Maria's

Wednesday, 3 December 2008

''Television is no way a true mirror of society''

Brief Essay outline

INTRODUCTION

As Alan Corenk once said “Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms’’. It is sad but true to some extent at the same time. Nobody can argue with the fact that television has become an obsession of our society. Paddy Chayevsky refers to it as “a menace that everyone loves to hate but can't seem to live without”. And that is specifically what it has become today. It used to be a channel of information, enabling people to learn at any time what was going on anywhere in the world. Today there has been a lot of criticism whether TV is still educative and informative or has become just a useless piece of furniture. Some people believe that violence, sex, reality shows etc., gives us the exact duplication of our society.
On the opposite side, others think that despite some individual’s bad intentions, television does not in any way reflect who we are or the world we live in.
Indeed, in some cases, the images shown on TV are based on some real facts. The sad thing is that these images have been distorted and exaggerated. Every member of a society is not a part of an unemployed cast of a reality show, neither someone who spends time gossiping about celebrities or revealing his feelings on a talk show. This essay will try to fairly analyse the positive and negative effects of Television on our society. The next step will provide a logical explanation for this “hate” that started lately to surround the word “Television”.

PARAGRAPH 1: Negative effects of TV on our society

PARAGRAPH 2: Positive effects of TV on our society

PARAGRAPH 3: Reasons for negative perception of TV

PARAGRAPH 4: Impact of today’s Television on our society.

CONCLUSION: I agree with this statement, because even though Television does sometimes show some depressing images of our society, we have to understand that they are just exceptions. After all, if we were reflected by some TV images, we would not be able to define that “picture” of the society as wrong because it would look normal to our eyes.

References
The quotation page, 2007, [WWW], Available from: http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Alan_Corenk/, Accessed: 25/11/2008

Monday, 1 December 2008

Seminar Reflection No.2

Hello, everyone,

Yesterday, we had our second seminar about the 'surveillance society'!!

I think it was better in terms of quality and content than the previous one, because my group and I managed to communicate, discuss and in some cases interrupt someone politely, in order to add a different point of view. I believe that, all members spoke enough and were able to support their ideas with good examples and arguments!!!

Finally, it was a really good experience and we all learnt a lot about the surveillance society and how it affects our lives in London, as well as, in our countries!!!

How good was I? 2
Had I done enough reserach and preperation? 2
Did I speak enough during the seminar? 2
Was I agood listener? 1
Did I argue my opinio clearly? 2
Did I give reasons, examples and evidence to support my opinions? 2
Did I ask relevant questions to other people? 1
Was the language I used accurate? 2
Had I prepared the language I needed before the seminar? 2
Did I direct the discussion or help keep the discussion moving the right direction? 1
Could other people clearly understand what I was saying? 2
Did I work well the other people in my group? 1

Our conclusion for the seminar:

Generally, the students in my group feel safe in London, because it's considered as a surveillance society! Furthermore, we don't mind being constantly watched, because after all these years we got used to it!!!

Finally, we believe that technology has two different "faces". The sad thing is that the negative side always find a way to overcome the positive one. We, as humans are used to turn anything good into something bad especially when it comes to technology. After all, let's admit that we do need technology. Maybe in smaller "doses" but still, it has become an indispensable factor of our society so let's keep in mind the positive effects and try to get along with it!!!

I wanted to thank one more time all the members of my group for their lively interaction and participation.

Nightey night everyone!!! :-)

Sunday, 30 November 2008

Preparation for the seminar

My research for the seminar tomorrow!
We can characterise London like a ‘surveillance society’, while as you can see in a lot of articles, there are a significant number of CCTV cameras in London, also at Heathrow airport start to use biometrics, the police use DNA database to indentify the murder of a crime or the robber, etc.. In my opinion, all these techniques are suitable and useful in our days, because people became more violent and we need this safe!!!
At these sites, there is an opposite opinion about CCTV cameras, while some people believe that CCTV cameras didn’t solve any problem of crime or robberies

Below there are some articles for DNA database

Electronic tagging

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article722844.ece

In my opinion, electronic tagging isn’t so good, because isn’t the ‘correct’ punishment for these people who do soothing bad in our society! It is more strong to be in a prison than to stay at home and if you stay at your home you could see all your people who love, so that it isn’t a punishment!!

