The lecture last thursday was about ethnography, the lady showed some phenomenon of contemporary lifestyle of teenagers in Sweden, how internet influence them and how they get contact with the outer world.
It seems this generation is strongly "brainwashed" by mass media and internet. From my point of view, the background might be: Sweden is a post industrial country, IT industry ranks top in the world. So the population structure is quite homogenous, lots of people work in offices, and over 70% young people use internet everyday.
Then we might can suspect one reason makes these young kids so much into facebook and addidas is : they don't know clear and they feel it's harder or shamed to live in other ways.
Why Internet?The reason is quite clear, it's convenient. There're piles of information and stuffs and circles in Internet, it seems everything you want could be reached via Internet, users can play the same game, share their opinions without distance, they can feel the speed and power of communication, and it's not costly to do it, only a laptop with internet connection is sufficient.
But why ONLY internet?
Physical environment---An artificial product
As a highly urbanized country, in Sweden everything has been sort of "defined", "organised", in big cities, there are few opportunities for informal , small scale business/ activities. For example, compared with other cities, you can hardly find a small grocery store, all you can remember about daily shopping is ICA, COOP, Hemköp etc, In these venues, customers(especially young generation who have few knowledge) are provided with necessities through Brand, they don't know how the products are made and how the people who made them work and live, they only face a smiling sales girl and only care about the brands and prices.
Nowadays this is very common in metropolitans that young generation are cultivated by media, brand, advertisement and organized "study trip", everything is predefined, under control of adult world and particularly some gigantic companies like Cococola or Nike. They only get touch with merchants and officers, not peasants or workers, who have closer relation with material world.
In the city they have very few opportunities to know how this real world is made. They only know ICA, COOP, but can't see how potatoes grow up in field, they only know H&M,Nike, but never get chance to know the people who are involved in the producing process. Their emotion are controlled by commercials, their ideology are carved by mass media, they can get free lunch from government so they don't worry much about future. Some children with strong personalities will stand out, but mass flock will follow the existing framework of society and lost their own abilities of discovery truths and facts.
These days Sergels torg is occupied by international market, people can eat exotic foods and buy interesting stuffs. But this scene only happens very few time every year, in the rest days, you can hardly find such places. But still the stall owners are only merchants, not producers, and maybe even not expert on their products. Maybe that's also one reason Swedish people like travelling a lot, in other country especially developing countries they can still approach the origin of world, buying a handmade hat or eat a homemade dish. And maybe that's also one reason for so many allotment gardens in the city, elderly people love natural environment they grew up with.
Social environment---few common interest with parents and neighbors, more friends on internet
The survey made by the lady chose suburban kids as study group, in Sweden, a large proportion of suburban families are immigrants from other cities or countries.
Apparently the young generation grew up in quite different environment than their parents, so their habits and customs and interest may differ as well. And the "chain of pears" distribution of suburbs in Sweden restricts daily communication in and between neighborhood, In this case they might tend to seek friends cross the geographic boundary. Since they are not old enough to go to pub and don't have much money, internet become the favorite contact method for adolescents.
It's crucial to let kids know Internet and media are only tools, it's human who should dominate our own life and opinions, only if more suitable places are set up to intensify communication between different social groups, can our young generation have a healthy an independent brain and body.
It’s well know that the sculpture in Sergelstorg has been haunted by technical problems, it never was able to deliver the intended visual output and - quoting Hall - "thus adds itself to the many projects within the [reconstruction of central Stockholm] that didn't endure confrontation with reality."
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