Just Winging It

It's interesting that this week mentalist   Marshall McLuhan's   reading   The Spoken Word: Flower of Evil? " really challenged me to think about the distinction between spoken words versus written words. McLuhan argues that spoken word is much more powerful in allowing response, engagement and understanding over written words. Where words don't give back a reaction or it can fall flat and not produce more than one meaning. Now for some people they read a book and it can be one of the great books of their lives because the words speak to them in a way, not another book can.  Whereas, some people can watch a theatre play adapted from a famous play, and the spoken words are much more understanding and distinct than the writing itself. That great example can even be with Shakespeare. Or even reading Oedipus Rex, words that may seem flat on paper.  I feel that there's an equal correlation with reaction/ response between spoken words and w...

Ah the ultimate golden question, “Why am I so hooked on my phone and social media websites?” Let’s quickly take a small test. Do you check your cell phone more than 12 times a day? Do you use your cellphone when you are at dinner? What about when you’re on an outing with your friends? What about the best one yet. Do you use your cellphone on the train? The one problem is that we base our lives around our cellphones. For an interesting test as a survey, count how many people are on their cellphones on the train and better yet- for how long. We depend on our phones to tell us the time, the weather, map locations, alarms, emails, dating and social networking sites. Or google to ask the stupidest questions (it’s okay, we know you did it at least once, we are all a victim to it). But I mean, how many of us first wake up in the morning and grab our phones or go to bed staring at our phones for hours in the dark? Adlerman brings up a shocking discovery,  that in a “2016 study pu...

Cross-cultural communication can be quite challenging and difficult. The forms of communication you may understand, other's may not. There are many different types of people who come from different cultures who share different forms of communication where for example, they are use to having their own space to sharing tight space with people. They can be someone who is use to hugging or kissing someone on the cheek frequently or to only shaking someone's hand. Communication isn't only about the social aspect, but truly how we learn to adapt to many other different forms of communication that people hold. This made me think of how other people I know who come from different backgrounds communicate. For example, a director whom I use to work with was born in France and moved to New York. No matter what whenever she meets someone, she kisses them on the check from left to right. And sometimes I see how shocked or shy someone will be when she does this.  Because so many peopl...

 I was always shocked on how communication is so highly underestimated and how many different types of communication we come across of everyday. But the major factor that not only enhanced but shaped communication in any way you can think of is: technology. Go on a train for instance: and count how many people are on their phones.   My expectations for the course is to get a deeper understanding about the interesting correlation between human interaction and technology. Furthermore, on understanding how our communication has changed, been enhanced by technology such as our devices which also includes social media.  And how obvlious it has made us of the world or even the problems that surround us. One example being the news: I can watch the news and they will talk about anything bad going on for like 10 seconds then it will CUT to the news reporter speaking about cute dogs on social media. Has technology ruined our ability to communicate? That's the real questio...