#FutureOfWriting
In a general sense, I think the future of writing will become increasingly digitized. Even taking a class such as CCOMS315 acknowledges the need for teaching digital literacy, and learning the ropes of the digital space. From an education standpoint, I have read about educators advocating for a modernized curriculum which includes digital media and literacy classes. From this lens, I believe that mediums such as blogging will become a more popular way of communicating which will lead to more accessible literature. Perhaps this will lead to news articles being made in a more user-friendly and attainable nature. It is worth noting that maybe with more accessible, and readable literature people wouldn’t be so opposed to educating themselves on new topics if the content was written in a more ‘fun’ way.
I also believe that writing on the internet will move in parallel with the ongoing political climate. I believe we will see campaigning, advocacy, and bipartisan issues manifest on the internet which will propagate a new type of social media that is even more politicized.
Hopefully we will see an emphasized need for digital literacy being taught earlier on, otherwise a lot of people will be left behind our writing culture transitions into a more modernized, and digitized way of communicating.
Response on Tech Survey
I found the results of the class survey to be extremely interesting. I found it really deepened my understand of preference and trend. For example, even though I am not on TikTok, I would have thought a lot more people would be active on this app considering the magnitude of influence it has had on pop culture, and the type of class this is. I also found the high percent of classmates on Facebook was interesting; a find the appeal in Facebook to be minimal however it is vital for a student in zoom university to have an active account as majority of group communications, class discussions, and McGill information can be easily found through Facebook. What I did not find surprising is the amount of people who have iPhones.
Overall, I would say that this tech survey affirmed that we are in a class with relatively tech-savvy individuals. This is intimidating but also motivating, as I am being challenged to work on my skills and tech habits.
Review for Super Sandwich
I have never been one to leave reviews, or engage in this side of participatory culture. Though I understand the affordances that come with leaving reviews for businesses, I have never had any push to do so. For this lighting post, I chose to review one of my ALL TIME FAVE sandwich spots in the city – the infamous Super Sandwich. Luckily, most of the reviews I read were positive, and I cant lie, it would have made me sad if I saw abrasive commentary. Since my first year at McGill this quaint spot has always been talked about, it is almost notorious within the McGill student body. If you want to know more about this bond, click here for McGill’s take.
After reading Besner’s piece, it almost validated a lot of my feelings that correlate with how I feel about review culture. People seem to forget that there are always eyes on the other side of the screen, one’s comments (positive or negative) will always be read. I feel our endless opportunity for expression is both a blessing and a curse, and Besner’s Ambiet Cruelty really highlighted this contrasting relationship.
The only time I’ll check out services like Yelp is when I am trying to decide on a restaurant to go to, or where to order take out/delivery from and it will likely continue to stay that way.
You can check out my review here 🙂
Representation of Female Bodies
For this lightning post, I chose to search “School Girl” in multiple platforms to emphasize the hyper-sexualization of female bodies. Before I hit enter, I thought about what would come to mind when thinking about a school girl if society’s construction of a school girl was taken out of the equation – the answer was me in my high school uniform. However, thinking about the results when including society’s conceptualization of a school girl, all I can think about are hyper sexualized portrayals of women that are propagated in the media, and from societies obsession with making women look younger than they are.
Unfortunately, the search results I saw undoubtably conformed to my expectations and I found nothing about the results to be surprising. This is because the hyper sexualization, and fetishism of younger women has become deeply immersed in North American pop culture and media – so much so, that I myself almost feel desensitized to it.
The issue with this search, is that the search is flooded with images of women in sexy school girl outfits and rarely do you find an image of girls in uniform in a high-school classroom. This affirms that there is a bias algorithm in place that was created by a human, which replicates cultural meanings that we see offline, in the online world.
Usher 