Where to Invade Next

In Michael Moore’s 2015 film Where to Invade Next he travels around the world to various countries to learn about parts of their culture that he wants to “steal” for the United States.  He traveled to Italy, France, Finland, Slovenia, Germany and Portugal to talk to people about thinks related to their work and educational lives.  The section of the film that I found most interesting thus far was the part about school lunches.

I have seen images online comparing American school lunches served around the world like the one linked below from The Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/25/school-lunches-around-the-world_n_6746164.html

Even though I had seen lists like that online and making the rounds on social media, I found it fascinating to hear the responses that Moore got from the students and chef in the French school.  Prior to seeing the film, most of what I noticed or had heard about school lunches around the world focused mostly on the freshness or how recognizable the food was.  However, in Where to Invade Next Moore went more in depth behind the choices of how lunch is served to the French students.  The first part of this that stuck out to me was that the school has a dietitian come in to work with the chef to design the upcoming menu for lunches, which I found very impressive.  French students also have a one-hour lunch block rather than the twenty minutes that many American students get.  The meal consists four courses, including one cheese course and a desert.  This hour is not just for students to socialize, but it actually more of a class that focuses on manners.  During their lunch period, French students learn about eating politely, and serving each other.  The students are also served by the chefs, which I imagine would teach them how to appropriately treat waiters and waitresses when they go out to eat.  The schools also don’t have any vending machines and just about all of their food is fresh.  Surprisingly the chef’s in French school spend less money than in American schools and they still have better quality food, even in the poorer schools.

Geek Heresy by Kentaro Toyama - Chapters 5-7

          In these chapters, Kentaro Toyama explored how technology and digitizing the world has changed what people value.  He started chapter five with an anecdote about book stores in Harvard Square while he was in college and by 2013 Amazon held a third of all book sales in the US and about sixty percent of e-books.  Towards the end of chapter five, Kentaro Toyama had a section titled The Tech Commandments, which I found really interesting.  The Tech Commandment categorizes how values have shifted because of technology.  Toyama acknowledges that could be an exaggeration, but they are not an extreme stretch.  The Tech Commandments consists of:

-       Measurement over meaning: value only that which can be counted

-       Quantity over quality: Do only those things that affect millions over people

-       Ultimate goals over root causes: Focus narrowly on the end goal to ensure success

-       Destinationalism over path dependency:  Ignore history and context, take a single hop to the destination

-       External over internal: Do not expect people to change; instead, focus exclusively on their external circumstances

-       Innovation over tried-and-true: never do anything that has been done before, at least not without new branding

-       Intelligence over wisdom: Maximize cleverness and creativity, not mundane effort.  Use intelligence and talent to justify arrogance, selfishness, immaturity and rankism. (Rankism is abuse humiliation, exploitation, or subjugation based on any kind of social rank)

-       Value neutrality over value engagement: Bypass values and ethics by pretending to value neutrality

-       Individualism over collectivism: Let competition lead to efficiency; avoid cooperation, which breeds complacency and corruption.  Any inhibition of individual expression, including compromise to support the common good, is the same as oppression.

-       Freedom over responsibility: Encourage more choices; discourage discernment in choosing.  Any temperance of liberty, including encouragement of responsibility is tantamount to tyranny.

I found these commandments to be pretty close to what I’ve observed around me.  A lot of what he talks about in these chapters is about how people are focused more on making their lives easier and looking for the quick fix or the easiest path rather than the most rewarding or what brings us the most success and fulfillment in the long run.  An example of “quick fixes” that he used that I really liked was “Teaching to the Test.”  Toyama explained that because schools are under so much pressure to have high test scores they “turn to quick fixes: technologies and methodologies that drill students in minor variations of common test questions.  However, rather than fostering curious, productive, well-informed, and well-adjusted citizens, the mindless drilling erodes students’ motivation to learn.”(Toyama 94)  I think that this is completely the case, at least where I’m from, because a large portion of our core classes only focused on the two standardized tests that we had to take and feeding us practice questions so the school would look good compared to surrounding towns.

In chapter 6, Toyama talked about his time at the Technology Access Foundation (TAF).  He talked about how powerful of a tool technology can be, but how teachers have to be very careful with it, using the example of how some classes open a laptop and start their school work, but others open a laptop and instantly start watching YouTube videos.  He talk about how there should be set rules that are explained at the beginning of the school year and stuck to.  Toyama explained how it took him a while being at TAF before figuring out which rules worked for him and his class and took some adjusting to get it right.  In this case they were just using laptops and had figure how to best use them, but there are now people who specialize in technology for education.  Schools higher these specialists to work in the school and figure out what kind of technology, whether it be software or different devices, and work with the teachers to see what will best help their classes learn in a productive, and maybe even fun, way.

