The Vernacular Language

The Vernacular Language Over the course of humanity, there have been many different languages that have come and gone. As this topic is being discussed, we can probably assume that there is another spoken or written language being developed for use in one way or another. Latin is one of the most prominent languages and was one of the longest used amongst those that were educated and within literature. The real questions that beg to be answered are the origins of the language and what were the impacts the spread of vernacular language had on cultures during this period.The Latin language has survived in one form or another for over two thousand years, dating back to around 75 B. C. and still in use today. No matter where we look, we can see the influence of this language. Dating back to the founding of Rome, in 753 B. C. , they have been at war and have been a nation that has conquered many different countries. While the rise of the Roman empire began in 406 B. C. with the attack of V eii, there was not a true injection of country traditions until later in history and ending in the 12th century.This spread of the empire is where the spread of the Latin language took place and the spread of the vernacular language. To start, what is vernacular language? According to the free dictionary (n. d. ), vernacular is defined as the standard native language or a country or locality. The everyday language spoken by a people as distinguished from the literary language or a variety of such everyday language specific to a social group or region. Note that this term originates from Latin vernaculus. Even some of our definitions of words come from Latin.As we progress through this report, we are now starting to see how much of an impact this language had on society. The Roman Empire was vast and their reign over a large portion of the world lasted for many years. As they conquered nations, their traditions slowly became the traditions of that native land. Most of their reign cov ered Europe as we know it today and spanned hundreds of years. With the spread of a nation, comes the spread of their culture as well. Language is the oldest form of expression within a culture and passing this on either through force or assimilation has a lasting impact on those involved.The Latin language has survived in one form or another for over 2,000 years. It is the parent language of many modern day languages such as Italian, French, Romanian, Portuguese, and the Spanish language. As it was already noted earlier in this paper, even words in the English language have roots that can be traced back to the Latin language. One of the main reasons that the Latin language was so prominent is the fact that it is a form of communication. Culture does not spread without communication. Without communication, we cannot pass on knowledge or exchange ideas amongst each other.If we did not have communication, we would not be the culture that we are today. To say that the Roman Empire had an impact on the entire world is making a very moderate statement. The Roman Empire has had influences in all of society and include areas such as poetry, music, the arts, and architecture as well as language. While most people associate the Empire with a lot of the aforementioned, none of it would have been possible without the Latin language. Again, we are pointed back to the ability to communicate with others and to be able to pass on knowledge.It does not matter how advanced a culture is or may appear to be if they have no ability to pass any of this on to another culture. Not only does it allow the passing of knowledge, it also accomplishes one other hurdle in terms of the world and the growth of the world. With different languages and having nobody be able to communicate, we would never be able to come to a form of peace. Having the ability to relate to others in different parts of the world allow us to relay intentions, be it for good or other purposes.Without this communicat ion, most wars may have ended in the complete annihilation of countries instead of peace or some form of agreement between the two nations that were at war. The last section to discuss today is the lasting impact that the vernacular languages had on our society. What are some examples of this? Look around and you can easily see them if you know what you are looking for. Let’s begin with the author of this paper and continue from there. The author has had his name passed on from generation to generation. While the use of his name stopped for a while, it was started again with his great grandfather.Passing this down, the use of Latin numbers, or more commonly known as Roman numerals, is used to dictate which number of that name he is. For the author, he is the fourth consecutively named son and as such, after his last name is IV to represent the fourth. Look at dictionaries when researching words and you will also notice that these words have root definitions to them. An excell ent example of the use of Latin is in scientific studies. Genus, phylum, etc. all come from Latin origins. The last one to mention that still has Latin roots is the naming of the NFL Superbowl games using the Latin numbering system.In closing, the Latin language and the vernacular language has had a lasting impact on society and will continue to have this impact. It is a part of almost every culture today in some form. Without this vernacular language, society would not be where we are today. References Latin Language Blog (2010, March 24). Latin Numbers 1-100 | Latin Language Blog. Transparent. com Blogs. Retrieved November 18, 2012, from http://blogs. transparent. com/latin/latin-numbers-1-100/ Map of The Roman Empire. (n. d. ). Global Ministries – The United Methodist Church – General Board of Global Ministries.Retrieved November 18, 2012, from http://gbgm-umc. org/umw/corinthians/empire. stm Matthews, J. (2007, October). Beginnings of Vernacular. Retrieved November 18, 2012, from http://ac-support. europe. umuc. edu/~jmatthew/naples/vernacular. htm Pulju, T. (n. d. ). History of Latin. Rice University — Web Services. Retrieved November 18, 2012, from http://www. ruf. rice. edu/~kemmer/Words04/structure/latin. html The History Channel (n. d. ). Timeline – Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire on History. History: Shows, Schedules and Resources. Retrieved November 18, 2012, from http://www. history. o. uk/shows/rome-rise-and-fall-of-an-empire/season-1/timeline. html TheFREEdictionary. com (n. d. ). Vernacular languages – definition of Vernacular languages by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia. In Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus – The Free Dictionary. Retrieved November 18, 2012, from http://www. thefreedictionary. com/Vernacular+languages University of Calgary (1996, August). First Europe Tutorial – Latin and Vernaculars. Home | University of Calgary. Retrieved November 18, 2012, from htt p://www. ucalgary. ca/applied_history/tutor/firsteuro/lang. html

Of Mice and Men on the American Dream

Of Mice and Men: The American Dream Quote #1: â€Å"I remember about the rabbits, George. â€Å"†The hell with the rabbits. That’s all you can ever remember is them rabbits. † (1. 18-19)| This is the first mention we have of the American dream. Even from the introduction, it seems Lennie is more excited than George about the prospect. George’s easy dismissal of â€Å"them rabbits† makes it seem as though he thinks the whole thing is silly. This will get more difficult as we realize that George might be as excited about the dream as Lennie; it seems he is just more cautious about that excitement, given that he’s more knowledgeable than his companion.Quote #2: â€Å"Well, we ain’t got any,† George exploded. â€Å"Whatever we ain’t got, that’s what you want. God a ‘mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an’ work, an’ no trouble. No mess at all, and when the end of the mo nth come I could take my fifty bucks and go into town and get whatever I want. Why, I could stay in a cathouse all night. I could eat any place I want, hotel or any place, and order any damn thing I could think of. An’ I could do all that every damn month. Get a gallon of whisky, or set in a pool room and play cards or shoot pool. Lennie knelt and looked over the fire at the angry George. And Lennie’s face was drawn in with terror. â€Å"An’ whatta I got,† George went on furiously. â€Å"I got you! You can’t keep a job and you lose me ever’ job I get. Jus’ keep me shovin’ all over the country all the time. † (1. 89)| George explodes at Lennie and rattles off what he imagines to be the dream-life of a travelling worker without any burdens (like Lennie). George dreams of a carefree life and is careful to emphasize that Lennie is the barrier. What George outlines for himself here is strangely predictive, given what will com e to him later in the story.Quote #3: GEORGE â€Å"O. K. Someday—we’re gonna get the jack together and we’re gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an’ a cow and some pigs and—† â€Å"An’ live off the fatta the lan’,† Lennie shouted. â€Å"An’ haverabbits. Go on, George! Tell about what we’re gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in the cages and about the rain in the winter and the stove, and how thick the cream is on the milk like you can hardly cut it. Tell about that George. † â€Å"Why’n’t you do it yourself? You know all of it. † â€Å"No†¦you tell it. It ain’t the same if I tell it. Go on†¦George. How I get to tend the rabbits. † Well,† said George, â€Å"we’ll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter, we’ll just say the hell with goin’ to work, and weâ €™ll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an’ listen to the rain comin’ down on the roof—Nuts! † (1. 119-123)| This seed is one of the foundational pieces of the whole play, perhaps it’s most important. There are numerous bits to analyze in this passage, ranging from its reflection of the American Dream during the  Depression  to the fact that the dream is so repeated among the two men that even dull Lennie has memorized some of it.For our purposes, it’s very important that this talk of the farm is talked about wildly throughout the play – it seems like the farm is a dream to George, a hope for Lennie, and (eventually) even a plan for Candy. It’s especially interesting that sometimes it seems the farm is the dream that keeps them going, and sometimes it is just a reminder of the lack of usefulness of dreaming. Quote #4: Lennie watched him with wide eyes, and old Candy watched him too. Lennie said softly,  "We could live offa the fatta the lan’. † â€Å"Sure,† said George. All kin’s a vegetables in the garden, and if we want a little whisky we can sell a few eggs or something, or some milk. We’d jus’ live there. We’d belong there. There wouldn’t be no more runnin’ round the country and gettin’ fed by a Jap cook. No, sir, we’d have our own place where we belonged and not sleep in no bunk house. † (3. 202-203)| The bottom line of the dream for George is not the absence of work, or the easy living, or even having a lot of money. It is simply grounded in having some place to belong to him and Lennie and Candy.Quote #5: When Candy spoke they both jumped as though they had been caught doing something reprehensible. (3. 212)| Dreams are delicate things in the real world, and George and Lennie have always carefully kept their plan a secret. Faced with the gaze of someone from the outside world, the men seem asha med. The real world they live in would never allow or look kindly upon such a trifle as their dream, precious as it is to them. Quote #6: They fell into a silence. They looked at one another, amazed. This thing they had never really believed in was coming true. (3. 221)| On one hand, this could be amazing.On the other hand, we’re suddenly forced to ask whether the dream isn’t better off as a dream, something they can believe and imagine that’s bigger and better than any reality. One might argue that when Candy gets close to George and Lennie, he spoils the dream of the farm by making it a genuine possibility (and ironically, something that could be a disappointment), rather than an ongoing and eternal hope. Quote #7: [Crooks] hesitated. â€Å"†¦ If you †¦ guys would want a hand to work for nothing—just his keep, why I’d come an’ lend a hand. I ain’t so crippled I can’t work like a son-of-a-bitch if I want to. (4. 88) | Dreams are almost infectious. Even Crooks, whom we’ve only come to know for his not the person to believe up to now, he seems ready. It’s at this point we feel like this thing is really going to happen – or that it might just be too good to be true. Quote #8: Crooks called, â€Å"Candy! † â€Å"Huh? † † ’Member what I said about hoein’ and doin’ odd jobs? † â€Å"Yeah,† said Candy. â€Å"I remember. † â€Å"Well, jus’ forget it,† said Crooks. â€Å"I didn’ mean it. Jus’ foolin’. I wouldn’ want to go no place like that. † â€Å"Well, O. K. , if you feel like that. Goodnight. † (4. 148-153)| Crooks’s hope is broken.He can continue to live on the ranch, seemingly happy to be aloof, but we know from this episode that he stays on the farm because he has no dreams of anything better anymore. He had that dream for a moment again with the other g uys, and was quickly pulled back into the vicious world of those with no hope. When you can’t even dream, you really don’t have anything, and it seems Crooks’s lot in life is to be resigned to some pitiful nothingness. Quote #9: George said softly, â€Å"—I think I knowed from the very first. I think I knowed we’d never do her. He usta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking maybe we would. (5. 78)| Ironically, in the case of the dream farm, it is Lennie who is the main threat to the dream’s success, and it is also Lennie who makes the whole idea worthwhile. Quote #10: Lennie said, â€Å"George. † â€Å"Yeah? † â€Å"I done another bad thing. † â€Å"It don’t make no difference,† George said, and he fell silent again. (6. 34-37)| It seems now that George has given up on the dream, nothing much matters. Lennie’s â€Å"bad thing† obviously makes a huge difference, but within the fact of George’s concerns (making their dream a reality), what Lennie did or didn’t do doesn’t matter. The dream is over.

