I wanted to make a quick comment on this for some time now.
The other day I left my computer on while I was doing some work in the other room. When I stepped back into my room and looked at my computer screen, there were pictures of naked people on my screen saver!!!
Those naked people happen to be these two handsome guys. Yes, what happened was I have my screen saver set to display flickr pictures from my friends and family contacts. Carrie just happened to post that picture of Caleb and Keilan on her account.
This got me thinking about something cool that’s starting to happen in our culture, media is starting to break away from being mainstream. Instead of having content forced on us by corporations who probably in most cases value profit than our well being, we are starting to have a lot more control over what enters our brain.
For example, everyday in the mornings, instead of grabbing a newspaper I read through the blogs on my feed reader–each of which are blogs written by my friends, or blogs of stuff I’m interested in. Also, I sync my iPod with iTunes and download podcasts–radio programs produced by any one on the internet–which I listen to in my car while I’m driving. The photos I look at are pictures taken by my friends and posted on their flickr accounts. What’s significant about each of these forms of media that I’m exposed to is that I’ve chosen to have this content fed to me. And, what’s also cool is that a vast majority of this stuff is produced by my peers.
Think about this for a second, what would a world be like if the media and entertainment we’re exposed to was produced by our friends? Do you think that in such a world girls would be as worried about how they look, when the models they’re exposed to look just like them?
I think this is where we’re kind of heading. It’s also a good reason to learn what an RSS feed is, even though it sounds a little bit geeky. RSS is what lets you have a newspaper/magazine/TV channel of stuff made by your friends, or whatever content you’re interested in. It’s a good way of controlling what you take in.
Related posts: