By Joel Bowman, on October 19th, 2015% No, not the The Leftovers TV show…. The “left-behinds”—those who are failing to keep pace with the technological revolution. I am increasingly one of them.
At one time, I was among the “techno” leaders. I was one of the first academics to embrace email and did so at a time when most of my colleagues were rejecting email as a method of communication. I have previously mentioned secretaries I knew in days gone by who resisted having their typewriters replaced by computers and word processing programs. They were among the first left-behinds. At the time, I didn’t fully understand why . . . → Read More: The Left-Behinds
By Joel Bowman, on December 12th, 2014% A long time ago (1985) a New York University professor, Neil Postman, published Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. One of the principal ideas is that television is “entertainment,” even when the subject is serious. The “news” becomes just another “show.”
From time to time I have wondered what Professor Postman would have thought about social media. His principal complaint about television was that it turns “news” into “entertainment.” Rational discourse was replaced by video and sound “bites,” with the focus of attention increasingly fleeting and fragmented. I remember the history of television . . . → Read More: Social Media and Our Collective Well-being
By Joel Bowman, on March 20th, 2012% An alternate title for this blog entry might be “Adjusting to Social Media.” Many of us who are older “dogs” at this point haven’t really caught up with the changes in forms of communication that have occurred in recent years. Some of us are making the effort. Others aren’t. If you’re a student of communication, you’re probably familiar with Morris Massey, who has used the lens of generational differences to help individuals understand the communication process. Where we were when, especially in pre- and early adolescence, influences the principal frames through which we view the external environment. When I was . . . → Read More: Old Dogs and New Tricks
By Joel Bowman, on June 4th, 2011% With apologies to the Beatles and “A Day in the Life”:
One of my daily habits is reading through the major online news sources to get a sense of what is happening here in the U.S. and in the world. I often find it fascinating to see what subjects are drawing the most media attention—and the kind of attention they are attracting. Here’s a brief round-up of recent “stuff”:
Placebos are in the news (again): One of the things I find most interesting about placebos is that articles about them written by medical doctors studiously avoid the word . . . → Read More: I Read the News Today (Oh, Boy)
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