Importance Bookkeeping Essay

In business, there are many factors that must be considered in order to ensure that they business is on the right track, specifically in financial matters. One of these is the aspect of bookkeeping. This paper discusses the importance of bookkeeping and will discuss laws that govern accounting aspects. Importance of Bookkeeping Bookkeeping is one of the most important aspects in financial management. It is the process of recording the financial transactions made by the company and considered as the first basic step of accounting context. Bookkeeping is important because it will definitely help you in terms of monitoring how the company is going daily, weekly and monthly. It is essential since it will help the company organize the financial transaction records which include the receipts, checks, canceled, cash disbursements and sales. The bookkeeping approach makes sure that the financial aspects are organized and balanced and enables the company to know where their money and other financial matters are going. Having this kind of bookkeeping is noted to be one of the vital keys for having successful business. A lost receipt is equivalent to lost deduction which may result for more money to be paid out in taxes. Having good bookkeeping can help the business save more financially. In addition, having organized, accurate and balanced bookkeeping records also allows the company to gain more trusts from different investors and lenders in the long ran since they will be able to see complete financial data before providing you with your needs. In addition, bookkeeping records is also important to manage the financial status of the entire business and to keep track of what is happening to the company financially. Governing Laws in Accounting In order to know that accountants are doing their jobs accurately and organized with correct information, different authorities has been able to formulate and establish accounting laws which should be followed by different companies and industries. Most accounting laws aims on restoring faith from different stakeholders. Accounting laws varies on different nations and each of the government tries to impose laws to serve as a standard model for different companies in making their accounting statements. One of the laws or policies in accounting is the international accounting standards. Being able to know the significance of financial accounting and reporting, scholars have standardized financial accounting and established the International Accounting Standards committee (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2002). The IASC known today as International Accounting Standard Board (IASB) has been able to establish the International Financial reporting Standards. The IFRS has been applied in the global contexts and Europe, US and other countries try to follow the new standardized and harmonized accounting policies. IFRS policies and laws are generated to apply to general objective of the financial statements and other financial reporting of different industries. This governing laws permits different business entities to report their financial accounting and statements with more disclosure. The purpose of these governing laws is to create fair value for all involved stakeholders in the financial statements. Reference Price Water House Coopers (2008). Online available at https://www. pwc. com/gx/eng/about/svcs/corporatereporting/IFRSforSMEs. pdf Retrieved on December 12, 2008

Talent Factory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Talent Factory - Essay Example Here we look on those organizations that are well prepared for the future and have a strategy that is suitable to groom future leaders. These organizations have talent factories working internally or we can say they groom people for future so they can take up bigger responsibilities. They do this by merging two important things these are functionality and vitality. These people who are being groomed tend to become future leaders for the organizations. In this article the reader has looked upon the two top talent factories Procter & Gamble and the HSBC group both have different approaches to groom people for future but have been successfully grooming future leaders for some time. Functionality basically refers to the processes, tools, and the systems that allow any firm to put the right people at the right positions; this helps in linking the processes of the company to its objectives. HSBC follows the motive of giving people the feel of a local bank when they operate internationally, and link it with their daily processes to make it possible. HSBC keeps track of the people that are performing well at lower positions all over the world in their organization. ... The people of higher management in HSBC usually know their counterparts in other countries this builds a network of HSBC which enables them to collaborate in an easier way. Procter and Gamble on the other hand follows another strategy for talent hunt. P & G conduct its talent hunt through their growth plans; the organization hires new recruits from the local markets of the country they are operating in. For example hiring officers in China hire Chinese locals. This way the organization exploits talent from the country they are operating in. The new recruits are considered to be future leaders in the market they are working, but the higher level managers are still hired globally meaning that the executives decide of their hiring. P & G conduct training programs to train new recruits, special training programs outside the resident's country are also conducted. The organization helps new hires through mentors and special cross functional teams. The new employees are constantly given dif ferent opportunities to prove themselves, for example in 3 to 4 years of his or her hiring an employee has worked on more than 5 products with different people and in different scenarios. The organization has a very efficient system of hiring and pays close attention to it. The talent hunt system is conducted through a proper procedure with a program that keeps track of middle and upper middle managers. Their performances and successful projects in the past and the projects they are working on in the future. The managers are then promoted appropriately, according to their merit. Now coming to Vitality that is the other part of the combination of talent factories.

Diabetes Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Diabetes - Essay Example Additionally, the paper gives a clear outline of the management, complication, and multi professional diabetes services that are relevant to type 2 diabetes. 1.2 Case Study Sarah is 39 years old lady admitted to the ward due to abdominal pain, loss of weight, dehydration, and generally feeling unwell. On admission, Sarah does not have past medical history but genetically has diabetes and heart disease. Through examinations such as chest x-rays, ECHO, blood and urine test, it is clear that there is glucose in the urine, with further investigations showing that she has type 2 diabetes. Finally, the study gives evidence on the evaluation of education strategies in relation to the effective self management on Sarah, and evidence based knowledge with regard to assessment, treatment and management based on the best treatment. ... Apparently, type 2 diabetes is caused by a combination of genetic factors that are related to the secretion of insulin, resistance of insulin and environmental factors such as lack of exercise, over eating and aging. Besides, type 2 is a disease that is caused by multi factors that entail multiple genes and environmental factors, which vary depending with the situation (Barnett, A., 2011). None the less, the advancement of type 2 diabetes is purely associated with a family history of diabetes like in the case of Sarah. The considerable higher concordance rate between monozygotic twins as compared to that between dizygotic twins indicates the involvement of genetic factors. Hence, it is assumed that pathogenesis is involved in the genetic abnormality, in the molecules related to the regulatory system of glucose metabolism. The role of environmental factors such as aging, obesity, insufficient energy consumption among others are independent risk factors that are associated with type 2 diabetes. Impaired secretion of insulin and its actual resistance contribute to the advancement of path physiological conditions. Essentially, impaired insulin secretion is a reduction of the response of glucose, which is present at the onset of diabetes. The tolerance of glucose is induced by reduction of glucose response in the early phase of insulin secretion, over and above, the reduction of insulin secretion after any meals (Winter et al., 2002). This reduction is crucial as it plays a basis path physiological change especially when the disease is at the early stage. If not treated it results to a decrease in pancreatic and cell mass in a human being a situation that affects the long term of blood glucose, (Williams

Segmentation and Target Market Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Segmentation and Target Market Paper - Essay Example It’s phenomenal to hold the Internet in your hands† (Stone, 2010). What is catching about this statement is the idea of holding the Internet in one’s hands. Nowadays, the businesses and even many individuals are relying on the Internet for so many obvious reasons, may it be social, political, environmental and economic concerns. In the past, Apple is known to choose for important segment market, one that is growing and profitable. Apple continuously targets the high-end users coming from the business and consumer segments of the market (Bott, 2014). According to a marketing research, in 2012, the average household income of the users of Mac computers is $98,560 (Mattioli, 2012). In addition to the said finding, the users of Mac computers tend to be younger, around 41 percent of them are 34 years and younger. Today, teenagers are considered to be one of the vital users of Apple products due to the advent of social media and modern music and social engagement online. Psychographic wise, it is clear that Apple has a branding strategy that focuses on emotion. From the privilege speeches of Jobs, the Apple brand has been clearly synonymous to lifestyle. Along with this, Apple has remarkably integrated the modern concept of technology into passion, dreams, innovation and so on. On the other hand, Apple’s retail stores are remarkably present in various cities around the world with substantial number of population. This is relevant to its geographic segmentation strategy in order to optimize sale and ensure profit or sustainable marketing operation in the long term. On the ground of behavioural segmentation, it is clear that Apple remarkably divided the customers based on how they behave towards its product offerings. As stated, there are two general categories of users for Apple product offerings: the business and individual consumer. Those targets in the business industry engaged purely in commerce and other relevant

Pacific Island and significant human migration to this group Essay

Pacific Island and significant human migration to this group - Essay Example The paper tells that human migration for instance to the Pacific Islands, despite how indiscrete their topology and distribution is, can satisfactorily be analyzed today with advancements in study techniques available. Mention must be made of genetic techniques that have proven to be vital in the field of anthropology, with a rare level accuracy and specificity. Pacific anthropological studies have widely been performed, especially regarding human migration to the region, to unravel astonishing discoveries of how this was possible. Based on geographical divisions of the main Pacific into the three main Islands, anthropological studies have been facilitated. These main groups of islands are Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. Perhaps, it would be a significant step in studying the geographic location of the Islands, to understand the relationship of the Islands with the source of their inhabitants; the continents. Pacific Islands are named after the ocean in which they are found in; the Pacific Ocean, which covers a third of the earth’s surface. Generally, there are about 30,000 Islands in the Pacific Ocean, with a wide geographical distribution touching several continents namely; Antarctica, Asia, North and South America as well as Australia. As earlier mentioned, the major group of islands both in numbers and size are mainly three (Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia), with a similarity in their south of Tropic of Cancer location. Melanesia (black islands), include New Guinea and the surrounding islands near North America. Micronesia (small islands) covers Kiribati and the islands around it, most of which are found to the north of the equator.

Chinese Judiciary Achievements Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Chinese Judiciary Achievements - Essay Example Despite this strides made, china is still away from achieving a wholly independent judiciary. This has been enhanced through enormous re-education and community attitude changes are encouraged. Achievements Chinese judiciary in the past thirty years has been successful in its quest for formalization and institutionalization. The areas include but not limited to; taking strides towards regulating acts of administrative laws. The important roles played by administrative legislation toward effective legal regulation of government legislative practices are crucial for any legal system. Legislative law of the people’s republic of china for instance, has ensured a basic legal framework for managing acts of administrative legislation (China's judicial system and its reform, 2010)1. For this to be realized, Chinese government issued the ordinance regarding the procedures for the formation of administrative control and the provisions on the guide for making administrative rules. This w as a sign of institutionalization and formalization at the judiciary. Cleaning up administrative rules, repeatedly standardization acts of government legislation (Cai, 2001)2. ... clarity and coherence in lawful standards, and in its way to realizing progress in the law based government, it has initiated several cleanups aiming at government legislation particularly those related to duties and rights of administrative areas. This initiative by the Chinese government to cleanup rules, regulations and normative documents have helped with the enactment of law-based government. Building of administrative penalty system and guarding individual procedural rights. An administrative penalty refers to authorizations passed on individual, legal persons and organizations found to have violated administrative directions. Such penalties help in effective management of communal affairs, enactment of administrative objective and disciplining person found with the offense of breaching administrative law standards or derail administrative goals and avoid illegal habit. China is among the few states to have an official administrative penalty law (Cai, 2001)3. In the year 1996, the Administrative Penalty Law established the legal ideologies and processes for legal and correct penalties and putting public opinion into consideration. It became useful during the incorporation of administrative penalty actions of administrative structures into a lawful framework. Through this, unjust penalties which were common in the early 1990s were stopped efficiently. Issuance of public security law and promotion of domestic based administration has seen improvement in areas such as legislative theory, important principles, and the sorts of punishments that are appropriate for public security management, punishment processes and supervision of law enactment. This is a reflection of the progress made so far by the Chinese government towards realizing a law based state and it

Why College Football Should Be Banned Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Why College Football Should Be Banned - Essay Example â€Å"The Wall Street Journal reported. New Mexico State University's athletic department needed a 70% subsidy in 2009-2010, largely because Aggie football hasn't gotten to a bowl game in 51 years. Outside of Las Cruces, where New Mexico State is located, how many people even know that the school has a football program? None, except maybe for some savvy contestants on "Jeopardy." What purpose does it serve on a university campus? None.† (Why college football should be banned) Football is so popular that college presidents are cutting on other major sports to accommodate college football and this is extremely bad for the students, who are interested in varsity sports such as swimming, track and field events and so on. This goes to show that the authorities want college football to be one of the most popular sports in the country if it already is not. A lot of money is being spent on modern stadiums and even more on coaches who benefit heavily because they get a great pay package, where does the money come from? It comes from the fees paid by students who do not benefit even a wee bit out of all this. The author of the article also presents the several medical dangers involved in playing college football, repetitive hits to the body is arguably the most dangerous of all yet college football continues to thrive. To conclude it is fair to say that college football is risky, it does not help the students even a wee bit and this is exactly why it should be banned.

Dantes Third Circle of Hell Essay Example for Free

Dantes Third Circle of Hell Essay In Dantes The Inferno, the third circle of Hell is reserved for the gluttonous. After awaking from a faint, Dante soon finds himself in the third circle surrounded by the foul slush. He tells about the black snow falling into the dirty water. Dante also tells of the stinking dirt that festered there. In this circle lives the three-headed monster Cerberus, ripping and tearing at the sinners as they lie in the sludge. The only soul named in this circle is Ciacco, nicknamed The Hog. Ciacco was a resident of Florence who was a glutton. He tells Dante that for his offense he lies rotting like a swollen log, doomed to wallow in the mire and smell the wretched stench for all eternity. Dante, aghast at the putrid-smelling slop, tells Ciacco that the sinners agony weighs on my heart and calls my soul to tears. Although he pities Ciaccos condition, he does not hesitate to ask him for information concerning Florence, and it is Ciacco who gives Dante the first political prophecy of The Inferno. Virgil seems to be unmoved by either Ciaccos or Dantes show of feelings. Instead, he takes the opportunity to explain to Dante that as the perfection of judgement nears, both pleasure and pain will become more pronounced. Dante realizes that for the sinners in Hell, this means that the pain of their punishment will become greater. By discussing the foul sludge, the black snow falling, and the putrid scent in the air, Dante shows that those who were gluttonous on Earth will be punished by forever wallowing in the end result of their incontinence, a filthy, stinking pit of misery.

