McKenzie Wark on Occupy Wall Street: 'How to Occupy an Abstraction'

The article by McKenzie Wark was interesting because it talked about an issue in our society and she goes in depth about how cruel Wall Street is. We hear about it and see it in movies but in reality it is a corrupt place where power is abused by different businesses and corporations. She talks about how the only was to fix the problems in wall street is to basically think in the same way that these same corporations and businesses think. Overall, I enjoyed reading this article because it goes in depth about a specific problem and offers a way to solve that specific issue.

Formulary for a New Urbanism

Reading this piece was interesting. At first, I was not into it but as I kept reading I found that I can actually relate to what Ivan Chtcheglov was talking about, even though the piece was written in 1953. Ivan was talking about how advertisements were boring and unoriginal back then, and 64 years later they still are unoriginal. Most people can predict what will happen in an advertisement because they are almost always the same, just different products. I feel like the only way we improved with advertisements since 64 years ago was the development of our digital world and now we can see those unoriginal ads not only on billboards and newspapers but also on our phones and computers. I liked how in the beginning of the article the author displayed imagery, I felt like I was there.

Car Advertising Dominating Nature

The article by Alan Foljambe was an interesting read and definitely informative. Since I'm not familiar with the different advertising techniques, the article definitely introduced me more to all those techniques, especially when it comes to car advertisement. Subhabrata Banerjee two types of "green" ads that car companies are using nowadays. "deep green," which are car ads that appeal to people who are concerned about nature, so these ads present the cars in a way that makes them look like they are good for the environment and don't harm nature. The other type of "green" advertisement is called "shallow green," where the ads are not concerned with nature and the environment at all, but they ad nature scenery in their ads to make it look like they care about the environment. The article was short but informative and i enjoyed reading it. 

 

Shock’s Next Wave

Reading this “article” was very interesting because it talks about a subject that we are all familiar with and we see every day, which is advertisement. In the reading, Bruce Grierson, points our three different types of “shocks” related to advertisements. Visceral shock is where the creator of the piece pulls people into his/her work and expects a reaction out of them right away. Intellectual shock is where the advertiser doesn’t actually advocate for the product, instead, they actually would, in some way, make fun of the product, but still tell people to buy the product, which actually confuses the audience of that ad. Soul shock is where the advertisers use events, people, pictures, that trigger an emotional response for the audience, which causes them to buy the product or donate to that certain charity, etc. overall, this was an interesting read, mostly because it was about something that I can actually relate to.

Ways of Seeing

Reading this chapter was interesting, at first glance, it looked old and boring, but reading into it was worth it. It talks about publicity images, or what we usually call advertisements. the book mentioned how almost always, these ads talk about the past and the future, never the present time, which is weird to think about. The book mentions how we usually look at these ads because of the pictures they portray, which we may relate to or just find interesting, so we go on to read what the advertisement is actually about. This chapter made me realize how often we actually see these "publicity images" or ads. They are in our everyday lives, in the radio, when listening to music, when scrolling through different apps, on the television or walking down the street. We are surrounded by these ads and we subconsciously choose the ones that we relate to, especially if a picture is attached.

Jhally vs. Twitchell

Reading this article was interesting, it was lengthy but I could relate to parts of the argument, and I also recognized some of the ideas they were talking about that I have learned about in High school, such as Marxism. Being familiar with some of the topics in the argument and being able to relate to other parts kept me interested in reading this article/debate. They talked about real life situations, such as college students leaving school with so much debt that their brilliant ideas end up “losing their stream” because they are too worried about paying off debts, finding jobs to pay off those debts and support themselves. Their main argument was about advertising and how its important to us because “we communicate our needs and desires and wants [through advertising].” They also mentioned something that pulled me in by saying, “Why must popularity drive everything? Why shouldn't minority views be heard? Why is that so radical?”  I think this is an important point that many people need to realize. What is popular shouldn’t be what we live by, I think that most of the time, whatever is popular at the moment doesn’t last long, especially when it comes to some ideas, the most surprising and interesting ones come from a “minority view point” where no one would expect them. Overall, this debate was interesting in that it introduced different viewpoints from two different scholars who are well respected in society.

How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything

Out of the three different article, I enjoyed reading “How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything,” by Alexis Madrigal. I like that it started off with the history of Google and talking about how Google “began as an online search company that made money almost exclusively from selling ads based on what you were querying for,” and what it has developed into. I feel like the whole world revolves around Google and as much as you try to avoid using it, you just cannot because its like a force of habit to just "Google" everything. I think it is fascinating how fast it has developed and how it still is developing. I honestly love Google because it has everything you need, literally everything and I think that its amazing that we get to use it for free, since nowadays everything seems to have a cost, but I guess the cost of using Google is the whole privacy issue, but so far that hasn’t influenced my life in a negative way so I will continue to use Google. The article was also interesting in that it mentioned “augmented reality” because we had just read an article on the topic.