Gaby Colletta's Blog Post #1 : An All Encompassing Medium

It is clear that digital media has affected and continues to affect our personal connections.   In chapters 1 and 2, Baym introduced many facets of the digital age that play out through our interactions.  It is easy to have a love-hate relationship with an entity that drives force in opposing directions – as indicated in Bayn’s explanation of how digital media finds ways to hinder yet empower us.   I decided to take this class for the purpose of discovering the weight of the “love” side in this relationship.  

 

As an advertising junkie, I wanted to share a commercial developed by Google Creative Lab.   I thought it would be interesting to examine how a form of social media acknowledges the power of digital and capitalizes on many themes that have been introduced in our texts.   Baym talks about synchronous media, and the ability for instantaneous communication across distance.   If you have ever seen the Google search story “Father and Daughter,” this ad exhibits just that.   Furthermore, the ad exhibits the intimacy that can be achieved through this medium (a common critique of digital media).   Please see link below for reference:

 

 

The ad itself mixes Google search, YouTube, instant message, e-mail, digital book, and many other features of the Internet to tell the story of a relationship between a father and daughter.  The messaging is an amalgam of texts, words, emoticons, visual and auditory that emphasize the power of the medium.  In this ad we see a social medium evolve to encapsulate several other modes of communication.  Donath highlights the tension between persistent and ephemeral.   In observing this video the process appears to be ephemeral steps connecting one another into an overarching, persistent message that I personally feel successfully touches the viewer.    I thought this ad would be interesting to share because it effectively illustrates the capacity and potential of digital media.   In taking this class I hope to gain perspective on how to apply digital forward thinking to the idea building process.