Saturday, September 21, 2013

POST 3: INDIVIDUAL WORK ON 'THE IDEA OF PROGRESS' : The Google Glass.


This video is the official presentation of the Google Glass. It is in fact a sort of add for the Google Glasses, wich are glasses designed by Google. But actually, theese are not regular glasses. They are "intelligent" glasses that work like a phone. On this video, we can see a man who wakes up (we never see his face, actually we watch the whole video through his eyes, wich means, through the glasses, because he is wearing the glasses), and starts the day like a normal person: he drinks his coffee, eats a sandwich, and make plans for the day... But the way he makes plans is completely unknown and surprising, and crazy for somebody who doesn't kow what the video is about: he answers messages and take notes... on his glasses! Just by talking, the glasses are interacting like a phone, because of a mini camera on the side of the glasses.
These glasses are in fact "internet glasses": they are designed so that whatever the person who has the glasses on needs to know, if asks it, the glasses will give him the answer, just like if he was using his computer or his phone, but the difference is, the user doesn't even need to do anything, just to talk.211
This innovation is a revolution for the world; after the T.V, the computer, the internets, and the smartphones, each of them a big step for man in the world of new technologies, but every time for smaller objects, here comes the smart glasses: these glasses are not only a computer that you put on your eyes, it also represents, maybe, the end of the "homed geek" because you can use them anywhere and at any moment, even while you are walking... 
I think that anybody who sees this video wil first think "no, that can't be possible, it's to perfect, it's what humans were trying to create for hundreds of years, so it has to have a problem", but when you look back and realize ten years ago, nobody even had smartphones, you think "oh, then maybe it is possible". The world may go to fast for some people but progress is one great thing that today, we are happy to have and to use in our lives.

This is what the Google Glass looks like.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

MADtv: "Date with a teacher"



'What a jip!

* The scene takes place in a restaurant which gradually turns into a classroom. The main characters are a woman teacher and a young man who could be her student. They are meeting on a blind date, which means that neither of them knew who they were going to meet after getting in touch on the Internet... We know for sure that they are respectively teacher and student because the woman gets more authoritarian as the relationship develops while the youngster behaves more and more like a chid/childishly.
(The scene takes place in a restaurant. The characters are a teacher and a young man who are on a date, we know that because at the beginning the woman says that she is a teacher and the man looks much more
younger than her, and during the video he acts like a pupil so we can guess he is a student)

* The jokes the woman makes are puns (or wordplay) for most of tem. Some of them:
- The boy tells her she must have a lot of PATIENCE; she answers "No, a doctor has patients, a teacher has pupils" it's a homonym joke because they are two words that sound the same, but are spelled diffrently and with different meanings.
- Then, to illustrate what homonyms are, she tells another pun, wich is: "i like everything but you butt."
- When the waiter arrives to take the order, he asks "Can i take your order?" and she explains that it's a mistake, he sould say may, so she says "It's very important to know the difference between can and may; otherwise, you career MAY end up in the CAN."
The other kind of "jokes" she makes are due to a funny situation, and most of the time it is funny because she starts acting like a teacher, and then the whole restaurent starts acting like a classroom full of pupil. For exemple:
- When the young man, her date, tries to read the word "florentine" while ordering, she says "Oh my, that is a tricky word... Go on, let it out!" like if he was a small pupil trying to read a difficult word in class. After that  she " Awwww very good!" and gives him a little star sticker like a reward for his "hard work". Then, she tries to give a star also to the waiter, who doesn't want it on his forehead, like the young man but just in his hand, and she answers "Okay, you can put it on you chart later" wich is what american pupils do at school.
- When the young man starts flirting with te woman at the table next to them, the teacher says "HEY, eyes up here mister!" pointing her eyes. It's funny because it has a double meaning: the first one is because he is "cheating" on her by flirting with another woman, the second one is because she says that to him like she would say that to a pupil cheating during a test.

* When she leaves the room, she says to the restaurant "Everyone, i'll be right back. Meanwhile, JOE is in charge." (Joe is the young man). But as soon as she leaves the room, Joe "spittballs" the woman he was flirting with, the waiter hits him and the head and when Joe gets up, the woman puts a fork and his chair so when he sits on it he screams. Everybody is laughing and yelling, and in fact, acting like children and making a mess like pupils in a classroom when the teacher is gone. Then, when the teacher comes she says "Okay everyone, heads on tables." and suddenly the whole mess stops, everybody calms down, put theyre arms and heads and the tables and make silence, while she says "I am very disapointed in the whole restaurant" like if she was talking to a classroom full a excited pupils.

* The "revenge" taken at the end by the teacher was by leaving with another man (the "nice student") instead of Joe, her date at firts, because he disrespected her by flirting with another woman while he was on a date with her and by not attending to his role while he was supposed to be in charge of the restaurant/"classroom".





This cartoon is also about blind date: there's a woman, Sarah, who is about to have her first blind date and she is thinking about it, because she is a little stressed. So she finally tells herself to give it a chance. Her blind date arrives, and the first question he asks is "Are your boobs real?". It's so rude she immediatly screams "CHECK PLEASE!" so she can pay and leave right away. The funny thing here is that right before taht she was telling herself to give it a chance but suddenly right after the man arrived she leaves. It's kind of a paradox.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Internets Anonymous

In this cartoon we can see two men, one sitting in front of his desk, using his computer, and the other one, standing up and looking at the first one. They are dressed in the same way (same shirt, blue trousers) so we can guess they are probably workmates and that they are at work, in the firm they work in. The man sitting on the left looks very pleased, self satisfied and shows that he is overjoyed. The man on the right though, seems worried, confused, puzzled.
The man on the right is saying to his workmate that he is going to "internets anonymous" which is probably an organization, like alcoholics anonymous, to kick an addiction, here, addiction to the internet. But he says that internets anonymous volunteers... Meet in a yahoo chatroom! This is an ironic cartoon, which satirizes the situation of internet addiction. So basically, the cartoonist means that this man is going to try to kick his habbit by using it, it's a paradox. We could say it is like if somebody was trying to quit drinking, and to do that, he would go in a bar and have a beer with the other alcoholic anonymous. The goal of the cartoonist is maybe to alert people to the fact that internet, when used too much, can be like a real addiction, a bad one, and that it can be as hard trying to quit it as trying to quit drinking or smoking.

In a way, I think this cartoon is representative of today's world because the internet is playing a bigger part in the world every day. People started to use it about 20 years ago, so it's kind of new, but already, everybody is a little addicted to it, because it's so easy to use. The internet helps do a lot of things like writing to people, meeting people, buying things, working, etc... a lot faster then before! Nowadays, most of the communication is mostly made through the internet.
I don't really feel concerned about this cartoon because even though I use internet a lot, and my phone is always in my pocket, I'm not completely addicted to it. I can live without it for days, and go out instead, have a social life... I don't need  the internet, but I like it a lot, and use it, like everyone else.
Internet addiction can be a real problem for some people, because when addicted a lot to the internet, you stop going out, stop socializing, you stop doing everything that a normal human being does, and you become like a vegetable. The internet can show you and teach you a lot, but if you use it too much and not in the right way you become stupid, like the man in the cartoon, who is not even aware of his addiction. Also, if only 20 years after the real beginning of the internet, everyone is so "addicted" to it already, what will it be in 10, 20, 50 years?