This week’s lectorial didn’t take place due to the Labour Day holiday. Interesting story behind that, as I found it puzzling to why some of my friends from other universities still have school on that day. RMIT used to be a technological institute, unlike the other universities such as University of Melbourne, and therefore we were part of the labour movement, hence we still do observe such public holidays. Just a little information I received from a fellow tennis player at the weekly hits at Carlton Garden Tennis Club.

Back to lectorial, the readings assigned to us for week #3 was not so much a reading, but more of watching a YouTube video of a man who just launched his book on media studies. He touches on 2 very different categories in the media industry, both with very different motives and are strongly driven by very different set of goals. 1 being capitalisation and making money, generating revenue out of it. While the other being expressing our creativity, passion and arts. Unfortunately, most of the time, these 2 do not go hand-in-hand. At one point in time, 1 has to be compromised to make way for the other.

Another thing that he mentioned was how we should only look forward when it comes to learning, or using media. We shouldn’t dwell on the past, because the past is history and there’s no point, as some things back then might not hold any value currently or might have been obsolete. I however, might not agree with this point to some extend. We definitely have to look back at some point in time to review how far we’ve come, how far we might have ahead of us, and what were the mistakes we might have made and learnt from. True, we have to look ahead, as media evolves, little by little, every single day. It might not seem like it, but before we know it, media would have changed, taking shapes and form like the stock market, no one can predict. A decade ago, we were still using phones that were only made to make phone calls, text messages, 2D games and maybe, if you had a little more money, a coloured screen with a built-in camera. Today, almost everyone has a smartphone that could call, text, take pictures, listen to songs, check/reply to emails, surf the web, navigate, and so much more. How would media evolve next? Your guess is as good as mine.

One last point I’d like to raise from that short 7 minutes video was the observation he made. The definition of “share” has taken on a whole different meaning of posting something on your Facebook timeline, and newsfeed, which I find that so true. The internet has came up with so many terms and words that we might use in our everyday lives. It’s just mind boggling how much we rely on the Internet these days, however it works like a double edged sword, it opens up so many opportunities for cyber crime, bullying and who knows what.

Having said the above, sometimes I think it’s just good to take a step back to observe the world that we live in today, and occasionally fall back onto old simple technology before it got so complicated. For example, instead of making friends online, maybe taking a walk in the park and just meeting new people from there. Or listening to music CDs from a CD player instead of playing it from an iPod. Like how the Foo Fighters made their Sonic Highways album using tape instead of ProTools, due to the kind of sound or tone it treats the music, you can’t reproduce that on a digital audio workstation. Some things from the past are just worth revisiting every once in a while.