A.) My Media in 2025

The Bittersweet Symphony of Our Media Hungry World

When I woke up this morning and went about my usual morning routine, I left for work feeling unlike myself. I realized how much media and technology has consumed the unscheduled moments in my life. We have arrived in an era where we feel like we need to obtain information, any kind of information, when our minds aren’t being occupied by work, socializing or sleeping.  I woke up and immediately checked social media, hoping that it would offer me something new, but it didn’t. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, three media mediums that changed the way we communicate 10 years ago. Thirty years ago it was Email, a revolutionary way to keep in touch with someone without picking up a landline to call him or her or sending snail mail. Now everything is digitized, posted on a public forum and distributed to us. The world is at our fingertips and it feels bittersweet.

I rode to work and read the news on my tablet this morning. Notice that I said “news” not “newspaper”. What is a newspaper anymore? You can’t call something that gives you the news on an electronic imitation of a newspaper, a newspaper. It is not even made out of paper. We must accept that the print age of Marshall McLuhan’s media epochs has been overcome by the electronic age.  Ten years ago, in the midst of the tablet fad, I stuck my nose up at the tablet, thinking that reading the physical newspaper or book was far superior. Little did I know that that wouldn’t be possible, that it would become extinct.

Despite my pessimistic views on the population’s constant need for social media and technology in order to scratch an unconscious itch, the evolving media has accomplished more than we could have ever imagined. The rhetoric is indispensable commodity in communication. We can obtain information at the click of a button, information that we wouldn’t reach us until hours after it’s occurrence forty years ago. Brands like The New York Times (yes, the NY Times), CNN and NBC have progressed with the changing demands and have made communication more efficient than ever.