I am reading (not among my thousands of BIC texts) a book entitled Introducing Media Studies by Sardar and Loon.  I came across a very interesting article in it focusing on the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1953).  He proposed that “the relationship between the signifiers and the signified is arbitrary,”  which struck me as odd.  When I think of communication (particularly through a digital medium) it seems as though the thought, idea, or concept one is trying to get across must have a concrete, logical symbol.  For example; if I had seen a squirrel running across a road and caused a car to swerve and crash into another car and I somehow caught a video of the whole thing, wouldn’t such a video serve the purpose of communicating the episode?  The video illustrates exactly what occured and the events leading up to it-so I ask myself what is missing.  The only thing I can think of is the fact that the audience will never have seen the event precisely when it happened.  This all to say; many of his theories have been put on the backburner because semiology (this study of tentative meanings across mediums) is too advanced to even understand quite yet.  If anyone has any thoughts, though, I would be very interested.

T. Hales

Today is the day I have begun what seems to be my most interesting class (Also: on my second day of college.) The class is entitled “From Memex to Youtube,” and I believe it surveys both the history and trends of the emerging media throughout. My major is known as “Communication Specialist” and mixes studies from both Speech and Film/Digital Media. This class therefore, is very beneficial to my overall experience (not to mention that it seems pretty fun.) I am reading “Inventing the Medium” by J. Murray for the class right now and I’m impressed at how thought-provoking a seemingly simple study can be

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