Pop Culture in the Media (Exam Three)

The decline of the Age of Typography and the ascendancy of the Age of Television.

What does Postman say is “the most significant American cultural fact of the second half of the twentieth century?”

Speech.

According to Professor Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death, “ …., of course, is the primal and indispensable medium. It makes us human, keeps us human, and in fact defines what human means.”

Metaphors.

According to Professor Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death, forms of media do not denote a specific, concrete statement about the world, but instead are like what?

Media.

According to Professor Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death, we do not see nature or intelligence or human motivation or ideology as “it” is but only as our languages are. And our languages are our ….. Our …. are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture.

Professor Postman suggests that public discourse in our present culture takes the shape of dangerous nonsense.

What does Professor Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death assert about public discourse?

Context-free information.

According to Professor Postman in Building a Bridge to the Eighteen Century, what kind of meaning did telegraphy give legitimacy to?

A commodity.

According to Professor Postman in Building a Bridge to the Eighteen Century, telegraphy makes information into what?

Nineteenth.

According to Professor Postman in Building a Bridge to the Eighteen Century, from what century did we inherit story-less information?

The great problem of the twenty-first century.

Regarding Postman’s discussion of information of information from Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century, “how to transform information into knowledge, and how to transform knowledge into wisdom” captures the essence of what?

Move.

Professor Postman in Building a Bridge to the Eighteen Century, suggests that the principal strength of the telegraph was its capacity to …. information.

40\.

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According to Professor Sherry Turkle in Reclaiming Conversation: it is not surprising that in the past twenty years we’ve seen a …. percent decline in the markers for empathy among college students, most of it within the past ten years. It is a trend that researchers link to the new presence of digital communications.

Goldilocks.

According to Professor Sherry Turkle in Reclaiming Conversation: If we text rather than talk, we can have each other in amounts we can control. And texting and email and posting let us present the self we want to be. We can edit and retouch. I call it the …. effect: We can’t get enough of each other if we can have each other at a digital distance—not too close, not too far, just right.

Efficiencies, connection.

According to Professor Sherry Turkle in Reclaiming Conversation: But human relationships are rich, messy, and demanding. When we clean them up with technology, we move from conversation to the …. of mere …..

Talk less.

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According to Professor Sherry Turkle in Reclaiming Conversation: Studies show that when children hear less adult talk, they ….. If we turn toward our phones and away from our children, we will start them off with a deficit of which they will be unaware. It won’t be only about how much they talk. It will be about how much they understand the people they’re talking with.

Endangered conversations that modern technology diminishes.

What is Professor Sherry Turkle in Reclaiming Conversation describing in this quote: “The kind in which you listen intently to another person and expect that he or she is listening to you; where a discussion can go off on a tangent and circle back; where something unexpected can be discovered about a person or an idea.”

Depression and social anxiety (b & c are both correct answers).

According to Professor Sherry Turkle in Reclaiming Conversation: Torn between our desire to express an authentic self and the pressure to show our best selves online, it is not surprising that frequent use of social media leads to feelings of what?

Human emotions, including their own.

According to Professor Sherry Turkle in Reclaiming Conversation: Research shows that those who use social media the most have difficulty reading what?

As another connection.

According to Professor Sherry Turkle in Reclaiming Conversation: In the new communication culture, how is interruption experienced?

Open screens.

According to Professor Sherry Turkle in Reclaiming Conversation: …. degrade the performance of everyone who can see them—their owners and everyone sitting around them.

Boredom.

According to Professor Sherry Turkle in Reclaiming Conversation: More generally, the experience of …. is directly linked to creativity and innovation.

Excludes others from its meals.

According to Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power, the family becomes rigid and stiff when it does what?

The family of two.

According to Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power, what is man’s most contemptible creation?

Eating their beliefs to repletion.

According to Elias Canetti, originally the ancients thought nothing of what regarding eating?

Those who form the sewers of scandal.

According to Balhazar Gracian in The Art of Worldly Wisdom, who has bad breath?

Tarnished name.

It is a sign of having a …. to concern oneself with the ill-fame of others. Some wish to hide their own stains with those of others, or at least wash them away: or they seek consolation therein--’tis the consolation of fools.

Rome lost its view of the future.

According to Professor Ortega y Gasset in Invertebrate Spain, why did the Roman empire fall apart?

