Race to the Moon Heats Up for Private Firms - NYTimes.com

Race to the Moon Heats Up for Private Firms - NYTimes.com

Millennial Test

For my presentation I wanted to try a little game. Authors and scholars have written that millennials are independent like to work in teams, like rewards, use technology as an everyday part of their lives and much more.

I want to put this to action. As my marketing paper on Tron: Legacy explains. Disney used these themes to market the the millennials and specifically to the millennial male through Flynnlives.com and to the a broader millennial audience through music.

Below please find the details to participate in the game!

Let the game begin!!!

1) What year was Tron first released? Use the IMDB date and subtract 1772 and find this room in Axinn. Upon arriving say one the first of the four character names that is listed on the IMDB website.

If you or your teammate do not receive a note, please return back to the classroom!

The first person or group to post their answer to the last question to the #millmed Twitter stream will win!

Good luck and Enjoy!

Don't Let Technology Use You

Are we using technology or is it using us? I’m not going to lie, I was intrigued by this show, but not for the right reasons. Immediately I was drawn to the aspect of a puppet master, the all-knowing, ringleader playing the ultimate game of Guess Who. However, I could only be intrigued yet so far because from the first episode it seems like this show is taking enormous liberties with A’s knowledge and her quick dissemination of the information to the respective girls. This isn’t possible because A’s dead, right? For this reason, I feel that I would ultimately be upset by the show. As Professor Stein mentions in her write-up about this show and its relations to Veronica Mars and Gossip Girl, the combination is intriguing. Veronica uses technology to figure out the mystery of her friends’ death, “A” uses technology to control her “friends.” I use quotes her because of the inherent ambiguity in person and subjects. The mystery aspect of Veronica Mars combined with the all-knowing informant of the Gossip Girl takes on a new role. Gossip Girl is only powerful because of the information she is given by the girls at school. However, in Pretty Little Liars the power is taken from the girls and used against them. A complete reversal has changed the power dynamics within these groups. This is representative of the millennial generation. As a professor said in a commencement speech I listened to yesterday, “Don’t let technology use you.” What’s happening in these three shows? Are the girls using technology or is technology using them. In Gossip Girl technology is definitely ruling the girls lives, they think that they have the power but in actuality they are relinquishing this power to a person they don’t even know…. Naïve. In Pretty Little Liars, A uses technology to mess with the girls lives. Technology is the vessel for millennial mind games. Then we have Veronica who uses technology to her advantage. Her we can see how Pretty Little Liars acts as a bridge between Veronica Mars and Gossip Girl because the girls still use technology as a means to communicate yet are subject to all of its downfall as they are threatened by it through texts from A.

Faceblegh

Love all of the features that you provide, hate how you're invading my life.

Facebook is obviously becoming more integrated into our daily lives. However, what are we giving up for these conveniences? Privacy is one obviously. Facebook has become so successful that companies are getting pages thus gaining information on their followers. Talk about easier to market to a group once they all give you what they are interested in. A friend just told me that she read and article on how Facebook is causing an increase in depression. Great now we are comparing ourselves to online personalities...and high school just got that much worse. Forget high school, social groups just got a lot more closed off. Oh and now these personalities have extended into different websites. You can leave comments on say Youtube's music website, Vevo. You can leave comments on this website with your Facebook login. This isn't the only site and I'm sure there are more to follow.

Just thought you readers would like to hear about what you already know what is happening from a different perspective.

What are your thoughts...or you could just post your Facebook page and I can find out all about you...Let's be friends?

Random thought - Facebook should start its own news source. Since we all check Fcebook every day people would read it...or maybe one news company could just link into it.

Gleeversity

We hate stereotypes, boo-ho, go cry about it. Stereotypes serve as an identifier and familiarize us with a setting. They can make us comfortable or uncomfortable with what we are watching and Glee presents us with the typical high school setting. I use the term Gleeversity because Glee uses its diverse cast to hook in multiple groups of people while challenging us to think about less talked about issues (also, it just sounds cool). Granted, I was appalled at the beginning of this show for its stereotypes, a black young woman named Mercedes Jones who sings R-E-S-P-E-C-T and compares herself to Beyonce. Then comes Kurt who asks for his Marc Jacobs apparel to be spared before being thrown into a dumpster. They also have him dress stylishly and sing a Broadway show tune; we get it he’s gay. The blonde white girl cheerleads, the tall athletic brown-haired male is amazing at everything he does, and Berry is the Gleek that is a star waiting to shine. Fine, we get it these are stereotypes of “real life” high school characters. But guess what, in real life, its the real life characters of Diana, Finn, and Rachel that dominant the scene for long periods of time. However, we need these characters to show the issues within our Gleeversity. Kurt and Mercedes eventually do get more face time and there lives are expanded a little bit. But this is made possible by the show, hooking people in with familiar topics in order to go under the surface. I understand that Glee hasn’t completely satisfied this opportunity to go more in depth with Kurt, Mercedes, and issues around homosexual and racial inequality but the show would have flopped if the two main characters were black lesbian females, that were in a relationship with one another and grew up in a low income white household. It sounds really interesting, but is greater than 10 percent of America going to watch it? I don’t think this show would have made it past the first few episodes. That’s if it managed to be produced.

