Ignorant Generation

There has been a long debate concerning the life of Jesus. Some people claim that Jesus never existed; some said that he was just a myth; some believed that Jesus is just fabricated by the church and that the Bible has been transcribed “so many times” that its essence has become corrupted.

Many in our generation today remain ignorant of the facts relating to the word of God and his second coming, unaware that it will occur.

The Crusaders ‘Chaos’ Volume 5 shows the reality that will happen at any point of time. The promise written in the Bible that God will return in His kingdom.

In then material provided, one image caught my attention. The illustration shows that the people are marked on their forehead with ‘666’ which was known and rumored to be the symbol of the devil.

According to the perspective in the book of Revelation, this was said to be as the symbol for the ‘beast’. The 666 is the number of the beast described in the passage of Revelation 13:15-18. Christians believed that the mark or number of the beast will be a financial identification system that the Anti-Christ will establish during the tribulation. Everyone who receives or have this mark will have to swear allegiance to the Anti-Christ and acknowledge the beast as the supreme authority. This is why those who have the mark will be placed in hell. Those who choose not to have the mark won’t be able to buy anything because cash, checks, and any form of money won’t be recognized. Everything will be replaced with the beast’s system’s instant funds. When you have this sign, you’ve already sold your soul to the devil.

In the comics material provided, there’s a statement saying that the beast would have the control over everything but it is not stated and specified on what form of control. It may have been a control using the technology because as we can see, nowadays, everything is controlled and is connected with technology.

We are under the command of technology, today, we are unable to have information as much as we want if we don’t have technology. We are too dependent on technology with everything in our lives. We can’t communicate and disseminate information if we don’t have technology.

In my own understanding, the ‘beast’ mentioned in the material that will have a control over us will be the technology. In the Psychoanalytical approach wherein individuals are unaware of the many factors that cause their behaviour and emotions. These unconscious behaviours have the chance to produce unhappiness. In connection with the comic material, if people in the future would have chosen to have the ‘mark of the beast’ in order to survive, it might have been because they wanted to survive. They wanted not to be left behind on the trend and that they wanted to ‘belong’ no matter what the cost will be.

In conclusion, God is no fool. He has spoken through prophets directly and indirectly through scribes. The message remains clear because the Lord has protected it through each and every action. Our Almighty Father has given us all the evidences we need to seek truth. “If we reject it without providing evidences, not only are we fools, but we are fools with no valid excuse. “

Jira Ela Margarette Pillado Lamis 2012 – 55842

Television: Stress Buster

Television nowadays appears to be a stress buster for us but then as studies shows, it actually adds to your mental stress. Television may seem to help us get rid of our tensions but it adds burden to our brain according to studies. Yes, television has its negative effects and has sever negative impact on the minds of the watchers.

Spending too much time watching television consumes our  time than can rather be spent in other fruitful and healthy activities like exercising or reading. It also uses up our time that can be spent with our family and friends. Spending time with our loved ones is a better expenditure of time than in watching TV.

Children today watch television for long hours. They spend their evenings watching their favourite program on TV, at times they stay up late to watch films. This activity adds to their sedentary hours. Addiction to television deprives them of their time to play. They should be playing outdoors with their friends, engage in physical activities and read books rather than spending their time watching television.

According to researchers, attention deficit disorders in children are a result of watching television for long everyday. They say that watching television leads to developmental disorders, affecting that faculty of the brain which is responsible for their language skills. Children who watch more television and read less, show difficulties in paying attention or concentrating.

Nowadays, television is one of the affective media used to promote all kinds of products. Unsupervised television watching in children can lead to early exposure to things that they may not understand or may misinterpret. Television advertisements my influence the children to resort to improper measures. Commercials about fast foods, junk foods, softdrinks and others that are not good for the health are bound to leave an impact on children by watching them.  Advertisements, films and programs leaves impact and influences young minds by thoughts and behaviour.

Television is one means of recreation but its excessive use is detrimental to one’s physical and mental health. We need to strike a balance of everything in life.

Television nowadays appears to be a stress buster for us but then as studies shows, it actually adds to your mental stress. Television may seem to help us get rid of our tensions but it adds burden to our brain according to studies. Yes, television has its negative effects and has sever negative impact on the minds of the watchers.

Spending too much time watching television consumes our  time than can rather be spent in other fruitful and healthy activities like exercising or reading. It also uses up our time that can be spent with other things.

Children today watch television for long hours. They spend their evenings watching their favourite program on TV, at times they stay up late to watch films. This activity adds to their sedentary hours. Addiction to television deprives them of their time to play. They should be playing outdoors with their friends, engage in physical activities and read books rather than spending their time watching television.

According to researchers, attention deficit disorders in children are a result of watching television for long everyday. They say that watching television leads to developmental disorders, affecting that faculty of the brain which is responsible for their language skills. Children who watch more television and read less, show difficulties in paying attention or concentrating.

