These days I remain split between whether I should write (my experiences here on my blog) or whether I must read (articles to enrich my understanding of the world at large). For some time, I was wondering if I had run out of things to write about? However, it's not that I don't have any thing to write, rather I tend to think if the same time was invested in reading (for example the world news, books, novels, academic texts, etc.), would my view of the world be different? It ofcourse will be. But do I want to affect my view of the world through these mediations? This is a hard one to resolve.
I took two courses this semester - one on media theory and the other on globalization space - both taught by important theorists within their domain (Francesco Casetti and Keller Easterling, respectively). Through the Theory of Media course, I have come to understand further how media is 'scripting' our lives. In simpler terms, we start imagining the world in terms of media, in forms of media. Thus the medium becomes the message! Too simplistically put here, but I will not dwell on this idea here, rather go back to my questions I raised before!
The other one "globalization space" got me introduced to so much that is happening around me. There is so much happening around the world that would probably interest me. If I was a traveler, I would go mad absorbing all the information that was coming in front of my eyes and into my brain. But the unfamiliarity to all of it is what made be a bit nervous about myself. Today, as all the students taking the course (who came from different parts of the world and studying different disciplines at Yale) presented their observations in the form of a Pecha Kucha presentation, I found it a bit difficult to understand, rather contextualize much of the information that was displayed. They spoke about concerns from their own homelands - all related to globalization. It was hard for me to absorb the material. Not that I could not have grasped, but it was hard to put them in the already formed large categories in my head. For a moment, I wondered if this must be attributed to my lack of general knowledge about the world.
To talk in my favour to some extent, I do look the format as a hurdle. The content presented in 15 slides scrolling each for 15 seconds with a densely packed background commentary is hard to digest in the duration of 3 minutes. I wonder if it was the as difficult for others in the audience. For that matter, I can not understand any thing that I do not spend sufficient time with. I am anyway not so good at small talk, and I can not talk about things merely on their surface. I have a compulsive habit of either getting to the root of the discussion, or just leaving it there, untouched.
Thus my experience of this Pecha Kucha for the class was a mixed one. I would have loved to know more about a lot of the presentation contents, but now, I remain at the risk of forgetting all of them since I could not penetrate them further beyond the screen shots that lasted for 15 seconds! Such unrest made me dig into the Times of India online immediately after I came back to my desk after the session. I looked up headlines on Mumbai Mirror, Rediff and so on to perhaps try and make myself upto date with my own hometown, or country. Ironically, no news fascinated me. this was largely because I could not place them in their own histories (which is also supposed to be mine), and secondly because I could not relate them to my own personal history, of how they affect me!
I am certain they do intersect in some way. It was evident when I clicked by the small converter within the online newspaper website: "Find out how much is 100 rupees in US dollars today?" I was captivated, and got pulled into it instantly, at once realizing the importance of world economic dynamics and the way it affected my own journey. But I still can not fathom the amount of information existing in the world. Some people are extremely good at accumulating a gist of everything around themselves. I wonder if they are living scripted lives (imbricated by the media!)? Many people are well traveled, many of them are well read, many are further informed by the media they have consumed. I seem to be lacking on all fronts, yet trying to find my confidence in my own limited view of the world!
How relevant is it then, to know the world? Or how do we make it relevant? Or rather, do we try to make everything relevant to us once we have consumed it, only because we have consumed it? It is human nature to force connections into whatever is there in our heads. We connect all dots, like we make constellations out of starts that are so distant from each other in the void of the sky! We connect everything, such that it becomes meaningful to us. Meaning thus, is constructed out of relationships to other things happening around us. In other words, meaning is merely a relative act of understanding. Yet, meaning is so important to exist. But can meaning be self-referential? Can the orientation of meaning be inside-out rather than outside-in? To word it simply, does the world become what we make of it, or do we become what the world wants us to be?
I know these are hard questions. We construct our lives within the dialectic of this 'inside' and 'outside'. But this is an interesting contradiction between the two courses I took this semester, rather I must say courses through which I look at life. Media and the global - as much as they split each other, they also bind. As much as they set apart, they bring the places close.
Probably this will be a lifelong struggle. I can never make up my mind about "how much one should know?" Aren't the definitions of "intelligence", "wise", "smart" - in other words, all socially acceptable, morally positive codes of behaviour scripted within that question? Sometimes I feel more knowledge makes us dumb, since it makes us behave in a more and more scripted behaviour. Scripted behaviour, to understand simply, is a behaviour that is not natural to you or your bodily existence - it is something that the world wants you to behave like!
