Artifact #10

The article I chose is Out There in the Dark, All Alone, written by Manohla Dargis.  This article talks about different ways movies are viewed today and how numbers have drastically decreased throughout the years as far as the amount of people who go to the movie theaters to watch movies.  "Comparing the 90 million who went to the movies each week in 1948 with today’s audience, which hovers around 23 million — Matthew Sigman, a self-confessed “big-screen film fan” from New York, wrote in with a quibble." Most people today would rather sit at home and watch movies that they have purchased on DVD or watch them online or through netflix or even on their cable channels.  These ways of watching movies are more comfortable, more convenient, and most importantly, a lot cheaper.  Back in the 40's, movie watchers could only see new movies if they went to the movie theater, and after the movies were in the theater, they disappeared.  Today, if someone likes a movie, they can purchase it and watch it as many times as they want to.  We have the luxury of being able to re watch old movies and new movies as well, but back in the 40's if they wanted to see a new movie, they would have to go to the theater.  


Some terms used in this article:
on-demand era: time period where we can watch movies any time we want through tv channels, online websites or movie companies, for example, netflix
nickelodeons: a movie theater back in the day that charged 5 cents for admission
cinema: the art of making films or movies


Movie prices have become so high that I hate going to movie theaters because it ends up being $20 after you've bought your ticket and maybe a soda and popcorn.  It is absolutely ridiculous, but if I stayed at home I could rent a movie for less than $5 and get a soda and popcorn from home.  Many people are resorting to this and I believe that the decrease of movie goers will continue as more technology is introduced.  Technology makes it too easy to want to go out and spend the money to go to a theater.  Also, like i said before, watching a movie in your own home is more comfortable and more convenient.  You don't have to deal with the other people in the movie theater and if you needed to pause the movie for something, you could, unlike in movie theaters.  More and more people are finding watching movies in their own homes is so much easier and a lot less expensive.  
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/movies/the-24-hour-movie-and-digital-technology.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&emc=eta1

Artifact #9

The article in the New York Times "The Spirit of Sharing" is a article about museums becoming more and more developed and being technologically up to date.  The way these museums have become more and more technological is helping their popularity and their visiting rates.  The stuff that museums like this one have on their website make it very interesting for viewers and it makes the viewers more and more interested. I know that if I got on a museum website and was able to watch a teepee being built, i would for sure want to go there and see it in real life.  The author of this article stated that they are not trying to make their museum website to fit in with the latest fads, but they instead are transforming the websites and even the museums to make them more appealing to the visitor's eyes.  If museums in St. Louis began to go with this idea and make the museums and websites more interesting, more and more tourists may travel to St. Louis to visit these museums.  Also, the younger generation may also become more interested in the museums and would increase the amount of visitors coming through the museums.