No Laptop Left Behind: Conflicting Results in Educational Technology

             In Chapter One of Geek Hersey: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology, Kentaro Toyama explored how having access to computers effects education, even if other factors that contribute to a person’s education are dismal.  A quote that really stuck out to me was “talent is universal; opportunity is not.”  I feel like that quote could apply to so many different areas and still be true. 

            The part of this chapter about bringing laptops to parts of India reminded me of the One Laptop Per Child program, that developed special laptops bring to schools in developing countries.  There was also a program, which I can’t remember the name of, that put couple of computers in rural areas of developing countries and made it so only children could use them, by adding low overhangs and other barriers that mad it difficult for adults to use.  The idea behind this was to have kids learn and learn about technology, so in theory they could be more competitive globally.  Though these programs may have been helpful in some ways, as Toyama pointed out, just because a child has access to technology, that technology isn’t necessarily going to help them process information any quicker or more effectively.  Toyama explained how education needs to be a “two-way interaction” rather than having kids just learn by looking at a screen.  Even though people can communicate through technology, I think is important for kids to learn from a present person for two reasons.  One is that a person being in front of them teaching will give them more of a personalized education where they can ask specific questions and have special needs met if necessary.  The other is that not only are kids learning academic material in schools, but they are also learning socials skills. In class, we have talked so much about how social media changes how we communicate.  I can’t help but thing what a luxury we had growing up with face-to-face conversations and are now able to recognize these differences.  I think if kids grew up with such a high percentage of their communication through a computer, they would lack basic social skills when they became adults.

Black Mirror Season 1 Episode 2

In class we watched the second episode of the first season of Black Mirror titled “Fifteen Million Merits.”  The dystopia that is created in this episode would be terrifying to live in.  The first scene literally shows the main character, Bing, waking up in what I consider a box.  What stuck out most to me about this small room is that there were no windows, and no sign of a world outside of it.  Ironically a country sunrise scene with an animated rooster is what Bing woke up to everyday.  This rural scene, and Bing’s “rolling road” selection on his bike indicated early on that Bing was going to be a character that desired a “simpler life” or someone who valued the outdoors. One the show, people live their lives between the little boxes that are essentially their homes, and stationary bikes that they peddle day in and day out to earn “merits” which is what they use as currency.  They use these merits to buy food, apps for their room, entertainment, and to pay penalties on skipping ads or content that they do not want to experience.  The show also has its own talent show, Hot Shot (similar our America’s Got Talent), for fifteen million merits a person can audition for the show.  Success from the show promises a better life, one where you can pick out your own clothes and look outside every day (what a concept!).  Bing spends his inheritance to get his friend on the show for her singing ability.  When she is degraded and taken advantage of, he works tirelessly to get himself on the show to make a statement, threatening to take his own life in the process.  In the end, he becomes part of exactly what he hated and has his own show.  When we see his life then, we see how much of a façade it really is, because seeing outdoors means seeing screens with images of trees on them.

Liza Smith-Vedder Presentation: The History of Advertising

I really enjoyed Liza Smith-Vedder’s presentation on The History of Advertising and how advertising works into the newspaper business.  Even though I am an MJD (media studies, journalism, and digital arts) major, I have never learned a whole lot about advertising, so it was cool to be able to get an overview of the history of advertising during this presentation.  A thread that went throughout her presentation was that as long as advertising has existed, people have hated it.  We learned that people are more likely go survive a plane crash rather than click on a banner ad on website.  We also learned about how intrusive people find it to be and how they’ve always seen that way, since way back when malls and stores were created and began to replace corner markets.  Not only do people have a disdain for advertisements, but also people have not trusted advertisements they see for a very long time.  People don’t trust ads, because historically advertisements have been extremely deceiving, which have earned them their reputation as being untrustworthy reputation.  Another theme throughout this presentation is how advertisers are always one step ahead, one step ahead of consumers and one step ahead of government regulations.  They are always finding ways to persuade consumers in not necessarily the most ethical ways to buy their products or services.  An example that we saw many times with cigarette ads.  First they claimed those cigarettes are good for you then when it was outlawed to blatantly lie about your products effects, so the companies started saying that more doctors smoke their cigarettes than any other ones.  Ads are also always one step ahead of the consumer in how they capture the public’s attention.  The advertisements that we see online are so tailored to us, that we don’t even necessarily notice that they are interfering with our online experience.  The example we discussed most was Facebook and how personalized the ads we see are.  This reminded me of in our Global Communications class when we learned about filter bubbles.  While learning about filter bubbles we talked about several different examples and facets of them, but while discussing Facebook, I think we leaned that they use 57 sensors to determine what content (including ads) shows up on your news feed.

Another part of the presentation that I found fascinating was how script has changed over time.  It was just a very small detail of the presentation, but when we were looking at pictures of old newspapers, particularly one from Pennsylvania (which looked like Pennfilvania), it was amazing to see how much lettering in our own language has evolved over time.

