Guest Lecturer

Paul, the guest lecturer today, spoke using some specific terminology with quite alien words. However the concepts were easy to grasp and fascinating. I was captured by the ideas of youth subcultures mingling more than they used to. Being a mature age student I distinctly remember the solid boundaries of whichever group you were part of. The advancement in communication technologies appears to have played a major part in this phenomenon, hence the title of the lecture being "My Space Or Our Space". The dicussion boards that were made for specific groups on the internet have these set boundaries, but the personal ones such as "Facebook" and "Myspace" were given the metaphor of a blank canvas to reflect the individual rather than a subgroup. I also was made aware of companies profiling potential customers. It happened to me through "Amazon" and I hadn't noticed, let alone really thought about it. I also liked the terminology surrounding this, Broadcasting to Narrowcasting to Egocasting. Overall it was nice to get a few ideas on society and culture, especially as I am doing a psychology major.