Icon Analysis

The Icons that I have chosen are Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Britney Spears, and Facebook/Myspace. Extreme Makeover Home Edition is hosted by Ty Pennington, who got his start on TLC’s Trading Spaces as a carpenter. Now he goes around the U.S. helping families live better. Providing troubled and struggling families with better homes, great opportunities, and dream vacations. Basically the show chooses one family that has been struggling to overcome disappointment, frustration, adversity, and lots of times it is a family that struggles to make a difference in other people’s lives. I have also chosen Britney Spears, now most of you are probably wondering why. Britney Spears, although recently experiencing life difficulties in the spot light, was the beginning of young teen girl idols for America. Lastly, I chose together Face book and MySpace because both sites, although different, provide the same linkage of people across the nation through the internet.

I chose Extreme Makeover Home Edition because it is a show that provides hope and healing not only to those families that are selected for a dream come true but also for the audience watching at home. This show demonstrates that there is still good in the world and there are still people out there that are trying to make it a better place. When they show some of the homes and describe the lives of the family chosen, we as the audience clearly see why this family was nominated and chosen and we know in our hearts that they deserve this opportunity. Seeing the look and reactions of that family at the end of the show is always thanks enough for the crew and sponsors that made it happen. I find it pretty amazing that the crews can put together an entire house in one week. That is hard work and dedication to making the dreams of one family come true. Knowing that maybe because of this, that family won’t have has many hard times or as many struggles as they once had.

Britney Spears started out with a bang! She was the highest grossing female entertainer before she was even 21 years old. She took the pop music world by storm with her catching songs, amazing dance moves, and that little thing we call sex appeal. She changed the entertainment world with her concerts, videos and music. Britney was always pushing the envelope and people were watching to see what she was going to do next. However, I think that in recent year’s people and the media have forgotten that although an entertainer, Britney is still just a young girl with down-home dreams of being a mother and a wife. People often scrutinize her choices but fail to look at their own. Britney is a symbol of hope and inspiration. She proves that it’s not always the greatest to be at the top, that it’s ok to fall down, and when you do, you just have to pick yourself back up.

Lastly, Face Book and Myspace. I put them together because although they started out as two different sites for connecting with friends, their intentions were still the same. Both sites are the idea and concept to get and keep connected to your friends from all over the world. Both sites allow you to talk about yourself, your likes, hobbies, and heroes and to “comment” or “write wall-to-wall” with your friends. Both sites are adding games and applications that can be played and shared amongst your friends. Although not many people realize this, Face Book and MySpace have also changed the employment world because employers are now able to access your Face Book or MySpace and look at your information and can predetermine whether or not they want to hire you based on your pictures you post, comments to friends, and your blogs/notes. In this busy, technological world, these two sites are keeping people together and informed.

Assignment 1-4

It is interesting that the example was the iPhone because with the introduction of the iPhone has come the introduction of a new technology...the touch screen!

I won't lie I spent $400 on an iPhone and that was before the new faster iPhone was introduced with the faster 3G network! When it was first introduced people were amazed at the capabilities of having all those amenities and applications literally at their fingertips. Most people that don't have it look at it as possibly one of the hardest devices to operate when in all actuality I have found it to be the easiest phone I've ever had. In fact, when someone hands me a regular cell phone I say, "how do you work this"?

All this new technology of the touch screen launched more items available with touch screen capabilities and has now even become a competition and its not just among celluar phones.

Of course Apple introduced along with the iPhone their iPod touch which is like the iPhone only without phone capabilities, which to me is silly, why not just buy the phone it has all the same stuff and you can call people! Then more than a year later Blackberry has just introduced their new phone available exclusively at Verizon Wireless just as the iPhone is available exclusively at AT&T. The new Blackberry Storm! A touch screen phone, where have I seen this concept before? I have a friend that owned the iPhone but wanted the Storm so she sold her iPhone on Ebay and bought the Storm, a week later she tells me she hates the Storm and wishes she never sold her iPhone. Everyone will be different of course, those that didn't have the iPhone will probably like the Storm but once you get used to a certain kind of technology it is hard to try something else and the Storm is definitely different.

Along with touch screen cell phones and iPod's, Hewlett Packard (HP) has introduced their newest computer, The Touch Screen PC!! Very exciting! Can you imagine being able to surf the internet page by page just by touching your computer screen? This is incredible technology and I have to say that I really want one.

I am certain that their is a company out there trying to create a touch screen TV as well if they haven't already. Eventually the entire world will be accessible with the touch of a finger!

What is Popular Culture?

Popular culture is the collection of ideas that are popular, well-liked or common and create the prevailing culture. These ideas are heavily influenced by mass media. Popular culture is the views and perspectives most strongly represented and accepted within a society. With that being said, I have to wonder that if all the things presented to us from the media is actually widely accepted by everyone, especially the current entertainment industry. The language in music and movies has become very vulgar as well. In fact, even the movies created for children seem to have some adult humor involved these days. The children’s movies are becoming violent as well, like Spiderman, The Hulk, and Iron Man. Are we teaching our young boys that violence is ok and accepted? I realize that the movies and music alone cannot influence our children but if we as parents are allowing them to witness these things I believe we are subconsciously saying that violence, vulgar language and the exploitation of women is ok. So here’s my question, when presented with media like that and knowing it’s going to continue, are we as a culture saying we accept this?

The relevance of popular culture in business and careers will depend on what type of industry a person works in. I want to seek a career in sales, meaning advertising and marketing so current cultural aspects will greatly affect my career. I should always be on top of what the people want and expect.

I have chosen the digital camera to be an example of a pop culture artifact. As we continue to move forward with technology, digital is becoming a great part of our culture. It doesn’t matter what it is, our cable is becoming digital, our phone services, our TV’s, within the next few years, everything will become digital. The digital camera has come quite a long way just in the last few years. Cameras are our way to capture all the moments in our lives that we want to remember and look back on and digital cameras are making that even better.