Creators Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: Chapters 5 & 6

             In the fifth chapter of the Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling, the author explains that the reasons to use a transmedia approach can “fall into two basic camps: the business case and your creative vision.”(41) They explain how transmedia storytelling allows for more opportunities for the storyteller to work with and sell from.  They then use several examples of extremely successful series in Hollywood including True Blood, Twilight, Game of Thrones, and Lord of the Rings.  All of these series were book series and then were turned into either films or television shows.  I am not super into any of these series, but from what I know, because they have such large followings, there are countless different ways that the companies market these stories, the most obvious being the books and film productions, but I’m sure there are also spin off productions, online publications, merchandise, etc.  I think that when a franchise is able to market their stories in so many different ways they are able to do two things, sell multiple different things, and to multiple different groups of people that they may not have been able to reach before.  What I mean by that is that different types of media effect different people in different ways.  So if the book or the movies don’t appeal to someone, the other might.  Also, people react differently to different mediums, so having those multiple different experiences will allow the companies to market different products or messages.  As beneficial as transmedia storytelling can be, it also must be carefully crafted, because “every single element of a transmedia story has to be fulfilling a narrative purpose, without exception.”(43) 
          Chapter 6 takes a step back and looks at the “Basics of Traditional Storytelling.”  This acts as a guide for people who are not already storytellers to catch up so they can effectively utilize the transmedia story telling method.  They go over the importance and use of elements of a good story such as character, conflict, plot, rising tension, setting and mood, theme, and originality.  I really liked their use of examples that a lot of people would recognize such as Romeo and Juliet, and Star Wars, because I think that will help people have a deeper understanding of what they are trying to explain about good storytelling.

Vimeo - User's Rights

         Vimeo is a video sharing website that was founded in 2004 by a group of filmmakers.  It is similar to YouTube, but appeals to a different audience because of the type of material that is featured on the site.  Content on Vimeo is typically much higher quality than on YouTube, and it tends to be filled with more indie films, documentaries and journalistic productions.

I was curious to look into the rights that Vimeo has to use a video, or part of a video that has been uploaded onto their website.  I know in the past, I have seen things about social media sites being able to use content that users have uploaded, typically for advertising purposes.  I wasn’t able to find anything that said exactly what I was looking for, but I did read through their Privacy Policy and most of the Legal section of their website.  I also looked for any issues with users and how Vimeo has used their content and there didn’t appear to be any issues.  Vimeo has a very extensive FAQ and legal section on their website to inform their users of their rights and different licensing options.

Vimeo explains what the creative commons license is, and directs producers how to use it if they so desire.  It is important to note that the copyright owner is the one who is able to decide if they want to apply a creative commons license to their work, it is not the decision of the person who wants to use their work.  They explain the four main possible conditions to the creative commons license.  The first it attribution, meaning that other people can copy, display, distribute, perform, or remix your work as long as they give you credit for the original work.  Next is no derivative works, which unlike attribution does not allow any alterations to be made to your work, but others are allowed to copy, distribute, display or perform it as long as it is verbatim to the original.  The share alike aspect allows others to distribute your work as long as it’s under a license identical to the one that you have chosen for that piece of work.  Another common aspect of the creative commons license is non-non commercial meaning that the other people can not make any money off of their copy, distribution, display, performance, or remix of your work.  Another option that Vimeo points out is the Public Domain Dedication, which means you allow others to copy, modify, distribute, and perform your work without asking your permission.  Vimeo then gives resources for users to further learn about their licensing options.

Vimeo is very clear in claiming no responsibility for any copyright infringement that occurs as a result of a video being posted on their site.  Because you still own the copyright to your intellectual property and whichever content you upload, it is up to you to fight copyright infringements.

The website does not use a DMR (Digital Rights Management) technology to prevent piracy for several reasons.  The claim that the most important reason is because there aren’t any DMR technologies that have proven effective.  Also, using DMR can diminish the quality and accessibility of videos, and is would “substantially increase the cost of hosting your videos.”

Vimeo offers several different options for producer to choose from regarding who can see their video and what they can do with it.  They include an option to add a download button to your videos for people to download onto their computers.  They also have six main privacy settings, which include: 

• Anyone - anyone can view the video
• Only me - only the producer is able to see the uploaded video
• Only people I follow – only people that the uploader follows on Vimeo can see it
• Only people I choose – only people that the producer selects can view it, this will only work if the people you are sharing with are also Vimeo members
• Only people with a password – The producer is able to choose a password for the video and share it with whomever they’d like to, this includes non-Vimeo members
• Hide this video from Vimeo.com (Plus + PRO only) – This allows people to post their video to the web, but not show it on vimeo.com, this also removes it from public albums, channels, and groups