An overview of global warming

An overview of global warming Cautions: Global Warming! The air quality of our atmosphere has been in drastic changes in the past century. Industrial revolution has cause major harm to our environment. Pollution, dumping toxic wastes into our ocean, and releasing harmful gases and sprays into the atmosphere. These are some of the cause of global warming so dangerous in the worlds environment. We should take more action towards global warming before its too late. What is Global warming? Global warming refers to an average increase in the Earths temperature, which in turn causes changes in climate (Global). Population growth, deforestation, and pollution have increased by a large margin from twenty, forty, or even a hundred years ago. Since the Industrial Revolution, machines have changed the way life we lived. Before the Industrial Revolution, human activity released very few gases into the atmosphere, but now through population growth, fossil fuel burning, and deforestation, we are affecting the mixture of gases in the atmosphere (Global). It is imperative that we, the people, take action on our dying environment, for the future of our kids and generations to come. Unless steps are taken to stop this progression of events, and even in spite of such steps, the vast majority of the evidence shows that the Earth will continue to grow warmer, with widespread and even catastrophic results. How did we find out what was the cause of global warming? After doing some research, I learned that global warming is created by the greenhouse effect: The greenhouse effect is the rise in temperature that the Earth experiences because certain gases in the atmosphere (water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane, for example) trap energy from the sun. Without these gases, heat would escape back into space and Earths average temperature would be about 60 F colder. Because of how they warm our world, these gases are referred to as greenhouse gases (Global). Do you know what a greenhouse is? Have you ever seen houses with a small glass house in the backyard just for plants? Well these glass houses also known as a greenhouse. They are meant for plants to survive through the winter time by trapping heat within the house. Since, Earths atmosphere is very much like the greenhouse model, energy from the sun passes through our atmosphere where energy is absorbed by the air, water, and plants. Once absorbed, the energy then releases itself back into the atmosphere and then releases into space. Without the greenhouse effect, our climate could be disastrous because the atmosphere regulates our climate. It could raise or lower the temperatures, misbalancing nature. Even though the greenhouse effect is good for the environment, it could also be bad. Since the atmosphere is filled with pollution, the energy re-releasing back into space sometimes gets trapped by the atmosphere and warms up the Earths climate. Pollution is one of the largest problems in todays environment. By emitting harmful gases such as carbon dioxide which are mainly released from cars and power plants, harmful gases will build up into the atmosphere. The harmful effects of gas build up in the atmosphere and can increase the temperature of the Earth which could endanger plants, cause wild weather patterns, or alter land formations (Global). There are many ways to increase the effects of global warming such as contamination, wastes, or deforestation. One of the largest producers of pollution is power plants. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), turning on the television, using the washer/dryer, or even turning on a light can help lead to more greenhouse gases since they use electricity which originate from power plants. The fumes of power plants are created from the burning of fossil fuels which are released into the atmosphere. What is fossil fuel? According to the Greenhouse Effect article, fossil fuel originated from plants. Plants remove carbon dioxide from the air. When the plant dies, the remains are buried in the soil. After thousands and thousands of years, the carbon dioxide is transformed into a coal or oil which is fossil fuel. The General Accounting Office study forecasts a 42 percent surge in electricity production over the next two decades that will boost U.S. power plants carbon dioxide emissions by 35 percent and mercury emissions by 9 percent (Eaton). Since the population of the world is growin g each day; people are going to use more power which would create more fossil fuels being burned up and more power plants being built to accommodate the rate of the population. Even though there are no inventions to make fossil fuel fumes to be more friendl to the environment, there are other alternatives to cut back on burning fossil fuels. By conserving power, we can cut back on electricity which could help by burning less fossil fuel. Part of the problem could be solved by converting these plants to burn cleaner natural gas (Overview). There are other alternatives to produce energy that dont come from power plants such as solar and wind energy. Solar energy is known to use solar panels to gather energy from a heat source such as the sun. This energy is gathered and stored in a flat panel where it is stored until the energy is consumed. Unlike Solar energy, there is another way to gather energy from our environment. Wind-power energy gathers energy from the wind. Have you ever driven in the highway and seen these large white fans on the top of a hill? Well, those fans are wind conservers. They act the same as solar but by the wind. The amount of energy in creases depending on the speed of the wind. In other words, the faster it goes, the more energy is gathered. Technological advances have brought the cost of electricity generated by the wind down by 82 percent since 1981 (Overview). Today, the average person usually drives himself/herself to work, travel, going or dropping someone off at school, yet do they know how much harm it can cause just to do an errand? With millions of cars driven each day, many harmful toxins are released from the cars exhaust. The amount of gases released can cause harmful effects to the environment and to health. Like power plants, cars are only small versions of power plants, but with so many of them being driven, it could be worse than power plants. The fumes of these cars can lead to breathing problems mainly for older people since their lungs are usually weaker. Organophosphate insecticides, such as diazinon, disulfoton, azinphos-methyl, and fonofos, are used widely in agriculture and in household applications as pesticides. Over 25,000 brands of pesticides are available in the United States, and their use is monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The release of the pesticide can cause children or people, if inhaled, to cause malfunctions in their immune system because it mutants their cells. To help the environment, technology can be very helpful in decreasing the greenhouse effect that is plaguing our environment. While there is no technology to remove C02 from a cars exhaust, we can make them pollute less by making them more fuel efficient (Overview). Creating cars that are fuel efficient can cut back on fuels being used by cars. Hybrid cars (Gas/Electric Cars) are being created that let you go over 800 miles before a fill up for fuel. Newer technology is allowing cars to run farther by using less gas by shifting the engine between electricity and gas. If we are to make any progress in slowing global warming, we must make our cars go farther on a gallon of gas (Overview). Wastes are another large problem in our environment and a benefactor of global warming. Sometimes anti-environmental groups dump wastes into lakes and oceans where they could contaminate an area and misbalance the ecosystem. This can cause a problem because wastes could release hazardous materials that could be radioactive or very harmful that can cause people to be sick. Yet, do the people know what the effect of this waste can cause do to the environment? As a Norman Myers said, if we dont watch what we do with our resources and what we do to our environment, our resources will soon be depleted which will cause a huge conflict throughout the world. Do you know where your trash is being dumped everyday? If you say in a landfill, you are correct. A landfill is where your trash is processed and compacted and stored. Yet what does the build up of landfill have to do with global warming? The trash that we send to landfills produces a greenhouse gas called methane. It is a product of decomposition of organic matter and of the carbonization of coal. Methane is one of the greenhouse gas chemical compounds. Methane is also produced by the animals we raise for dairy and meat products and when we take coal out of the ground (Global). Like power plants and cars, trash can be very hazardous in the build up of the greenhouse effect. Since trash and wastes are getting overcrowded in landfills it could lead to trouble in the near future. Running out of room to store our wastes, there are ways of shortening the load of trash by recycling. Recycling is the process of reusing waste to make new material. Even though the public thinks recycling is good, it can also be bad. The use of sewage sludge as a fertilizer poses a more significant lead threat to the land than did the use of leaded gasoline. All sewage sludges contain elevated concentrations of lead due to the nature of the treatment process Lead is a highly toxic and cumulative (Stauber 108). Recycling wastes to create fertilizer on plants can harm farmers and ruin agriculture. The material in these wastes is very harmful because it could be contaminated with unnatural substances. Land spreading of sewage sludge is not a true disposal method, but rather serves only to transfer the pollutants in the sludge from the treatment plant to the soil, air and ground water of the disposal site (Stauber 109). Destroying nature can also shorten the life span of the Earth. Deforestation, the process of cutting down trees could disturb the ecosystem or the environment. According to the EPA, The projected 2C (3.6F) warming could shift the ideal range for many North American forest species by about 300 km (200 mi.) to the north (EPA). Since trees remove carbon dioxide from the air, cutting down the trees would only result in climate changes. If the climate changes slowly enough, warmer temperatures may enable the trees to colonize north into areas that are currently too cold, at about the same rate as southern areas became too hot and dry for the species to survive (EPA). Due to deforestation and global warming, the shift of climate change dries up the soil which would be impossible to grow anything. This is how deserts are created. The percentage of the worlds plants threatened with extinction is much larger than commonly believed, and could be as high as 47 percent if tropical species are in cluded, researchers said (Study). How can we help stop the people who are cutting down the trees? By doing the opposite, planting trees would help the environment since it removes carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. At the rate of planting one tree is about the same rate of thousands of trees being cut down. Regulating tree cutting companies would slow down the process of deforestation but it is still a problem because wood is very high in demand for housing and construction. How is nature holding up against global warming? The effects of global warming have destroyed thousands of homes by floods, created new diseases, and have left hundreds homeless to the rampage of awkward weather patterns. Global warming effects do not just change the temperatures; they can lead to the change of weather patterns and the rise of sea levels. Devastating floodsjust some of 526 significant natural disasters in the first nine months of the yearripped through parts of Europe, China, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh this year, killing thousands of people and leaving millions more homeless. Even though some nations might get positive effects such as aiding against droughts, other nations would get consequences from global warming (UN). The change of weather patterns can be very disastrous to nature and the sea since it alters the ecosystem. By changing the ecosystem, animals and vegetation are pushed out of their habitat and into a different location. Wild life isnt able to adapt to the new environment easily because they wouldnt know where to gather food or conflicts with other species. Weather patterns can create tsunamis (large tidal waves) which would crash into coastal regions creating erosions. Sea levels are rising due to the rise of temperature due to global warming. Sea level may rise between several inches and as much as 3 feet during the next century (EPA). Due to the melting of glaciers, water is rising from the ocean which is saltwater and it can spread or flood inland threatening plants and animals. If we do not help the environment now, our planet wont exist in the near future. It is important that the people understand that harming the planet to a degree can cause the extinction of the Earth. Rise of temperature, change in weather patterns, toxic wastes lurking in our air, we are vulnerable. If we want to survive on this planet in the future, we must act now before it is too late. Steps need to be taken to cut back and slow down global warming until newer technology can alter and to help the longevity of our world.

