the “getting-to-know-you” process and dive head first into our new friends’ personal lives. Oddly, Facebookers are hardly reticent to publicize highly personal information and compromising pictures on their profiles. We’re a generation willing to trade our privacy for public exposure, in conjunction with our celebrity obsession and the desire to mimic celebrity culture. Facebook recreates the reluctant voyeurism much like flipping through US Weekly. It’s consistent with a generation unashamed of guilty pleasures. We know something is in poor taste of poor quality, The OC for example, yet we embrace it nonetheless. So even though Facebookers are aware that the new format is insidious and obtrusive, is it just another guilty pleasure? One could argue that this technology follows a constructivist model, wherein the use of a technology depends on social conditions and relations that arise. Facebook knows its members because we have told them everything about us. They modify their site to appeal to us. In a twisted way, Facebook has given us what we want, whether we approve or not: Leering voyeurism into the lives of our peers who take guilty pleasure out of knowing their every move is being documented, like a cyber paparazzi following wannabe celebrities.


Juan Cole on trust in the government: http://www.juancole.com/2006/09/bush-abu-zubayda-and-end-of-trust-bush.html

Apple, those sly dogs: http://www.cjrdaily.org/the_audit/apple_gets_reporters_with_same.php