CL Jenkins

This weeks reading hit me as particularly relevant, especially as I sit here now at the dining room table typing sitting in front of three vintage Star Wars posters. Shall we begin?

Jenkins says "Patterns of media consumption have been profoundly altered by a succession of new media technologies which enable citizens to participate in the archiving, annotation, appropriation, transformation, and recirculation of media conent" (pg 554). Okay, well, obviously. That is exactly what I am doing- all of us in this class- are doing right now, of course with The Daily Show on in the background-we are so post modern. But I digress. Sorry Jenkins, I will continue worshipping your postmodernity.

Jenkins goes on to say "Particicpatory culture refers to the new style of consumerism that emerges in this environment. If media convergence is to become a viable corporate strategy, it will be because consumers have learned new ways to interact with media content" (PC 554). These are all very apparent in this new generation of kids who are technologically capable beyond the previous generations wildest dreams.

Let's take for instance the Holy Grail of technology and interacting- MySpace. On this website people can post videos, pictures, and music on their own personal webpages. For instance, this past week at work on of my coworkers and I took turns singing the chorus of "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" by Sophie B. Hawkins. And wouldn't you know it, tonight when I got home from school and logged on, she had posted the video of the song from a YouTube clip on my page. There you go. We are multimedia.

But I'm sure silly songs from the 80s, which on a side note I should add both my coworker and I were too little to remember and are therefore commenting on something that came before our time in an ironic way (postmodernsim!), is not all Jenkins meant. Society is evolving and changing with technology. I have thought about what Dr. Roger said on last Tuesday night about society losing tract of reality as a main concern of his. Is this what Jenkins meant? While we are forced to interact and hold a conversation with multimedia everyday, whether it is as silly as posting videos on personal webpages or as corporate as a business meeting, are we in fact losing touch with the "reality" we used to live in?