Why I ❤ media? It’s simple.
It gives hope to the future, of becoming one human race inhabiting our planet together and not against each other.
Media now may seem like this big-complex-information-data-packed-fun-sort of thing. Something that we use every day for socializing, checking whatever our brain thinks of and feeding our boredom with funny cat videos. Then, on the other hand, we also have this association, that it might become something threatening to our reality, altering it in ways we cannot control or identify. However, in these stirred up feelings towards this thing called ‘media’ hides one vital feeling, and that is unity.
Through media, with that I am especially referring to our glorious internet, we are globally connected. This connection is not dead, but alive and breathing the content we share and growing with the information flow we create.
Still, this connectivity is not yet used to its full potential.
Think about it, let’s take education for an example. It is a ‘product’, completely produced by the human brain. This knowledge has been accumulated over the past decades, centuries and generations. In the contemporary world, we now live in it is growing ever so vastly.
Still, we are unable, as a human race to share it and spread it freely. The potential possibility of doing so does exist, especially now, because the ‘obstacle’ of distance, that prevented us in the past to interact and exchange information, has in some ways been overcome or at least reduced to a minimum. The conventional classroom could already be altered in many ways, for example through expanding the integration of technology much more.
Imagine, ’global streaming of education’. Education is the most important source for the successful growth of humanity. The more intellect we spread the better this intellect can grow and we benefit from it entirely. Us as humans should in a healthy society, proudly spread this creation called education. With media and internet, we could reach the goal, to make it available to a larger, maybe unlimited number of humans.
Furthermore, migration is increasing, thus cultural exchange becoming inevitable. We must learn to understand other cultures and share interests and lifestyles with each other. Media platforms are already supporting this greatly. We are able to see what happens on the other side of the planet, what cultural habits exist and what lifestyles are led around the planet. Let’s of course not forget about the exchange of humor becoming more global in the past decades. The rise of, for example, 9Gag or reddit celebrates and drives the global stream of humor successfully.
Culturally we are still very diverse, but online a different, more united culture and language is being cultivated, especially through the recent generations growing up with this medium and interacting through and with it on a daily basis. Memes, pictures, viral videos and much more all connect us independently from cultural norms and are a language in itself.
All in all, we can agree that the internet has given us, as humans, a free, loud, easily spreadable voice. It’s our choice what we want to say, share and teach with it and how we want it to grow.
Together we have to understand the power of media and choose to use it for social good, rather than fear and fight it. We shape media, so let’s shape it into something we’ll ❤ even more, and ‘not into a nightmare of physically integrated AI controlling our sense of reality and turning us into mindless consuming zombies and maybe extinguishing humanity itself. ‘
P.s Its threatening potential is, however, a great inspiration for illustrations.
So…I love media, because it (still) gives hope to the future that we will choose to shape 😉
– Lea Custodis
Why I Heart My Media 