The Medium is the Massage Response

               When I started reading this book, it felt very out of context because I started on page 60. It was interesting, but it felt very fragmented. A section that really interested me was the one about commercials, and how movies have come to be more like commercials to manipulate the psyche to feel one way or another. But as the book states if you have not been preconditioned to a lot of the techniques used in commercials you would not be affected by it, and you might even find it annoying.
                I found a couple of bits in this section interesting. First the part about the commercials states that television commercials were considered a "bastard form." I found that bit interesting because it might have been considered a bastard form then, but nowadays it is a pretty good business to be working in if you are a filmmaker. It's a good place to be, because you can make a lot of money making commercials. Though commercials are still annoying, they keep allow a lot of filmmakers to make a good living.
               The other bit that I found interesting was the New York Times front page title "Power Failure Snarls Northeast." Just this title shows how reliant almost all of America is on electricity (with the exception of the Amish.) Maybe the Amish have the right idea: to not become too reliant on electric utilities because if they ever stopped working most of society probably would not know how to function. This article states that 800,000 people are caught in subways, cars have stopped, and the city is dark. Electronics are such an important part to our everyday lives, and especially to people who work in film and photography. Even if we are using say a Bolex camera, chances are, if we are indoors, we are lighting the scene with electric lights. Most everything we do in our work, and in most other jobs rely on electricity.