Nowadays, television is one of the affective media used to promote all kinds of products. Unsupervised television watching in children can lead to early exposure to things that they may not understand or may misinterpret. Television advertisements my influence the children to resort to improper measures. Commercials about fast foods, junk foods, softdrinks and others that are not good for the health are bound to leave an impact on children by watching them.  Advertisements, films and programs leaves impact and influences young minds by thoughts and behaviour.

Television is one means of recreation but its excessive use is detrimental to one’s physical and mental health. We need to strike a balance of everything in life.

Digitizing Privacy

There’s no better way to put it in this information age of ours. In our highly digitize world, it’s easy for anyone to gather information about you if you’re using some form of technology. In fact, the more you put technology as part of your life, the easier it is to gather intelligence about you.

Since 2004, Facebook has more than 600 million active users, as it is, it is the fastest-growing and biggest social networking site. Millions and millions of people log in to Facebook everyday, updating their status and checking out updates from their friends. Nowadays, if you’re not inclined to it, you might encounter the ‘information gap’ between you and your peers who are updated every now and then from social networking sites.

It’s also funny how we all know that Facebook collects data about what we do, what we eat, where we are and possibly share that information to third parties organizations without our consent, and yet we still don’t really let that bother us much. In other words, the things that we post on Facebook aren’t really erased even when we ‘delete’ them from our profile or wall; they are still somewhere in the cyberspace, perhaps available to be traded. Yet we continue to make our most personal posts, as if to repress such knowledge of privacy violation into our subconscious in a Freudian sense of things. Or maybe some of us think it’s a great idea after all, since we get information that is of interest and relevant to us, and not just random advertising junks.

Although Facebook provide us with privacy settings, such that we can configure our account to only allow our friends to view our posts, I don’t think it’s sufficient to guarantee that your data only visible by people whom you want to. Well, it can never be foolproof when we’re talking about the internet. People can still tag you in their own photos and that can be seen by their friends or strangers. Even if we make it a point to only reveal our posts to our friends on the list, there’s still and many ways for people to gather information about you. For one, they can peek into a mutual friend’s account and see what you’ve posted, they can save your photo to their desktop and they could really get to what you do except if you’re not updating your profile.

In other scenarios, we may have that “cyberstalkers”. Cyberstalking Cyberstalking doesn’t only implicates on your online life; sometimes it can very well translate to the offline world. For example the fact that some Facebook users like to ‘check in’ to places they or post their routine running routes via some mobile phone applications, they can easily be the target of stalkers. Such information, when accumulated and analyzed, is exceptionally useful for them to stalk their victims in real-life. It might happen to all of us.

In my opinion, I think we should exercise caution and not divulge too much information about ourselves, allowing our privacy gets violated and end up in unforeseen troubles. It remains a mystery how much information Facebook actually gather from us, but advertisements we see when we log in to Facebook seem strangely well-tailored to our preferences and needs. Facebook is a free service, so these advertisements are primarily where the revenues came from. It might be used against us and may cause us trouble in some point. We could say that our privacy is at stake because what we do in Facebook may be closely monitored, kept and passed on without our actual consent.

Impact of technology in social change

There is no doubt that technological change brings about social change. The Industrial revolution saw many people displaced from their land, to find work in crowded city factories.

Advances in technology, is generally not equitably shared within society. People with money have more opportunity to acquire technology, which enables them to acquire even more wealth. It is also important to remember that war has been and will continue to be the driving force for technology and innovation. Power and wealth are intrinsically tied together. Technology leads to greater social economic division. Laborers are viewed as commodities and expendable. Technology leads to alienation because it can create jobs that require no specialist knowledge.

The internet in its current form was developed as a free exchange of information, unregulated by any one government or owned by any one person or company. In its raw form it was the playground of hackers and computer geeks, who challenged the status quo. It brings about a new era, the technological revolution. The free flow of informations has brought about technological advances at an unprecedented rate and has made many rich and brought companies who failed to adapt to a standstill.

Resisting the tide of technological change is impossible. Of course it is possible to do business without a website or email or mobile phone or a fax machine. People have been doing business well before any of these gadgets were invented. But business today is about competition, and technology is about leverage. Technology can lead to alienation if it is not widely dispersed in society. The Industrial age saw the concentration of technology in the hands of the rich and powerful, allowing them to dominate and subdue the population into harsh working conditions and the social impact of the internet and computers is only just beginning, will it challenge the status quo or will it lead to greater population control?

Social change is not brought about by technology alone.

Social change is driven by those who want to see change; by those who have the disposition to innovate and use technology for improving lives or solving social injustice.

