The Presence and Tone speaks loudly

When Caitlin talked about being talked to a certain way makes us believe that someone knows what they are talking about, it made me think of how we talk to dogs, in that we can say anything in an excited voice, whether it is bad or not, and the dog gets excited.  I know my family would do this to my dog; we would say "bad dog" in an excited voice and he would get all riled up and excited himself.  Dogs do not understand us, but it is our presence and tone of voice that they respond to.  Now I am not by any means saying that we are like dogs, but if we do not pay attention to or understand what someone is saying, it is the presence or tone of voice that we respond to like thinking that Stephen Colbert is a serious reporter if we do not pay attention to what he is saying.  Here is a video of a dog responding to the tone of the owner's voice; at one point she says "bad boy" in a cute voice, but the dog does not respond until she says "bad boy" in an angry voice.

success overnight

Yesterday when I was doing my blog post, my mom burst into my room & told me to watch this video. This is a clip of a show called "Britain's Got Talent," which is kind of like American Idle. In this particular clip, a 47 year old woman (Susan Boyle) is featured singing her chosen part. When she begins to sing, the audience is speechless because when she walked in, she had absolutely no star power. But the contrast of her appearance and her great voice made her an instant success who stood out. This show was originally aired in Britain, but this woman has recently become practically a house-hold name. This just goes to show the magnitude to which communication has grow throughout the years. 100 years ago, if someone became popular in another country, it was pretty much guaranteed that we would never hear about it, where as now, it has taken a matter of weeks for Boyle's success to spread world-wide.

sneaky techniques

I just finished watching Steven Colbert's White House Correspondents Dinner. Aside from being ridiculous and silly, his speech also had some hidden messages in it. Something I caught was how he would say things in an ironic and slightly insulting way, but he would say them in a professional, business-like voice so that if you weren't paying attention to his words, you might think his speech was actually serious. This reminds me of the media and how they use the same tactic to send us information. Especially with news & politics (which was what Colbert was spoofing), the information is handed to the public in a very professional manor which makes it sound much more factual. When I am spoken to this way, I know that I relate this approach to fact. So regardless of if the news (or whatever else) is speaking the truth or just beating around the bush, this type of media has done a good job brainwashing me, unless I'm paying real attention, into believing much of what is presented to me.

Technology attacks

Its kind of scary that we are so reliant on technology; one small glitch in the system or technology failure and our technology world could be changed.  This kind of reminded me of the Terminator movies.  Robots are used to bring the world's technological world down causing the communication system to fail.  This brings a weakness upon earth because without communication, it is hard to organize a defensive attack.  I could see this happening with our own technology.  If we create robots to act and even be as smart at humans, they could easily be a threat to us.  I don't know about you guys, but it kind of scares me that we are looking into creating robots to be human like.  Because we are so dependent on technology for communication, we have not practiced other ways of communicating as much.  I can see the huge dependence on technology possibly being destructive in the future.

reliance on technology

I agree that communication is an enormous need in our society. And because our nation is so huge, most of our communication takes place via technology. Without electronic communication, our society wouldn't be able to function as it does. I, myself, use technology to communicate all of the time. By using email, facebook, phones, ect... I use some form every day. It's kind of a scary subject to my, how dependent our world, especially our country, is on technology. If anything were to ever happen that would take our technology away, I'm almot posative there would be disorganization to the point of anarchy. All of our system wouldn't be able to work, and it's scary to think where that would leave us.

computer crash

I get what Jenna is saying. At my clinical site and at hospitals all around the world, the ability to function efficiently depends almost entirely on computers. All of the patient records, charts, and data are on their computer database. Plus computers are also the main way in which the medical staff communicates with one another (through accessing updated charts everyone is on the same page). I recently asked what a hospital would do during a power outage or if the computers ever crashed. The nurse said that they have enough written records to get by. But our culture has become so accustomed to having technology and information at our fingertips that I don't think a hospital or our society, for that matter, could manage. At least until the system of doing things was totally revamped.