Lord Of The Flies By William Golding Philosophy Essay

Lord Of The Flies By William Golding Philosophy Essay In this paper I chose to analyze the book Lord of the flies written by William Golding as I believe it matches very well the field of organizational theory by presenting the contrast between different styles of leadership and the opposed actions of two very different leaders. I will emphasize four types of leadership styles: democratic, autocratic, laissez-faire and charismatic. I chose this book because in the novel, leadership plays a very important role, as it does in real life for us, because the characters need to feel some sense of security in order for them to survive. The situational leadership theory proposes that leaders choose the best course of action based upon situational variables. Different styles of leadership may be more appropriate for certain types of decision-making: for example in a situation where the leader is the most knowledgeable and experienced member of a group, an authoritarian style might be most appropriate, in other instances where group members are skilled experts, a democratic style would be more effective. The fundamental underpinning of the situational leadership theory is that there is no single best style of leadership. Effective leadership is task-relevant, and the most successful leaders are those that adapt their leadership style to the maturity of the individual or group they are attempting to lead or influence. Effective leadership varies, not only with the person or group that is being influenced, but it also depends on the task, job or function that needs to be accomplished. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situa tional_leadership_theory) The existence of mankind on earth relies on various factors: the basic needs for humans to survive are food, water, shelter, but these are only the physical needs of man. Humans also have social and mental needs which require the existence of law in order to be able to coexist peacefully with themselves, the nature and the environment. The only way that law and order can be achieved in human society is by a higher authority, or some form of government or leader. William Golding tries to touch on some of these aspects of our civilization through the various characters he creates in his novel Lord of the Flies. (http://www.bookrags.com/essay-2005/12/13/185154/04/) The main theme of the novel is the conflict between two opposed instincts that exist within all human beings: the instinct to live by rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands, and value the good of the group against the instinct to gratify ones immediate desires, act violently to obtain supremacy over others, and enforce ones will. The two main leaders in the story, through their similar and different leadership characteristics and objectives fight back and forth to gain the discipline of the other boys on the island in order to gain the power to make the decisions that they feel should be made, sometimes for the better of the entire group, and sometimes for their own purpose. The leaders which are presented throughout the novel all have their own method of leading, and serve different purposes. The elected and democratic leader is Ralph while the self-appointed leader who tries to run a totalitarian society is Jack. In the beginning they work towards common goals, but eventually their different views on how to lead the group lead them into conflict. From the very beginning Ralph assumes primary responsibility for the groups tasks when he starts organizing their living, because he realizes that not doing so will result in savagery and moral chaos (Hynes, 59). Being aware of the situation in which they are, Ralph uses Piggys idea of the conch and takes the role of gathering the survivors. When the boys arrive in the island they automatically seek for some kind of law and order, since there are not any grown-ups. They want to belong to a group, with someone in charge to lead them, and make them feel safe. Ralph becomes this person, after being chosen in a democratic election. He tries to hear what everybody has to say. Let him be chief with the trumpet thing (Golding, 30). The conch is a symbol of democracy because it entitles everyone to having an opinion in all matters of importance. It also symbolizes law and order, everything which Ralph stands for. Although he is accepted as a leader in the beginning, his priorities as a leade r and way of thinking create conflict with some of the others. Theres another thing. We can help them to find us. If a ship comes near the island they might not notice us. So we must make a smoke on top of the mountain. We must make a fire. (Golding, 49) When one observes Ralphs actions, it becomes obvious that he is not only a task-motivated leader, but also a democratic leader, which results from the fact that he leads an expedition through the forest in order to find out if the island is deserted or not. Ralph also wants shelters to be built where they can sleep, branches to be collected for a signal fire and a specific place beyond the bathing-pool to be used as a lavatory. Furthermore, he introduces rules when he tells the boys that they have to have Hands up like at school (Golding, 31) and that only the person holding the conch is allowed to speak. In addition, the conch makes the boys feel they participate; when holding it they get a chance to speak their mind and the others must listen. It is a significant trait for a democratic leader to aim for an environment of equality. Without a doubt, Ralph is also a relationship-motivated leader. He is compassionate and caring when he tries to comfort the littluns (Golding, 61) by saying there is no beast to be afraid of. He is interested in what the other boys think and he listens to them and what they have to say before he makes decisions. His closest follower, Piggy, thinks a great deal about what has to be done and how they can do it and Ralph brings up Piggys ideas at the assemblies. In brief, these are all examples that support the fact that Ralph is a complex leadership figure. He wants to be a sympathetic and egalitarian leader who does not avoid his responsibilities, but he is only twelve years old and has neither the experience needed for the task, nor the support from the other boys. In the beginning, all the boys stand by the rules set by Ralph. After a while this society starts to break up as man has a way of choosing the easiest way out. The boys get tired of the responsibility and want to play, hunt and have fun. They do not want to get rescued as they are enjoying themselves too much. When moving on to the authoritarian leader, represented by Jack, we find a character who starts his advance for the role of leader at the very first assembly when he states that he is the rightful leader of the schoolboys since he is the head boy in the choir. He is arrogant and disrespectful when he yells at his choir and bullies Piggy by screaming Shut up Fatty! (Golding, 17). Jack feels humiliated when Ralph is elected. Although he temporarily gives in, Jack soon starts using different strategies to undermine Ralphs authority, and at the same time making himself more powerful. He stirs up the group by lying about Ralph having said that the hunters are bad at hunting. And even though Jack is the one who suggests that they need rules, and is quick to point out that the one who breaks them will be punished, he soon breaks them himself when he, for instance, speaks without holding the conch or makes himself heard above the other speakers (Olsen, 13). These actions are unopposed and we aken Ralphs leadership, and according to Kirsten Olsen it is the breaking of old rules and making his own (Olsen, 14) that paves the way for Jack coming to power. After being publicly humiliated when his attempt to have Ralph unseated fails, Jack decides to leave the group and have a fort of his own. Cunningly he tries to win people over from Ralphs camp by accusing him of being a coward and a bad hunter. Jack also offers the hungry boys meat if they leave Ralph and join his group instead. Not surprisingly most boys rather eat pork and play than pick berries and do tiresome chores under Ralphs command. As a result of Jacks behavior, one notices how Ralphs leadership style gradually changes into a laissez-faire leader. At one point he wonders what is going on: Things are breaking up. I dont understand why. We began well; we were happy (Golding, 87). Later he talks to the assembled boys and asks: Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?(Golding, 200). According to Ralph the first alternative is the only possible one, but the others do not seem to agree with him. Jack is a charismatic leader who paints his face with clay before he goes hunting for pigs. The hunters join Jack because they feel as if the mask on Jacks face commands them to do so. Most boys just do what the leader says, or what the majority does, without thinking in terms of right and wrong or friendship, since they are afraid to be on their own, or even worse, a target of the other boys aggressions. Compared to the democratic leader Ralph, Jack is an authoritarian leader who yells at his peers to make his point, threatens them into obedience, makes them commit crimes as well as actually hurting them physically. An example of Jacks tactics when he finally is in power is the situation where he orders his subordinates to tie up the twins Sam and Eric, and then turns to Ralph, saying: See? They do what I want (Golding, 199). As a consequence of Jacks increasing number of followers, Ralph finds himself being the leader of only a few boys. One person, though, who never abandons him is Piggy, the representative of common sense. He desperately tries to adjust the situation on the island to conditions more like those at home and he asks: What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? Whats grown-ups going to think? Going off hunting pigs letting fires out - (Golding, 98). Compared to Jack, who leads a primary group, the choir, Ralph, with the exception of Piggy, does not have a group of close and loyal allies. A typical example of how Ralph is betrayed by some of his followers is the actions of twins Sam and Eric. They try to avoid conflicts, and therefore never openly take a stand for Ralph. The end of Ralphs leadership is a fact when Jack and his band of hunters have killed Simon and Piggy, the two most devoted boys. There are no more boys to lead, and without followers Ralph can no longer be a leader. In conclusion, both leaders have different characteristics and priorities, which make them lead the group in different ways. Ralph is considered to be the elected leader and Jack the self-appointed leader. These leaders have different skills and different views on how to create society, which leads them into many conflicts. This just goes to show that humans cannot be trusted with power, as power corrupts. The moment Jack becomes the leader of his own group he turns into a savage and does things without thinking. The same can be said about governments in the world today, who start wars with the purpose of fulfilling their own needs, and they do not mind harming others to achieve their goals and objectives. Maybe humans really are savages that cannot live in peace and coexist on this earth with all the animals and the environment. It might be quite possible that Goldings view of humans as being the worst creatures on earth, is not very hard to comprehend, as you can relate to the conf licts created by leadership that are seen throughout the world.

Custom Essays: Ophelia as a Sexual Being -- GCSE English Literature Cou

Ophelia as a Sexual Being in Hamlet      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In Elaine Showalter's essay, "feminist criticism allows Ophelia to upstage Hamlet [and] . . . brings to the foreground . . . the cultural links between femininity, [and] female sexuality" (221). In most of his plays, William Shakespeare has many women in secondary roles, only filling dead space or causing strife between men. During Shakespeare's time, thoughts of women bordered on weak and deceitful images, leading to the idea of frail, yet conniving creatures. In Hamlet, the character Ophelia uses her sexual prowess as a source of power when dealing with the opposite sex. As she weaves her way through the background of the play, she affects the men greatly to become a main focus when critiquing the literary work. Interpretations of Ophelia vary based on the experts' view of sexual importance. The influence she has over Hamlet's emotions and desires affects the outcome of their faltering relationship and Hamlet's sanity. Viewing Ophelia as a sexual being, one can sur mise that she embodies the very essence of female sexuality. Kenneth Branagh's 1996 film version of Hamlet portrays Ophelia as a siren: natural, beautiful, and the perfect object of male desire. In Elaine Showalter's essay and Kenneth Branagh's film, the representation of Ophelia gives strong evidence regarding the sexuality Ophelia emanates and her effect on the men surrounding her despite her five short scenes in the play. Ophelia's overzealous sexuality, uncommon in those "moral" days, constitutes an image of madness and impropriety ending in her tragic death by her own hand.    With the strong sexuality Ophelia radiates, even her brother Laertes cannot resist her charms. Speaking with Ophelia, Laertes warns h... ...h her fire and passion. William Shakespeare produces this female character, which becomes the most important heroine in all of his literary works. As a symbol for women everywhere, Ophelia depicts the importance of using the power one has to make a difference in one's own life.      Works Cited Hamlet. Dir. Kenneth Barnagh. Perf. Kenneth Branagh, Kate Winslet, Brian Blessed, Richard Briars, Julie Christie, Billy Crystal, Derek Jacobi, Michael Maloney. Castle Rock, 1996. Showalter, Elaine. "Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism." Hamlet. Ed. Susanne L. Wofford. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1994. 220-238. Wofford, Susanne L., ed. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism, William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1994.   

Traits Of Adolf Hitler :: essays research papers

"He Failed as a student in classical secondary schools, a situation that contributed to his desire to become an artist. He went to Vienna in 1903. His years there were characterized by melancholy, aimlessness, and racial hatred,"stated by Alan Bullock (Allen Bullock 1962, 97). This does not sound like the life of a the future leader of Germany. But what Adolf Hitler lost in scholastics he made up for it and then some in leadership skills. Hitler, having great leadership skills, showed that leadership skills can be more important than brain power.A good education was something that Adolf Hitler did not have. He dropped out of school at the age of sixteen, spending only 10 years in school. Sadly, he didn't even get into a art academy, even though it was his goal in life to become an artist. Arthur Schlesinger says that "However in his last year of school he failed German and Mathematics, and only succeeded in Gym and Drawing. He drooped out of school at the age of 16, spending a total of 10 years in school,"(Arthur M. Schlesinger 1985, 14) Even though he didn't have a normal amount of education, he still became the leader of Germany. Adolf Hitler, nevertheless, was a great orator and when he spoke, everybody listened. He sometimes spoke several times a day, moving from town to town seemingly tireless. Ken McVay had this to say about this subject, "He was a tireless speaker and before he came to power would sometimes give as many as three or four speeches on the same day, often in different cites. Even his opponents concede that he is the greatest orator that Germany has ever known,"[sic](Ken McVay 1995, (Internet)). Though he didn't have a good education his orator skill, which is a leadership skill, helped him achieve his goal.Along with being a tireless orator, Hitler also possessed the quality to make everybody listen to him, a quality that most, not including Mr. Marcero, saline high school teachers could use. He would get the audience by telling them what they wanted to hear, then he would manipulate the people to arose their emotions. "His power and Fascination in speaking lay almost wholly in his ability to sense what the given audience wanted to hear and then to manipulate his theme in such a way that he would arouse the emotions of the crowd,"(Strasser 1993, (Internet)).

