Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" has long been once of my favorite songs, and it has a pretty clear message which ties in to a number of things we've discussed in class, so I thought it'd be a great choice to base my piece on. The Sound of Silence is all about "the inability of people to communicate with each other, not particularly internationally but especially emotionally, so what you see around you are people unable to love each other," as Garfunkel put it. Given that the module is focused on visual literacy, which is all about being able to communicate on a deeper level, it seemed a very appropriate fit. I was intrigued by the "neon god", and how that relates to the McLuhan reading. Where art tries to make communication better, technology opts to try to make it easier. This gives us many more tools to communicate, but none of them better than real human interaction. However, we allow technology to change us so easily that our ability to communicate can be hindered by technology, as we will choose to communicate in the manner which is easier for us than choosing the manner which allows us to convey the most. While the effects of this can be seen in the facades we create for ourselves in social media and other forms of less personal communication, I decided to focus on television obsessed culture, since it is really the grand-daddy of these issues, but it is old enough now that we can look at it more objectively.