YouTube & Amazon....AKA my rabbit holes!!

Pictures [or Video]...Or Were You Really Even There?

aka Assholes at concerts!  But I will get to them in a minute...

I went to APSI (AP training) at The University of Arkansas over the summer and one of the days the instructor had us reading excerpts from various AP tests that have been given over the past few years.  We were to read, interact with (annotate) and try to answer the MC questions for them.  One passage we were given and one that prompted much discussion was from On Photography by Susan Sontag.  This part, in particular, stuck out to me.  It also prompted much discussion that included what I will talk about in this blog.

Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we're shown a photograph of it. In one version of its utility, the camera record incriminates. Starting with their use by the Paris police in the murderous roundup of Communards in June 1871, photographs became a useful tool of modern states in the surveillance and control of their increasingly mobile populations. In another version of its utility, the camera record justifies. A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what's in the picture. Whatever the limitations (through amateurism) or pretensions (through artistry) of the individual photographer, a photograph -- any photograph -- seems to have a more innocent, and therefore more accurate, relation to visible reality than do other mimetic objects. 

Music has always been a big part of my life.  I went to my first concert in 1991, I was a junior in high school.  My cousin and I bought tickets to see Nelson.  Here is an old band poster just in case you are too young to know who they are.  Nelson is comprised of twins (clearly!) Matthew and Gunnar Nelson.  They are Ricky Nelson's (from Ozzie and Harriet) sons and while they did follow in his musical footsteps they did stray a bit from his style of music and from his more clean cut image.  Obviously, for this post I had to find a picture of them since unless you were Zack Morris you didn't have a cell phone and those dinosaurs certainly didn't take pictures!

Fast Forward 28 years and a whole lot of technology later.... I have been to A LOT of concerts in the past 28 years and up until just about 4-5 years ago the only thing I have from those shows are my memories of them.  More recently I have seen a total of 38 bands in the 19 concerts my husband and I have attended since April 2018.  I have some sort of digital "reminder" of each of these events, if not something from each band. 

This past weekend we went to Kansas City to see Alter Bridge and Skillet.  They had a lesser known band called Dirty Honey opening for them.  The show was inside an old theatre downtown by Sprint Center.  It's not a super small venue, but it was a little smaller than some we've been to recently.  We got there about 45 minutes early to stand in line since our tickets were pit/GA tickets; we like to get as close to the stage as we can. 

This is what I ended up seeing for most of the first 2 bands.  It was pretty frustrating, but since I had planned to blog about this experience it was perfect.

There is nothing better than a couple of 6'6" + dudes who push their way in front of you just before the band you have been waiting to see for the past 4 months starts to play!  I did have an excellent view of his back and what little I could see through their phone screens for most of Alter Bridge.  There was a point in the show where I became the asshole I had been complaining about, because there was a song or two that I could barely see the lead singer so I held my phone up to document it!

We did get lucky when the last band came on most of the D-Bags that were in front of us left and we were able to actually see.  We also got shifted around more toward the middle which was also nice.  At this point, I was close enough that I was able to take photos and some video without being "that guy" who holds the phone up so that no one behind can see.

We LOVE concerts, but the atmosphere is so different now that everyone in the crowd has access to a
phone/camera.  I have been to shows where the guy next to me in the front row recorded the ENTIRE show.  I have been to shows where people around me did Facebook live through most of the show.  We are SO busy taking pictures and videos and reading comments on what is being posted that we aren't actually enjoying the show!  I have tried to NOT be that person.  I take a few pictures of each band, I try to get a couple of snippets of video if it's a song I really like.  Other than that I am putting my phone away and enjoying the moments that I am there.

I have a friend who went to see Madonna recently.  He posted a photo of the outside of the venue, but no images inside.  His caption said that all phones were Yondr'd at the beginning of the show.  I feel like this is something that we will be seeing more and more.  Partially because of copyright issues, but also because of how uninvolved with the show we become as we spend more and more time on our phones documenting it. 

I don't feel like I was any less "there" when I saw Nelson back in 1991.  I don't need the pictures to prove it so why do I feel like I need to prove that I was at every concert I go to now?  It's the age we live in.  It's how we share with out "friends" online.  It's really sort of ridiculous!!

How do you read?

I have two instagram accounts, a personal account that I have had since I got my first iPhone (back when you could only get the app if you were using an iPhone) and a classroom account.  My posting is pretty sporadic on both at times. but one thing is pretty apparent when you scroll through both...I LOVE books!  I do not discriminate against any form of book either.

My reading journey has followed the path of least resistance really.  I learned to read in Kindergarten, WAY back in 1979!  Since then it's sort of ebbed and flowed, but I never remember having a point where I didn't like reading.  I was that kid in elementary school who took home the reading log in the summer and came back at the beginning of the next school year wanting to win the prize for the most books read.  I won that prize too...more than once.  I can't tell you how many Pizza Hut personal pan pizzas I consumed as a kid because of the Book It program!  Books were entertainment for me; a way to put myself into a world that was different from my own.  We didn't have a TV in our house (religious mother) for a number of years while I was growing up, so books were how we entertained ourselves.

I did have a few years as a young adult where I didn't read as much.  When I graduated from high school and started working I didn't have much time.  More correctly, I was enjoying being on my own too much so I didn't make the time.  After I got married and started having kids I found myself with more time on my hands since I was staying home with them.  I started reading Historical Romance and I would devour books as quickly as I could get my hands on them.  Luckily I had a cousin and an aunt who loved to read so we would round robin all the books we bought.  My cousin introduced me to Paranormal/Urban Romance. This increased my reading as well for a couple years, but I soon got busy with kids and other things and stopped reading for a while.