Race and Ethnicity Essay

The ongoing struggle to fight the skin color prejudice in the contemporary American society is portrayed in Michael Jackson’s song â€Å"Black or White. † Whereas the racism is defined as a superior behavior against other race-thus making it inferior, the singer refers to this term as â€Å"See, it’s not about races, just places, faces, where your blood comes from is where your space is. † Michael Jackson, one of the most influential artists in the music industry, calls for equality in how people view and behave towards each other. The question, which this master thesis investigates, does it matter if you’re black or white, is clearly answered by the singer: â€Å"It don’t matter if you’re black or white. † Jackson was trying to influence his society to act in a similar way and he calls for them to live their lives by Dr. Luther’s dream â€Å"†¦. judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. † However, almost thirty years later, it still seemed only as a dream because he sang: â€Å"I’m tired of this Devil†, where the bad is being represented by the prejudice. At the same time, he clearly states: â€Å"I’m not gonna spend my life being a color† – this is where he makes his conclusion. This can imply that even though he doesn’t discriminate and would like to see color prejudice gone, he is still being discriminated against. While being the most prominent artist in the music industry, he still calls himself â€Å"a color† and he rebuts against it and wants to be seen for the person he is and not the pigmentation of his skin. It is widely known that Michael Jackson had many facial plastic surgeries and it is controversial whether or not he altered his skin color by chemical peels or was it the disease called vitiligio that changed his face color to white. Therefore, it can be speculated that he modified skin to appear white, which ultimately is his vision. It can be further questioned – since Michael Jackon can’t win his struggle for racial equality, did he give up and go white – just to end his inner battle? Will all his suffering come to closure since now he looks white? Is this the true answer? It may be deemed as so since the skin color is the guide of one’s position in the society where being white claims supremacy-control and power. It should be noted that Michael Jackson is one of the greatest musicians of all times, having sold over 750 million records worldwide. He has accomplished so much in his life, yet still feels inferior and calls for racial equality in the world. His vision for a better world to live in, free of racism, ends on a sad note: â€Å"It’s black, it’s white†. To summarize, through decades, the blacks have fought to be equal, as the American nation shall guarantee those rights, yet, the society is still divided into the superior, the whites, and inferior- the blacks (and other people of color). Blacks have always been portrayed as the dirty, the poor, the lesser-of-a human type whereas the whites are seen as the dominant, the good type. Again, Jackson does not agree with this stereotype in saying: â€Å"I ain’t second to none. † Moreover, he claims that he will no longer be scared and mentions historical symbol of a KKK group: â€Å"I ain’t scared of your brother, I ain’t scared of no sheets. † With his passing in 2009, many of his inner struggles come to the end, but will the next generation start working on being color-free as the king of pop envisioned? America has always struggled with racial issues, especially those of black and white. Some them included racial segregation, education, workforce, banking and even seating on the bus. Black people continuously tried to â€Å"break thru† into community, but were always pushed aside as dirty, poor and unwelcome. We, in modern times, see the United States of America as a country that treats everyone equal. Americans should all be all equal, no matter what race, color, religion or any other characteristics they have. After all, we all remember year 2009, which is when Americans elected their first African American President. Question that comes to mind – why â€Å"first African American President,† not just simply their 44th President? So – the race and color of your skin does matter in modern times. My analyses of selected books, academic journals, films and music video will concentrate and argue if Americans indeed discriminate against race or if it is history and no longer exists in American life. First, I would like to take into consideration the iconic Michael Jackson, one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest singer and performer of the 21st century. Not only his songs deserve a closer look, but also his lifestyle – ideas, fears and the public opinion. â€Å"Black or White† by Michael Jackson and Bill Bottrell is a one of the greatest singles in Michael’s career. It was released on November 11, 1991. What inspired Michael to particularly select these two topics? Black or white – as implied in the song, he sings about skin color. Songs starts in Africa, possibly showing Jackson’s â€Å"beginning† – he is black. In one of the scenes, Michael sings â€Å"I ain’t scared of no sheets; I ain’t scared of nobody† – while he is walking through fire images – which is being compared to KKK and its torch ceremonies. Here, he is portraying his painful vision of KKK and its vision. Later, the performers sing â€Å"I’m not gonna spend my life being a color. † What a great statement. Michael, throughout his whole life and his career, shows us his inner and constant fight for a non-racial America. Being black himself, he had struggled and finally came to the top, but still did not achieve the level of happiness – which is â€Å"no color† in his country. Later, Jackson sings on Statue of Liberty’s torch, again possibly reminding us about the KKK, and at the same time – the Statue symbolizes liberty, which for him will be color-free, no discrimination America. We shouldn’t forget about Michael’s actions in this video. In the original version, he is smashing the car, windows and the inn exploded. However, later he had to edit this version to minimize his violent behavior, however. He altered it by adding four racial graffiti messages onto the windows that he was smashing. As I suggested earlier, Michael Jackson is portrayed as an angry black man who simply hates the discrimination against black people and shows his feelings by destroyed his surroundings, as he was being destroyed himself –just for being of black color. In is interesting to observe, the Jackson, when asked to change his destructive aggressive music video, he indeed did change it, but didn’t forget about this hostility towards discrimination. He had just portrayed it differently (graffiti). First message reads: â€Å"Hitler Lives,† then â€Å"Nigger Go Home,† â€Å"No More Wetbacks,† and finally â€Å"KKK Rules. † It can be argued if Michael Jackson is simply smashing windows with those painful ideas – is destroying them – to make a better world? Finally, the song comes from the album â€Å"Dangerous. † What did the author have in mind? Are all of those issues, painful experiences and the fight for non-colored America dangerous? It can be argued that yes. Jackson showed us the dangerous side of being black, where he was always forced to fight and that causes different sorts of trouble. In â€Å"Black or White,† Michael brilliantly portrayed two core problems people were facing daily: black or white. As we look at his lifestyle and constant metamorphoses, Michael Jackson had numerous surgeries that altered the color of his skin and make him â€Å"white. † It is very controversial as many sources quote that Jackson had a condition where one looses a pigment of his skin, called vitiligo. However, Michael Jackson public image is seen as a person who constantly tried to be white, therefore, sought surgeries to help him attain this goal. Michael Jackson shows us that it could have probably been easier to make himself white and not struggle for color-free America, where everyone is equal, no matter of who there are or what they look like. It would also be important to analyze some of the lyrics from Jackson’s music video. He sings: â€Å"I had to tell them I ain’t second to none. † It can be understood that he no longer is accepting the fact that black is â€Å"second,† which is worse, just because of the color. He continues: â€Å"And I told about equality† – he tells us he wants to be considered equal, despite his skin color. Next verse, he has really had enough of being pushed around because he is black â€Å"I am tired of this devil, I am tired of this stuff, I am tired of this business. † Finally, he talks about racism in: â€Å"See, it’s not about races, Just places, Faces, Where your blood, Comes from, Is where your space is, I’ve seen the bright, Get duller, I’m not going to spend, My life being a color. † Here Michael Jackson compares himself to simply being a â€Å"color. † He is less than a human being only because he is not white. He is â€Å"black. † Again, he accents his refusal of living his life being black. He wants to be equal, equal to white. It should be also noted that throughout video, Michael Jackson is wearing black and white clothing (white shirt, black blazer, white accents on his right arm and nails, black shoes, white socks). He seems to be a person caught in a black-and-white world and struggles to change it, showing his pain. However, at the very end, he turns into a black panther. This transformation may symbolize him as a black man who will fight for his rights, yet, still remain black. In book â€Å"The Color of Credit: Mortgage Discrimination, Research Methodology, and Fair-Lending Enforcement† Stephen L. Ross and John Yinger present racial issues and argue the importance of skin color in banking. It should be noted that this book was published in 2002, year where we all think that American people are equal, especially on racial basis. Therefore, why and how does the skin color come into play in banking? First, the American lenders take many factors into consideration when disbursing the mortgage. Such factors include many details such as the creditor’s ability to repay the loan – where the lender accesses the potential risk of losing the loan. There are many different lenders and they base their information on statistics, demographics and make final decision based on the risk factors. Research showed that mainly blacks would seek loans, which are not favorable to all lenders. Therefore such bank does take race into consideration when reviewing for application for credit. It is also shown that blacks will most likely work with subprime lenders (44%) with comparison to whites (only 4%). Blacks generally cannot use the prime mortgage market due to their poor qualifications, thus creating the black to white ratio of getting the mortgage – with figures of 2. 28 denial for prime market and 1. 27 for subprime. At the same time, limited research shows that blacks-even though have some qualifications as white – would remain in the subprime market and thus be charged higher fees. Equal Credit Opportunity Act says: It shall be unlawful for any creditor to discriminate against any applicant, with respect to any aspect of a credit transaction—on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex or marital status, or age (provided the applicant has the capacity to contract). (U. S. Code Title 15, Chapter 41, Section 1691) This would mean that all people should be treated equally in banks, when doing business in banks, no discrimination in credit transaction. However, authors argue that the bank may take a different look at the person and who they are in â€Å"business necessity† can be proved. Therefore, even while it is regulated by law, certain discriminatory practices can and do exist. Later, it would be rather hard to prove that the lender discriminated based for example on race. All regulations are not very clear and courts find it hard to find such a connection of discrimination. It is implied that blacks, with poorer ability to repay, living in lower income communities, must face subprime, expensive mortgages – to possibly make as much money as possible in the shortest time-so if the black borrower defaults on his payments, the lender wouldn’t lose its investment. This is to compare with the white borrower who lives in the richer-type setting, is more likely to meet his payments, therefore, he is offered a prime mortgage rate, without the necessity to further secure the loan. It can be argued if blacks and whites are treated equally, despite many regulations. On one hand, the lender must adhere to all necessary regulations, but on the other hand, such institution can make necessary decisions to make that mortgage profitable – thus, taking all factors into consideration in the application process. We can further analyze that race and color of skin does matter when one is being evaluated for such an application. It is believed that whites pose a lower risk to a financial institution than blacks. This also means, as authors point out, that black are less likely to be approved for a higher-priced home than a white person, which causes the real estate agents to discriminate and not show the more expensive houses to blacks. Maybe they don’t discriminate, they just know that lender is not likely to approve a black person in comparison to the same application of a white person? It is particularly important to note that authors point out that ‘‘on average, black mortgage applications have higher loan-to value and debt-to-income ratios than do white applications. ’’ In closing, it should be noted that while many regulations exist, there is no proof that racial discrimination has gone away and some research suggests that blacks still have lower approval rate in comparison to the whites. It is said that race does play a key role when the lender looks at your mortgage application.

Transforming the Influence of the Media on our Lives

Our goal in this publication is to help our readers lay a foundation for transforming the influence of the media on their lives. It is in all of our interests to critically assess, rather than mindlessly accept, news media pronouncements. Our hope is that we can aid readers to become more independent, insightful, and critical in responding to the content of news media messages and storiesIf objectivity or fairness in the construction of news stories is thought of as equivalent to presenting all the facts and only the facts (â€Å"All the news that’s fit to print†), objectivity and fairness is an illusion.No human knows more than a small percentage of the facts and it is not possible to present all the facts (even if one did know them). It isn’t even possible to present all the important facts, for many criteria compete for determining what is â€Å"impor- tant. †We must therefore always ask,â€Å"What has been left out of this article? †Ã¢â‚¬Å"What would I think if different facts had been highlighted here? †Ã¢â‚¬Å"What if this article had been written by those who hold a point of view opposite to the one embedded in the story as told?†For example, people commonly consider facts to be important to the extent that they have significant implications for them personally: Is any given event going to affect what they want, how much is it going to cost them, how is it going to influence their income, their living conditions, their leisure, their convenience? How some given event is going to affect others, especially others far away and out of sight, is quite another matter. There is therefore a large divergence among the news media of the world as to what is presented as â€Å"significant† in the world.