Oneself.

According to Professor Ortega y Gasset in Invertebrate Spain, Ruling …. is a prime requisite for ruling others.

Unity.

According to Professor Ortega y Gasset in Invertebrate Spain, Apparently …. is both a cause of and a condition for doing great deeds. Who can doubt it? But the reverse of that statement goes deeper, and is both more interesting and more valuable – the spur of great deeds to be done engenders national …..

The essence of particularism.

“each group ceases to feel itself part of a whole, and therefore ceases to share the feelings of the rest” characterizes what concept for Professor Ortega in Invertebrate Spain?

Poor selection of individuals.

According to Professor Ortega in Invertebrate Spain, what is the clearest symptom of a culture’s lack of will?

Not making anything new.

Whatever we touch sounds hollow. The fiery words of former days go on being repeated, but they strike no echo in the heart; the inspiring ideals have become mere topics of conversation. No one starts anything new, either in politics, or science, or the realm of morals. All the activity that is left is spent in what?

Vitality.

According to Professor Ortega in Invertebrate Spain, I hope my readers understand that I mean by …. simply that power of creation which is life itself. …. is the power which a healthy cell has of begetting another cell, and vitality is likewise the secret force which creates a great historic power. …., or the power of organic creation, takes a different form in every species and kind of living thing.

Risk.

According to Professor Ortega in the book Invertebrate Spain, what is the essential difference between sport and play?

Anything is preferable to dying.

According to Professor Ortega in the book Invertebrate Spain, what is the essence of the sentimental morality?

Solitude.

According to Professor Ortega in the book Invertebrate Spain, Even as late as the 18th century, houses were still spacious and deep. Man spent the major portion of his day in them, in secret and well-defended ….. That …., working on the soul hour after hour, forged it, like a transcendent blacksmith, into a compact and forceful character.

When a small group can seize power.

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According to Professor Ortega in the book Invertebrate Spain, “a res nullius, when the rest of the social group feels no sense of solidarity with it, when no one holds existing institutions in high esteem” is the one situation in which what can occur?

Stranger.

If wandering is the liberation from every given point in space, and thus the conceptional opposite to fixation at such a point, the sociological form of the “….” presents the unity, as it were, of these two characteristics. This phenomenon too, however, reveals that spatial relations are only the condition, on the one hand, and the symbol, on the other, of human relations.

Trader.

Throughout the history of economics the stranger everywhere appears as the …., or the …. as stranger. As long as economy is essentially self-sufficient, or products are exchanged within a spatially narrow group, it needs no middleman: a …. is only required for products that originate outside the group. Insofar as members do not leave the circle in order to buy these necessities--in which case they are the “strange” merchants in that outside territory--the …. must be a stranger, since nobody else has a chance to make a living.

Objectivity.

Another expression of this constellation lies in the …. of the stranger. He is not radically committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies of the group, and therefore approaches them with the specific attitude of “…..”

Intimate.

A trace of strangeness in this sense easily enters even the most …. relationships. In the stage of first passion, erotic relations strongly reject any thought of generalization: the lovers think that there has never been a love like theirs; that nothing can be compared either to the person loved or to the feelings for that person.

Organic.

In spite of being inorganically appended to it, the stranger is yet an …. member of the group. Its uniform life includes the specific conditions of this element. Only we do not know how to designate the peculiar unity of this position other than by saying that it is composed of certain measures of nearness and distance.

Socrates.

In Professor Anton’s brief video You Can’t Buy an Education, it is noted that this scholar never took any money for education?

A gym.

In Professor Anton’s brief video You Can’t Buy an Education, Anton notes that an education is more like what kind of membership?

Growing.

In Professor Anton’s brief video You Can’t Buy an Education, ultimately, learning is about what?

Reverse.

According to Marshall McLuhan regarding your short reading on the laws of media, when pushed to the limits of its potential, a new media form will suddenly …. upon its original characteristics?

A leash (restraint).

McLuhan’s Laws of Media: What is the reversion of the cell phone in the tetradic example?

Freedom.

What does capitalism enhance, according to the tetradic example in McLuhan’s 4 laws of media?

Personality.

