Media Autobiography

Media Autobiography
Thomas Windom
P. Phillips
English11011
4 September 2007
Media, News, Computers, and Me
This past June I got my first computer that was actually mine. My Grandparents bought me a computer for my graduation gift because it is something that would be essential for me to have entering into college. Since I had the liberty to choose which ever computer I wanted, I got an all black Mac Book. It uses Mac OS X 10.4.9. I got to be pretty familiar with Mac as an operating system this past school year when I took Video editing as a senior. I really took a liking to it and I have heard nothing but good things about Mac's so I decided that was my best choice. It comes installed with Garage band, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iCal, iChat, iDVD, iSync, iWeb, iWork, Photo Booth, Safari, and many others. Im most confident with using Garage band and iMovie. During my video editing class i worked with these two programs a lot, using Garage band for making my own music, and iMovie for recording and editing videos. The program that I use the most is iTunes. I almost always have music from my iTunes playing.
I don't really use any programs for reading and speaking on my computer. However i do use the writing program often. Since I don't have Microsoft office for my computer yet I use a program called TextEdit. It is a very small and simplified writing program that comes pre-installed on all Mac computers. It is not nearly as complex as Microsoft word or Microsoft works. However it gets the job done. One thing that I specifically like about this program is that unlike the writing program that comes pre-installed with Windows, is that it has spell check. I also use a listening program often also. Like I mentioned before I use iTunes on a daily bases and I have 1071 songs mostly consisting of Hip Hop. I have three email accounts that I check on a daily bases. My yahoo account was the first account that I ever had. I have had this account since I was in the 6th grade when we had to get free emails in order to keep in touch with our pen-pals. I do not use any sort of news web sites on a daily bases. However, I do use CNN.com on occasion whenever I am assigned to current event articles. As far as communicating, I use AIM on a daily bases. I registered for a screen name when I was in the 8th grade and since then I have had 3 different screen names. At the current moment I only use one because most of my recent friends have that one. As far as social web sites go, I use facebook 99.9% of the time and the other 1% of the time I have a myspace that I hardly ever use. Two years ago I started to use myspace and I really enjoyed it. I slowly started to not use it for what reason I do not know. During this past year, my senior year, I just set up a facebook account. However, I was very reluctant to start my account. I felt like it was just some fad that would eventually go away, like it was something I wouldn't enjoy. However, I started to get into it really fast. And now, I go on facebook religiously. I check it after basically every class. When it comes to search engines, I use google all of the time now. When I first got familiar with search engines, yahoo was the big thing so I used that majority of the time. Then I switched to using dogpile.
On average I think I spend around 14 hours a week on my computer. Through out the day I am on my computer normally for a total of around 2 hours a day. Depending on whether I have homework or not i might be on my computer for three hours. The three main activities that I do on my computer in order are; iTunes, Facebook, and then AIM. There maybe a tie between Facebook and AIM. It just depends on the day and whether or not im getting a lot of wall posts on facebook or not. And when it comes to my iTunes, I absolutely love music. So my iTunes is always playing. Every night I go to sleep listening to the same playlist that I have labeled "smooth." So when you look in my iTunes under top 25 most played, the first 14 songs are all from "smooth."
For the most part I think I spend as much time on the computer as any average teenager. Sometimes my computer does prevent me from getting work done. For example like now when I am trying to hold 3 AIM conversations and write this paper at the same time. But for the most part I can get my work done without my computer being a distraction. My parents really don't understand the whole computer and technology age as much, so it is a hard concept to grasp for them when they see me talking to 5 different people on AIM, checking my facebook, and listening to music at the same time. They feel that it would be a lot easier to just pick up the phone and call someone. Although a lot of the times I could very well be on the phone while doing my top three computer activities. For the most part my computer habits resemble most of my friends that are girls. Not to many of my guy friends are as active when it comes to computers as I am. 99.9% of the people I talk to on AIM are girls.
My computer experience has not changed my thought process about printed text such as books and magazines. I started reading comic books around the 2nd grade and I haven't stopped since. I love comics and I like to read when the reading is either difficult to read or just entertaining and drama packed. I like to read books along to lines of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. I do not watch a lot of TV.
I do not pay that much attention to current events. On a scale from 1-10 I would put myself at around a 7. Since I love sports I will read the sports section watch sports center on occasion. For the most part I hear about current events via word of mouth. I like to stay somewhat up to date on my current events because they are good conversation starters and you can relate to people who you never thought you could relate to.
My primary source of news is when I just hear things from other people. I hate watching the news because its all depressing to me. There are hardly good things on the news these days so I just prefer to not watch. Considering the fact that I get most of my news updates from friends, I spend a great deal of time with my primary news source. I also hear a lot of news from my father, who often informs me of news he thinks I ought to know. If I see news on the internet than it is usually from yahoo.com on the main page when they have news flashes. If I see somethings thats interesting or catches y eye than I might re-route myself to clicking on and reading an article. I love watching UFC, so every now and then I will go to www.ufc.com and check up on the fighters and see what events are coming up.
I honestly do not have thee slightest idea of who owns any of my sources of news with thee exception of my friends and family who tell me news. I imagine someone that has a degree in communications, journalism, or broadcast journalism owns the news sights. I would also imagine that they have had some education in business since they now own a successful news and advertising company.