Summary and Response
"But Enough About You…"
In Brian Williams, “But enough about you…” he clearly states that “Americans have decided the most important person in their lives is…them” therefore meaning that some things if not everything should revolve around what a “typical” American citizen wants. Whether it is what he or she wants to hear, see, and or experience, what he or she wants to buy, sell, show, or even not show…
Media in the past was definitely not as advanced as it currently is. “Media” in the early 1900’s to maybe even the early late 1900’s was considered to be Newspapers, Magazines, Advertisements, and Radios. Now; “Media” consist of a Blackberry or a PDA, of Direct TV or Comcast, of a Desktop or a Laptop, of a Flat screen TV or a Projector.
One can see the development of Media, but can one really tell whether the development of “Media” has been for the best or the worst? “Back in the Day”, families got together to watch television, to hear the NEWS, to watch “Family” shows together. Now, it’s “In with the new, out with the old”, why the TV if there is the Web. As Brian William states in his essay, “All of it exists to fill a perceived need”. The Web is something that delivers a person anything he or she wants to know, hear, see, or experience with no limits what so ever.
In this essay, it is made clear that though an anchor like Brian Williams himself directs a Broadcast like before with nothing but slight better changes for their viewers is currently having a reduced amount of viewers. According to Williams, the journalist and reporters are still doing their jobs. Their research, preparation, and presentations of a day’s news has not changed from when it “use” to be; what has changed is the audience, which has become a much more smaller audience. And as he states, “…many have been lured away by a dazzling array of choices and the chance to make their own news.”(p540)
One can debate that the Web indeed is a wonderful invention, personally speaking… “WHAT WOULD THE WORLD BE WITHOUT THE WEB?” And personally, I think it would be more involved in REAL problems. The world would be more aware of what is really going on around them and not what they want to be going on around them. It would be more of a REALITY CHECK to the world.
Brian Williams’s idea that the Media has changed from what a person really needs to know, such as a War to what a person wants to know or hear is more than partially true. With the help of the Web people are creating their own ideas, their own news, and their own reality. They are living a fantasy world by considering “Paris Hilton in jail” something more important than a shooting of 13 innocent people at an Army Base.
If one were to really analyze how the Web has affected society in general, the Web is something considered extremely “important” too many if not most of American Citizens. The web is easy and something that gives you what you want, when you want, and wherever you want it, whether it is to see it, hear it, or have it. The web is making a person selfish, little by little, by proving to a person that everything indeed is about them regardless of anything and at the tip of their hands.
Information that citizens should be informed of is information that are only shown to citizens if they take the initiative of typing it, or texting it, or changing the channel to it. It is not like before when people were more aware of what in reality was going on around them. “Americans have come to regard the act of reading a daily newspaper – on paper –…” Americans now rather view what are considered to be updates on Blackberrys, Iphones, PDA’s, or Laptops. The problem is, that these updates don’t consist of information about the country or its people, but more of what’s the fashion on the next addition of Vogue, or the deals for Black Friday.
What American citizens were to what they have become, is something very critical. People are more concerned about themselves and or too busy to actually notice what is going around them that they are missing out on what really is important. If the Web doesn’t begin to change people for the “better”, then indeed as William states in his concluding paragraph, we might just “miss the next great book or the next great idea...”
