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About This Tumblr Profile (Part 3)

Finally, I would like to end this series of posts talking about the thoughts I exposed to Digital Media, and how was writing it. For a moment, to be honest, I haven’t realised how Digital Media was present in our daily lives; how helpful and damaging it could be at the same time. One example, that it was referred earlier, it was the fact that Digital Media may never substitute the human relationship. A quite common way that this happens is that we think that just for the fact of talking to someone in a social media we are not alone, it could hide a feeling of loneliness and give us a fake impression that it is everything is alright when it is not. People cannot live only with digital relationships, we do need some physical ones, otherwise, this could take to some serious issues regarding our mind. I’m not saying that the fact that social media is approaching people in an easier way is a bad thing, this great achievement that social media gave us, but we must not live only with that, which was something I have thought much about. Although there is a bad side in all this, it is important to bring forward the good side of all this, once thought by me. Nowadays it is possible to do a whole lot of different things from the comfort of our homes, like buying new laptops and doing the grocery shop, and we nor even have to go somewhere to take it, because they deliver it in our homes, and this is, undeniably, a great advance regarding the use of Digital Media. In conclusion, there’s such a vast possibility of great things to be done with social media, we just have to be very cautious while planning and using it.

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About This Tumblr Profile (Part 2)

Secondly, I would like to talk about another aspect of this Tumblr account, which is the possibility of reflecting on the content learned throughout this semester. Until I started writing these posts, I haven’t realised how important the studies of Digital Media was in my life. Although I had already studied it, in a much brief way, the studies of this subject at Griffith College gave me a wider vision of all this. All the four modules I did this semester helped me to brand new range of opportunities in this aspect. In the first moment, I was just hoping to work with something related to social media, but after I started I am considering other possibilities, like working with UX (User Experience), for instance. I may say that I am delighted for having the opportunity of studying here and being a student of such a great group of lecturers, with I will be forever thankful. I personally think I would not need to mention that every single moment lived in Griffith College is part of a great dream I have since I’m fifth teen years of age, to study something I truly love and think it is some pleasant to work with, in a university abroad, it was something I waited ten years to happen. I know life it isn’t a fairy tale, but I think I’m living mine at this very moment, I am just hoping to have a happily ever after, when everything is over.  

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About This Tumblr Profile (Part 1)

On my first series of post on this account I talked about challenge, and how challenging was starting a Master’s Degree course. It is not a surprise to me that doing this Tumblr account was again another type of challenge, and I would like to bring to discussion how was the adventure of writing the posts for this profile, and I will do it in the next series of posts. First and foremost, I imagined it would be much easier to write my thoughts about Digital Media and what learnt in the current semester, but this task was much harder, mainly for the fact that I had to find in remember everything that happens throughout the semester, and this is due to the fact that I did all these posts in two days and not do post as the semester goes. Another fact that made this assignment much hard was my personal lack of organisation, which, if I had, it would make everything much easier, although I may say that I am not a total lack of organisation, I personally think that this assignment was my “capital sin” if I could put in that way. But it is important to say, once again, that I’m the type of person that really appreciates a good challenge, I personally think it is a great experience, sometimes I succeed in doing it, sometimes I don’t, and I believe that this time wasn’t a total disaster, but it wasn’t the best I could do, because I know I’m capable of much more. So I would say this was a “Middle Ground” assignment, not the best, but not the worst as well.

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Digital Media and Me (Part 6)

Bringing these thoughts about Digital Media to a conclusion, as well as this series of posts, I would like to make a quick sum up about everything it was discussed here. Although Digital Media has brought progress in many areas, it is important to raise awareness of the damages that this kind of new technology could bring to us, which is each and every day is more usual in our daily life. We should not worry ourselves or take risk to take the best picture to post on our social media profiles, we should enjoy more the moment, the beautiful view and our friend, because our life does not happen inside of a mobile phone it happens in a real-world full of wonderful things to be explored, and it is better to do so without a smartphone. Also, it is important to emphasise that, in spite of great advances regarding the industry in general, the use of artificial intelligence in our daily life could be considered harmful if we don’t do it with precaution, mainly in what refers to our social interactions. Artificial intelligence could be someone’s friend, but it will hardly ever feel the same things a human being could feel. This same idea goes to pet, which I personally think it is the most important, because, as said previously, nothing could substitute a dog or a cat, that’s always there to give love and help you to feel better. With that being said, I just would like to say that, Digital Media is amazing, but we need to be cautious when we are using it and creating new uses for it.

