Yin & Yang

I have to say that these blogs are really helping me understand things. Most of the time when Mark does a lecture, I am left leaving the room with a headache. Maybe I just don’t understand his vast vocabulary, or all these theories and principles take a while to really get used to. Either way, I’ve noticed that one of the best things to do is go back to things once I’ve learned more about media in general. I think I’m one of those people who needs to see the whole picture before I can understand it. A lot of topics in media really do link back to each other though. I have a better understanding of the ecology of media after looking at the history of media, and the history of technology. After I completed my semiotics paper, I was able to look back at the icons, symbols, encoding/decoding, and the role of ideology lectures and understand them a lot better. I am starting to also understand where we are going, because media activism and culture jamming has occurred due to media ownership and convergence.

There always seems to be another side to media, an opposite. To every new technology comes advantages and disadvantages. With media ownership comes those who crave media democracy. I feel as though media is all about the yin and yang.