Monday, March 26, 2012
Presentation
In todays class, Cisco, Gage, Erick and I will be presenting about our Project X experiences. We all decided to go watch the movie in different theaters and see how it reflected on the audiece and how different areas were.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Science of Shopping: #5
For this weeks assignment, I visited the Neiman Marcus in the Topanga Mall. This wasn't my first time going there so I was pretty familiar with the layout of the store. When you walk in the store from the outside parking lot, you step foot right into the women's section... I find that strange that they cater to women so promptly. When you get on the escalators going down to the bottom floor, you see butterflies hanging from the ceiling making you feel like you're in some imaginary fairy world or something (I guess its something else to cater to women because its my moms favorite part in the entire store). Once you get to the lower floor, your left, right, and front is jewelry/make up/fragrances. The mens section is behind the escalators out of sight. Going back to the mens section, you will also see a restaurant in the store itself. What store these days has its own restaurant in it?
I feel this specific Neiman Marcus was modeled to cater to women. I always have difficulty picking out things for myself because of the narrow selection. All in all, the store is modeled in a very simple way (at least for the lower half of it) it transitions from men clothes to mens accessories to general jewelry then fragrances and finally the exit to the entire mall.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Essay: The Gamer & Reality
After watching “The Gamer”, I was shocked that the human population is projected to be in that state of mind after a certain amount of years. Its a pretty obvious fact that todays lifestyle is much faster paced than it was ten years ago. Everything seems to be happening so quick and in order to reach your goal, you need to put more effort into it. Back when I was young, I was the happiest kid on the block to even have a game boy. But nowadays we see eight year old kids walking around with iPhone’s and iPad’s. And in my opinion THAT is the reason why life (at least in America) is projected to turn out like that. To put it short, I feel that this modernization and the very quick advancement of technology is the reason why people are slacking off and doing things in unorthodox ways compared to lifestyles five, ten, or fifteen years ago.
Take business or big corporations as an example, typically what I see these days is a big chunk of them go on a video conference call when they want to have a meeting. What happened to actually going to one anothers offices and using the actual conference room? I guess its these advancements and all this spectacular technology that made society too “comfortable” where they are and keeping everyone in their little nest. Everything is done online these days making face to face communication almost close to none and this is why I can understand what Kable’s “owners” bedroom was modeled after. Almost everything is at our fingertips these days. We no longer have to call our stock brokers to buy or sell shares, we can simply log into our account and do everything ourselves. In my eyes life is turning virtual day by day and we do not notice it because of how comforting and convenient it makes everything for us. I can see a lot of this from the gamer who was playing “Society”. In my eyes he was portrayed as a slob who does not do anything productive even if his life depended on it. And the funny thing is, that his life was actually behind a television screen and his controller to his avatar.
Its not only adults who take advantage of this modernization. I constantly see young children using their new devices or playing on their gaming systems. Back when I was a child, playing consisted of going outside and riding my bike around the block, playing catch, and hide and seek. These days I only see kids playing angry birds or the hottest new app. Another example that is very common presently is young kids having Facebook’s or being members of other social networking sites. I see a lot of internet rage memes mocking 9 year olds on Facebook and why they need one in the first place. I for one totally agree with this. Just looking around me on a regular day shows me how fast were moving. How fast were growing up, how fast our lives are going. What I see happening to children starting so young these days is the same thing that happened to children in the fifties and sixties. Back then, the product was tobacco and the targeted market was adolescences because once they hooked someone at a young age to use their product, they’ll have a customer for life. This is what I feel is going on with technology and convenience of everything. They are hooking children with the hottest new product and the company has one more consumer under their belt. What I feel is that it is a part of globalization and it is simply business.
Ultimately, I think that I am not the only one who feels that we are not living the lives we use to ten or fifteen years ago. Back then, even for adults, things seemed respectively nonchalant. My parents and relatives are the only people I need so I can rough idea of how things have changed. Since both of my parents are employees versus being employers, they feel more pressured doing more work in a less amount of time. So people are being pre-programmed in a sense, just like a machine.
The only thing that I would have to strongly disagree about the movie is how violent, narrow minded, and disgusting we were portrayed to be. In the film we were portrayed as people who do not mind killing another person in a “virtual” world even though the characters are real people. Even though our lives are turning fast paced and our lifestyles are changed, it does not give justification as to why we would turn into such cruel creatures. We still care for human life and no matter how bad conditions may get, there will always be a force that brings us to a medium between good and evil and that is what I feel will not allow us to do such things. We may turn into a less productive race as a whole, but at that point, the ones who are productive, are the people who are in control (in this case the owner of “Slayers”/”Society” in the film). The entire idea of “Society” can also come into play. I understand that its a real life version of The Sims but that does not necessarily mean that we are going to be narrow minded. All you would see in Society was people wanting to have sex and just doing disgusting things in general. People who actually play The Sims do not even go that far. What you would do in life, even in a virtual world, comes from who you are as a person and what kind of background and mentality you have. These people in the film seemed like they escaped out of a mental institution or they were some sort of molester and it is truly sad that we as a human race are perceived to be so low and naive.
