Madden Madness

The popular video game Madden has been a part of my life for nearly 10 years.  I can remember coming home from school in middle school and playing on my father's computer until it was time to go to bed. Now, I play on my Playstation 3 every night before going to sleep and even in between classes.  For those unaware, Madden is an American Football video game named after the famous coach and announcer John Madden. I am definitely not alone in my addiction to Madden, as it is one of the best selling games of all time.  There is even a television show on ESPN devoted to airing Madden tournaments around the country.

Typically, I play a game every night with a friend of mine who lives down the hall from me. The games get extremely competitive and usually result in one of us throwing our controller and yelling expletives.  We even discuss the results of the game the next day, rehashing the best moments.  Often, we have been reminded by others that we do not actually play the game, even though we discuss the game as if we do. The medium Madden has become an actual sport to us, in lieu of actually playing football outside.  While decades ago children would play football oustide for entertainment, I find myself sitting in front of a television for hours on end simulating a football game with a computer.

Madden may be wildly successful and popular; however, the argument can be made that it negatively affects our youth.  As a substitute to real physical exercise and social interaction, many decide to instead sit on a couch and compete in a fictitious football game against a computer.  While I have never let a video game dictate my life, it is important that I budget my time appropriately so I can enjoy playing Madden while still maintaining a healthy balance of school work and social interaction.  This is vital to anyone that takes as much enjoyment out of a video game as I do in Madden, as it is easy to become so addicted that other areas in your life suffer.

2nd Blog Entry: iPhone Addiction

When selecting an artifact that demonstrates my own experience with the dominant media of our society, I decided to think of my typical daily routine in order to decide which medium has the most cultural significance in my life.  Upon doing so, I quickly realized that my iPhone plays a dominant role in nearly all aspects of my life.  After being woken by the alarm feature on my phone, I quickly check the weather, scores from the previous nights baseball games, and local news all from my phone.  Throughout the day I send and receive event reminders, text messages, and emails from the same device.  Sometimes I even trade stock from my phone in the middle of the day.  At night, I plug headphones into my phone and listen to music while I visit the gym.  As you can clearly see, I rely on my phone for a variety of functions.

            Thinking back to the reading, Chapter One specifically, my understanding of the world around me would be completely different without my cell phone.  If I were to go without my cell phone, I would be forced to find different methods of communication, such as written and spoken (methods I admittedly do not use enough).  Additionally, my source of information from the world around me would be gone and I would have to seek alternative methods of gaining this information.  The cultural significance of my iPhone is colossal, as the phone constitutes so many intellectual manifestations.  My extensive daily use of the device proves how vital it is to keeping me in sync with the rest of the world.  It would be very hard for me to function without a form of communication or news of the outside world, and my iPhone is what I primarily use for both.  It is almost scary for me to think of my reliance on my phone and how hard my life would be without it.  The culture that my cell phone has given me is one of instant communication and gratification.  I am so used to receiving news instantly that if I ever had to rely on written mail through the Post Office, I would go crazy due to impatience.  As a society we are progressing further with mass media almost daily, and I am not alone in my reliance on instant gratification. 

Define Media

          When proposing my own definition of media, I started by making a list of all devices and objects that I assume to be mediums.  This list included televisions, cell phones, magazines, and computers, among others.  Aside from being told by society for years that these items constituted media, I deliberated over the shared qualities of these products that give them the ability to be defined as a medium.  Upon doing so, I realized that media goes far beyond sight and sound, and into the communicative ability of an object.  Every item on my list that I believed to be a medium had the ability, in one way or another, to communicate with the user through the use of technology.  Cell phones relay conversations, televisions and magazines transmit entertainment and advertisement, and computers allow for numerous methods of communication.  Just as Dr. David Croteau and Williams Hoynes proposed in Media Society, I initially believed media to be “the different technological processes that facilitate between (and are in the ‘middle’ of) the sender of a message and the receiver of that message” (6-7).  Scanning through my list, I realized that every object I believed to be a medium either used power or was prepared by a computer before being printed.  For reasons I will address, my initial shared belief with Croteau and Hoynes that media are “technological processes” no longer made sense to me.

            By defining a medium as a technological process, one is also proposing the notion that mediums did not exist before electricity and the printing press.  This misconception is common, as even I initially believed technology was essential to the definition of a medium.  However, when we think about other forms of communication, such as cave drawings and hand gestures, communication through non-technological mediums is blatantly possible.  Media has advanced exponentially in the past few decades and is now more prevalent than ever before.  Having been raised in a society where technological media is relied upon for all forms of communication and entertainment, it is easy to forget that mediums do exist that are void of technology.  As Croteau and Hoynes write, “our everyday lives are saturated by radio, television, newspapers, books, the Internet, movies, recorded music, magazines…” (3). While these mediums certainly surround us today, none are more frequent and widespread than ordinary conversation.  Any form of communication, from speech to written, can be deemed a medium as it allows for messages to be transferred between two or more parties.  This definition may appear to be obvious enough; however, the recent rise in popularity of “social media” has given many a blurred definition of media.  The addition of the word “social” before media leads many to believe that media itself does not already include a social aspect.  This could not be any further from the truth, as media consists of all activities that can be classified as social.

            Popular forms of media, such as Facebook and Twitter, have given users the ability to easily interact with friends, family and colleagues.  On Facebook, if one is a friend of another member they are allowed to view their status updates and uploaded pictures.  This allows for an extremely convenient medium which provides users with instant gratification, as opposed to having to wait for a reply from a letter you sent in the mail.  Facebook, and similar mediums, are revolutionizing the way we look at media and interact with one another.  While previous generations are more likely to interact through a non-technological medium such as conversation, the current generation, who has been raised on technologically advanced mediums like Facebook, is far more likely to use technology-infused mediums.  Media are numerous and vast, and everyone will have a different medium preference.  The methods of doing so may change, but all mediums serve the same purpose to allow for communication between multiple users.