The future...

As it has been said in the past, in ten years time we will no longer be required to leave our homes. Instead we will strap on a helmet and enter a virtual community allowing us to attend education and so forth electronically. However as ten years has come and past at a rapid pace we are still yet to see this so called helmet available to the wider community and we are still attending university and school physically, or by online correspondence.

I am still yet to see someone sitting in their pajamas at home attending a lecture with two hundred other students who are also sitting at home with some sort of virtual helmet strapped to their heads.

Technology is a rapidly changing industry. Developments are being made on a frequent basis in many industries of technology. Is it really that disappointing if we have to continue to have some sort of physical contact with other individuals in order to further our education or to carry out our daily lives?

There have been many technological developments which have changed the lives of many. These include:
the bionic ear
pace maker
automated limbs

Although we may never be given the chance to strap on this much talked about helmet, in all honesty would we want to? As winter sets in, in Australia and the typical Melbourne weather begins people are already complaining that it is too wet to go out. I then pose the question to you, why would we want to stay home with our virtual community, when at the end of the day we are still alone. We can already perform a various things online including start relationships, buy groceries and clothing, book holidays and air flights and much more.

This therefore brings me to my next point. The Internet is not necessarily an honest place. More often than not we hear stories of people meeting online who spend a large amount of money to fly to another country to meet their six foot tall, slim, blonde, model girlfriend or tall, dark and handsome boyfriend who they had met online only to find out they are an average looking middle aged man/woman.

The reporting of war throughout the media

Jordon Crandall (2004: 110) believes that the popularity of Reality TV has something to do with the change of attitude towards the reporting of war. Reality TV now constitutes over half of the top 10 shows in the United States. As reality televisions popularity increases we are now beginning to see the decrease in “real” news stories regarding the topic of war.

As Crandall said embedded reporters in the middle of the many current wars are under strict guidelines as to what they can and cannot produce. Rules of engagement for embedded journalists include details of military action could only be described in general terms and journalists are prohibited from writing about possible future missions, classified weapons or sensitive information. It is understandable that future missions are not to be written about for the protection of the soldiers and also the civilians of the proposed location. However when looking at the traditional ethical codes of conduct as outlined by the Society of Professional Journalists it can be seen that abiding by the rules of engagement all of their ethical codes of conduct cannot be achieved. They include to seek and report the truth, minimise harm, act independently and to be accountable. Embedded journalists are often put into a unit therefore being assigned a commander. The commander is then given the right to block a journalist from filing stories via satellite connection at any time

Are the images which we receive on a daily basis through the media a true representation of what is really happening all around the world? Or simply what the media regulators choose for the public to know? There have been many arguments put forward in regard to the reporting of war being staged. For example it has been said that footage shown to the public by the media had been pre recorded and also the wrong images
As the old saying goes a picture speaks one thousand words. However, how are these words being ‘spoken’ if the public are being deceived by the media who are the individuals responsible for reporting worldly events to us? It is probably unrealistic to think that we will ever be shown true representations of events from our media, especially scenes of war unless we went to the war zones ourselves.

Diasporas: maintaining cultural identity

Individuals generally speaking gain their cultural identity through means of religion, nationality, ethnicity and also cultural practices. Cultural practices can include language, music, sport, literature, art, popular culture, mass culture, costume and even food. Rules of social engagement also forms part of ones cultural identity, including etiquette, manners, gender, values, laws and norms. Diasporas can be used to maintain aspects of cultural identity.

A diaspora can be defined as dispersed networks of ethnically and culturally related peoples. The concept is concerned with ideas of travel, migration, scattering, displacement, homes and boarders. It commonly, relates to displaced persons, wanderers, forced and reluctant flight. However they are no longer characteristically produced by forced dispersal and reluctant scattering. Today, they can include business people, foreign students and academics, retirees and long term cultural tourists.

Members of diasporic groups can be dispersed widely, even into remote locations, but still pick up news from home on a satellite dish or cable in those places where they are more concentrated or in cases where homeland news and information transmission is undeveloped, suppressed or radically contested, they may access video letters, websites or special delivery orders flown in on a regular basis. Alternatively, they might rent a movie or popular television series which has come to their local store along with fine capillaries of distribution which emanate from their place of ethnic origin, or even from one of the new centres of diasporic media production now springing up in the west. Diasporas create ‘a place where social issues are discussed and debated, especially because socio-political policies, processes, and tactics affect various nations, social classes, and genders differently’.

These are people on the global frontier looking for a connection with their places of origin rather than with the community in which they now live. National boundaries have now lost their sharp edges and are beginning to blur. Groups are now able to remain connected to their cultural roots and share a sense of community that once would not have been possible. Many people wish to learn about their culture because they want to recapture the power to name themselves.

Cultures, nations and identities are constantly being redefined in both real and virtual life, actively constructed and maintained through various media and the sciences. Diasporas are simply a way of utilising technology to enable the development of cultural identity for individuals no matter where in the world they reside.