“Liquid Life” – Mark Deuze

Liquid Life, Convergence Culture, and Media Work Mark Deuze Bloomington Indiana – USA (Ph) 1-812-3231699 Email: [email  protected] edu URL: http://deuze. blogspot. com Dated: March 19, 2006 Working Paper Word count (excluding references): 7. 917 Author: Mark Deuze (Indiana University) Keywords: Social Theory, Liquid Modernity, Media Work Biographical information: Mark Deuze (1969) is associate professor at Indiana University’s Department of Telecommunications in Bloomington, the United States, and Professor of Journalism and New Media at Leiden University, The Netherlands.He received his PhD in the social sciences from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Publications of his work include five books, as well as articles in peer-reviewed journals such as New Media & Society, The Information Society, and First Monday, and he publishes an irregular weblog on new media and society at http://deuze. blogspot. com. Liquid Life, Convergence Culture, and Media Work Abs tract Life today has become analogous with work – and it increasingly displays all the contemporary characteristics of work in what has been described as the ‘new capitalism’: permanent flux, constant change, and structural indeterminacy.Zygmunt Bauman thus argues how we are all living a ‘liquid’ life, which is â€Å"a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty. † In liquid life, the modern categories of production (work) and consumption (life) have converged, which trend is particularly visible in our almost constant and concurrent immersion in media. According to Henry Jenkins, these are the conditions of an emerging convergence culture.In this paper these trends will be explored in detail, coupling insights from contemporary social theory, new media studies and popular culture to show how our modern conceptions of media, culture and society have modernized, and how the emerging media ecosystem can be illuminated by sett ing it against the ways in which those at the forefront of these cultural and technological changes negotiate their professional identity: the mediaworkers. 1 Liquid Life, Convergence Culture, and Media Work In today’s society, argues Zygmunt Bauman, â€Å"work is the normal state of all humans; not working is abnormal† (2005a: 5).Life has become analogous to work. Instead of developing a lifestyle, our everyday efforts and energy go into choosing a work-style: ‘a way of working and a way of being at work’, as one British professional coaching agency describes it. As work becomes a way of life, life increasingly displays all the characteristics of contemporary work, where we have to come to terms with the challenges and opportunities of contingent employment, precarious labour, and a structural sense of real or perceived job insecurity.Ulrich Beck (2000) points at the fundamentally ambivalent prospects of contemporary ‘work-styles’ at all leve ls of society as marked by uncertainty, paradox and risk. The conditions of work at the beginning of the 21st century are in a constant state of flux, brought about by all kinds of job destruction practices in the context of what Richard Sennett (1998) calls ‘workforce flexibility’.This culture of contemporary capitalism manifests itself most directly in the notable change of one’s career from a series of more or less predictable achievements within the context of a lifelong contract to a constant reshuffling of career bits and pieces in the ‘portfolio worklife’, as heralded by Charles Hand as early as 1989 (pp. 183ff). In the portfolio lifestyle, careers are a sequence of stepping stones through life, where workers as individuals and organizations as collectives do not commit to each other for much more than the short-term goal, the project at hand, the talent needed now.The modern categories of life and work at the beginning of ther 21st century ar e thus spilling over, into each other, making each of these key aspects of our human condition contingent on the characteristics of the other. Bauman shows how this increasing fluidity of the everyday, coupled with a prevalent sense of permanent flux, has created the conditions of contemporary ‘liquid’ life as â€Å"a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty† (2005b, p. 2).In this paper I will set the sketched developments and discussions on the centrality of work and the convergence of work and life in liquid modernity against a context of the pervasive and ubiquitous nature of media in our everyday lives. I will show how our almost constant and concurrent immersion in media can be seen as both a reflection as well as an amplification of the hybridization of life in culture of new capitalism. This perspective opens up different ways of looking at seemingly contradictory thus deeply unsettling trends in 2 today’s lived experiences at home, at work, and at play.At the heart of this argument stands a selective reading of contemporary social theories on the changing nature of work by Richard Sennett, Zygmunt Bauman, and Ulrich Beck, coupled with the approaches to new media by Lev Manovich and Pierre Levy, and popular culture by Henry Jenkins. By conceptually linking between the centrality of work in today’s risk society, with the omnipresence of new media and the pervasiveness of the genres, discourses and uses of popular culture, we may open up exciting ways of looking at both historical and contemporary phenomena on the intersection between media, culture and society.New Capitalism The constant uncertainty of everyday liquid life today, as sketched by Zygmunt Bauman, is accelerated and amplified at work following the prevailing management mantras of new capitalism, where stability and solidity as one-time hallmarks of a healthy company now have become signs of weakness (Sennett, 2005: 41). The relationshi ps of capital and labour, argues Manuel Castells, are increasingly individualized and organized around the network enterprise form of production, which integrates the work process globally through telecommunications, transportation and client-customer networks.Such worldwide integration introduces a fundamental aspect of unpredictability to the nature of work, as the success or failure of the local production process becomes almost completely contingent on the fluctuations in the global network – and vice versa, as â€Å"any individual capital is submitted to the movements of the global automaton† (Castells, 2000: 18).Here, adaptive behavior, permanent change, casualization of labor, and continual innovation are all expressed in the executive credo of ‘workforce flexibility’ which according to Bauman has turned from something to be avoided into a virtue to be learned and practised daily (2002: 24). This flexibility for many is synonymous with living in fea r of real or perceived job insecurity. Sennett signals how even affluent and highly educated young professionals fear â€Å"they are on the edge of losing control over their lives.This fear is built into their work histories† (Sennett, 1998: 19). Society today, argues Sennett, uses the feverish development of flexible organisations against the ‘evils’ of routine. Unlike Handy, he sees little promise in this re-interpretation of uncertainty as the corporate strategy of choice: â€Å"Revulsion against bureaucratic routine and pursuit of flexibility has produced new structures of power and control, rather than created the conditions which set us free† (ibid. 47). This 3 flexibility stretches out into both work time and non-work time, which distinction has blurred for many, if not most, people. Adapting to changing management practices, new technologies, and cultivating creativity and talent cannot be necessarily tied to a nine-to-five working weekday, especia lly considering the general lack of corporate investment in employee training.With the slow demise of lifelong full-time employment, continuous searching for jobs, preparing for potential future jobs, as well as managing multiple careers more or less simultaneously have become core elements of everyday lifestyle for many. This inevitably must lead to a more inclusive understanding of work as taking place in differing socio-economic settings and as interconnected with many other, often non-work, relationships (Parry et al, 2005).Work comes in many different shapes and sizes – paid and non-paid, voluntary and employed, professional and amateuristic – and we seem to be engulfed in it all of the time. Working increasingly includes (re-) schooling and training, unlearning ‘old’ skills while adapting to changing technologies and management demands, moving from project to project, and navigating one’s career through an at times bewildering sea of loose aff iliations, temporary arrangements, and informal networks.This perception and experience of working has come to define life and modern society. Additionally our understanding of contemporary work-styles by definition includes structural uncertainty and risk, thus framing every aspect of our lives within that particular context. Precarity The key to understanding this ‘brave new world’ of work is its precariousness, characterized by endemic uncertainty and permanent change (Beck, 2000: 22-3). The nature of work is changing rapidly in our runaway world – some even foresee an end of work in the nearby future (Rifkin, 2004).However real or perceived the insecurities experiences in our everyday work-styles are, its precarite bleeds into every understanding we have of ourselves and who we are. As colorfully described on the Britain-based website Precarity. Info: â€Å"WHAT IS PRECARITY? Precarity stretches beyond work. It includes housing, debt, general instability, th e inability to make plans. We can talk about the subjugation of life under capital, not just the subjugation of labour under capital. Precarity is an instrument of control; it is enforced by those with power 4 upon the powerless.We can't choose how we want to live. It engenders competition in social life. It forces us into a Darwinian â€Å"struggle for existence† on a social level. Precarity is the basic condition of individuals in capitalist society. It divides us, and limits opportunities to get together. People are disempowered and social relations break down. †1 If work and life are increasingly indiscernable in the play of the everyday, the key institutions linking their practices to modernity – work (or: occupations) and the family must also be seen as undergoing a fundamental shift.With the increasing precariousness of labor and the exponential entry of women into the workforce both ‘work’ and ‘family’ have not only changed; thes e core institutions of modern life have thus become integrated. Catherine Hakim (2003) signals a shift in preferences towards adaptive or work centered (instead of home centered) lifestyles that cannot be attributed to societies as a whole, but to particular groups within liquid modern societies – especially those who want to keep up with the demands of contemporary consumer culture.The family has become what Anthony Giddens (2003: 58-9) calls a ‘shell’ or, in the words of Beck, ‘zombie’ institution: people and policymakers alike still refer to the family as the primary unit in today’s society, even though in its traditional connotation of the nuclear family – two married parents and children at home – it has all but died. Instead, our families perhaps must be seen as transitory units similar to what Georges Benko describes as ‘non-places’ like shopping malls or airports.In such spaces existing for temporary convenie nce and the more or less anonymous exchange of goods, services and information, no one is really expected to stick around very long. The family as a traditionally celebrated safe haven from the uncertain world outside, seems hto have turned itself against the values of domestication and ‘settling in’ – it has become the place and space for structural coupling and uncoupling (Bauman, 2003).With a divorce rate of roughly 50% in most capitalist economies, a growing recognition of the normalcy of gay and lesbian lifestyles, the exponential increase among city dwellers of predominantly childless peoples like recent immigrants, aging babyboomers, and empty nesters, and with singles forming 40% or more of the total population of countries in North America and Western Europe it must be clear that the meaning of ‘family’ as an institution, like work, has fundamentally changed.In his assessment of the personal consequences of the changing nature of work in our past-paced capitalist economy, Richard Sennett (1998: 21) laments how no one becomes a 5 long-term witness to another person’s life anymore. Indeed, most of us, rich and poor, are constantly on the move – either as economically and politically desperate migratory sanspapiers or as highly-skilled cultural entrepreneurs in an globally networked marketplace, where knowledge and information have become the primary form of capital (Drucker, 1993).We are not just on the move from parttime job to flexible contract, nor just from one city to the next country; in the particular urban settings of flexible capitalism we also move from from ‘pink-slip party’ to yet another social networking event, from rented apartment to leased living space, from fling to affair, and from single-size servings to disposable everything.Our only shared condition increasingly seems to be the lived experience of being â€Å"permanently impermanent† in the context of constant chang e, which in turn disables us to bear witness to anything other but our own plights, to be solely solved deploying our individual skills and personal resources (Bauman, 2002: 18; Bauman, 2000: 72; Bauman, 2005b: 33). In the beginning of the 21st century we are seemingly becoming blind to each other, which social fragmentation is exacerbated by the undeniable primacy yet deeply unsettling nature of work in everyday life.Jonathan Gershuny (2000), after comparing time-use datasets from twenty different countries (including Australia, Finland, The Netherlands and the United States), summarizes the characteristics of modern industrial societies in terms of a continuos growth in the numbers of skilled workers as a proportion of all employment, and a growth of time allocated to the production and consumption of sophisticated products and services.Even though we tend to spend more time consuming products and services of the information age, and technologies increasingly augment and automate human labour, this does not mean we are spending less time working, as Jeremy Rifkin (2004) has argued. Quite the opposite: new forms of work organization in fact entail intensified demands on the work-time of both permanent and temporary employees (Smith, 1997). The trend towards flexible work started in the 1970s, and has accelerated in the late 1990s, coinciding with the rush of an increasingly information-based global economy to the World Wide Web.It is particularly in this sphere of information- and knowledge-based work where the culture of flexible capitalism has taken root as the dominant mode of labour organization – and where researchers have found both employers and employees in fact preferring a condition of so-called ‘boundaryless’ contingent employment (Marler et al, 2002). A boundaryless career reflects a career path that 6 goes beyond the boundaries of single employment settings, and involves a sequence of jobs between different companies and diffe rent segments of the labor market. As job security and promotional opportunities within larger organizations decline, individuals may view multiple employer experiences in a positive light because it supports skill development, increases marketability, shifts career control to the employee, and perhaps results in better matching career and family life-cycle demands. As such, boundarylessness represents a different conception of job security† (ibid. , 430).Whereas for most workers in traditional temporary and contingent settings their employment situation is far from ideal, many in the higher skilled knowledge-based areas of the labor market seem to prefer such precarious working conditions, associating this with greater individual autonomy, the acquisition of a wide variety of skills and experiences, and a reduced dependence on a single employer (Kalleberg, 2000). The portfolio work-style of the self-employed information or ‘cultural’ entrepreneur can thus be char acterized by living in a state of constant anxiety, while at the ame time seemingly enjoying a sense of control over one’s own career. Bauman warns against overtly optimistic readings of the relative freedom these prime beneficiaries of inevitably unequitable globalization claim to enjoy, as â€Å"it is in a horrid and lamentable insecurity that their targeted or collateral victims suspect the major obstacle lies to becoming free† (2005b: 38). Freedom and security, often seen as mutually exclusive, thus become ambigious in the context of how different people from different walks of life deal with, and give meaning to, the consequences of not having either.It is perhaps the perfect paradox of contemporary liquid life: all the trends in today’s work-life quite clearly suggest a rapid destabilization of social bonds corresponding with increasingly disempowering effects of a frickle and uncertain global high-tech information economy, yet those workers caught in the epicenter of this bewildering shift express a sense of mastery over their lives, interpreting their professional identity in this context in terms of indvidual-level control and empowering agency (du Gay, 1996; Storey et al, 2005).Conditions of real or perceived job insecurity thus do not necessarily mean the workers involved are suffering in silence – nor that the anxiety that comes with a boundaryless, largely contingent, and portfolio worklife necessarily must be seen as a blessing in disguise. The convergence of the time and effort we invest in both production (‘work’) and consumption (‘life’) as signaled by Gershuny does suggest that our most common solution to the increasingly anxious and sometimes exciting developments in society is an