For and against using or increasing these forms of surveillance technology

Surveillance technology in the future

http://ezinearticles.com/?Surveillance-Technology-Now-and-in-the-Future&id=1266580

‘We have to move ourselves into this new world. It is a great challenge for us.’
But the question is: how safe is this new world????
I believe, people could never feel safe, because always there are improvements which are more powerful than us.
Goodnight...

Saturday, 29 November 2008

Here I am!!!

Hi everyone,
On Friday, I search on the internet the definition of these words:
Surveillance, Footprints, fingerprints, biometrics,etc.. (all the words which mentioned in Jim's Blog).
I found the definition from the on line Cambridge dictionary and also used this site http://www.answers.com/, from which you can find how the words used and with which words you can use these words.
Furthermore, I read some of the articles which are in the list and I found them informative and interesting, because in my country we don't have so effective systems, we use some of them like CCTV but not so effective like here and there aren't everywhere! In my mind of view, these cameras are very effective, because citizens could feel safe!!!
Also, cybercrime in recent years is incresed gradually and this is a problem for the developing countries, because they don't know how to solve this problem. At this site http://www.crime-research.org/library/Schetilov.htm, you can find, the typical examples of such kind of crimes are, list of crime which could mentioned as cybercrime, the main features of cybercrimes, etc..

To be continued tomorrow....

Tuesday, 25 November 2008

Seminar Reflection

Good morning, everyone...

Yesterday, we do our first seminar, about the media!! I find it very interesting, but sometimes when you want to interrupt someone for your group you can because he or she just continue to speak and you can stop him or her!!Anyway, i found it very informative, because we have in depth discussion about the first part of the seminar ''television viewing habits around the world'', so I learn a lot about the laws and the current situation of TV on different countries around the world.
In my mind of view, for the next seminar I would like to do some improvements, because I want to learn how to interrupt someone more polite or how all the members of our group to do some questions and not only the one, because i think tis isn't a seminar but I ''mini'' lecture in four people!! furthermore, if all the member have one more active role the seminar will become more interesring and interactive!!!

How good was I? 2
Had I done enough reserach and preperation? 2
Did I speak enough during the seminar? 3
was I agood listener? 3
Did I argue my opinio clearly? 2
Did I give reasons, examples and evidence to support my opinions? 2
Did I ask relevant questions to other people? 3
Was the language I used accurate? 2
Had I prepared the language I needed before the seminar? 2
Did I direct the discussion or help keep the discussion moving the right direction? 3
Could other people clearly understand what I was saying? 2
Did i work well the other people in my group? 2

Below you can find some of my resources for the media, sorry I didn't do it before the seminar because I didn't have enough time!

Have a nice day!!!!

Friday, 21 November 2008

Vocabulary

Test: vocabulary for TV
http://www.world-english.org/media_vocabulary.htm
The 500 Most Commonly Used Words in the English Language
http://www.world-english.org/english500.htm
The 100 most commonly used verbs in the English Language
http://www.world-english.org/100verbs.html

That's enough for today!!!

Thursday, 20 November 2008

Television in Greece

We live in an era, in which human deings spent too much time at home watching TV(television). This fact has a dramatic effect on our community in terms of socialization.

In my country, like in most other countries all over the world, people exposed to a whole range of different programmes. In Greece, the vast majority of channels are free, except if you want a better image quality, as well as, cable channels, such as, Filment, SuperSport, E!Entertainment, etc.. A significant number of Greek TV shows are national and a smaller number of them are American films and series.

Furthermore, there is limited censorship from the government. The only obligation is that channels must put an appropriate symbol to define who's permited to see the show which is on-air.

In addition, we have a good quality of TV shows, because during the day you can watch a lot of educational and informative programmes. On the other hand, like in any other country there are reality shows. In my opinion, reality shows must be stopped due to the fact that a lot of young children are influenced by them.

Overall, in my mind, the government should stop the reality shows, because in Greece viewers are influenced by them and there is no point in watching other people's routine. The cast in these shows is mainly unemployed people who decide to join it, in order to make ''easy money''.