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Showing posts with the label Communication and Media Theories

Digital Mutants - A Reality?

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In my last two posts I have written about Digital Mutants, as a hypothesis based on observation, experience and pure guesswork. I am not a prophetic, and certainly not Marshall McLuhan. When I wrote about Digital Mutants, it was just an idea, so I decided to do some research. What I read is not surprising, and at least partly vindicates my stance.  Here is a small review of the literature I have found: A study done by researchers in Kings College, London found that there is a 39 per cent difference in the DNA of the highest and the lowest users of social media. They have attributed inherited genetic factors rather than environmental effects to these differences. You can read the full articles here: https://www.ft.com/content/419733b2-e181-11e6-9645-c9357a75844a https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/2686719/your-facebook-addiction-is-written-in-your-dna-your-genes-influence-how-long-you-spend-online/ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170123151411.htm Anothe

A World of Digital Mutants?

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For people in their 50's like me, the evolution of digital technology has been surprising, overwhelming, disrupting and overwhelming. I had not even seen a television set till I entered senior college, had seen the computer only in SciFi and James Bond movies let alone touch it. I never thought I would ever make a film, simply because my family did not have deep pockets. For us, even owning a telephone was a luxury, and no thought of a mobile phone ever crossed our minds. I remember the time when I was first introduced to a computer in 1989; I was almost afraid to touch it. I remember how gingerly I used the mouse. I bought my first computer in 1992, which was a 386, with a 120 MB hard drive and a 4 MB RAM! And when there came along a 1.2 GB hard drive, we thought it could not get better than this. For the last about 100,000 years, we, the Homo sapiens have evolved with nature. We have got used to the sun, the moon, the weather, and the sunrise and sunset diurnal cycle. We fee

Visuals speak. A thousand words, or even more.

Visuals speak. A thousand words, or even more. But are we able to hear what they say? And do we really understand what they say? Rhetoric is the art of persuading the audience, with written or verbal arguments, or using any other means of communication. These other means of communication are non-verbal - using expressions, gestures, mannerisms, and images or visuals, and are sometimes more effective than verbal, textual, written communication. A gesture, a raised eyebrow, a wink, or a closed fist could be more effective than a lot of words. In a previous post  in this blog, I have written about how we form an opinion about an object or a person in a single glance. In that single glance, we perceive, recognize and also form an opinion. How fast is this process? Experiments have proven that it could be as fast as a fraction of a second. But otherwise, there is also a longer process, that of the cortical pathway in the brain, which recalls and matches images, and the meanings they c