Classwork

Personal document: google is your friend

   The document below is a music video about Google created by two young brothers named Antonius and Vijay, also known as the AVByte brothers. They regularly post Broadway musical style songs about various topics on their channel AVByte (many of them internet related) and this is one of them. It was published in March 2013, one month before the official launching of the Google glass in the United States. The two composers and video makers, seen as they make a living out of YouTube which is powered by Google, are Google and more generally internet and technology friendly. It was then only logical for them to make a video like this one, about the Google search engine (not the whole multinational). 

   The video is built around six main characters, or more specifically singers, who are all supposed to be one of the six Google letters and wear a T-shirt with the corresponding colour. Then they also play the part of random internet users along with four other characters who appear more shortly. It all happens in one setting, an office that fictitiously could be a Google office or its headquarters. It can be seen as Google talking to us from home. The first 12 seconds are an introduction where they explain that when you are desperately  looking  for an answer, the best place to go to is Google. Then we can hear the chorus completing that idea and insisting on the fact that it is efficient and simple to use. The verses are structured around a series of examples of dumb doubts ("when is the fourth of July?", "If you want to mail a baby but you're worried it'll die") followed by the way you can find an answer to it on Google. They make references to popular culture featuring Slender or some wizard wanting to attend Hogwarts. The orchestration and the six singers have the typical feel of Broadway musicals, with a strong wind section, a syncopated rhythm and clear, vibrant loud voices.

   The message they try to convey is clear and simple, Google has made our life easier and has brought knowledge and skill closer to us. They want to insist on how efficient and fast a platform it is. One particular line is important "With Google by your side there's not a thing you can't achieve". It shows that it brings you the opportunity to easily find information, tips, and official websites for places or many other things. With Google we can't say we couldn't find the way, but they don't say "won't", for it obviously depends on each of us and not Google if we do succeed in the end. The dumb questions can be seen in two ways. Apart from making us laugh they could mean that Google can be an antidote to human stupidity: they will soon learn that Hogwarts is a fiction and that mailing babies is equally lethal and illegal. It can also be a little thought about the downsides in the sea of positive aspects intending to say that in all the years that Google has been around people have by no means become smarter. Generally though, what they say is that Google is a great tool for anything you need or want to do.

   The video is very skilfully made and carefully thought out. The vocals, the composition and orchestration show hard work and musical knowledge, the shooting and editing are good too and the image and sound qualities are very high. Obviously, as the song praises Google, it gives a very biased point of view and shows only a part of what Google actually is, forgetting many downsides. I agree with the positive aspects they give but I also think that we need to be really aware that Google classifies the websites based on popularity and not reliability. We can easily end up in front of information that is inexact or even completely false. Also because search engines make information so easy and fast to access , young people become lazy when it comes to actually learning the information they find online because if they need it again "one search will do the deed". They could be criticizing that with the dumb doubts and they also mention it in the questions afterwards but it's not clear enough. We are also losing the habit of searching in books, but it's sometimes necessary for specific information we won't find elsewhere. Also Slender's question "How do you make friends" is something the internet cannot give a full answer to. Google is still a brilliant tool if we use it in a careful and responsible way.

   In the description of the video, its authors mention the Google Glass, and that is because the Google Corporation is indeed not limited to the search engine but has more than twenty other services and websites of its own (Google+, Gmail, Maps, Hangouts...) that make it the giant multinational it is nowadays. Some of them are more used than others but they all aim to simplify our lives. So we could also ask ourselves, this time regarding the whole corporation, to what extent Google is our friend.

When technology is too much...or missing. A commentary on two videos.

Description

This video is structured around two main narrative voices and a character illustrating what the voice-over says while a singer often merely repeats or comments on what's just been said (as in a Greek chorus).

The setting is a Christian home and church and an office, so this particular context is very meaningful, making us understand that most of his life is conditionned by technology.

We can notice on various occasions that the main character is addicted to high-technology products, mostly smartphones.

He is shown as a family man unable to communicate with his wife, except through texting.

He is also shown as a church-goer incapable of attending worship without all his phones vibrating all the time, disturbing everyone around him and making him look like he's full of the holy spirit.

Finally, he is depicted as a computer geek whose life has become extremely complicated instead of having been simplified.His addiction to technology is also shown at the office where he is doing at least six things at the same time, none of them actual work.

Interpretation

Basically, this video means that high technology has become a religion for many people, even Christians who are not supposed to be materialistic.

Then, in a Christian lifestyle, quite a few church-goers and believers tend to focus more on materialistic issues rather than spiritual ones.

We can add that technology reigns supreme for many people who revere it as a God enlightening his followers.

 Also people will spend their life looking at a screen instead of actually living something real. The video might be humorous superficially but it is more than anything else a warning against the excessive use of new technologies.

The question is, is this a real progress for humankind?

Description

Two people are stuck on an escalator in a place that seems literally empty/deserted. The man looks upset/annoyed. He might be an office worker walking to his job. The woman claims that she is already late, so for her, this is the last straw. At one point, she ('s about to cry and) asks for a phone. As none of them have one, he screams for help but no one answers, then she screams for help without a response. In short, they both look helpless, clueless, powerless and even hopeless. There is a second part of the video that doesnt appear here where a technician comes to fix the problem, takes the escalator and gets stuck too.

 

Interpretation

 We can relate this situation to a fairly common one in real life : getting stuck in an elevator. The difference however, is  that in this situation, people have the right to panic/freak out/feel panicky whereas on an escalator, there is no reason whatsoever to be scared. It can also be a reference to Buñuel's Exterminating angel, where people are stuck in an open room for no apparent reason. this video is a good example of humour of the absurd.

This video points out the increasing dependence of human beings on technology (we can think of calculators). If it goes missing, it is as if a crutch had been taken away from them, so these two people cannot even walk up the stairs, which would be the normal thing to do. We could think that technological progress makes humans lazy or at least less prone to take initiative and think by themselves, less inclined to make efforts.

The Fanatic Geek

      This first document called The Fanatic Geek is a cartoon by Patrick Chapatte. It was published in the Herald Tribune, an international newspaper, on the sixteenth of May 2008, when that year's edition of the famous Cannes film festival had just begun.

     Although it is more than five years old, it tackles an issue that is still today a much-debated topic: piracy, which seriously affects the movies industry.

     What catches the eye first is the Cannes Film Festival logo that gives specific information about the place and the time the cartoon is set in. We know that the scene takes place in Cannes, right in the middle of cultural news at the time Chapatte drew it, and that it will be built around that context. Three people are standing in the middle: a man who, judging from his hairstyle and boots, could be an American film director signing an autograph, an elegant blonde woman who comes with him and a young person waiting to have his autograph signed.

     Taking up most of the space in the upper right corner there is a balloon with a shocking message for the director: that young man has illegally downloaded all his work. So the next thing we see is the director's face, strategically placed in the middle of the image to be focused on, and the least we can say is that he doesn't look pleased. That fanatic geek with his loose jeans and his "@" T-shirt sticks out in that glamorous environment with its long dresses, its flashes, its red carpet and its screaming fan girls. He represents the internet against the movie industry.

     What the author is showing through this cartoon is a new generation of young people who would rather look for movies, music, series... free on the internet than pay their creators for what they are, in this particular case, watching. The message he is trying to put across is that the internet is slowing down the industry that feeds cinema, and that young people, with their growing use of new technologies are continuously contributing to that form of theft. Why pay if you can get it for free? The cartoon itself is in a way a caricature of that situation, imagining an extreme scene (telling your idol you steal his work) in quite a humorous way. But the situation itself is completely real; millions of people nowadays discover the work of many artists without paying a cent for it, through the internet. Cinemas, CDs and even TV are being left behind.

     Although the image raises people's awareness on the topic of illegal piracy, its author doesn't bias it and chooses to keep an open mind on the topic to let us draw our own personal conclusion with our mind just as open. He simply shows the discrepancy between the industry and its young audience, caused by the raising new technologies. 

     In terms of composition I think the drawing is very well thought out allowing a simple representation of a problem that is proving more complex than it seems lately, with caricatured characters and one concise sentence. The scene chosen here is extravagant enough to make us smile but not to the point of exaggerating the problem itself or making serious generalized accusations. The way Chapatte looks at the issue of piracy here is clever enough to make us think and open a debate that is particularly important when film festivals take place, but we are left with the disappointment of never knowing his opinion for sure. It is nevertheless a very intelligent and necessary take on a difficult question of this new century where young people won't pay for what they can get for free and the arts industries are not willing to work for free. 

     But who should change and adapt to modern times? Free downloading of any copyrighted content is undoubtedly theft and should be punished more severely, but the audience won't stop looking for ways to avoid paying for it. Thankfully, illegal downloading is not the only way to get free content on the internet. Platforms like Hulu, Spotify or Youtube apply a different method to  keep their offer free for users and pay the creators: advertisement. Despite the fact that we all dislike adverts cutting our film on Hulu, and we complain about the fact that internet media is turning into TV, it is safe (unlike streaming websites) and a fair deal for everyone, until we find a better answer to the problem. To stop intellectual property thefts effectively, the film industry should find more ways of understanding the new audience's demands instead of fighting against the consequences of technological progress.