Today’s class was very engaging and I took a lot away from what we covered. Firstly, we revisited highly compressed music but instead discussed how accenting beats 2 and 4 rather than 1 and 3 is incorrect and results in poor sound. This isn’t just heard in popular music on the radio but it is arguably where you will hear it most frequently. To me, it’s not something you’ll pick up on unless someone shows you and I can’t listen to certain songs the same way now. I feel like I have to rant about it to my friends and tell them what’s wrong with music today though I’m sure this will not be received well so I’ll probably refrain from doing so. I’m grateful to have had it brought to my attention, though. Also, I first learned about black face minstrelsy and minstrel shows in ENG 345 so I was familiar with this discussion but it took a different direction that my other class didn’t explore and discuss. It’s interesting how deeply embedded minstrel shows are in our society and how it has continued in entertainment today. 50 Cent definitely created a character he portrays in his artistry that isn’t who he is all of the time. He comes out of this persona in the same way that minstrel show actors would return to their “non-entertainment” selves. It is safe to say that these personas artists in our contemporary society act as is a product of the influence minstrel shows had many years ago. It’s just too bad it is of racist origin.

Our brief discussion on the difference between noise and signal really stuck out to me. The signal to noise ratio is a measure used in “comparing the level of the desired signal and level of background noise.” It makes perfect sense to me that signal is what you want to hear, it’s like what you’re looking for, and then noise is completely unwanted. It’s not the signal, so it’s irrelevant. A common phrase you’ll hear among the youth is “F*ck that noise.” If it’s something you don’t want to hear, it doesn’t bring you happiness or pleasure, or if it’s senseless, it’s simply noise and we are disregarding it. This popular phrase helped me understand what the professor was getting at as he explained the signal to noise ratio. I was also able to understand the conversation about information theory and how it’s indifferent to meaning as it’s a theory, a study a “degree of order.” This session was informative and thought-provoking.

As we discussed Nicholas Carr’s novel The Shallows, us millennials came face to face with the fact that the internet has changed the way our minds work. There’s no way around it for the majority of us. It’s been decades now since we’ve taught ourselves information and successfully retained it. Now, we buy our information and ultimately gain nothing. I know I’m guilty of this. Not necessarily buying information to succeed, but doing research on material and getting my information from the internet rather than reading what I’m supposed to myself in order to learn. The sad thing is, I’m going to look back at my college years and realize I cheated myself of some valuable information and skills that I was privileged to consume and learn in the first place by taking the easy way out and doing the bare minimum. However, I did take happily take lots of notes in class on things I found interesting and I plan on holding onto my notebooks and looking back on the important history I was taught and what not to educate my peers. I really enjoy educating others, and I hope I can find it in myself in my last semester of college to get the most I can out of what’s left of my college career to educate myself and others. I found it especially interesting that a book is compared to a faucet and the internet is equivalent to multiple faucets as so much is going on at once and we’re constantly redirecting our attention to something else. We have a much shorter attention span, and I can say with certainty that many of us struggled to get through this book because of this. Oh, the irony…