Take business or big corporations as an example, typically what I see these days is a big chunk of them go on a video conference call when they want to have a meeting. What happened to actually going to one anothers offices and using the actual conference room? I guess its these advancements and all this spectacular technology that made society too “comfortable” where they are and keeping everyone in their little nest. Everything is done online these days making face to face communication almost close to none and this is why I can understand what Kable’s “owners” bedroom was modeled after. Almost everything is at our fingertips these days. We no longer have to call our stock brokers to buy or sell shares, we can simply log into our account and do everything ourselves. In my eyes life is turning virtual day by day and we do not notice it because of how comforting and convenient it makes everything for us. I can see a lot of this from the gamer who was playing “Society”. In my eyes he was portrayed as a slob who does not do anything productive even if his life depended on it. And the funny thing is, that his life was actually behind a television screen and his controller to his avatar.
Its not only adults who take advantage of this modernization. I constantly see young children using their new devices or playing on their gaming systems. Back when I was a child, playing consisted of going outside and riding my bike around the block, playing catch, and hide and seek. These days I only see kids playing angry birds or the hottest new app. Another example that is very common presently is young kids having Facebook’s or being members of other social networking sites. I see a lot of internet rage memes mocking 9 year olds on Facebook and why they need one in the first place. I for one totally agree with this. Just looking around me on a regular day shows me how fast were moving. How fast were growing up, how fast our lives are going. What I see happening to children starting so young these days is the same thing that happened to children in the fifties and sixties. Back then, the product was tobacco and the targeted market was adolescences because once they hooked someone at a young age to use their product, they’ll have a customer for life. This is what I feel is going on with technology and convenience of everything. They are hooking children with the hottest new product and the company has one more consumer under their belt. What I feel is that it is a part of globalization and it is simply business.
Ultimately, I think that I am not the only one who feels that we are not living the lives we use to ten or fifteen years ago. Back then, even for adults, things seemed respectively nonchalant. My parents and relatives are the only people I need so I can rough idea of how things have changed. Since both of my parents are employees versus being employers, they feel more pressured doing more work in a less amount of time. So people are being pre-programmed in a sense, just like a machine.
The only thing that I would have to strongly disagree about the movie is how violent, narrow minded, and disgusting we were portrayed to be. In the film we were portrayed as people who do not mind killing another person in a “virtual” world even though the characters are real people. Even though our lives are turning fast paced and our lifestyles are changed, it does not give justification as to why we would turn into such cruel creatures. We still care for human life and no matter how bad conditions may get, there will always be a force that brings us to a medium between good and evil and that is what I feel will not allow us to do such things. We may turn into a less productive race as a whole, but at that point, the ones who are productive, are the people who are in control (in this case the owner of “Slayers”/”Society” in the film). The entire idea of “Society” can also come into play. I understand that its a real life version of The Sims but that does not necessarily mean that we are going to be narrow minded. All you would see in Society was people wanting to have sex and just doing disgusting things in general. People who actually play The Sims do not even go that far. What you would do in life, even in a virtual world, comes from who you are as a person and what kind of background and mentality you have. These people in the film seemed like they escaped out of a mental institution or they were some sort of molester and it is truly sad that we as a human race are perceived to be so low and naive.
Project Space CSUN
For my groups ethnography we decided to go the CSUN Pub & Grill. The function of that space is to provide student with a place to grab food, have a beer, and watch sports on the big screen. Our visit was early in the morning at around 9:45am and at that time there was barely anyone over there and the people who were there were mostly hitting the books or on their computers. However, during the day the pub gets very packed and its pretty difficult to get a table. The area serves its purpose well because students need somewhere to come hang out and relax from the hectic college curriculum and maybe get a beer, socialize, and watch some sports. I feel that CSUN as a whole is like a city. Because when i look at Los Angeles, I see people living the day to make a living in most cases which is a pretty common goal of people in L.A. So i think the same about CSUN; its a community in which everyone has almost the same goal and is trying to graduate for a better future. This of course comes with the stress like life in the actual city, which makes having the Pub really great. Students can go somewhere to hang out with friends and loosen up their nerves.
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