We need some familiarity in order to get to the meat of our Gleeversity. I really wish that these stereotypes didn’t have to be so stereotypically, and hopefully as time goes on writers won’t have to make characters like this. However, with the power they have gained, it is in their responsibility (maybe?) to stop messing up with the public service announcement episodes that viewers are complaining about and smarten up with their writing to get the audience they built to explore the depth of minority characters they kept dancing in the background.

Millennial Vision

Recently, I have noticed a slight decline in vision. After countless hours in front of computer and television screens, I feel that my eyesight have become effected. Since many millennials have the same habits as myself, will the millennial generation have worse eyesight than generations before us. I'm sure generation X and the some of the savvy babyboomers are experiencing some of the same problems. However, we are the generation with the most prolonged exposure to such __________ (rays?) from screens that I feel we have been the most affected in regards to our eyesight.

Anyone agree? Has any recognized a decrease in their eyesight from staring at the computer screen for years?

What are doctors saying? I'll definitely do some research on this topic but it'd also be great if you smart Middlebury students and the AWESOME and SMART non-Middlebury readers have any insights to what will happen to our sight.

"Veronica, Why Is It So Dark?"

That question is simply answered with the word, noir. “Millennial noir” as cited in Professor Stein’s article, Millennial Noir, “A noir sensibility seems to be newly resonant in our contemporary television…” (p.4) Veronica Mars is a perfect example of millennial noir and how its style, gendered characters and narrative arc are reminiscent of film noir.

While my posed question may sound ridiculous, the style of film noir is distinct. The presence of film noir is known for its distinct style with regard to shadows, tones, and dress. Veronica Mars harnesses the style of shadows and tones through its dark lighting, shadows, and flashbacks. It is hard not to feel the noir like styles that are present in this show. For example when Duncan Kane wins president of the student council. He’s making a speech in a barely lit room where you can hardly see the faces of other students or him as he makes the speech. Aesthetic appeal isn’t the only reason this show has noir like features.

Veronica is a detective, teenager, and a female, kind of like the high school version of Harriot The Spy. Following the noir tradition there is a case that needs to be solved, however, in this case its left up to a female teenager that has to figure it out. I thought that this was interesting because unlike other noirs that I have seen, Veronica is not the typical main detective character. As Stein posses in her article, millennial noir takes liberties with renegotiating the noir and its gender representations. The television show, Gossip Girl, is a good example of this. Despite the episode we saw, where Chuck Base is the detective that has noir like flashbacks, the female narrator possesses in place of the male detective narrating the story.

Millennial television reworks gender representations of the powerful yet powerless detective as the narrator of both, Veronica Mars and Gossip Girl are female. We are now at the hands of the female character to get information that the characters in each respective world will either come to learn or not find out. At the same time that the narrating voice is being changed, so is the way that these detectives get their information. The Internet is the new and millennial way of digging to find information. Interestingly in GG, Blair tells the girls that they aren’t looking hard enough for information and to just make something up when they can’t find the truth. Opposite is Veronica Mars where Veronica will always dig deep to find the truth and stop at nothing to get criminal. Also, Veronica resolves to more old-fashioned detective methods, which we can say comes from the presence of her dad. She will question people, using the Internet as a means of finding them, for here the daily crimes and moments of confrontation are sparked in person. Not by an ominous force online that disseminates information.

This break between the two leading woman characters represents a break in what the two shows are going for. Veronica Mars and Gossip Girl renegotiate the classic noir with their female leads however, I think the noir style and theme wise is heavily more present in Veronica Mars. These show are a good sight to see how millennial noir is changing old representations takes on film noir and renegotiating its dominating traits. Through gender and style, Veronica Mars, takes on the role of detective in a dark world that has to figure out a murder. Watching this show in contrast to Gossip Girl as a potential site of millennial noir is interesting in itself because of the clear differences between the two shows in respect to their style and themes.