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Digital Media and Me (Part 5)

To continue these thoughts about the future and Digital Media, I would like to be a bit more reflexive about it. If nowadays we’ve got the opportunity of buying something with our phones, and have a drone delivering us our order, what could be the next step? I thought, long ago, that it would be impossible to live without cash, but I’m the kind of person that lives just with cards in my wallet, with no physical money. So having the presence of no physical money is not the next step, because it is already happening. I imagine that one day we will not need to do the dishes, because someday there will be some kind of robot that picks up the dishes, at the table, and it will wash it for us, a little bit different from a washing machine, that needs someone to “feeds” it. But one thing that will never ever be replaced by Digital Media, especially robots, is the relation between humans and pets. Nothing can substitute the love of a dog, a cat, or any kind of pet has for its “owner”. I hardly believe that any kind of artificial intelligence would be able to come to a human asking for caress in the early morning. In my personal opinion, the artificial intelligence wouldn’t also be able to look you with those genuine tender eyes, whenever they do something wrong, and you, as the “owner” of the pet will not be able to do anything, but just fall in love with these wonderful pair of eyes. To conclude this post, I just hope humanity not to be cold-hearted to create a substitute for our beloved pet.

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Digital Media and Me (Part 4)

Another aspect that emphasises the idea of Digital Media being directly related to the future, is that these days someone could hardly live without a smartphone, which was something hard to believe ten years ago. It is impressive, and sometimes even terrifying, to see how important smartphone is in one’s life, and also how many things we could do with it. Many of those things, we previously needed a computer to it, like editing photos and videos or simply sending e-mails. Going even further, people are even doing shopping on their mobile phones. If someone wants to buy a new laptop, they could do it while they are on the bus, on their way to work, with Amazon’s app. And that’s not all, people could even do their grocery shopping on their mobile phones. Let’s say someone is heading home, in a cold winter evening, after a long and tiring day at the office, and this person realises that he (or she) needs to buy a few things for breakfast, and this person probably doesn’t want to go to the go to the market to buy tomorrow’s breakfast, so he could buy these things on the market’s app, while he’s on the bus, and the people firm the market will deliver it at his home. All of these facts could be used as an example of how the Digital Media and the future are directly connected, and none of this was expected to happen ten years ago. While writing this post, I started thinking about and reflecting on what could be expecting us…

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Digital Media and Me (Part 3)

Continuing the analysis of the previous post, the fact that back in the day it was a way harder to upload a photo to any website, but especially talking about social media website, emphasises the astonishing difference between nowadays social media. If we take Instagram, for instance, which was a social media that had as its main purpose, when it was released, of posting photos of the instant that the user was living, and it was a social media exclusive for those who had an iPhone. In that period, this was a social media for very few people, because you had to have a smartphone, which it wasn’t something quite common, and this smartphone needed to be an iPhone. At the present time, Instagram passed from a social media for few, to a social media for everyone, and there are two major facts that contributed to this; the first one to mention is that Instagram is not a social media exclusive for iPhone anymore, anyone with a smartphone could upload a photo, not only for the feed, but also to the Instagram Stories, which is a feature that’s similar to Snapchat. The other important fact that made Instagram more popular nowadays, it is that smartphones became much cheaper and easier to get, thus, it is a way easier to have access to Instagram. For the record, it is important to mention that Instagram has a website and it is possible via PC’s browser, but to make any type of post, the user needs to have a smartphone.

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Digital Media and Me (Part 2)

Another aspect that shows how ordinary the act of taking photos has become, as mentioned previously, it is the fact that nowadays there are some social media that their use is based on taking photos (or videos) and discard it in second or in 24 hours. One good example is Snapchat, which was the social media that started all this, where the users take a photo, send to their friends, and they will probably never see this photo again. It is important to mention that this model of social media was later adopted also by Facebook and Instagram. If we take a look at the period when photography has started, it is a bit obvious that the reality of 2019 is radically different, but even if we look at how this photo reality was in 2009, it is still possible to point out some astonishing differences, like, for instance, the fact that there weren’t any social media like Snapchat back at those days. Although Facebook already existed, it was such a big hit in Brazil as it was in most countries, the most popular social media in that period was Orkut, which was quite similar to Facebook with very few distinctions, but nothing like posting momentary pictures. As far as I can recall, if a user wishes to post a photo on his Orkut profile, he should pass the photo from his camera to his computer first, and then upload the photo to his profile, with could take a little while, depending on the size of the picture.