Communicating through Social Media

Multidimensional interactions have altered the basic rules of communication social media has drastically changed how we communicate. Not too long ago, we communicated through the mail, on a land-line telephone, and in person. Today, we send text messages; leave voice messages; use instant messenger; send emails; talk through headphones, cell phones, and online video phones; and, of course, interact through the Internet where a plethora of social media tools has redefined communication. Such a redefinition has had an enormous effect. The entire paradigm of social media has altered the basic rules of communication, especially between business and their audiences. The one way communication methods of the recent past—business-to-customer and business-to-business—have been replaced by a more robust multidimensional communication model. That model is collectively called social media.

Today, everyone from teenagers to seniors are using digital media to communicate about the issues that are important to them. Social media, in particular, can be a creative way to tell your story to a targeted audience.

Digital media, however, does not work in a vacuum. For it to be effective, it should be integrated into a larger communications plan.

“Facebook is the most popular social network in the world, with over 350 million users, so it should come as no surprise to discover that people are using it as a primary tool for communication. However, our survey results also show that people are still using more established methods of communication, from the phone to email. It is important for organizations to understand these trends if they want to reach their customers exactly where and how they would like to be reached. As attitudes change and new methods of human interaction develop, businesses must stay ahead of the trends.” said Hazel Butters, CEO of Prompt Communications.

A Facebook page can help people become more deeply connected to your mission. They can add themselves as fans, write on your wall, upload photos, and join other fans in discussion groups. It could interconnect each and everyone whenever they want to. To communicate effectively in the social media world means understanding the new rules of the road. People want: To have a say. Meaningful dialogue.To be engaged and involved in the process. Personal interactions with others. To be listened to. To help shape what they find useful. To connect with others engaged in similar activities.

People overall believe that advances in technology have created a negative effect on their lives and interpersonal communications. More than half believe communication relies too much on technology, while some feel social media is making communication less personal. Despite these reservations, people are still using social media regularly.

As a conclusion, we are inherently more comfortable using the tools of social media to communicate with their network of peers and friends because we have lived with it and revolve our lives into it.

 

 

Don’t Get Ran Over!

Impact of Technology and Media Today

Over the past century until now, technology has served the world through many different ways, whether it’s the flick of a switch to turn on a light bulb or sending an email via internet to someone who lives across the globe. People used to walk and ride horses to travel, but today we have all sorts of transportation, including trains, cars, airplanes, etc. Computers also play a huge role in our daily lives. The first computer ever to be invented was back in 1946, in which it weighed 30 tons and was as big as two semi-trucks. Today, we have personal home computers, handheld devices, such as MP3 & MP4 players, cell phones, iPods, iPhones, and iPads that are capable of doing much more than just calculating a bunch of numbers. Although technology is able to let us do so much with the touch of a finger  the downfall of this is that the generation today is being spoon-fed with all of these technologies, it often don’t allow the time to think or listen to each other with the constant sensory stimulus of texts, tweets, Facebook updates, emails and more.

According to the article I’ve read, Blogs have been a big help to them in their situation. Blogs are not just sharing stories of survival and aggregating news coverage, but it also enables the bloggers to express their insights, rescue efforts & humanitarian assistance, and it also facilitates the grieving process. Blogs are well matched to emergency situations in which other forms of communication fail because the technologies that enable blogs, including the Internet and text-messaging, tend to be more resilient. When land lines, cell phones, and traditional utilities failed in New York City on September 11, the text-messaging capability of the BlackBerry proved to be one of the most effective sources of information exchange between individuals (Krim, 2001; Romero, 2001; Tam, 2001). Because uploading and downloading of Web content can occur wirelessly on the BlackBerry, it is also an effective vehicle for mass communication, including the dissemination of information through blogs. During prolonged power outages, the BlackBerry can run 24 hours a day for up to a week off a single charge (Holsendolph, 2001).

But then, my question is, “we also have other forms of media to give us information other than these blogs, so why should we choose these if we have other medium which could we have that do not require internet to give us information?”. According to the authors, ” As both a redundant technology and a vehicle to give voice and access to average people, blogs are a must-have addition to crisis communication toolkits. Although several of the functions we identified in these blogs are also represented in mass media, such as information and political communication, they serve an important function during crises when traditional mass media may not be able to provide the information available to bloggers because of limited accessibility to the affected areas. It would be interesting for future research to examine if these functions differ in other crisis situations either past or future.” In this point I agree, more reliable information could be given credibly and accurately than any form of media could give.

Constant communication through use of technology is changing the way people think of themselves and how they communicate. They can get attention, always be heard, and never have to be alone. Connecting electronically can also lead to isolation. Understanding the prospective of critical sociology and how media practices impact what is seen as normal affects society’s values. The ease of connecting through technology and communicating online does have an impact on culture locally and globally as more and more people choose to communicate online instead of in person.

 

 

References:

Macias, W., Hilyard, K., &Freimuth, V. Blog Functions as Risk and Crisis Communication During Hurricane Katrina. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. (2009)