Black-Box

The idea of a “black-box translator” is the main point that stuck with me after I read “Revolution in the Revolution” by Andrew Joscelyne. I find the concept of what actually happens when people react to media very interesting.

It is interesting to study why and how different forms of media are able to start cultural revolutions nad ideologies. I would love to know exactly why the Bible has had such an influence on past societies, as well as the present. It is just a book with words, why do people develop faith in it? Could it be only because people need a general sense of faith in ther lives? That they need something to believe in and a reason for why things happen? Or could it be because the power of the book is so overwhelming that no one knows it’s true potential?

I am a religious person. I believe I am because I was raised in a religios home, but that does not truly explain why I keep my faith. When I read the bible, I am usually lost and confused with it’s content and maybe that is why I continue to believe. It might just be because I am driven and I want to understand the Bible’s meaning. I have never thought that it could be the actual technology of it being a simple book that keeps me reading, but it is a valid point of view that is worth analyzing.

I have never understood why my father and brother get so excited over watching a football game on television. They are not actually playing the game and they are not feeling the sensation of getting knocked to the ground. Maybe in this case it is because of the medium that they are using to experience the game. Maybe there is a power behind the television that somehow makes my father tell everyone to shut up when the ball is thrown. It is almost as if the TV is controlling them without even physically affeting them. Maybe it is just because the "images rule [their] dreams," (Debray, 2) but I will never understand what is going on when their eyes absorb the light projected from the television screen, and I will never graspe the full ‘black-box’ concept, but from now on I will not stop thinking about what is really happening in my mind when I see media.

Sender

Message

Encoder

Transmitter

Channel of Communication

Receiver

Decode

Cited Work:

Regis Debray, "Media Manifestos:" Wired Interview with Debray
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.01/debray.html>.