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Digital Media and Me (Part 1)

As mentioned on the previous post, I personally think that the future (in the broadest sense of this word) is directly connected to the digital world, and, therefore, to Digital Media. For the next few posts, I will explain why and how I see this or at least try to. If I take a close look at how was my life ten years ago, so in 2009 (considering that I’m writing this in 2019), my life has considerably changed, regarding the use of Digital Media. First and foremost, in 2009, a smartphone such a luxury item, at least in Brazil, the country where I came from. I can recall that if someone had a mobile phone that had a camera, for instance, it was something kind of unbelievable, and, back to these days, it was very common to see people with a single camera, like those from Kodak, and it wasn’t the kind of professional camera, it was an ordinary one. I do remember that I had some classmates that used to take their own cameras to take a picture of the group. In contrast to this reality, nowadays the act of taking pictures has become something considerably common, mainly for the fact that is rather unusual to see a mobile phone without a camera. Not only that but also the fact that most of the social media that are currently popular do need some kind of image or photo to be used, and sometimes they only make sense if you take pictures and share it.

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A Journey Through Griffith College (Part 3)

The Applied Digital Media Master course at Griffith College helped me to develop a much broad and deep comprehension of Digital Media in general. Before joining Griffith College, my knowledge of Digital Media was restricted to what covers advertising, especially social media. Just for the record, it is relevant to mention that I did my final thesis, for the Bachelor’s Degree, on how is the relationship of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden with its fans on Instagram, it was not mandatory to write about something related to any social media or the digital world, but I end up choosing to study this kind of thing because I personally think the future is directly connected to the digital world. The thesis that I wrote, as we could see, discussed some fields of Digital Media, but even so it wasn’t enough for me, I knew I needed more to knowledge about it, considering that I wish to work exclusively with Digital Media. Thus, when I joined Griffith College, I could start a much broad study about this matter, looking at things like Web Authoring, the design of a website, and even subjects that had a more sociological approach, like, for instance, surveillance and artificial intelligence. So I may that I was one person in September of 2019 (when the course started to me), and I am quite sure I will a different person when I finish this master course, mainly in what regards my comprehension of Digital Media and my experiences with it.  

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A Journey Through Griffith College (Part 2)

To learn how to programme a web site was quite a challenge to me, mainly for the fact that I had never done anything related to it in my life. In spite of all the lack of knowledge, I may say it was a very pleasing experience because I am the kind of person that really appreciates a challenge. I have this kind of feature owing to the fact that it is a better way of learning when we challenge ourselves to do something, at least in my point of view. To be a bit more philosophic, whenever someone gives you something that it is already done, you do not have to do any kind of effort, you may not learn how to do this one thing properly, because you did not put your brain to work and try to find a solution yourself. When we have this type of provocation, it is a wonderful opportunity to put our brain to the test, due to the fact that we try, as most as we can, to find a better solution for this situation. This was clearly seen on the worksheets given to me, I always took them as a challenge, and I always tried to do it in the best way I could do. That is why I think that this kind of experience is considerably delightful because whenever I need to do something related to it, I will remember the worksheets I had at Griffith College.

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A Journey Through Griffith College (Part 1)

Since the end of September, I’ve started to attend class at Griffith College, in Dublin. I may say that it was a rather delightful experience, mainly for the fact that I’m learning somethings that I had never imagine to learn in my life, like HTML, for instance, that I am quite sure it will help me to get a good job here in Ireland, due to the fact that is something really useful nowadays. As a Brazilian, who has a Bachelor Degree in Advertising, I have never thought about the possibility of learning HTML, because, in Brazil (at least in the University where I studied), anything related to web programming is considered to have to do not have any relation with Advertising, thus, I have never considered the possibility of studying this kind of thing. I personally think that the Brazilian way of learning should incorporate the studies of HTML to its lectures, in view of the fact that we are living in a world where people are consuming internet more and more each day, and, although Advertising is not directly related to web authoring, it would be something that could help students of this area to get a job in an easier way, because advertising is one of the many areas where internet is getting more influence every day, and this kind of knowledge it is being demanded by its professionals