Week 1: Media Autobiography

In the Information Age, we receive information from many types of media. I am no exception; in my past 24 years of life, I have spent a lot of time using different methods to learn about the world around me.

The very first kind of media I used was books. My grandfather used to read the stories from the book Romance of the Three Kingdoms when I was small; and that is the reason why I have a great interest in history. Before I moved to America in 2002, most of the books that I read were written in Chinese. After I came to the States, I still read a lot of Chinese books; however, I spent more time to read English books: for academic reason but also leisure reason. I still read a lot today, mostly history books and detective fictions.

Television also plays a big role in my media life. I used to spend a lot of time watching TV when I was a child; and according to my mother, that is the reason I need to wear glasses, since I watched too much and got too close to the television. I do not spend that much time on television that I used to; because internet has become a bigger part in my life.

My parents encouraged me to read newspaper in a daily aspect since I started to attend elementary school. By doing so, it helped my Chinese a lot; I was better than other children in my school in Chinese, especially my writing skill and reading comprehension. I do not particularly like reading newspaper; for it is more like a practice than a habit. But I enjoy reading it because sometimes it is fun to find misspells or other mistakes while I am reading it.

I am not a big fan of magazines, for there are too many ads in them. And also, I am not really interested in reading the gossips between celebrities. Although I do not really read magazines, I still read soccer magazines and video game magazines. Soccer magazines are more a leisure reading; and video game magazines provide me the news and information from the games that I am interested in.

I love watching movies, for they show me things that books cannot provide like visual thrill. However, it seems like movies in these couple years are like all the same. And also, people who are making movies cannot create their own original idea like they used to in the 90s. They always have to make films from popular comics or novels. I am not against reproduction of a good old film, but it seems everyone just doing it because they do not have to deal with a basic background story; which skips a big part of film making and saves a whole lot of time in order to be able to make more films in a year.

Recordings, or music, help me to stay focus while I am working. In fact, I am listening to music while I am writing this post. I do not follow a specific genre; as long as it sounds beautiful to me, I will listen to it. I used to buy CDs until I can buy them online. Somehow people in the music industry are making the same kind of music blindly; it makes the music in recent years sound very much alike.

The most important type of mass media to me is internet. I usually spend more than half a day in front of my laptop browsing on the web. It helps me doing the research for my papers when I attended UC Davis; I use it to chat with my friends through webcam in Hong Kong instead of making long distance calls. I used not to listen to radio; but online radio helps me to know what is going on in Hong Kong. Like online radio, newspaper on the internet also is another method that helps me to know the big things happened in Hong Kong. Internet is the biggest part in my daily life; and therefore, it is also the most important sort of media that I use everyday.