Media in My Life

To put it simply, media is a really interesting thing. In the Oxford English Dictionary, the first definition of "mediate" (noun form) is "to act as an intermediary or a mediator." Not super helpful, but  they all have the same root word. The adjective form gives us a better definition, "intermediate; intervening or interposed in position, rank, quality, time, or order of succession."

Now, I realize that that's pretty boring and frankly, not super clear. Let's break it down a little more. The etymology of "mediate" comes from the Latin word mediatus, past participle of mediare which means to "halve" and later meant "be in the middle." That all comes from the online etymology dictionary, which I find pretty cool.

So how is that relevant to our use of media today? My interpretation of this would be to take the literal meaning of the root word: to be in the middle. Pair it with our understanding of media today (social media, the news, books, tablets, etc.). We've also got that massive Wiki list of artistic media ranging from paintings, to films, to power tools,  and we are left with an interesting concept of what "media" means to our generation, something that comes in the middle of us and information, or a message.

I'm a TV person. I love horror movies, and comedies, and TLC, and The Biggest Loser. I'm also an internet person, to an extent. Not a huge social media person, but I do dabble. I'm obsessed with music. My most beloved media outlet is through text. I am a huge nerd when it comes to reading; books, mainly, including non-fiction, classics, realistic fiction, teen romance novels, mystery novels, history textbooks, any kind of literature assigned to me in class...the only thing I really hate to read are textbooks that are math/science related. I've always been the girl to sit with my book and binge-read until my eyes were blurry. 

I think that media has revolutionized the world. (Duh.) Televisions, phones, newspapers, music; these outlets reach people in a way that has never been possible in the millions of years before. All of this stuff is serving as a platform for stuff to make its way to us, and I cant think of anything cooler than that. Before media became a thing, there was just all this knowledge floating around out there but somehow we've found a way to snag it and plant it on a tangible thing for us to absorb and learn about and love/hate/whatever. It's really a beautiful thing.