Michelle

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=//Communicating in 2006//=

//“What does communication mean to me?”// Well to answer that, first you’ve got to understand who I am, from communication’s point of view. I am a 15 year old girl living large town(city) in the year 2006. I attend your average catholic highschool, and I have a lot of friends and people that I communicate with on a regular basis. However my meaning behind the word “communicate” is one that has changed greatly throughout the generations. In the times when my mom was 15, if she had -hypothetically- found out that she was going to go to a Osmond Brothers concert (yeah, my mom was into Donny Osmond – the less I think about it, the less messed up I am), she would have to either wait until the next day at school, or call her friends on the telephone in order to share the exciting news. In a matter of about 30 years, those options have completely changed with the invention of the Internet. In February, I’m going to a Billy Talent show; I found this out last night and now half of my friends have heard, even though it’s the weekend and I haven’t been to school yet. Did I call them to tell them? No way! Michelle The Super-Teenage-Communicator doesn’t use the telephone! Instead, I went straight to my laptop and changed my MsnMessenger display picture and personal message to “Billy Talent - February 2007″ and left about eight million MySpace comments to my friends (okay, so I may have been a little //too// excited about concert, but it still all leads back to communication in the end). Not even 5 minutes later, **dozens** -even **hundreds**- of people had access to the information I was putting out as opposed to telling my friend Chloe over a 20 minute phone conversation. In fact, just typing it on this blog has further communicated the news to even //more// people. What this example is trying to illustrate, is that communication has expanded so much over the past 20-30 years that the kids of my generation no longer rely on telephone or simple speech to transfer our information. Communication no longer means “transfering information from place to place using writing, speech, or the telephone”. Now our main communication pretty much means “The Internet”. As communication evolved, more and more people were able to recieve the same information quicker and quicker. This idea first took off with the invention of the printed word, but the Internet has taken it so many steps further; making information available with the click of a mouse and expression of your own information just as simple. As well there are so many options and outlets for this information, sites like Google (general information), YouTube (for videos), Photobucket (images, and recently videos), LimeWire (pretty much everything) and so many more that it is impossible to name them all. However, I would like to focus on a site called MySpace. The reason for this being that MySpace is a playground for communicating virtually ALL kinds of information and has become very popular with all kinds of people (especially my own generation). About 5 months ago, I was a proud MySpace-resistor; I totally hated the thing. It seemed like another place for teens to go and waste Internet space, posting spam and too time-consuming to be worth any real attention. Two of my friends, in the end, convinced me to get an account (yeah I folded to peer pressure, but there was a good month where I didn’t think I’d ever get one), and I have to say; **I am completely hooked.** I check my messages at least 4 times a day! I am not going to lie and say that my initial opinion was entirely wrong; there is alot of useless information posted on there (things like bulletins telling your friends whether or not you’re single), but that isn’t something unique to MySpace and can only be expected. What is so addictive is the core purpose of the site; expression. Everything you could ever need as an outlet to communicate is right there. If I wanted to talk to a friend, I could see if he/she was online and just leave them a comment; if they’re not there, they’d get the message when they sign in (like e-mail), and if they were there, they’d get it immeadiately and probably reply back right away (somewhat like instant messaging). I could also post pictures that I wanted people to see, or videos I think are funny ect. The main attraction about the site (for me, at least), is that your profile is completely customizable. I can decorate it with whatever images and colours I prefer, my favourite music; anything to express myself the way that I want people to understand me. MySpace is, in essence, communication of the new generation all in one website; We want people to recieve our thoughts, opinions, wishes and information. We want control over what is sent. We want all of the people we want to recieve the information, to recieve the information. We want all of this done //fast// and //easily.// We are a generation of speed, convenience and communication, so we have created tools that use all three; and, for the most part, //we love it.//