The New Media

Human beings are more surrounded by media than ever before with the sudden rise of technology within the past couple of decades. Everywhere we look, someone or something is trying to communicate a message to us—for example, billboards, the label on your juice drink, someone’s bumper sticker. Those are just small examples, but really media is much larger than a few words on a bumper sticker and it is something almost every person visits once a day: the internet. The internet makes information so much more accessible for a larger audience; people have more resources available to them than ever before since the creation of the internet. While unlimited access to infinite amount of information may seem unbelievably beneficial, it does come with repercussions. Many jobs are becoming obsolete with the rise of technology; other jobs are evolving from this shift in culture. Graduating with a degree in English in 2017 is a lot different from graduating with an English degree in 1967 and current English majors must be prepared to adapt to the technological changes of their time and be able to utilize new medias to their advantage. This is why, all of a sudden, employers want people who blog; twenty years ago, “blog” wasn’t even a word, but now it is one of the biggest skills a college graduate can sell themselves to an employer with. English majors not only have to have the ability to write on paper, but write using the newest medias such as doing layout for a website, designing a flyer on Illustrator, or creating content for a company’s social media. The reason that I have taken several graphic design classes as my electives at Lewis is because I think graphic design and English actually go hand-in-hand because both deal with the act of communicating to people and the ability to work in both of those medias is what is going to set some English majors ahead of other English majors who still think that all we do is read literature and write about it—we do so much more.