The Kindle Mediameditation 4

This week in Media and Society I got to take my first look at a kindle, which is Amazon.com's E-reader.
I cannot embed it but here is the commercial for the kindle
Picture from here
First Impression: Is that it?
First seeing it i thought to myself that cant be it, but indeed it is only about 3/5's the size of a piece of paper from note book.
I was never partial to reading books. They never interested me not because I did not find them interesting it is because I cannot read very well. I got my literature through other media for example the Audio Book was one of my constant companions though child hood. Fall asleep listening to the Hobbit or the newest Harry Potter was always great. Listening to the same tape over and over again was essentially re reading favorite passages from books.
With this under my belt I do not view the kindle as an invading force to stamp out the existence of print media. Because having gone outside the normal realms of reading I still think that the media experience you get from reading a book is magnificent. The blanking out of thought the only sensor input is from your eyes, it allows you to imagine what you are reading. This is a parallel with Audio Books because sometimes when you do not have the time to read you can listen and imagine why you do some repetitive task.

iCactus! Media Meditation 3

Image courtesy of 8bitpeoples.com
Recently a friend of mine introduced me to new musician named KHONNOR. Who is actually from Saint J vermont. He has made music under a bunch of different names but the album i have listend too is iCactus.
iCactus was done in 8bit which is the music that old video games generally had. So games from the days of the N.E.S. would have been 8bit.
He distributes music for free because he actually enjoys playing music enough to do it for free.
Here is the link
Its little short but it is definitely worth checking out.
Here is one song off of the album ala youtube

MIDTERM MEDITATION!!!!!11one!

1. After studying 21st century media for eight weeks in this class, what have you learned?
This is an awfully broad question Dubiya

Iv learned that blogging is the way of the future. Each new medium for news lasts until something better comes along. Radio to TV, News paper-News website. Movies to Netflix.

2 What is the most important thing you have learned about yourself as a critical reader, a writer, and a thinker in this class so far?
That i need to improve my reading speed and my writing style. I am a very slow reader. It takes me 3 or 4 views of a video to be able to read all of the text in it. Writing wise I need to remember to cite sources.

3. Whats one thing you would do differently this first half of the semester if you were to take this class again?
I would put more of an effort to use the class blog and to keep up with the blog posts. Maybe analyze the reading a little more.

4. What's one thing you would like me to do differently this first half of the semester if you were to take this class again.?
Less blogging, but this is a blog heavy class maybe increase the amount of media meditations and lower the blogging requirement of reading.

5. Please comment on the usefulness of the power tools, our course blog, your personal blog, our in-class quizzes, our films and our book(s) as learning tools.

The quizzes are great for applying what we learn to real life current affairs and media. The powertools are gods gift to man enough said. The text book is awesome because it is so new with its info. I have never used a text book that was so current. The class blog is less useful. I know its important but i never read it, I find blogging very tedious and boring in all honesty. I do recognize its importance for the new professional generation going through college Being tech savy is a must for every young professional. the films are great especially in conjunction wi the power tools. Its an excellent critical thinking exercise.