According to Professor Mumford in his discussion of the Environment, As we enlarge the sphere of interest and the field of operations, we automatically increase the number of shocks and stimuli that may throw the …. out of balance; and therefore we must counteract this tendency by building up protective inhibitory reactions, by lengthening the circuits of emotional response, and by slowing down the whole tempo of life.

Growth.

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According to Professor Mumford in his discussion of the Environment, What is called “….” of the metropolis is in fact the constant recruitment of a proletariat, capable of accommodating itself to an environment without adequate natural or cultural resources: people who do without pure air, who do without sound sleep, who do without a cheerful garden or playing space, who do without the very sight of the sky and the sunlight, who do without free motion, spontaneous play, or a robust sexual life.

The daily education of the senses.

According to Professor Mumford in his discussion of the Environment, what is the elemental groundwork of all higher forms of education?

Enviornment.

According to Professor Mumford, man must not merely have the privilege of selecting a type of …. in contrast to that which embraces his daily routine: each …. should exercise its own type of selective control: choosing its men.

Renewal.

According to Professor Mumford in his discussion of the Environment, one of the most important attributes of a vital urban environment is one that has rarely been achieved in past civilizations: the capacity for ….. Against the fixed shell and the static monument, the new architecture places its faith in the powers of social adaptation and reproduction.

Family.

The …. can flourish only by the process of continuously living in an environment which itself bears the impress of that life, favors it, responds to it, elevates it. For the …. does not merely symbolize human continuity: it is that continuity.

The conservation and enhancement of life.

According to Professor Mumford in his discussion of the Environment, what is consumption is directed toward in a biotechnic economy?

Civilization.

According to Professor Mumford in his discussion of the Environment, The basis of …. lies in the fact that energies that were once devoted almost exclusively to physical survival eventually reached a point at which an increasing part of them could be devoted to man’s higher functions: instead of submitting to brute necessity, he dominated his environment, he freely remolded his own patterns of living, he created goods and values, purposes and meanings, in short, a common social heritage that other men could share over ever wider reaches of space and time. Men first achieved survival in isolated and restricted groups. …. is the never-ending process of creating one world and one humanity.

Garden, desert.

According to Professor Mumford in his discussion of the Environment, In every city, a perpetual contest goes on between the …. and the ….. The streets of the city tend – through overcrowding, through congestion of traffic, through indifference to all but the barest physical needs – to become a stony waste: an environment hostile to life: noisy, dusty, ugly, unsafe. In such an environment, bare health can be maintained only by heroic exertion.

The three primary themes of the book are about technology, language, and education.

What is an accurate statement about Professor Postman’s book Conscientious Objections?

Technology.

Postman: But it is well said that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In America, and increasingly Europe, …. is a one-eyed king ruling unopposed amidst idiot cheering. I object to this state of affairs, and I would like some of my essays to lend support to lively discussions of where we are being taken, and in whose interests, by the unfettered development of …..

The engineers.

According to Professor Postman, who are the unacknowledged legislators of our time?

Jacques Ellul.

From whom does Professor Postman borrow the expression “the humiliation of the word”?

Resistance.

What does Eric Hoffer refer to as a chief factor in the shaping of character?

Regreneration.

Eric Hoffer suggests that small wonder that we in this country have a deeply ingrained faith in what?

Technopoly.

Professor Postman: It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. This requires the development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs. What is he describing?

Psychic tranquility and social purpose.

According to Professor Postman, the relationship between information and the mechanisms for its control is fairly simple to describe: Technology increases the available supply of information. As the supply is increased, control mechanisms are strained. Additional control mechanisms are needed to cope with the new information. When additional control mechanisms are themselves technical, they in turn further increase the supply of information. When the supply of information is no longer controllable, a general breakdown in …. occurs.

Stupidity.

According to Professor Postman, the educationist should become an expert in …. and be able to prescribe specific procedures for avoiding it.

Stupidity changes form as its content is distributed through different media.

According to Professor Postman, what is not one of three conclusions about stupidity that all writers on the subject have reached?

Superhero comics.

What is by far the most popular genre of comic books?

During the 1940s, the years of WW2.

Regarding the last question, when did this genre emerge in American culture?

Nietzsche.

Where did the term and concept of the superhero emerge?

Myths.

The archetype of the superhero can be continually reinvented to suit its audience, and thus superhero stories have been likened to modern-day …..

Batman.

In 1966, the …. television series debuted to very high ratings, boosting the sale of all comic books, especially …. itself.

