Today in today’s workshop we discussed the communicative revolutions of media, and what is meant by media itself and the messages its produces today. Week 11’s lecture on Mediums and Technologies explored the historical and contextual media platforms, comparing early communicative understandings of the transmission model in contrast to our more post-modern interrelated system of connectedness present today.

As corporate privatization seemed to be a big influential factor of our media today, I decided to go a have a look at some of the more successful business’ advertisements online currently, and see whether I could make any sense of what was going (big picture style). Air B and B’s Is Mankind ad definitely demonstrates a rhetoric surrounding the sharing community concept, which I guess has recently emerged from the internet’s projection of global connectedness. As it has been discussed previously in prior classes, I do know that the sharing economy’s growth in popularity was due to the 2008 global financial crisis, which I guess in it’s aftermath put financial pressure on communities to ‘share and care’. Consequently, a neo-utopian lifestyle has emerged on social media that’s adopted a philosophy that advocated by ‘hipsters’ and boutique cafes.

Now, going back to the class discussion of the privatization of platforms, I don’t know whether this ‘humane’ idea is as legitimate as projected by huge billion dollar companies, because of, well, just that. This specific advertisement tries to unite through the campaign the diverse audience present online as it contemplates the identity of man through the symbolic gesture of a baby’s *evolutionary* progression.  This utilizations of the anonymous face of the technological community sure, demonstrating Air B and B’s acknowledged of unidentified masses (… this is starting to sound very broadcast era-esque). It is for this reason I believe, audiences must continue to challenge the sharing markets privatisation and ‘production’ of unified universalism, as once again we see businesses appeal to generalised audiences. Especially considering they’re attempting to personalise their business by identifying who we, the un-identified technological audience, actually are. It’s weird because it doesn’t take long for the audience to realise that exploitation tools and techniques used in today’s advertising world, which makes me question why privatized companies like Air B n B keep putting money into ads they know will come off as creepily boosteristic and false. Maybe, instead they should try and rehumanise the experience of the technological communication economy by setting up travel agencies etc for people to go into and book through, or maybe that part of the industry is gone and dusted as more and more people seek from the internet the possibility to live.

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Here is a parody of the Is Mankind advertisement that I thought was very hilarious