The article I read from Common Place was titled “I Can See Stupid from My House.” This article was written by a student from OSU named Drew Kambic. This article discussed sound bytes and how influential they are in the United States. He discusses how they are getting shorter and shorter in today’s world and how it is harmless when it comes to advertising products. He goes on to discuss the effects that the shortness of the sound bytes of politics and how this has a harmful affect on the world today. The author discusses how the reason for the shorter information messages is all due to the fact that the attention spans of Americans today are shorter and that if the important information were to be said, it would be to long and lose majority of the people. He is saying that people do not know the truth about the politics in the world nor do they care to know the truth. Basically, the comedy is what sticks in peoples’ heads and not the important issues because those however take too long to explain. The author made a good point that understanding comes from time and effort. I agree with the author that I would much rather have an audience that is small and informed than a large audience that knows absolutely nothing about the subject of the matter. I feel that we should take more time to focus on the world events and really understand what is going on in the world. I feel if we spent more time watching the news, then listening to comedy shows, that we would be smarter and able to present better arguments and ideas when the time comes.
I agree with your opinion on having an educated society. But I feel like a commercial is not a long enough period of time to discuss a political issue. I think teh public should do more research when making decisions since commercials can be misleading.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that the attention span of Americans is getting shorter and shorter each year. However, I do not think it is a good thing. The short commercials do get ones attention but i feel like they make Americans dumber because many Americans will believe anything, even if it is a complete lie. I agree we should spend more time understanding things before we make a judgement.
ReplyDeleteI agree also. I think that it is important to gain information about a topic before you make a judgement.
ReplyDeleteWill: Yeah, that is what the author of this article is stating, that people should not rely on the commercials and that they should listen to the news and do their own research
ReplyDeleteShafner: You made an interesting point that we are getting dumber because we listen to the short commercials and that we will believe anything. This is very sad and very true. Hopefully, it changes
ReplyDeleteI agree with yoru assesment. the point is to do your own research, yet I doubt that the soundbytes will ever go away; we treat such news as entertainment and it'll always be twisted for increased interest.
ReplyDeleteI think it is also important to keep in mind that it is often very hard to discuss unpopular or challenging ideas when they are presented as sound bytes. Arguments lose their nuance and supporting evidence when compressed into sound byte form, and if the supporting evidence is not commonly known, the idea an argument is promoting might seem wrong or kind of crazy.
ReplyDeleteIndiasulainis: Yes that is probably true that it will never go away and yeah we do twist the news so it will be more interesting, but do you think that is the right thing to do?
ReplyDeleteRichard: I agree with you on the fact that it is very hard to discuss challenging ideas in sound bytes and when we do place them in sound byte form they do lose the importance. But, if we did not put them into sound bytes or try to do this to advertise them, do you think that people would know about it?
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