The Green Lantern.

What Superhero comic book did not survive the end of WW2?

Comics Code of Authority.

In fact, the superhero genre might have fallen out of vogue entirely were it not for the infamous congressional hearings in 1954 regarding juvenile delinquency and comics, specifically those of the crime and horror genre. The instatement of the …. led to a revival of superheroes, who were deemed acceptable role models and whose story lines did not have to contain explicit content or graphic violence.

Batman: The Dark Knight.

What comic book film became the fourth movie in history to earn over a billion dollars?

The history of American culture.

Looking back on the history of American comics, one can see the history of what, as well?

Our fascination with violent spectacle.

What fascination do superheroes reveal about modern popular culture?

Television brought the war to American soil.

What did TV do to the Vietnam War, according to Professor McLuhan?

Identity.

Professor McLuhan: War and violence result from breakdowns in conventional images of .…

A few orders from people who never visited the place.

What did the horrors of Auschwitz derive from, according to Kenneth Burke?

Pax Romana.

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Kenneth Burke: “one aspect of imperial war, which is perfectly willing to make peace with the enemy as soon as he settles down and pays regular tribute – or, in paradoxical modern equivalents, lets us rehabilitate him in ways whereby certain of our own powerful financial interests get a drag of a buck or two out of every five bucks we advance out of the collective treasury for the enemy’s recovery”...

Killing is not murder.

According to Professor Toynbee, what is the fundamental postulate of the institution of war?

An increasing recrudescence of atrocities.

What does Professor Toynbee suggest about the increasing fanaticism of nationalism, as measured in terms of the conduct of war?

Exact methods and measurable data.

The constant danger in interpreting human behavior is to overvalue …., separated from their historic context. The relevant data are often too complex for even verbal formulation; for the very things that the conscientious historian is tempted to leave out, because of their obscurity, their purely analogical suggestiveness, their subjective involvement, are needed to bring any richness of insight into our judgments.

Quantitive expansion.

That …., based on a detachment from organic norms, human purposes, and historic continuities, and the elimination of all other purposes except those proper to science and technology alone, was the radically new factor in modern civilization.

The moral code of the practitioners of science.

How does Mumford refer to “the refusal to accept social responsibility or to anticipate social consequences within a broader context than their science”?

The release from the moral inhibitions and life-conserving taboos that made its use possible.

According to Lewis Mumford in his work ‘Apology to Henry Adams’, Adams foresaw not only the atom bomb, but what?

Feeling.

According to Lewis Mumford in his work ‘Apology to Henry Adams’, Adams saw that we needed more what?

Woman.

According to Lewis Mumford in his work ‘Apology to Henry Adams’, regarding the answer to the last question - where does Mumford suggest this comes from?

Mirror neurons.

According to Jeremy Rifkin, what is it called when soft-wiring of the same areas of the brain operate in a sort of empathic way in terms of observer actions, such as a monkey trying to crack a nut witnessing a human trying to crack a nut?

Affection and companionship.

Jeremy Rifkin suggests that we are soft-wired for what?

Belonging.

What does Jeremy Rifkin suggest is our first drive?

2\.5 years old.

According to Jeremy Rifkin, at what age does a child begin to recognize him or herself in the mirror?

Selfhood.

According to Jeremy Rifkin, …. goes with empathic development. Increasing …. increases empathic development.

8 years old.

According to Jeremy Rifkin, at what age does a child learn about birth and death?

Utopia.

According to Jeremy Rifkin, what is the opposite of empathy?

To the local tribe with blood ties.

According to Jeremy Rifkin, in hunter or foraging societies, communication (and thus empathy) extended how far?

Script.

According to Jeremy Rifkin, by the time we evolve to the great hydraulic agricultural civilization …. allowed us to extend our central nervous system and annihilate time and space and bring more people together.

Theological consciousness.

According to Jeremy Rifkin, during the period of the great hydraulic agricultural civilizations the differentiation of skills and the increasing of selfhood led to what?

The nation state.

According to Jeremy Rifkin, the 19th century industrial revolution created a kind of empathy characteristic of what?

We (all of us) share the genes of one man and one woman from about 175,000 years ago.

According to Jeremy Rifkin, What does he say about Adam and Eve and the bible with respect to our relation to the world?