endless individual and professional mixing of the cultures of working and living, thus indefinitely 7 lurring the boundaries between them. Crucial to this understanding is the realization that not only are we sp ending more and more time producing – information, knowledge, products, ‘things’ – we are also increasingly engaging in acts of consumption. The rate of consumption in society has greatly accelerated over the last few decades. The values, ideals and practices of consumerism tend to be framed in an extremely negative light – focusing for example on the increasing infantilization, mainstreaming and materialism of contemporary consumer cultures.However, consumerism can also be embraced in terms of its transformative potential regarding elitist, top-down, and otherwise non-responsive social institutions such as the political system (cf. the emergence of the ‘citizen-consumer’), the economy (cf. the ‘conquest of cool’ and the marketing of resistance), and the media (Keum et al 2004; Thomas, 1997; Jenkins, 2006). Indeed, the consumptive trend has been particularly visible in the sphere of knowledge and information-related leisure services provided by the cultural industries.We spend more and more time and money on entertainment experiences – which vary from acquiring consumer electronics to attending multimedia shows, from collecting technological toys to participating in social media online, and from navigating between ‘high’ cultural (cf. theater, museums, opera) to ‘low’ cultural (cf. reality TV, videogames, tabloids) forms of expression.Indeed, our collective quest towards increasingly compelling and diversified leisure like media-centric experiences has turned us into cultural omnivores: attending a play one day, renting a couple of Hollywood blockbuster movies the next; reading the latest installment in the Harry Potter (or the Russian Tanya Grotter) book series this week, spending the following weekend building a Website containing links to all the relevant information about global meteorological and ecological trends online.It certainly seems people have a lot of spa re time on their hands if we add up all these activities. However, Gershuny found evidence of what he calls the ‘end of leisure’: â€Å"each year we have to work harder in our free time to consume all those things that we have been working harder to produce in our work time† (2000: 51). Status in society today thus comes with a price: time outside of work (whether at home, on the road or in the office) has become a scarce commodity, even though we seem to spend more of it all the time. Media in Everyday Life The paradox of more time spent simultaneously at production and consumption can be resolved if one takes into active consideration how both spheres of activity have converged in our increased reliance on media in all aspects of life, in turn facilitated by rapid advancements in information and communication technologies. Next to engaging in all kinds of leisure activities to compensate for strains or other drawbacks on occupational work, work and leisure can increasingly be seen as xtensions of each other – especially for professionals in the knowledge and information sectors of the economy (Blekesaune, 2005). One particular effect this spillover effect has had on our everyday lived reality is the ongoing retreat of people into what can be called ‘personal information spaces’ at home and at work (which for a significant number of people occupy the same space), within which we only talk to and with ourselves.These spaces can be seen as particular physical environments such as turning parts of the house or apartment into a ‘home theater’ and ‘home office’ filled with all kinds of consumer electronics used to consume and produce media content (such as a desktop computer with internet access and a printer, one or more game consoles, a television set, digital video recorder, DVD-player, and anywhere between two to seven loudspeakers).Other examples of such personal information spaces include the ensemble of mobile media technologies we carry around us everywhere we go – devices that seem to socially isolate us while at the same time connecting us to the rest of the wired world (using a cellphone, laptop, Personal Digital Assistant, digital camera, walkman, and other more intricate forms of wearable computing that truly put the ‘personal’ in Personal Computer).Yet these spaces can also be experienced as disembodied – as in our ongoing immersion in persistent online environments varying from virtual workspaces (for example through videoconferencing capabilities and company intranets) to massively multiplayer computer games (World of Warcraft, Everquest, Ultima Online), virtual worlds (Second Life, The Sims Online, Active Worlds), and social networking services (Friendster, Orkut, MySpace). The various ways in which the ever-growing numbers of people both young and old engage with each other through these and other media is sometimes taken as new for ms of community.Manuell Castells for example describes our intensifying interactions online as a new form of ‘hypersociability’, where the social consists of networked individualism â€Å"enhancing the capacity of individuals to rebuild structures of sociability from the bottom up† (2001: 131). 9 Sennett’s act of witnessing (or perceived lack thereof) seems to have moved online, where people move in and out of interactive networked environments, managing their multiple virtual selves (cf. avatars) in persistent gaming, chatting, instant messaging and otherwise connective, digital, and online environments.Market reseach suggests the worldwide number of internet users surpassed one billion in 2005, most of whom access the global computer network from the United States, China, and Japan, with other large user groups in India, Germany, Brazil, Russia, and Spain. 2 Internet user penetration is now in the 65% to 75% range for the leading countries. We use intern et overwhelmingly for interpersonal communication, whether it is in the context of play, love, or work. And yes, these distinct domains of everyday life dissolve in our interactions online. A prominent place for people to look for or advertise new jobs is Monster. om, a Website, which launched in 1994. The site, which has affiliates in 21 countries around the world, currently boasts a million+ resumes and has contracts with close to 150. 000 companies. A growing number of singles – quickly becoming the dominant species in liquid modern societies – seeks and sometimes finds love online. A popular online matchmaking service, Match. com, launched in 1995, currently has more than 15 million members in more than 240 territories on six continents, and operates more than 30 online dating sites in 17 local languages. 3 The free online classifieds community at Craigslist. org operates 90 sites in all 50 U.S. states, and 35 countries, reports three billion pageviews per month â €“ the vast majority of which go to job listings. 4 The most successful businesses on the internet – like eBay, Yahoo, Google, and Amazon – share one fundamental characteristic: the product these companies deliver is connectivity, bringing people together to trade, communicate, interact and exchange knowledge, information, goods, and services. However, not just businesses thrive on interaction and connectivity online. The most often used reference guide on the World Wide Web is Wikipedia, a multilingual free-content encyclopedia, which started in 2001.The encyclopedia is based on the so-called ‘wiki–concept, which means it is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by anyone with access to a web browser and an internet connection. Wikipedia contains close to four million articles appearing in over 200 language editions, and gets about one million visitors a day. 5 Weblogs are another excellent example of how witnessi ng has become an increasingly virtual, yet also deeply personal act. Jill Walker provides the following definition: 10 A weblog, or *blog, is a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first. Typically, weblogs are published by individuals and their style is personal and informal. Weblogs first appeared in the mid-1990s, becoming popular as simple and free publishing tools became available towards the turn of the century. Since anybody with a net connection can publish their own weblog, there is great variety in the quality, content, and ambition of weblogs, and a weblog may have anywhere from a handful to tens of thousands of daily readers. 6 At current estimates, the total number of weblogs worldwide comes close to the 30 million mark, with more than 50. 000 postings per hour, and over 70. 000 new weblogs created each day. 7 Indexing research by Susan Herring and colleagues shows how the vast maj ority (70%) of weblogs are highly personal vehicles for self-expression and empowerment, written almost exclusively by individuals (Herring et al, 2005). However, this kind of individualism in weblogs is in fact quite connective, as bloggers include comment and feedback options with their posts, put up their blogs for free syndication (cf.RSS-feeds), reference and link to other blogs when creating posts, and cut and paste all kinds of content – including moving and still images, text, and audiofiles – from all over the Web as well as their own original work onto their weblog. The area online where the convergence of connectivity, content, creativity, and commercialism reaches its pinnacle is in the realm of computer games. Worldwide, more than 5 million active subscribers participate in massively multiplayer online games. 8 In a massively multiplayer computer game players connect to game servers via internet and interact in real time with other users worldwide.A signif icant part of this gaming experience consist of ‘meta-gaming’: in-game communication between gamers, using all kinds of devices such as headsets, chat commands, and in-game player signals. The playing of multiplayer games both reproduces and challenges everyday rules of social interaction, as the game environment can be seen both as an extension of real-world experiences and as strictly virtual space (Wright et al, 2002). Yet, meta-gaming is not just about the game: it includes any type of social interaction such as talking, loving, and trading. Ted Castranova (2005) for example has shown how we buy, sell and exchange goods and ervices in online games to the extent that such synthetic economies of scale have come to resemble those in ‘real’, offline worlds – if only because of their sheer size. All of these activities must be seen in terms of their concurrence, as we simultaneously engage in them through for example the windowing of computer screens: pressing ‘alt-tab’ gets you from your job resume on Monster to a post on a weblog, from browsing the information in a 11 Wikipedia entry for a presentation to contributing a book review to Amazon, from a purchase on eBay to an exchange in World of Warcraft.It is important to note how through these interactive, interconnected and networked devices and environments our work- and lifestyles further converge, not only facilitating but rather accelerating the blurring of modern life’s traditional boundaries. Contemporary changes in the economy, politics, society and technology thus get expressed in our increasing concurrent immersion in all kinds of media, which immersion in turn amplifies the convergence of the different spheres of activity in everyday life, blurring the lines between work and non-work, work and leisure, as well as between production and consumption.New Media, Culture and Society At the heart of most if not all of today’s new media technologi es saturating our work-life environments is their networked character, which interconnectivity has woven itself into the fabric of everyday existence among the majority of the population in European, Australasian, and North-American countries.Although this certainly suggests many people do not have access to such technologies, in the world of knowledge and information work the dominant presence of internet and other networked media cannot be ignored. In whatever shape or form, media bring the world to our doorstep – and we bring our world into media. No one is ‘outside’ anymore, whether by choice or necessity.This also means that the precarity of contemporary life through media extends to each and everyone of us, and cannot be said to be beholden to any particular group, race, class or gender – even though life’s current precariousness means different things for different people in different settings. In this context it is both fascinating and indee d hopeful that what characterizes most of the ways we engage with worldwide-networked technologies is the extent to which we seem to be doing so through participatory cooperation.Whether it is the online collaboratively authored encycopedia Wikipedia credible enough to challenge the Brittanica, the open source software movement potent enough to ruffle the feathers of Microsoft, the citizen journalism of Ohmynews powerful enough to influence presidential elections in South Korea, the search engine based on treating links as user recommendations Google, or the free-for-all online classifieds listings of Craigslist succesful enough to eat away the profits of corporate newspapers in the United States: the bottom line of all of these practices is collaboration, a 12 lourishing ‘collective intelligence’ particular of cyberculture (Levy, 1997). When asked to explain the worldwide success of Craigslist, founder Craig Newmark hints at collaboration as the key value embedded in t he way we use, design and give meaning to networked information and communication technologies: â€Å"my experience has shown me that most people are essentially good and trustworthy, and want to help each other out.I have been reminded that the rule about treating others the way you want to be treated is a good one. †9 Similarly, the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, base much of their company’s success on letting individual employees and users co-develop new and existing applications like Google Scholar or Google Video, which are made available in so-called ‘beta’ versions first to sollicit suggestions. 0 Considering the commonly voiced concerns of an increasingly fragmented society and a general decline in traditional social capital as defined by people’s trust and in politics, institutions such as church and state, and to some extent others, it may be counter-intuitive to claim that a more engaged and participatory culture is emerg ing (Putnam, 2004).Considering the interactive, globally networked and increasingly participatory nature of new media, it is inspiring to consider a different kind of social cohesion – a form of community that is not necessarily based on what Sennett (1992) has perceived as a purified absence of difference, but rather on Castells’ earlier mentioned notion of hypersociability particular of the network society. Interestingly, none of this participatory or otherwise collective nature of contemporary media is new.Ever since the mid-20th century so-called ‘alternative’ media have more or less successfully emerged next to, and sometimes in symbiotic relationships with other forms of community media (Atton, 2001). One could think of pirate radio stations, small-scale print magazines, local newspapers and community television stations in the 1960s and 1970s, community-based Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and Usenet newsgroups on Internet in the 1980s, and as from th e 1990s a wide range of genres on the Web such as community portal sites, group weblogs, voluntary news services, and so on.The emerging new media ecosystem inspires and is inspired by networks of more or less collaborative end-users, creating what Eric von Hippel (2005) calls ‘user-innovation communities’, where people increasingly create and share their own products and services. Within the particular context of media organizations and cultural industries, much of this community-oriented and at times participatory content production takes place within the walls of commercial media conglomerates.Henry Jenkins’ (2006) work on the popular television and movie industries shows how media corporations at least in part must be seen 13 as co-conspirators in the emergence of a participatory media culture, from Star Wars’ George Lucas encouraging the production and distribution of fan movies to the producers of reality television show Survivor actively participati ng in so-called ‘spoiler’ discussion forums online.This increasingly participatory media enviroment translates itself in the widespread proliferation of networked computers and Internet connections in the home (and increasingly to handheld mobile devices). Recognition of this culture of participatory authorship has come from software developers where they have introduced the concept of ‘open’ design. An advanced form of this type of design is the Open Source Movement, based on the principle of shared and collaborative access to and control over software, and using (or rather: tweaking) it to improve the product for global use.The videogame industry has – since the early 1990s – long acknowledged the necessity of viral marketing and user control in product development by pre-releasing game source code, offering games versions as shareware, and tapping customer communities for input (Bo Jeppesen & Molin, 2003). Participation, not in the least en abled by the real-time connectedness of Internet and however voluntarist, incoherent, and perhaps solely fuelled by private interests can be seen as a principal component of digital culture (Deuze, 2006). Our media nvironment has thus become a key site of how we give meaning to the changing context of how we live, work, and play. Pierre Levy and Jeremy Rifkin are among those who signal an emerging relational or social economy as a direct result from the mechanization, automation, or augmentation of agriculture, industry, and services. Central to this technodeterminist understanding of the global economy