The past Revisited

Thursday 05/05/05 11:57 AM | Comment on this

Last night while working on homework for school, an old boyfriend started messaging me on my computer. It was not only shocking to hear from him; it caught me off guard. This old boyfriend who I had a horrible break up with, had begun to message me. Not only was this break up horrible, it spanned two continents. We broke up while I was visiting him in England. An expense trip for me to find out he didn’t want me there in the first place.

When he started talking to me last night, I was actually freaked out. I quickly messaged William, my best friend. Will said, “think of this as a final tease and then never talk to the jerk again.” At the same time I was messaging Will, I emailed Candice, another good friend. She emailed me back quickly “don’t talk to him, he treated you bad, and you have wasted too much time, money and emotion on him already.”

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Leaving the Familiar

Monday 02/28/05 06:21 PM | Comment on this

Recently I left everything I knew and moved to Florida, leaving all the people who knew me, and the things I held dear. I left friends and enemies behind at the UPS in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Whatever the relationship we had, when it came time for me to leave I felt a sense of longing. I wanted a different date and time, to go back and change the things that had shaped our relationship to what it was or fix what it lacked.

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Media Equation of Real Life

Friday 12/17/04 10:21 PM | Category: Foundations | Comment on this

The Media Equation by Reeves and Nass regards computers, television, and other software as inanimate objects. Their theory suggests that although inanimate objects, people tend to react to them as if they were living. In the introduction of their book The Media Equation, Reeves and Nass take a glimpse into how people of all ages and educational backgrounds treat technology. They show that the confusion of real life and mediated life is not rare or unreasonable, yet very common (Reeves & Nass, 1996 p. 4-5). Reeves and Nass have identified in study after study that people equate media with real life. They expect that media will follow social and natural rules which have already been predetermined (Reeves & Nass, 1996). Watching television and movies is my favorite thing to do. I will compare experiences I have had with this visual media to the media equation and see how they match up. I will also compare the Media Equation to three other theories; those of technological determinism, expectancy violations, and cognitive dissonance.

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