In Common Culture, Petracca and Sorapure define culture “as the distinct practices, artifacts, institutions, customs, and values of a particular social group” (2). Culture provides each social group with its own distinctive characteristics and customs, which ultimately marks each individual within that group with a distinguishing factor also known as his or her identity. American culture is so vast due to its diverse population. However, when we think of American, some words immediately pop up in our minds. Worldwide, America has become recognized as a “multitrillion-dollar brand” that publicly sells “democracy”, “opportunity”, and “freedom” (Lasn xii). Due to rapid technological advances, America has become a manufactured world in which materialistic things, such as brands and products, have taken over. Since its creation, the Macbook has become one of the best selling laptops in the U.S market. Through its representation of technological innovation, big corporate businesses, and the “typical” American life, I believe that the MacBook is one “living artifact” that best symbolizes American culture.
Today, in the United States, everything can essentially be done through technology. We can communicate with friends, keep in touch and up-to-date with old middle and high school acquaintances, shop for clothes and other materialistic items, learn how to cook, stream movies and TV shows, play games, store massive media files and documents, and even fulfill college graduation requirements. The list goes on and on. Conveniently, all of these tasks and virtual interactions can be carried out with a single item called the laptop. As individuals who are trying to juggle with multiple tasks and activities and trying to accommodate for the fast-pace American lifestyle, we now use the laptop for everything. Because of technological innovations, we are able to carry our entire life around with us. Laptops can be seen everywhere, including the library, coffee shops, and college campuses. Not only do we keep our eyes glued to the laptop screen when we are at home, but we feel the need to carry it everywhere we go. As a result, much of our time is spent in the virtual world or, as Lasn calls it, “unreality”. If people are not on their iPhones or browsing the net, then they are watching TV or playing video games. People hardly take the time to explore, enjoy, and appreciate nature anymore. This is because, as Lasn asserts, “we face more and more opportunities and incentives to spend time in cyberspace or to let the TV do the thinking” (22). Technology has ultimately taken over the American culture by manipulating and luring the American society into its manufactured desires.
Due to the pervasive advertisements of these manufactured products, individuals have become branded by the mass media. As an Apple Inc. product, the MacBook represents one of the big corporate businesses that have taken control of the American culture. Over the last five or more years, Apple products have flourished, sold, and contributed to a big proportion of America’s mass consumption. Today, Apple is one of the most highly successful companies in the United States. Everywhere you go, there is a person talking on or using the iPhone. Because of its successful advertisement and sudden rise to popularity, there is much hype surrounding the iPhone. Everyone wants one because that is the new trend in American culture. Individuals have been bought into the hype of acquiring one of these high-tech products. This represents the large influence and control big corporations, like Apple, have on the American society. They have manipulated Americans into conformity by warping their emotions and evoking a need of their produce within them. Independence and spontaneity are no longer valued due to the conformation and branding of the American society.
Not only have Americans themselves become branded, but so have their lifestyles. We no longer live the natural, easygoing life, but succumb to the lavish comfort of an American lifestyle. Recent generations have been spending more and more of their time, or even life, on the laptop. As soon as children return from a day spent at school, they log on their laptop, eat dinner, and then spend the remaining of their night on the laptop again. This goes on in a cyclic fashion. The laptop represents a stationary life spent in a virtual world. According to Lasn, “in [a] world of unreality, it’s easy to forget you’re a citizen and that the actual world is an interactive place” (22). In a sense, we have become lazy and seek the comforts of our homes, where there is only so much we can do. As Americans, we rate comfort as one of the most valuable things. This explains why some of us are willing to pay $10,000 for a nice mattress and $100,000 for the comforts and convenience of a luxurious car.
As a symbol of technological innovations, multinational corporations, and the comfortable and stationary life, the MacBook helps us define American culture. As we observe these characteristics and customs of our culture, we need to reflect on whether this is how we want to be viewed and represented.
Reflection:
So far, English 1A has made me think deeply about what exactly “culture” and “pop culture” mean. I had never thought of culture as anything more than a quality that gives each group or society its own charact eristic identity. However, it is much more detailed and complex than that. It consists of our knowledge, customs, characteristics, values, beliefs, laws and morals. It is also shared, learned, adaptive, and symbolic. In addition, through Lasn’s Culture Jam, I have learned not to just take things as they are, but to also form my own thoughts and decisions about them myself. Although I had learned from psychology that TV violence increased aggressiveness in children, I was never aware of all the other “mental pollutants and information viruses” that may threaten our “ecology of mind”. Technology and the mass media have caused us to spend excessively more and more time in the manufactured world of unreality rather than the natural world of reality, causing us to absorb a lot of things that are potentially harmful to our minds.
I have always known that I am a slow reader, writer, and thinker but the past couple of weeks have confirmed and reminded me of this fact. It takes time for me to process what I am reading and I typically have to read a passage a few times in order to understand what it is saying. As a writer, I have learned that I need to start managing my time and organizing my thoughts better. I had problems with finishing my in-class essay on time, even though it was a computer-based exam. I realized that as the time started counting down, I became very nervous and my thoughts became scrambled. I need to keep my focus and pace myself.
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