would be what Levy calls ‘the production of the social bond’ through the ongoing development of sophisticated systems of networked intelligence.The centrality of using and making media in everyday life reveals our endless fascination with media – with any and all acts of mediation. In this context Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin (1996) signal a double logic of remed iation, embodied in the recombinant trends of media becoming immediate up to the point they disappear, while at the same becoming increasingly hypermediate, pervasive, and ubiquitous in all aspects of everyday life: â€Å"Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying technologies of mediation. It is through our uses of media the complexities of contemporary culture get articulated, as media have come to dominate every aspect of life. What is relevant to our concerns here is the interrelationship between work-time, leisure14 time, and media-time, making the world certainly a much bigger place than it used to be, while at the same time reducing our lifeworld as we retreat dutifully in our personal information spaces and interact with everyone yet ‘seeing’ no one.It is especially through media that for most of us the world has become glocalized, as Roland Robertson (1995) would have it, where global products, peoples and ideas are re-appropriated locally and vice versa. It must be clear that media have become central to our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live. However, as David Croteau and William Hoynes argue, â€Å"in the twenty-first century, we navigate through a vast mass media environment unprecedented in human history.Yet our intimate familiarity with the media often allows us to take them for granted† (2003: 5). The enormous extent to which this is true can be exemplified by looking at how people from all walks of life talk about and give meaning to their media use. Contemporary media usage studies in wired countries like the United States, The Netherlands or Finland tend to reveal how people spend twice as much time with media than they think they do. In the United States for example, people spend on average twelve hours per day using media.Media have become such an integrated part of our lives that most of the time w e are not even aware we are using media. American researchers describe this kind of almost constant immersion with media technologies and content from multiple sources simultaneously available through shared or shifting attention as ‘concurrent media exposure’, rather than popular industryterms such as ‘media multitasking’ or ‘simultaneous media usage’, emphasizing how important it is to avoid implying that our engagement with media is necessarily deliberate or attentive (Papper et al, 2004).We get up in the morning to the sound of the radio-alarm, switch on the television for breakfast, make our first calls using the hand-free set on our way to work, spend most of the day at our desks in front of a computer screen with fax and phone at hand, surf the Web for the latest news, blogposts and shopping deals during lunch hours, watch our favorite sitcoms and sometimes news shows over dinner, and spend the remainder of the day chatting, emailing and instant messaging online.All of this only consists of the kind of media we choose to use, ignoring advertising and marketing messages, simultaneously reading a magazine or newspaper when zapping or zipping past television channels or commercials, reading billboards along the highway, browsing the headlines of a free daily newspaper while in transit, thoughtlessly scanning through radio stations or songs on our walkman, 15 downloading, upgrading, tweaking, installing and uninstalling software, and so on, and so forth.Liquid Life and Media Work Contemporary life thus involves a complex dance between work, play, media, and life in the context of a rapid-changing ‘glocal’ context, the boundaries between which spaces, places and spheres of activity and perception have blurred. In short, the lifeworld today can perhaps best be seen as an ongoing remix of sorts, in terms a new language of how we understand and represent the visible world, our knowledge, human history, and fel low human beings: the language of new media, meta-media, and information culture (Manovich, 2005).As Lev Manovich states, â€Å"today we are in the middle of a new media revolution – the shift of all culture to computer-mediated forms of production, distribution, and communication† (2001: 19). The key to understanding our increasing opportunity, propensity or even necessity to more or less collaboratively remix our ‘glocal’ lived reality is too see this kind of behavior as a way for us to make sense of the growing complexity and uncertainty of the world around us (and in ourselves).Paraphrasing Bauman it is, in other words, a coping mechanism for dealing with the absurdity of life in today’s liquid modernity. â€Å"’Liquid modern’ is a society in which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines. Liquidity of life and that of society feed and reinvig orate each other. Liquid life, just like liquid modern society, cannot keep its shape or stay on course for long† (Bauman, 2005b: 1).A liquid modern society is one where uncertainty, flux, change, conflict, and revolution are the permanent conditions of everyday life. Bauman makes a compelling argument how this situation is neither modern or post-modern, but rather explains how the categories of existence established and enabled by early, first, or solid modernity are disintegrating, overlapping, and remixing. It is not as if we cannot draw meaningful distinctions between global and local, between work and non-work, between public and private, between conservative and progressive, or between work and life anymore.It is just that these and other key organizing characteristics and categories of modern life have lost their (presumed or perceived) intrinsic, commonly held or consensual meaning. 16 The way we do and understand things is increasingly transformed through and implicat ed by the way we engage the media in our lives. This in turn makes the media as a business, as in those companies that work to create the content of our media, of central importance to any kind of meaningful analysis of contemporary life.Defining the media as cultural industries, Desmond Hesmondhalgh for example shows their prominence for understanding the human condition and our lived reality â€Å"as those institutions (mainly profitmaking companies, but also state organisations and non-profit organisations) which are most directly involved in the production of social meaning† (2002: 11). If the media in the broadest possible sense are the sites of our struggle over meaning and symbolic exchange in society, it ecomes essential to understand the working lives of the people within the cultural industries – if only to understand which values, ideas, circumstances and social contexts define those primarily engaged in the production of of the resources and materials all o f use use to give meaning to our lives. It is in this context that Bauman discusses the typical charactertics of these professional ‘culture creators’, â€Å"who carry the main burden of the transgressive proclivity of culture and make it their conciously embraced vocation, practising critique and transgression as their own mode of being† (2005b: 54-5).Bauman implictly addresses the missing link between the particularities of the human condition in the beginning of the 21st century, our seemingly constant immersion in media, and the centrality of work as the defining principle of contemporary lived reality. The missing link is the changing nature of media work in today’s digital, global and deeply uncertain age, where media workers must be seen as the directors as well as reflectors of liquid modern life, in which life media have become ubiquitous, pervasive, personalized – as well as interactive, participatory, and networked.Media are both the harb ingers of change as well as the self-proclaimed guardians of social order as in the case of for example parliamentary journalists and tabloid reporters: documenting and thus contributing to the maintenance of the status quo while at the same time signaling the disruptive changes wreaking havoc on it from all sides. Indeed, the popular reality of the media gives rise to what Beck has described as the ongoing modernization of modernity, by emphasizing its core characteristics of risk, uncertainty, and paradox.And it is precisely this risk-taking, adventurous yet deeply self-contradictory nature that has come to define the nature of media work, where â€Å"senses of risk are constitutive and often pivotal to the whole economic and social basis of cultural entrepreneurship – risk being central to choices made not only in business but in the lifeworld more generally† (Banks et al, 2000: 453). Mediaworkers are 17 ot only interesting in terms of their contribution to the way we give meaning to our shared reality; who they are, what they do and how they give meaning to their work can also be seen as an indicator of how an increasingly significant part of the global economy organizes itself. Media industries are indeed one of the prime accelerators of a global economy, both in terms of its glocalization and its increased immersion in networked information and communication technologies.Media professionals – those employed in journalism, marketing communications, advertising, public relations, game design, television and the movie industry – embody in their work-styles all the themes of social change in liquid modern times as expressed in this essay, as Simon Cottle for exampe describes how â€Å"a growing army of media professionals, producers and others work in this expanding sector of the economy, many of them in freelance, temporary, subcontracted and underpaid (and sometimes unpaid) positions [†¦] They are also often at the forefro nt of processes of organisational change including new flexible work regimes, reflexive corporate cultures, and the introduction of digital technologies, multimedia production and multiskilled practices† (2003: 3). Indeed, Scott Lash and John Urry (1994) have signaled earlier how the cultural industries have always been post-Fordist avant la lettre, contributing to the culturalization of economic life through a structurating mix of commercially viable yet generic, and innovative, flexible and highly creative production processes.This unique blend of what Bryan Turner (2003: 138) describes as the dialectical process of linearity and liquidity in contemporary consumer cultures turns the media as an industry into the core culprit responsible for cookiecutter-style McDonaldization, as well as the main agent in affecting social, technological and economical change. Convergence Culture In today’s increasingly digital culture, mediawork can be seen as a stomping ground for the forces of increasingly differentiated production and innovation processes, and the complex interaction and integration between work, life, and play, all of which get expressed in, and are facilitated by, the rapid development of new information and communication technologies.Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000: 291) correspondingly argue how â€Å"the computer and communication revolution of production has transformed laboring practices in such a way that they all tend toward the model of information and communication technologies [†¦] the anthrolopology of cyberspace is really a recognition of the new human condition. † The new human condition, when seen 18 through the lens of those in the forefront of changes in the way work and life are implicated in our increasingly participatory media production and consumption, is convergent. This convergence is not just a technological process, where different types of media forms – audio, video, text – and channe ls – print, radio, television – are integrated into the computer.Following the work of Henry Jenkins (2004), media convergence must also be seen as having a cultural logic of its own, blurring the lines between production and consumption, between making media and using media, and between active or passive spectatorship of mediated culture: â€Å"Convergence is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottomup consumer-driven process. Media companies are learning how to accelerate the flow of media content across delivery channels to expand revenue opportunities, broaden markets and reinforce viewer commitments. Consumers are learning how to use these different media technologies to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact with other users.They are fighting for the right to participate more fully in their culture, to control the flow of media in their lives and to talk back to mass market content. Sometimes, these two forces reinforc e each other, creating closer, more rewarding, relations between media producers and consumers† (Jenkins, 2004: 37). Pertinent to our concerns here is the ways in which mediaworkers are implicated by this convergence culture so typical of today’s media. If convergence is a cultural logic that at its core integrates all of us in the process of producing mediated experiences, how do the professionals involved give meaning to their productivity, creative autonomy, and professional identity?One way of looking at this focuses on the political economy of increasingly conglomerated, transnational media corporations, emphasizing their role in rationalizing and routinizing production for the (glocal) masses: â€Å"Conglomerates have invested heavily in developing synergistic relationships between their various media holdings, integrating their production processes into â€Å"convergence† systems that yield content for different outlets, â€Å"crosspromoting† progr ams in different media, and establishing lines of vertical and horizontal integration in production and distribution† (Klinenberg & Benzecry, 2005: 10). A second approach acknowledges the goals and ideals of contemporary ‘corporate management of global enterprises, but draws our attention more specifically to those people directly involved in the process: the mediaworkers. â€Å"Being environmentally conscious, showing a social conscience and being a good corporate citizen are viewed in modern management theory as benefiting the bottom line. But this management-speak hides the growing focus in the media professions—the cultural boundary spanners—on genuine links between modern 19 organizations and the different individuals and groups in society that deal with them† (Balnaves et al, 2004: 193).Discussion Considering the dominant trends towards cultural convergence of production and consumption both in the way people run their everyday work-lives, and in the way media professionals do their work, it becomes increasingly interesting to observe and understand which values, ideas and ideals get embedded in the globally emerging system of userproducer co-creation. Granted, â€Å"the media business is unusually fluid and superficial† (Sennett, 1998: 80). But as I have shown in this essay, so are life, work, and play. And all of those activities are expressed in the way we use, co-create, and give meaning to media in our everyday lives. The suggested superficiality and invisibility of the media perhaps belittles the valuable, hypersociable and deeply participatory nature of our interactions within and between them.Indeed, the continuous glocal ‘remix’ of liquid modernity’s working and living conditions can be connected to the way we understand the media. The nature of work within an increasingly liquid, collaborative and convergent culture gets meaning in the media industry through product differentiation, wo rkforce flexibilization, and cross-media integration. Yet it also gets expressed in the various ways in which people use and make media all over the world – through ‘prosuming’ (Toffler, 1980) or ‘produsing’ (Bruns, 2004) practices, open source-type applications, wiki-based user co-creation, and other examples of convergence culture. I accept the notion that for most of us, life in liquid modernity is fraught with risk, uncertaintly, anxiety and flux.However, I feel that our analyses should take the next step, and acknowledge how people give meaning to this new human condition: through cultural convergence, participation, and new forms of sociability. It is too simple to argue that the media industries, which are so instrumental in all of these contingencies, either reproduce passive spectators or facilitate active, albeit superficial, engagement. The ways we use and give meaning to media, both as professionals and amateurs, show signs of a more comp lex, or in the words of Jenkins, ‘kludgy’ culture emerging, one that is built on the core elements of the global risk society and thrives on Bauman’s liquid life.I call for further investigation of and among those who bear the brunt of this emergence: the mediaworkers. 20 References Chris Atton (2001), Alternative Media. London: Sage. 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Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Talmadge Wright, Paul Briedenbach and Eric Boria (2002), Creative Player actions in fps online video games: playing Counter-Strike, Game Studies 2 (2), URL: http://www. gamestudies. org/0202/wright. 23 Endnotes 1 2 URL: http://ourmayday. revolt. org/precarity. info/info. tm (date accessed: 2-12-6). See URL: http://www. c-i-a. com/pr0106. htm. 3 See URL: http://corp. match. com/index/newscenter_press_glance. asp. 4 See URL: http://www. craigslist. com/about/pr/factsheet. html. 5 See URL: http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Wikipedia. 6 See URL: http://huminf. uib. no/~jill/archives/blog_theorising/final_version_of_weblog_definitio n. html. 7 See URL: http://technorati. com/weblog/2006/02/83. html. 8 See URL: http://www. mmogchart. com. 9 Phone interview with Craig Newmark, 1 December 2005. 10 See for example the company profile at CBS ‘60 Minutes’ at URL: http://www. cbsnews. com/stories/2004/12/30/60minutes/main664063. shtml. 24