Author: D. Sader

Reduce the Chance of War

Formulate a list of specific recommendations for political and social changes that might reduce the chance of war. Referring to current events in the world today evaluate the likelihood of such political and social changes coming about.

Artificial Perceptions and Arbitrary Values

Analyze your current experiences with some feature of the Interent using McLuhan’s ideas.

Marshal McLuhan died in 1980.

“All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.” Marshall McLuhan

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” Marshall McLuhan

“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” Marshall McLuhan

“Ideally, advertising aims at the goal of a programmed harmony among all human impulses and aspirations and endeavors. Using handicraft methods, it stretches out toward the ultimate electronic goal of a collective consciousness.” Marshall McLuhan

Futuristic Story

Write a futuristic story in which you present your vision of life twenty years from now.

Read an interview with Derrick de Kerckhove, author of The Augmented Mind.

How will people in the future be “always on” or “plugged in”? What will “cloud computing” look like in twenty years? What “next big thing” will replace Facebook?

How many “degrees of separation” will exist between you and your friends, your family, your children, your spouse?

How will people use their imagination twenty years from now? Will they still have one?

Kerckhove says we exist in “the era of the tag” and “tagging … is the soul of the Internet.” What remains to be tagged in the next twenty years? What will the Internet be like in twenty years?

As of 2011 more than 2.2 billion people—nearly a third of Earth’s Human population—used the services of the Internet.
… the average UK employee spent 57 minutes a day surfing the Web while at work, according to a 2003 study

Will one of the oldest forum threads on the Internet still exist in twenty years? “I am lonely will anyone speak to me”?

Newspaper Advertising

Newspapers have changed considerably in the past 30 years, specifically in response to other media, such as television and the Internet. Using a recent copy of a newspaper as a resource, compare and contrast the advertising and visual techniques of the newspaper with those in other media forms such as magazines and the Internet?In what ways have other media forms influenced newspaper advertising? In what ways have newspaper advertisements remained unique?