Reading 1- Lauren Arnold

I was very intrigued by the reading "The Affect of Animated GIFs" as well as the other reading "Peer Pressure 2011." The first article "The Affect of Animated GIFs" really got me to start thinking about why current students act the way that they do. There have been so many times when I either read or see that our students today are being anesthetized in order to make it through our educational systems (or even survival systems it sounds like by some of our standardized ways of living).

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(Here is a video right here from an RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms that discusses this idea at 6:10)

But this video states and I believe that we should not be putting ourselves to sleep in order to learn, we should be waking ourselves up! And it was interesting for me to read that Sally McKay's article honestly agreed with this that sometimes, our current cultural systems put individuals to sleep. The article states that sometimes the internet and its contents like the GIFs can have a "numbing affect" on our thoughts.

So although the GIFs themselves may have a lot of bright colors, motions, and ideas behind them- waking up the viewers is not what is actually happening. She explains that these GIFs can "induce a light trance, taking over the perceptual system by temporarily shutting down emotion and cognition." This is a problem because IF the "stupor" stays through endless looping, this person is being entranced.

She argues that although the internet serves as a "cultural critique" of our environment, our "body and brain are similar" in that the body has muscle memory and brain tendencies of memory too. She is arguing that our bodies and minds are in fact not separate, but very much connected; as I too believe that they very much should be integrated parts of the human existence. The question I have is though, if our bodies and minds are integrated and we are training ourselves to become adapted to these kinds of "anesthetic" mindsets and body sets through our "flooding of the senses," then how are we going to function as normal human beings? We're not, and that is why there is such a large argument out there stating that ADHD is the new "epidemic."

She explains that the "affect is of the body, but the body is conjoined with the mind," she explains that the "whole organism is entangled with cultural contexts. We must be using these cultural critiques of the internet in the best ways that we can, being informative like Sally's article was- trying to inform us of how to better ourselves. The internet should not be used to nullify us of our excited vigor to learn, it should be used as an outlet to inform and inspire.

So the question is then, should GIFs be considered a valuable part of educational arts if they could be anesthetizing our vigor to learn? I am ready to find out.

Also, if GIFs themselves "conform" to fit with requirements of things like "web browsers" etc, and the GIF itself is a part of the internet that is a cultural critique; it is bad because these cultural critiques do become homogenized as the cultural critiques and "whimsical" interpretations are shared on the mass media of the internet.

So how can the internet serve as a cultural critique then if it is simply being homogenized through mass produced aspects of the internet like the GIF itself?