Have cellphones changed our lives for the worst or for the best?

There are around  6,840,507,000 billion people in the world and out of that number there are more than 3.4 billion people who use cellphones on an everyday basis for basic communication needs. Recently, many people have decided that they would like to cut their expensive land lines and just get cellphone plans that are much more affordable. Typically, land-lines cost from 15-45 whereas you can get cellphone plans that include data, unlimited texting and calling for only about 40. Land-lines where you want to have internet included may cost anywhere from 80-100 dollars. With the cellphone plans you can tether your data to any computer for easier use. Looking at all this information I understand why many people are now switching to cellphone plans rather than having land-lines. The Canadian Wireless Industry says that as many as 2 million people by the end of 2011 will be only using cellphones and cutting of their land-lines. Looking at that number many may be surprised but as times change so do people right? Lets face it, cellphones are changing in the way we function in our everyday lives and those may be for the best or in the end maybe for the worst.

When cellphones were first introduced they looked some what like this
Looks like the cordless phones we use now a days right?




But now lets take a look at the modern day cellphone that many of us use which look like this:   


Taking a look at both those cellphones we have clearly come a very long ways from where we started. New technology is what makes the society change, if we go back to when the cellphone was first invented in 1973 you can see all you can do on the phone is call someone. But even then the there weren't many wireless towers and you probably wouldn't be able to call across the country depending on if they had adapted to the new technology. But, looking at the new modern phones you can see that they have a keyboard for sending an SMS, a track pad or touch screen to go the different places on your phone and much more. There are way too many new features on cellphones that are hard to explain because of how complex they are. The main point I would like to address here is that the technology we discover every year that changes something on electronics is the thing that is leading us to major changes in our lives, society and in the world.


How many of know teenagers that use their land-line to call their friends, or even now go on the computer to talk to their friends? Not many right? Just a year ago MSN was still popular among teenagers because not a lot of them had cellphones. That is because cellphone  plans were still a bit expensive along with the phones. But, when plans and phones began getting cheaper near the end of the year everyone all of a sudden "needed" a cellphone. It wasn't because they wanted it, it was because they "needed" it. Anyways back to msn, everyone I knew would make plans about when to go on msn and have group conversations and talk about what happened during the day or what happened at home. However, fast forwarding a year no one does that anymore because they all have phones where they can do group calling, have group texts and on blackberries have group conversations using BBM. As we can see here, times have changed drastically in only just one year because of new technology. 


Do you remember when you use to sit around at home waiting for your best-friend, or business partner/boss to call you on your house phone and you wouldn't let anyone else use or even pick up the phone? Well now with cellphones no one has to worry about privacy or waiting for calls because you can carry your cellphone around with you anywhere you go and call anyone you want whenever you want. Even though many studies show that cellphones cause cancer because of the radiation waves that are transmitted it hasn't stopped people from using cellphones. Since studies have come out more people have become aware but haven't stopped using cellphones because without them most people believe that they will not be able to function properly and efficiently as they would when they did have a mobile phone. Is this telling us that without cellphones we all wont be able to function properly and efficiently without cellphones? is it also showing us that we have become obsessed with our cellphones? 


In recent news stories there have been parents saying that their children use their phones at the dinner table while they are eating. They say that they wont interact with the parents and tell them how their day went at school but are absorbed in using their cellphones and replying to their friends. This here would be a great example in showing how children are becoming obsessed with their phones. It gets so out of hand sometimes that parents take away their child's cellphone. I must admit that I am one of those children that uses their cellphone at the dinner table. However, I do put my cellphone away when I do not think it is necessary to reply to a certain text message. There are limits at how much a person should use their cellphone for example; if you're in the same house as your sibling only one room away yet you text them what you want to say instead of getting up and going to talk to them. This is an example of pure laziness shown in today's society. Back in the day when people couldn't communicate with cellphones or land-lines they would go and visit the person they wanted to talk to but that has all changed. Now a days it is all about the cellphone.


All of the factors above have changed our lives drastically, it may not have affected you directly but maybe the members in your family, or your friends. Cellphones have changed the way people communicate with each other which automatically changes the behavior of society. They have also changed the social skills of many people. Many communicate through text messages but when they see each other in person they may not even acknowledge each other. In the end, I would like to say that cellphones have changed our lives but I think it has been for the worst, not for the good. Most of us have become self absorbed, anti-social human beings because of one piece of technology that most think that is their "life". Take a second and think about how in the next few years technology could make us even worse than this. Do you think it could be possible? I now leave you with this question. Thank you all for reading my blog, I shall be writing another one soon :)

My Personal Trends!

A few days ago in our media class we did a little survey on trends and how they affect our lives. Mr.Powles took those results and put them into pie graphs that showed us stastics on the differnet answers we chose. This survey was about how my media class acts towards trends in the school or trends in general. There was a short answer question that asked us what trends we see in Orchard Park Secondary High school and with those answers Mr.Powles came up with a list of the trends. There were atleast 45 trends on that list and most of them were followed by the students in my class. Looking at the list I made my own, I figured that I follow 11of the trends that were on the list. Some of those would be ; Love pink, yoga pants, uggs, Adidas, and some singers like lil wayne and drake, these are only a few that I follow. This would be 24.4% of the trend which infact does sound a little extreme , even to me. It may seem  that I may be considered a trend follower but it also has to do with some personal choice. The majority of the trends I do follow I had discovered before most of the people in the school and my family but I those are the styles I may have gotten from the t.v or the internet. However, some of the clothing styles that I liked I did start following from my school and friends. Therefore, I consider my self as follower more than a trend setter because it is hard to set a trend in such a big school like Orchard Park where there are so many different types of students who have differnet tastes in style and music. I think a person would have to follow atleast 1 of the trends to be considered trendy. This is because following one trend could mean you could spend a good amount of money on one outfit each  season instead of spending a lot of money each month.

