Keeping up with the Age of Technology

Forget about your neighbor "the Jones'"; it's all about Keeping up with Apple now. Their desire to constantly and rapidly change the world of technology has made it almost impossible [for me] to keep up.

I have the iPhone 5s which is only a year old, and now there's already two different new models that have come out since then. It feels like everytime I upgrade, something even bigger and better and newer comes into play just moments after, and all of the sudden my skimpy little iPhone 5s is irrelevant. Of course this ideal makes complete sense as a part of the American ideal that constant persistence and improvement by working hard will pay off in the end. If you follow this path, it will lead you to success and riches. This mindset has been cemented into the brains of Americans and then applied to basically the entire country.

The most recent technology craze has been the apple watch, but I sincerely don't see the point. Yes, it's obviously cool, very sleek looking, and has got some awesome "techy" features like sending someone your heartbeat or even just having everything at the swipe of your finger tip. My question though, is what purpose does it serve? If you have to have your iPhone with you when you use the watch anyway, doesn't that defeat the purpose of the whole watch, hands free, shpeel anyway? I respect apple and a lot of their products,  but to me the apple watch seems like a luxury that is allowing for us to have even shorter more reserved encounters with one another.

Addressing Race on the Bachelorette

Up until two weeks ago, I had never seen The Bachelor or Bachelorette before. I was incredibly skeptical about watching it because the idea of a man or woman picking their "soul mate" pretty much based on looks doesn't seem like a genuine way to meet your husband or wife. Side note: another weird thing, to me, about the show is why do you have to be on tv to find love? My friend told me that not everything is judged by looks once the show gets past the first episode, so I decided not to judge the show's appearance because not only would I be a hypocrite, but also a ton of people seem to love it so why not give it a shot.

This week's episode shocked me, because one of the contestants during an interview commented on the fact that he felt he was only on the show because of his race. He said that he was concerned there was no connection between him and Kaitlyn, and that he was only being kept on the show because he was "the minority guy that fills a quota". I found him addressing this idea on such a widely watched show to be very interesting and unexpected. He, of course, was kicked off because of his rude attitude, and drunk talking behind Kaitlyn's back, but thats beside the point. On a show that is predominantly based on a persons' appearance, the idea of race comes up a lot, especially with the Bachelor/Bachelorette, because having an all white cast negatively affects their viewership.

A former Bachelor contestant, Sharleen Joynt, said "I have some sense of the apprehension that comes with feeling like you're in the ethnic minority, and certainly no one has ever given the 'bachelor' franchise any awards for diversity." As you can see, from this quote, the show does not have an interest with portraying diversity, rather wants to appeal more to the idea of drama to ensure the show is indeed interesting.

The Circle of Media and Poverty

After spending the past week in AS learning about social classism, I stumbled upon an article by Charles Blow titled "The President, Fox News and the Poor," that seemed to fit perfectly with this topic.

President Obama spoke on a panel, at Georgetown university, that discussed poverty, where Obama stated his opinion that the media, mainly Fox News, has a tendency "to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving." His main issue with this idea is that it's become more and more popular over the past 40 years.

A huge problem with generalizing the behavior and attitude of poor people, is that it allows for people negatively stereotype that poor people don't have any money because they don't work hard enough, when this is not the case at all. This assumption is mainly to blame the media for; you don't see them advocating narratives of hardworking individuals trying to make ends meet for their families. "Very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress — which is much more typical — who’s raising a couple of kids and is doing everything right but still can’t pay the bills," says President Obama.

I completely agree with Blow when he says: "There are people across the income spectrum who are lazy and addicted and want something for nothing. But it’s unfair and untenable to pretend this is the sole purview of the poor." When the media shows stories of  poor people saying they want just want a free Obama phone, (explained in the article), that's not how most people of low income people act. But the more their viewers see stories like this, the more they believe it's true.