Goffman takes a unique approach to the way we present ourselves to our peers. He likens our everyday interactions to that of a stage in a theater. I tend to agree with this notion as I don't believe that anyone is exactly what you see when you interact with them.
Let's take an analytical look at this idea and see how it relates to the study being done by Sut Jhally and his presentation on The Codes of Gender. To be honest there isn't much analysis that needs to be done regarding these two studies because they are inexorably related. The study done by Sut Jhally did take a couple new ideas and look at them, however, his entire presentation was done by taking Goffman's work and applying it to the field of advertising.
Sut Jhally shows how women and men are presented in advertising and does a terrific job of breaking it down in order for us to understand. See my blog about Women in Advertising for an in depth analysis using Jhally's ideas.
Considering that The Codes of Gender is completely based on the work done by Eric Goffman, I would say that Goffman's work completely supports Sut Jhally's presentation. There is no way that you could separate the two. Jhally is simply taking Goffman's analysis and applying it to the world of advertising.
What is all the fuss over the new Google privacy policy? What has changed about it? Does it affect me personally? What are others saying? Well all of these are very important questions to address when looking at a change in any company's procedures. The important thing is to not follow all the hype, whichever direction it may take, and form your own conclusions about it.
What is all the fuss about? Well the main reason people are getting aggravated is that Google has condensed it's services and instead of having separate policies and information sharing procedures, they have decided to look at users as one entity across the board of its services. Now people are concerned that Google has gone too far and are worried about having their information put on the web and having it shared with too many parties. I can understand this sentiment and have looked into their claims. One technology website calls it "The end of "Don't Be Evil"." They claim that the new policy will collect all the information you upload, search for, and email in order to share that information. The truth in this claim is that, yes Google will collect all this information, but it will not be sharing it with anyone except the other services you use.
Others have taken a different look at it and have claimed that the technology world has overreacted. They claim that it has drastically simplified over 60 different privacy policies Google used to have and made it a much better system. They point out an instance in which congress sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page expressing concerns on how people can opt out of sharing their information from individual websites or globally. It is true that you can no longer opt out of sharing information from individual services but you can opt out of sharing it globally. I love the answer that one individual provided, "Stop sharing things you don't want tracked." I find this to be common sense but a lot of people just don't grasp the concept.
Does it affect me personally? Of course it does. That is, if you use Google for anything at all it affects you. In Google's new policy, they have implemented a system that they claim will help you have a much better overall experience. Through this new system, Google will put cookies on your machine that allows them to recognize your preferences and track your searches in order to bring up relevant information Google thinks you will find interesting or useful. This may sound like an invasion of privacy but Google offers you the option to prevent all cookies from being placed on your machine. The only problem is that when you block all the cookies, it may alter your Google experience because the cookie function also allows them to remember pertinent information such as what language you prefer to view web pages in.
I feel that this new policy is not that big of a deal ant people are making too much of a fuss about it. When Google says that they will collect the information, they make it plain that it will not be shared with any other services unless explicitly allowed by the user. See the "information sharing" portion of the policy. I am not really bothered by the policy. There is more threat of someone stealing your identity than there is of someone getting hold of your personal information from Google. The only thing you are threatened with is that you may suffer a mild embarrassment if someone sees a compromising photo of you on the internet. In an instance such as this I concur with the previous individual and say don't put things on the internet that you don't want others to see. It's common sense. I am personally a Google+ user and use many of the Google services including this very blog site. The new system that Google offers is helpful because it allows you to have a personalized internet. The internet will be constantly evolving and changing and I personally don't want to be left in the data dust and struggling to catch up.
So if you have a problem with Google or their policies you do have a choice. DON'T USE GOOGLE. There are plenty of other search engines and social networking sites available. Google may be a powerhouse but they don't own the internet. If you are troubled by their policies or their practices you can just elect not to use their services and all will be fine. You are not forced to use Google.
This video shows you what the talking heads are saying. They take a very biased standpoint and do nothing but bash Google while at the same time ridiculing other sites to make you feel like you don't have a choice. This is a classic example of how media warps the facts.
This video shows how useful the new policy will be. We've watched tons of science fiction films where a user is able to have a ridiculously personal experience with the internet and think "wow that's so cool" yet when Google is attempting to do that very thing, everyone cries foul and hops on the bandwagon to bash Google. Change is inevitable people and the sooner we understand that, the better our lives will be.
What exactly is Hermeneutics? It sounds like some kind of weird exercise program when you hear it. What is it exactly though? Who invented it? Well if you do a little research you're able to see that it is very important to our society and helps us better understand ourselves.
So first we must figure out what hermeneutics is. A very basic definition states that hermeneutics is the study of signs. But what does that mean? Well a more formal definition states that hermeneutics is the study of the methodological principles of interpretation. Now let's break that down and see what it means. before understanding what exactly this area of study is let's figure out what a sign is first. A sign is anything that stands for something greater than itself. Now we can move on with our analysis.
So who exactly cam up with the idea to study something that doesn't even represent itself? Well the answer to this question is not very easy to answer. Throughout the ages there have been many different philosophers that have tackled the issue including Plato, Habermas and even Sigmund Freud. So to study the people who addressed the issue doesn't really give us that much of an insight into what hermeneutics is. So we'll have to take a different approach.
How does one study signs? Well a sign is anything that points to something greater than itself so in order to study the sign you have to take several things into mind. First, what is the object? Signs can come in many different forms from a word, an object, or even a piece of music. The second thing to look at is, who is observing the sign? Depending on who is observing this sign will depend on the meaning they get out of it. Thirdly, we should look at who gave the sign that specific meaning. When we figure out who gave the sign the meaning we're able to better understand it.
Now lets take a look at Hermeneutics as a whole. What's the point? Well as a society, everything you look at is pretty much a sign. So the point is to better understand the world because our world is full of signs. So how do we study a world full of signs? Well we have to assign those signs to categories and break them down. Unfortunately, there are many different categories so I will only address a couple of them. The categories I will attempt to cover are Normative, Scientific, Philosophical, Depth, and Natural.
Normative Hermeneutics-interpretation of text
In order to address these categories properly would take hours so I will simply give a brief definition of each. Normative is the art of of text interpretation as a deliberate discipline by a specialist caste. For example priests, judges, and lawyers each study specific texts and their meanings in order to interpret them for the benefit of others. Scientific hermeneutics is the foundational discipline of the human or historical sciences. Basically I see this as meaning to interpret what we have done as a society or to figure out where we came from as human beings. Philosophical is just a general philosophy of existence. In other words the age old question "Why are we here?" Depth hermeneutics is also known as the hermeneutics of suspicion. This area attempts to free our minds from the social dogmas and oppression society places upon us to conform to their ideologies. And finally Natural hermeneutics which is just the interpreting we do on an everyday basis without really thinking about it. See my blog on Media Literacy for more insight into this area.
So that's Hermeneutics in a nutshell. It's a very interesting field of study because it helps to understand what makes us human. As intellectual individuals, it also helps us to better understand the society that we live in. We should all take an interest in hermeneutics because without it, we are nothing but what the society and signs dictate we become.
Without hermeneutics, there is no "unique" only the illusion of free will.
Goffman takes a unique approach to the way we present ourselves to our peers. He likens our everyday interactions to that of a stage in a theater. I tend to agree with this notion as I don't believe that anyone is exactly what you see when you interact with them.
