Take you chance to meet someone

When we were talking about the medium we use the most, Brittany said baking is her favorite medium since it gathers everyone. While I was thinking about this one day, I realize how Berryline, a small, cozy frozen yogurt place in Harvard Sq, changed my life.

Serra, who was a senior at Babson last year, told me about this place. I asked her to take me there one day and she did. After tasting that delicious frozen yogurt, I fell in love. It serves yogurt with several flavors and gives you the chance to decorate it with different toppings such as fruits and candies. That first day I made my special for the entire year and had original flavor with strawberries and granola.

Berryline does not only offer a delicious taste but also a very nice environment, which includes students mostly. It’s location in Harvard Sq, attracts many students and stands as a nice meeting point. People come and join each other while eating. We saw many people who met there and started hanging out together. For this reason, I think it’s a good medium, which gives both a taste and a nice atmosphere.

Even though we knew each other from before, Berryline made Serra and me closer as well. We called each other every night to repeat our small trips. While going there and eating our frozen yogurts in Berryline, we realized how much we are alike. We started calling each other for programs other than Berryline as well. So, Berryline is one of the best mediums for me since it brought me one of my best friends now. People who would like to taste Berryline, the address is:  3 Arrow Street, Cambridge.

This week, Serra will visit me in Boston. Berryline will again be our meeting point and will bring us together. I think you should visit once; who knows maybe you’ll meet someone important as well ;)

Why blame that little bird?



According to the dictionary “tweet” is “a weak chirping sound, as of a young or small bird”. In the old times, pigeon was one of the earliest and most important medium used by people. Many messages were going back and forth through these small birds which helped people communicate. Many years between those times and the 21^st century in which we are living now, witnessed many discoveries in technology world and supplied us many ways of sharing news with other people. Clearly, internet became the best area containing those ways. Among many of the websites created for this purpose, the one Jack Dorsey opened, in 2006 took us to nostalgia and brought that little bird back into our lives with a new name: Twitter! Twitter started as a social networking and media blogging website in which people can follow each other learn and learn other people’s statuses. Each person uses an account under his or her name and composes phrases stating where he or she is or what he or she is thinking at that time. Tweeting depends on preference of course! Some people prefer just to follow people, while some spend their whole day on Twitter commenting on every single tweet they see in their homepage. They see the tweets of people they choose to follow which can include their friends, friends of friends, celebrities, authors, even politicians. With this way, they get the chance to bring their comments on ideas of the people they cannot even reach in real life’s ideas and get into discussions.

With no offense, human being is a curious creature. Moreover, everyone wants their ideas, project or actions to be known much or less. Therefore, this website became too popular in the recent years since it offers live news of everyone and I cannot reject that I am one of those people. Yesterday, while I was trying to write a paper for a class, I noticed how often I check my Twitter, both from my computer and my cell phone. I caught myself updating my homepage every 10 minutes to see if anyone did anything new or anyone started a discussion. When I realized that I could write so little after a long day, I questioned myself why Twitter attracted me this much. Was I looking for some specifically or was I in the need of proving that I constantly have opinions on things going around me?  At the end, I accepted the idea that, I really feel left and distant when I’m not moving with the speed of people. I always want to learn new things and look for either support or critique for my ideas. Improving myself and having a small idea about recent things make me feel connected to life and excite me for future.

When my paper finished very late, I blamed the Twitter first and thought that maybe we should have stayed with the telegraph like the old days, only getting informed about urgent things. But then I realized that I grew up in the 21^st century and I’m only satisfied with the new things I learn every day. Why blame that little bird?

Path to Development

People born, grow, live and die.  While passing these steps, other people join them sharing their moments. In this life cycle, they aim for things, make preferences and work for their targets. The social environment they belong is as important as their own effort to make their wishes come true. To accomplish what they want, they have to influence people about their claim to make it valid. Media comes up at this point and help them introduce, argue, change or improve their idea. For this reason, I think that medium is a social tool, which both helps and stands as an obstacle at the same time for people working for their aims, by creating interaction and information sharing between them.

There are many channels of media. Some of them provide people visual information while some of them create influence just by words. When one channel offers concrete evidence, the other addresses the same issue in an abstract way. However they are all ways of expressing yourself to many people and a way of expanding social perspective. Through these channels, people learn each other’s opinion and either gain more or add more things to the opinion. The popularity of the topic can bring more researches and develop the idea. With this way, the argument becomes stronger with everyone’s contributions. As an example, when a new technology about a cell phone comes up, many people start discussing it through media channels. Every idea can bring new points and the potential buyers of that cell phone can decide the right thing for them accordingly. In a way, media stands as the leader of a group work who tries to gather everyone’s work and perform a valid project at the end.

On the other hand, media can be at the opposite side and gather people who disagree with your opinion and create a stronger claim against yours. For instance, a media can be a big obstacle to pass to a pop star doing an illegal work. All channels of media can bring comments about her behavior and put distance between her and her fans. In this case, media helps the community interact about an issue while it causes problem to the star.

Like McLuhan says; “It is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action” (9). In both cases, media helps the community gather. In some ways it’s like a carousel carrying everyone on the same track, but in different ways as like different horses; still connecting them to each other. Each one follows the other, like an idea bringing a new vision to the previous one in the community. While some people ride those channels, some people prefer to watch and observe.

In another way, it’s like a vegetable soup. Like each vegetable having its own flavor, all media channels carry their own messages but their combination brings a totally different, stronger flavor; message.

For this reason, media, the communication system of humans, yields humanity to the development.