Week 1

Omelas It is easy to say I would walk away from Omelas. If I were present in the joyus city I believe the decision would be more difficult. To live in the city one must accept the child's oppression and misery. The conscience has to play a major role in your inhabitance. All societies have a contrast of happiness and ease of life with suffering but the wellbeing of Omelas citizens relies solely on the suffering of the child. All of the citizens are complicit and endorse the child's mental, emotional and psychical abuse. Whatever lies beyond Omelas surely endures suffering and happiness may be harder found. However outside of the untroubled city I could live by my own morals and find happiness on my own terms.  I think the story also points to the fact that maybe it is impossible to live in a society without some form of suffering. I see parallels with Omelas citizens and those of us living in the western world. The child could take form in sweatshops, lithium extraction, ship b...

Team Project Our group kept in contact with one another over the course of the project through whatsapp. We first video called on the fourth of march and we discussed possible multinational companies we could look at and voiced any information or ideas that we had. A week or two later we made the decision to focus on Amazon. There were a few calls which I was absent from in that period but kept in contact with Luke, Caoimhe and Denisa in the group and started my research. After Luke chose waste, Caoimhe chose Non Renewables and Denisa chose fuel consumption I wasn't sure which angle to go from but through research decided on consumption and economics.  During the halfway point of the project we tried to organise calls but the groups wifi wasn't always strong enough and there were times group members electricity went out.. Denisa organised a google drive for all of us to put our work into so we could see how everyone was doing and get an idea what sort of direction we were headi...

Online Persona   Our personna is powerful and it matters greatly how people perceive us, regardless of whether it's face to face or online. How we present ourselves online can be  determined through our likes, dislikes, culture and our psychological profile. Online we have the ability to craft and curate a new identity or adjust our daily one. Perhaps there is a side of us which we do not show to the real world and online proves to be the perfect outlet. Maybe those of us who live impetuously may opt for a calmer approach online and vice versa. Online we have the ability to present our ideal self. To flaunt what we want but don't have or others may wish to stay true to themselves. On instagram or facebook we are able to present snapshots of what we want people to see and think about us and they may also not be true at all but our perfect ideal. Our online personas may be distant extensions of ourselves or completely false.  In real life we judge people on the way they wal...

McLuhan It took me a while to comprehend Mcluhan's theories and I am still not sure I understand them fully. In McLuhan’s book ‘The Medium is the Massage’ he states ‘The medium is the message’ meaning the message is not what's important but the medium in which the message is communicated. The form in which we digest the information provided to us  determines how we perceive the message and it also has an effect on us individually and as a society. McLuhan also stated ‘Our tools change how our brains are structured’, that is something which I could get my head around. I am often wondering what affects my most frequently used tool (my phone) has on me and how it alters my functioning. One effect I have noticed is that everything has to be instant. From the news to pictures of our friends, anything we want we can access we can with a few swift clicks and taps. I believe this has shortened our attention spans in learning and listening but also in doing. I often find that if the res...

Addressing  the Topic In the major project our group addressed the global firm Amazon. I think we as a group feel strongly about the topic of the presentation so we were all on the same page. That is also why we decided on a critical yet personal tenor to get our message across to the hard headed executives. In the project I focused on consumption and consumerism and the effect that is having on our planet. I tried to understand the subject from all sides and why it is such a dominant cog in the economic machine. I found that heedless consumption is the bedrock of the environmental crisis that we find ourselves in today. In the Anthropocene I see human’s reckless consumption as the main cause of change to the earth's natural system. In the project I tried to address the cause of our thoughtless consumption, the effects it has on our planet and possible solutions. I also felt it was important to point to Amazons ‘green pledge’ as a dangerously misleading farce. I also felt it was im...