MY PERSONAL MEDIA INVENTORY
Media on Earth: My Personal Media Inventory
Media and technology has affected our lives in ways that we can ever imagine. If we do not stop to think of the purpose and role of media in our life as human beings in this world, we would either get swayed by it and get to places we never wanted to go or use it to actually bring us to places where we do want to go. This essay contains my reflection of the role of media and technology in my life. It contains three major sections: how I would describe to an alien my personal media inventory, how my usage of media contributes to my life, and how the presence of media and technology affect my personal and social life.
Welcome to Earth!
We earthlings have an interesting way of communicating. We communicate through air! We get to talk, listen and write to each other even if we are not physically near.
Internet. The Internet technology is the easiest way to keep in touch with the world-wide web. I get to learn from other earthlings, listen to what they want to say, read whatever they want to write, and even do business with other people coming from thousands of miles away. The Internet is able to make the Earth seem so small!
Cell phone. The cell phone is a tiny gadget that makes talking and sending short written message with anyone anywhere around the planet so easy and fast. Through waves in the air, this technology is able to make us connect with anybody as instantly as possible. I use the cell phone to help me communicate with people I need to connect with at the moment but are physical somewhere else.
Television. The TV, as this technology is called for short, is a box-like gadget where pictures come alive! When I want to relax, I can turn on the TV and watch movies. Movies are made-up stories where some people act to entertain the rest of the world. Movies are also a good way to know more about the lives of other people. Some movies make me laugh, some make me cry, and even some make me feel afraid. The people in the movies – called the actors – try to portray reality but sometimes they are not really real. And that is the fun part of movies! The one making up the stories can always give the kind of ending that he wants, which real life does not really allow.
Radio. The radio is another device that we earthlings use to hear and listen to songs. It is nice to listen to the radio while travelling on the road, relaxing in one’s backyard, or sometimes even while working. Radio is a great technology because we have no way of seeing the people who own the voices we simply hear, the voices that entertain us, and the voices that keep us company.
Books. One of the earliest forms of communication of earthlings is through some kind of paper. Through time, the kind of paper has evolved to make it lighter, smoother, and easier to hold. Books are several papers put together to contain in one easy collection all the messages that the writer wants to write. Books used to be our main source of knowledge. It still remains now to be a source of knowledge but aside from just learning, books had become our source of relaxation as well. There are many books that contain entertaining stories, pretty much like movies. Books just do not move.
The Role of Media in My Life
All the forms of media I just described to my alien friend are available to almost all the persons in this earth, and because of that, media is able to make the world seems so small. Media is where we all converge – where we “meet” – even if we are not physically near each other.
Media is also able to make me know so many things. The content is very rich! It depends now on me how and what I want to use, depending on my need at the moment. As a student, these various forms of technology can make me concentrate better – sometimes. I must admit that technology can actually be quite distracting at times. I have to be a responsible user of all these devices so that they can serve as a help, instead of a distraction. That is what they were made for anyway.
My personal media inventory shows how possible it is for people coming from far parts of the world to connect and seem to converge in one place. It is amazing how technology is able to do that but it is something that we greatly appreciate, take advantage of, and put to good use. The Internet, for example, is one place where the whole wide world is able to converge. The Internet allows me to know, see, watch, and listen to things happening in other places in the world, places that I have never even been to. That is the wonder of the Internet!
My media inventory also shows how my exposure to all the different forms of technology brings so much content that I need to sort out, categorise, and digest as I need them. But the content can be so overwhelming. There just seems to be too much sometimes. In a way, it gives me an opportunity to practice my critical mind since I have to process all volumes of content that I get from media. Like it is with food, not everything nice to eat is automatically taken in and put in the stomach. This is where the issue of concentration also comes in. My media inventory shows how diverse my exposure to media is. With how I decide media to come into my life, these gadgets can help me become more efficient with the task I have at hand, or they may also be the cause of being distracted from what I am currently working on. These gadgets may be good, but still the human factor behind them is even more powerful.
Technology: A Sense of Self and Social Life Booster
The presence of technology in my life has helped me a great deal in many ways. The media forms help me build my sense of self because they make me feel that I am never alone, even if at times, I am physically alone. The cell phone is able to make me communicate my needs to my family and friends whenever I need to. They are able to respond at the time when it is most needed too. The Internet is also able to make me communicate with friends who are based on different parts of the world. It can make me keep in touch with friends who I have not seen for a long time, relatives who cannot be physically nearby, and with strangers with whom I never imagined I will end up to be friends. These are some of the wonders of the Internet that help build my sense of self.
Naturally, my social life has improved as well too. I am able to update myself with the whereabouts of my friends, and they are able to do the same. I am able to know what is happening in the different parts of the globe through the news advisories. Though I do not know them personally, I would consider being updated with news as part of socialization. People around the globe are part of the society I live in and what concerns them concern me as well. I read newspapers, listen to television or radio news, and read Internet articles to be posted about how other people are affected.
Perhaps most of the time I am in the recipient side of media. I am in the passive side accepting everything that is coming in. But at other times, I am in the giving side too. When I write something and post it where people from all over the world can read it, I become the giving agent. If I write something that is worthwhile, the others learn from it. If I write some kind of trash, then the others unfortunately receive garbage. My being part of a big society drives me to become responsible with everything I do, careful with what I share with the world and discerning of what I give and what I take in.
Conclusion
My personal media inventory shows that we are people living in a world that is physically so large yet figuratively so small. Media and technology may bring some benefits to our life but they may bring some form of destruction too. Media helps us not to feel alone and at the same time, it makes us reach out to the world as well.
Technology becomes powerful not because of the machines’ capacity to do things but because of how we humans decide to make use of them.