When I joined Facebook I started hearing about this book about vampires that all the moms my age were reading, and I was lost once again.  Say what you will about how horribly written the series is, but this book brought Young Adult literature into focus and pulled in a generation of readers (moms) who had previously stopped reading like I had.  From the time I picked that book up and sped through what was already finished of the series I have not stopped reading.  I even had a book review blog for a couple of years.  Free books from publishers and authors are pretty awesome for an avid reader like myself!

I joined Goodreads in 2010 and have read nearly 1000 books since then.  I try to read 100 books a year, but some years are more, some less.  I am always reading something, which is where the digital part of reading comes in.

It was probably close to 10 years ago when I discovered Kindle.  It was truly a wonder to think that I could carry around all these books in one small(ish) device.  Let's be honest, the first Kindles weren't so small.  They had buttons like an old Blackberry since there were no touchscreens then.  I loved that thing!  Since then I have upgraded a few times.  I have owned three Kindles.  I upgraded to the touchscreen when it released and then a Kindle Fire once I realized that I could watch movies on that one.  I do still occasionally use the Fire, but now I tend to just use the app on my iPad.

I have not, however, given up print books.  I did go a few years without buying any when I first got my Kindle.  It soon became apparent that not only do I like to read, I like to buy and own books!  It's not uncommon for me to have them in both formats.  I have another confession...I like really big books.  I bought the Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks in a bind up version that is close to 1500 pages long.  I carried that thing around with me and managed to read quite a bit of it, but I started noticing this weird bruise on my thigh.  I realized that it was from where the spine of the book was digging into my lap when I was reading it...weird, right?!  I ended up getting the Kindle version so I could read it on my Surface tablet, and so the bruise would go away.  I probably have close to 3000 books in Kindle format now.  Many of those books I also have in print either at home or in my classroom library.  I think it may be an obsession!

I have a book, or a couple hundred books with me ALL the time.  I am reading several books at a time ALL the time.  I am always reading something in print and something digitally ALL the time.  I do this because I know that no matter where I am I can pull out my book or my phone to read when I have a free moment.  It drives my husband crazy when we are at a stoplight and I start reading on my phone.

In my class we do independent reading for the first 10 minutes of every class period. In my classroom I always read in print.  I do this because I think it's important for my students to see that I am reading. They see me holding myself to the standard that I am setting for them, so they are more likely to follow suit.  I walk around with my book and I read while they do.  Lately I have been reading Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, or any of the countless books I am reading for comps, but occasionally I will read something fun that I have checked out during our library time.

Our school does have 1:1 technology, but I don't let my kids read digitally during independent reading time.  Mostly because I don't trust them to be reading when they have their computers open, but partially because I do think that in this digital world it's important for them to develop a love for books.  They are on devices all the time and I want just this short bit of time every day where they have to put them away and focus on learning to find that entertainment between the pages of a book that they are holding in their hands.  If just a handful of students every year are able to develop or maintain a love for reading I am one happy teacher.

Digital Possibilities...

Photo from FilmAffinity.com

The possibilities are seemingly endless when it comes to Movies and Television.  A seed of an idea can turn into something that in many ways could be seen as truly terrifying.  Black Mirror has a way of turning what seems relatively harmless into a frightening reality that seems truly possible in the not so distant future.

This particular episode of the show is titled "Be Right Back."  The cast, like most episodes of the show, is stellar.  I initially watched this episode while I was reading Frankenstein and writing a paper about adaptations.  I ended up not using it for the paper, but it's one of those episodes that is really hard to forget.  It's so timely and very disconcerting to think about how technology and science are close to making this type of thing a reality.  Even if it's morally and ethically wrong to do it, there is still that little seed that's planted that allows for the "what it" thought that is hard to get rid of.

This brief summary is from FilmAffinity.com.

Hayley Atwell plays Martha, whose boyfriend Ash (Domhnall Gleeson) is a "social media addict." They decide to move to a cottage in the middle of nowhere, but then Ash is killed returning the moving van. At the funeral, Martha's friend Sarah (Sinead Matthews) tells her that they can create a real-seeming version of Ash out of all his previous social media updates. At first, Martha is grossed out, but eventually she goes along with it — and then she discovers she's pregnant. And she decides to write back to one of the emails she's gotten from the artificial, posthumous version of Ash.

The idea really is terrifying, but it's easy to see how someone who is mourning the death of a loved one could be tempted by the idea.  We put so much information out the into the digital world that it's easy to see how with the right technology it could be gathered to recreate our lives once we are gone.  This episode takes it a step further by creating an exact replica of his body as well.  Martha does discover that there is something missing from this form that looks, speaks, and acts like Ash.  What technology can't replicate in this case is human feeling and emotion. 

This is a little like the concept of presence and absence that Katherine Hayles writes about in Chapter 2 of How We Became Posthuman.  She writes, "Questions about presence and absence do not yield much leverage in this situation, for the avatar both is and is not present, just as the user both is and is not inside the screen" (27).  She's using it in a different situation, but to tie it back to this episode of the show, Ash is living so much of his life online that this company was able to recreate his life after his death with those bits he shared/stored in the cloud.  His mind and body are absent, but so much of his life is still present.

It's a little scary to think that all those little bits and pieces we share online are being stored somewhere; once we hit send or post, they are out there and we can't take them back.  Our lives are no longer our own once we decide to have an online presence.  We may be years away from this technology, but it's also entirely possible that this is something that could happen very soon.  Think about that the next time you send a photo, a text, pay a bill, or tell someone Happy Birthday on Facebook.

Coming soon....

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