What I've learnt from Information Age class

Pejam celik-pejam celik, I am now almost at the end of the semester. Wow! How fast time flies and I wasn't even having fun.

Well, I'm not going to bore you with details of my assignments but rest assured that I have a lot of papers to write. Anyway, today is the last lecture for Faizal Nafis' Information Age class where we discussed on convergence, how nowadays a phone is more than a phone, a computer does more things than just compute and how that differs from say, 20 years ago. It's great that he talked about all this since it really helped a lot of us understand more about our assignment.. though as always, some are still clueless.

Anyway, there's one question that Faizal asked us that kept me thinking: what is it that some other media can do that the almighty Internet could not? Naturally the whole class was silent and everyone made that "I am deeply thinking" look. I doubt Faizal himself know the answer but he atleast tried by giving us this answer:

You can use the newspaper to wipe your ass when you run out of toilet paper

Hahaha.. How did he come out with that one? That's what I love about phylosophy class. Though we try hard to think big, the answer could sometimes be very simple.

Talking about newspapers, I have been a longtime The Star fan but I noticed that in the lights of the many buy-elections (yes, buy) that we are now having, The Star is being very biased in rporting compared to happier times. I know elections are important, I can't wait to vote but is it necessary to report every single detail of what Barisan Nasional is doing in Ijok when there are more important things left to be discussed? That is why I buy more NST these days. I just learned that their opinion columns can be very interesting read albeit the whole newspaper is very much thinner than The Star which sell at the came price.

Newspaper is perhaps the most powerful medium of information in Malaysia today. Internet is huge, I know, but how many people actually use the Internet as a medium to acquire information? Most of us just check Friendster and MySpace only right? On top of that, we are being spoonfed everyday by the government who insisted that everything on the Internet is false and silly. I guess people just haven't figured out the true capabilities of the Internet yet.. I remember discussing about the YouTube video about our Parlimen meeting during the 'You tak suka you keluar dari Malaysia' incident with a friend yesterday. That video shows us that hey, that's our politicians, brawling over stupid things and acting like monkeys. But at the end of the day, how many people actually saw that video? 29011 people. Lets say that only 25000 of this people are Malaysian. Then we minus the teenagers like me who can't vote and you minus those people who refuse to vote. We would probably be left with what, 17000? 18000? Let's just say that my figure is right, that means from the 24 million Malaysians, only 0.08% have seen this video and are eligible to vote. Sad isn't it?

I'm not ridiculing anyone but I personally think some papers in Malaysia are just pure rubbish. Honestly. I don't read Harian Metro, I don't read Kosmo and I don't read Utusan. How the heck this newspapers are allowed to be published? The news are mostly substandard with highly featurized stories which makes me wonder which one is the hard news and which one is the soft one. The same goes for magazines like Mastika. Yet, from what I see, this newspapers are the one that is making sales while newspapers with hard hitting news and great columns and articles like The NST are dismissed because the English is 'too hard to understand'. Go and read Tolkien and come back to me with a better answer. At the end of the day, people just love sensational news don't we? I'm sorry if you love this publications but that is what I think of it.

Many people ridicule me for being such an Internet buff, probably the same person who said blogging is silly. I don't give a damn.. I just couldn't care about whatever they say. We live in the Information Age here folks, the Internet is our Woodstock, it is our Vietnam, it is our Berlin Wall. Indulge in it. This is our time, why should we shy away from it? Why don't we make the most of it? I used to look at major historical events and said to myself, "Gee.. I wish I was apart of that", but then I realized that I was not meant for that time. I was meant for now and so are the rest of you my brilliant readers. Let's make full use of this opportunity and I know that we can make a difference, Insyaallah.

4 months ago I could not think about most of the stuff I just said and during first day of the class I dread the look of Mr. Faizal who reminds me of some of my high school teachers. The course Information Age itself sounded too ridiculous to me at that time. Oh, how our first impressions are always wrong. I can now say that I love Information Age and Mr. Faizal is perhaps my favourite lecturer. I guess I must than you Mr. Faizal Nafis for opening up my mind to this kind of stuff which I would never be able to understand by myself. You are probably the best Media lecturer a student could ever ask for. Thank you!

Labels: media, studies