One of the trends that I follow that I really love would be my Ugg boots because of how comfy and warm they keep your feet during the winter. The Ugg boots I have are the boots that I do not even let my sister borrow because I don’t want her to ruin them while she I was walking around at McMaster. Even though Uggs are just boots they are the trend that I hold on to tightly because they were expensive and are my first pair. These boots were originally from Australia and New Zealand. These boots were manufactured by Blue Mountain Ugg booots and Mortels that was a sheepskin factory in the late 1950’s. Soon surfers discovered ugg boots in the 1960s and had started to wear them when they came out of the water to keep their  feet warm. However, they were also used in the summer to keep peoples feet cooler in the summer. Ugg boots began to get popular in the 1990’s and early 2000s where celebrities like Kate Hudson , Sarah Jessica Parker and many more wore them. Soon the name of the boots became UGG Australia and they had sales of up to 600 million dollars U.S in 2008. Yet, even though these boots were made for the warm summer of Australia Uggs are now being worn in the winter to keep your feet warm. A complete opposite of the weather they were made for. Here is a picture of the very popular classic Ugg boots

The person who I believe influenced my style would be my eldest sister because she is a type of person who likes to stay on top of fashion trends and likes to listen to new and different types of music. My sister was able to make such a big impact on my sense of style and the type of music I listen to because my sister and I are always together, we share each others clothes and music and we also love to go shopping together. I think being together made us closer and me adopt the same sort of style and music style she has because we always share our clothing and the music we listen to. Most of the time before school I show my sister the outfit I'm wearing and if she doesn't like it I will change because I think she knows what works together and what doesn't. That is another reason she made an impact on my personal taste because I always want her opinion on what I'm wearing.
My personal trends have influences from many different people and places which in the end makes me who I am. No matter how much you say that my personal trends are strictly my own style it has to come from somewhere, there has to be a reason to why you dress this way and my reason would be my friends, family, and my school. Yes, some things you may start hearing or dressing in a certain way before everyone else, but that style has to come from somewhere too whether it's from the t.v or the internet you will always have something that makes listen to music and dress a certain way. I hope you liked reading my blog on my personal trends and I will be back shortly with another blog entry :)
Thank you ! :)

First Media Blog: Advertisements! :)

Hello and welcome to my media blog :)

For the past month in Mr.Powles’ media studies class we have been talking about advertisements and how they are, literally, everywhere. You can see them on the sides of public transit buses, televisions, radios, billboards and much more. See how many places I’ve already listed? I was just only starting. Before taking this class I was so oblivious about advertisements and how many I actually see every day. From the moment I wake up to when I sleep my mind is flooded by all the commercials I have seen on t.v in just one day. Studies say we are exposed to at least 5000 ads a day, shocking right?! Who knew we could see so many commercials, listen to so many advertisements and see soo many posters.While watching the super bowl in February I was only there too watch the game. Not to sit there and watch commercials that companies had paid millions and millions to have an ad just to appear for oh only about 30 seconds. Personally, I find all commercials annoying and repetitive so I almost always mute all them, but sadly, I forgot just this once and that’s when this ad came on:   

I was about to mute the t.v only 5 seconds into the ad when I saw a little Beetle walking around in a rain forest. All I remember me thinking was what? :s Why are they showing a beetle running around in a rain forest? That’s when the ad was almost over and then showed the Volkswagen 2011 Beetle. What a way to get someone hooked to the screen by making them question the ad, which would obviously want the consumer to keep looking at the ad to see how it ends. Sadly, I was one of those victims. 

Recently, advertisements have become part of our lives that we see daily. The first advertisement on television appeared on July 1st 1941 on a break between a baseball game between Brooklyn Dodgers and  Philadelphia Phillies. This ad was on Bulova a company that made watches was advertised on t.v for only $9 on the New York station WNBT. These days for advertisements to be on t.v you pay at least $200,000 for a 30 second ad during prime time. However, during the super bowls ad's are aired on television from 1 million- 3 million dollars just for a 30 second appearance. As you can see the prices of advertising on t.v has gone up a whole lot from when the first ad appeared in 1941. Here is a link to one of the old ad's from bulova

As you compare this ad to the previous ad above you can tell how much advertising has actually changed from they way they capture the audiences attention to the way they talk and even how the product is advertised and shown. Even though these are completely two different products my idea here was to show you how everything has changed and evolved since we first started out in this business. So keep a look out to see how they are promoting there product and in which ways are they trying to get you to be interested in the commercial to keep watching or reading or listening.  


No matter how much we try to escape advertising by recording our favourite shows and skipping through the ads, and muting the t.v  and much more we will some way be exposed to ads. By skipping through the commercial's when you record your favourite t.v show you can still see glimpses here and there which is exposing you to the products and lastly, when we mute the t.v we can still see the product and words clearly on the t.v. Face it, where ever we go we see advertisements and commercials , we just cant escape it. So next time you see an ad analyze it and pick it apart to see what they are really trying to do. Thank you for visiting my first blog and I hope you enjoyed reading it, I will be writing back very soon! Byee! :)