I think the American short answer to this question would be: "F*** the world!"
Let's accept it for the time being.
I took two courses this semester - one on media theory and the other on globalization space - both taught by important theorists within their domain (Francesco Casetti and Keller Easterling, respectively). Through the Theory of Media course, I have come to understand further how media is 'scripting' our lives. In simpler terms, we start imagining the world in terms of media, in forms of media. Thus the medium becomes the message! Too simplistically put here, but I will not dwell on this idea here, rather go back to my questions I raised before!
The other one "globalization space" got me introduced to so much that is happening around me. There is so much happening around the world that would probably interest me. If I was a traveler, I would go mad absorbing all the information that was coming in front of my eyes and into my brain. But the unfamiliarity to all of it is what made be a bit nervous about myself. Today, as all the students taking the course (who came from different parts of the world and studying different disciplines at Yale) presented their observations in the form of a Pecha Kucha presentation, I found it a bit difficult to understand, rather contextualize much of the information that was displayed. They spoke about concerns from their own homelands - all related to globalization. It was hard for me to absorb the material. Not that I could not have grasped, but it was hard to put them in the already formed large categories in my head. For a moment, I wondered if this must be attributed to my lack of general knowledge about the world.
To talk in my favour to some extent, I do look the format as a hurdle. The content presented in 15 slides scrolling each for 15 seconds with a densely packed background commentary is hard to digest in the duration of 3 minutes. I wonder if it was the as difficult for others in the audience. For that matter, I can not understand any thing that I do not spend sufficient time with. I am anyway not so good at small talk, and I can not talk about things merely on their surface. I have a compulsive habit of either getting to the root of the discussion, or just leaving it there, untouched.
Thus my experience of this Pecha Kucha for the class was a mixed one. I would have loved to know more about a lot of the presentation contents, but now, I remain at the risk of forgetting all of them since I could not penetrate them further beyond the screen shots that lasted for 15 seconds! Such unrest made me dig into the Times of India online immediately after I came back to my desk after the session. I looked up headlines on Mumbai Mirror, Rediff and so on to perhaps try and make myself upto date with my own hometown, or country. Ironically, no news fascinated me. this was largely because I could not place them in their own histories (which is also supposed to be mine), and secondly because I could not relate them to my own personal history, of how they affect me!
I am certain they do intersect in some way. It was evident when I clicked by the small converter within the online newspaper website: "Find out how much is 100 rupees in US dollars today?" I was captivated, and got pulled into it instantly, at once realizing the importance of world economic dynamics and the way it affected my own journey. But I still can not fathom the amount of information existing in the world. Some people are extremely good at accumulating a gist of everything around themselves. I wonder if they are living scripted lives (imbricated by the media!)? Many people are well traveled, many of them are well read, many are further informed by the media they have consumed. I seem to be lacking on all fronts, yet trying to find my confidence in my own limited view of the world!
How relevant is it then, to know the world? Or how do we make it relevant? Or rather, do we try to make everything relevant to us once we have consumed it, only because we have consumed it? It is human nature to force connections into whatever is there in our heads. We connect all dots, like we make constellations out of starts that are so distant from each other in the void of the sky! We connect everything, such that it becomes meaningful to us. Meaning thus, is constructed out of relationships to other things happening around us. In other words, meaning is merely a relative act of understanding. Yet, meaning is so important to exist. But can meaning be self-referential? Can the orientation of meaning be inside-out rather than outside-in? To word it simply, does the world become what we make of it, or do we become what the world wants us to be?
I know these are hard questions. We construct our lives within the dialectic of this 'inside' and 'outside'. But this is an interesting contradiction between the two courses I took this semester, rather I must say courses through which I look at life. Media and the global - as much as they split each other, they also bind. As much as they set apart, they bring the places close.
Probably this will be a lifelong struggle. I can never make up my mind about "how much one should know?" Aren't the definitions of "intelligence", "wise", "smart" - in other words, all socially acceptable, morally positive codes of behaviour scripted within that question? Sometimes I feel more knowledge makes us dumb, since it makes us behave in a more and more scripted behaviour. Scripted behaviour, to understand simply, is a behaviour that is not natural to you or your bodily existence - it is something that the world wants you to behave like!
I think the American short answer to this question would be: "F*** the world!"
Let's accept it for the time being.
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