Music Review: Britney Spears: Hold It Against Me

Hold It Against Me

Hold It Against Me: Escaping the Media and Technology

No, I will not hold it against Britney Spears for almost encompassing her entire music video, Hold It Against Me, with technology.  In fact, the technology in the video is what allows it to make a statement and to illustrate the story of the song.  Technology such as lighting, TV, microphones, Internet and computers, cameras, and stereos each play a part in her recent music video.  Although the technology did serve a purpose, it both enhanced and detracted from the experience. 

                Hold it Against Me tells a story of a woman (Britney) wanting to see a man but not being able to escape the crowds to go be with him.  The video displays Britney in a limited number of sets, but the main one being with her surrounded by  TVs, radios, microphones, cameras, and her fingers are even connected to wires as she sings.  Metaphorically speaking, I believe Britney Spear is making a strong effort in this video to say she cannot escape the media and the news that follow her.

The Technology Used

                Each technology was used to illustrate the song’s purpose.  The lights were constantly blinking bright to represent flashing camera bulbs; while cameras were included as well.  This was to show that paparazzi follow her.  TVs and Radios surrounded her to show that she was on TV and in the media continuously and could not escape it.  Wires were connected to her fingers to show she was connected to all of this communication technology, and that it has become a part of her.  Britney evens uses a fake website resembling “Match.com” to find her man.  This is actually extremely relevant because many people are resorting to technology such as the Internet, in order to socialize with potential significant others.  The stereos shown vibrating and close up helped to elaborate on the beat of the music.

Enhanced

                These technologies enhanced Britney’s new music video because it allowed her to display social media technology today through a different perspective.  Today, new communication technologies, such as the Internet, make communication both effective and easier than ever.   However, as Britney shows, it is incredibly difficult to now escape social media and technology.  Once something is on the Internet, it’s there.  Unlike a phone call to one individual, a broadcasted news report all over the daily news on TV is mass mediated.  In her video, Britney continues to say, “if we could escape the crowd somehow” (Spears, 2011).  Yet, you never actually see a live crowd; just the social media mentioned surrounding her throughout the video to the point that she cannot escape it. 

Detracted

The music video was, at times, too much.  All of the blinking lights and constant TV streaming, etc did distract the viewer from the song itself.  I had to watch the video a few times to really understand the concept.   

In Conclusion

Britney Spears did utilize social media technology and communication technology within her new video, Hold It Against Me, to prove a point.  She, or anyone else, can truly escape these technologies.  The internet and TV make it so much easier to be able to keep in touch and communicate, but also make privacy that much more difficult.  Her video gave a different or negative perspective on the growing love for new social media tools and mass communication efforts.  The technology did enhance the video to make a statement and display the meaning of the song.  Yet, sometimes the amount of communication technology being displayed distracted the viewer.

Link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Edv8Onsrgg

Citation

Spears, Britney. (2011). Britney Spears-Hold It Against Me. You Tube. Retrieved from

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Edv8Onsrgg&noredirect=1

News Item Response: M2M and the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things and the Cloud

Talking Business

Recently, I had the opportunity to intern at a well known cellular, wireless carrier’s corporate office.  During this period, I had my first realization of the emerging new Internet of Things era communications is making headway into (Salkever, 2001).   This new era is driven by machine to machine technology and will allow for less human error and greater efficiency, but will also have negative effects as previous communication responsibilities get replaced by machines .

 As technological progress continues to boom, the world of communication is becoming even more focused on efficiency, speed, and face-less communication.  As the concentrated competition within the telecommunications market continues to accelerate, so does the quantity of wireless connected machines that are free from human interaction.  The result is an emerging new era of machine to machine technology (M2M) and the “Internet of Things”, ultimately leading to the demise of human interaction (Salkever, 2001). 

Why So Popular?

As I had learned on the job, new M2M products that erased the “middle man” were on the rise in the wireless B2B world.  The technologies were fascinating.  For example, products, shipments, and even employees could be tracked 24/7 to ensure efficient work, inventory, shipping pathways, and temperatures were present without a single human interaction being made.  M2M occurs when machines “talk” to each other and to intermediary services, eliminating the machine-to-human interaction contact (Salkever, 2001).  M2M has opened up a significant opportunity for businesses and technology today due to its ability to increase efficiency and reduce human error (Salkever, 2001).  

How does it Work?

The storage of data between the machines is within a “cloud” in which a specific IP address is needed to have access to this information and transmit it (Salkever, 2001).  The increasing amount of data moving through IP networks and clouds is due to the fact that the hardware needed to store that massive of an amount of data would be way to expensive (Salkever, 2001).  Therefore, the cloud is becoming the best option in order to manage and track the Internet of Things (Salkever, 2001).  Yet, with amounts of data so large, failures of machine to machine communication could therefore total millions of time-specific inofration, even if just for a few second (Salkever, 2011).

The Negatives

Whether concerning private or public clouds, hackers and corruption are always a negative and important factor to be prevented as the future moves into this new era (Salkever, 2001).  The information hackers could obtain would be detrimental if on a government level, or other significant level.  Also, failures in clouds do not provide blame (Salkever, 2001).  There is no user error to point a finger at and to work to solve a problem towards (Salkever, 2001).  The days of simply resetting a machine’s server or image if, for example, traffic lights went out, would be obsolete (Salkever, 2001).    

In Conclusion

Although machine to machine technology opens the doors to more efficiency and less human error, the consequences from a M2M errors outweigh those of previous machine-to-human interactions.   Before the era of The Internet of Things comes in full force, privacy issues and failure issues must have almost full proof protection (Salkever, 2001).

Link

http://gigaom.com/cloud/alex-salkever-on-the-internet-of-things/

Citation

Salkever, Alex.  (2001). The Internet of Things and the cloud.  GIGAOM.  Retrieved from

http://gigaom.com/cloud/alex-salkever-on-the-internet-of-things/