Unifying ideas and adding a personal spice to it

Video – a modern way of reflecting the world, usually from its grater and softer perspective. Perhaps it’s the effects that are being used that grab our attention, our mind is being so deep penetrated with the visual text that an alarm of “this is not the reality” doesn’t even get triggered! Video, like nothing else, provides us with an abstract feeling of power and pleasure. And just like it was pointed out by Scholes: “Video texts are constructed upon a base of boredom, from which they promise us relief.” (Scholes).

Just in few seconds of a simple commercial we get a full picture of what was going on for years. In this minor example that was used by Scholes of a Budweiser commercial we get a story of a black baseball player that was trying to climb the ladder of fame and he gets an opportunity that goes well. The actor finishes it up with a bottle of bear and everyone lived happily ever after.

All that was done is a short period of time cultural knowledge upon which this video construction depends. Just with few scenes, and some help from a narrator adding a cherry of beep commercial music to the top of this cake, leaves an impression of what America is like. And what this is the way we do our business. The storyline provides us with everything we need to know about the life of that baseball player that reached a hilltop. And there is no better way to celebrate the event then to get some beer.

Scholes strongly advises us to look very critically at the ideology that is being hidden under the scenes. We need to consider that they are trying to do everything to sell their product. So the result is that they twist the reality and make it seem like the product that they are suggesting will fix up your life and make you a happier person.

Unlike Scholes, Birkerts in his literate exploration of wisdom and where it comes from, states that wisdom comes from reading, and reading on the vertical scale. A modern human is gradually going downhill with the help of new circuit driven technology. An idea of wisdom being outgained from the facts and general information, is being overthrown by Birkerts, and not only that… His main destiny that he wants the reader to achieve is that: human are expanding in knowledge, they are being informed of all these bits and pieces that they might inhale from mass media and other sources that surround us everywhere, with that “access with ease” theme to them, our understanding is just floating on the surface without actually implanting anywhere. The understanding that human get is so light and very general but it sure is mass in the linear expansion: reaching the point where “quantity is elevated over quality” (Birkerts). And unlike, it can be obtained from his example with the villager vs. the modern television viewer, the reader that has his hands on the written material he dwells in it and studies every corner of the room that was once in the dark. Creating the scene of not only the horizontal but the vertical inscription that can be stored. The villager also depends on his memory because the access to the phenomenal information that was gathered might not be eternal. But likewise just what Birkerts said: “We depend far less on memory: that faculty has all but atrophied from the lack of use.” (Birkerts).

Although Birkerts does not say so directly, he apparently assumes that not all of the modern human society, but most, is in the trap of “intensively” reading which is when a reader has access to so many books that he can grow in and dig out knowledge due to the book pricings on the current market. Although he stated clearly that we might read a lot but what we read is just tiny bits and generalizations of and event or a happening, and that sort of information in is a such mass quantity that “when everything is happening everywhere, it gets hard to care about anything” due to the modern video text that Scholes was talking about.

In my opinion they are both right! Why does Birkerts say that reading is the way to achieve depth in knowledge and wisdom because reading and striving to dig out the treasure or even get the main point of an article is much easier. And the reason is because there are no distractions to articles. But when we examine video industry they, purposely, fluff the main point up so all what you see attracts you and you don’t realize that the main point is planted in your head. Now what Scholes subjects is that you can still reach the depth of video text its just that there is more work to it! You need to dig more and look analytically, especially at commercials because those, in most cases, are not you friends. But just because we are scared of bears doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t go to woods. We need to be alarmed and prepared. Prepared to read the visual text vertically not just grasping the horizontal general information.