Convergence

2008-05-27T20:16:00.000-07:00

Reading used to receive not only attention, but public support, as this image shows. Reading today occurs in other settings/screens, as the second image shows.

Last night: convergence and what it means for literacy and schooling

2007-04-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

POSTER

230 The everyday life emerging in information technology is a battleground over the nature of human identity.
181 What I call the segmented family of the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first multiplies the cultural forms of the home. Above all, the formation of the body through identifications and object choices has altered by dint of information machines. Oneiric assemblages of child and machine inscribe the body with a structure of desire whose shape may be difficult to characterize but whose difference from the Oedipal child is certain.
244 Digital cultural objects may be transformed by the “consumer” in their reception. Segments may be easily added or subtracted from the cultural object. Bits and pieces of any other cultural object may be inserted into, or blended with, the one in question. Sampling, the musical practice of merging sounds from several locations, becomes a general feature of all cultural objects. The cultural object thus loses its fixity, and the “consumer” becomes not a user but a creator. [What does such a claim do to remediation?]
248 In the domain of cultural objects, brands have not worked well. [vs. Jenkins]
265 A new contradiction of capitalism emerges in digital culture whereby the urge to sell commodities comes into conflict wit the need for private information.
266 Open source and open content are tendencies within new media that build on structural features of digital technologies. BUT Great resistance is engendered against new media tendencies that offer cultural directions that do not fit the model of the commodity characteristic of modern socieity.

SCHOOL

How much or little is our model of literacy changing, and given that answer, how does that change what we do in school?

If sampling and remixing are now a part of invention, then do we teach these processes? That might mean teaching kinds of materials, kinds of texts made from them, kinds of spaces they inhabit, and ways to design them rhetorically. This is a new curriculum and also connects to Lanham’s suggestions re copyright. In such a curriculum, what are our criteria for assessment?

Do we also teach new ways to read such materials, such texts?

Do we teach the/a theory that makes all this hang together? Is this the site for critical awareness?

In the case of English Studies in the future, do we think of ourselves professionally—as in the profession of English—or disciplinarily—as in literacy studies writ large?

In the case of Wysocki’s new media, do we think in terms of networks (and network as framework) with effects on practices and understandings, and the relationships between them?

Re Payne and Hayles, how much if any is the code part of what we know and what we teach?

In such a curriculum, what would we hope to gain, and what might we lose?

Project Presentation

2007-04-16T20:10:00.000-07:00

Overview: This multi-faceted program would incorporate various media and other efforts aimed at encouraging youths smoking cessation/prevention. The program would be initiated in the provider setting, and would have several media outlets that would fuel further participation and opportunities to increase information dissemination.

Target Audience: Children ages 11-17 and their parents in the family physician setting to provide information about the health risks of smoking and educational materials to help prevention and cessation. Region: Miami.

Total Budget: $2.5 million

Program Components:

Physician Workshop: Program training provided to physicians
Media Relations: Print, radio, online, etc. (community-based)
Toolkit for Teens: Printed and digital materials and promo items
Toolkit for Parents: Printed materials, possible cd/rom, promo items
Clinician Program: Guided peer-to-peer discussion forum
Web Site: Program hub for advertising, tools, info, networking activities
Community Partnership: Local health community partners

Check out 'Bob Quits'

Evaluation and Measurement: Measurement will demonstrate program effectiveness by comparing actual percentage change of smoking cessation/prevention rates of program participants to rates of a non-participating control group. Indicators will include:

The number of participating doctors
The number of students they reach
The number of Web site hits
The number of teens registered to Web site
A baseline market survey of sample demographic before program
After-market survey to gauge changes in attitudes and behavior among participants

"Evil Bert...is indeed a trouble maker." (25)

2007-04-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

p 24
"Transmissions of images, texts, and sounds may now, in the digital domain, be both noiseless and incoherent." ... "Translation is now a central dimension of any cultural study."

p 127
"The critical value of modern art is limited by the form of its objective presentation; that is, it appears as an object that may become a commodity and that reinforces the hegemonic relation of subject to object characteristic of modernity. ... [T]he art of networked computing brings forth a culture that highlights its future transformation rather than confirming the completeness of the real."

p 134
"If hypertext is a different inscription of writing from printed books... then the hypertext's effects on the reader might also diverge from that of the book. ... Hypertext located on a network of computers reconfigures all positions in the literary act--author, narrator, text, reader--to such an extent that perhaps the term narrative does not adequately capture or indicate the new positions."

Whither School?

2007-04-10T17:33:00.000-07:00

Here Is What I’ve Added Up So Far:

In “The Audit Of Virtuality: Universities In The Attention Economy” Richard A. Lanham questions common assumptions in the university. His argument shies away from traditional practices in the university, such as the preference for face-to-face instruction, the function of tenure as a job description’s stabilizer, the role of administration as a collective faculty bodyguard, the idolization of academic as being above economy, impure motive, outside influence, and inefficient but designed to be so. The larger critique was the misalignment of the university with the Internet.

In “What Should College English Be Doing?” Thomas Miller blames the University for the decreasing value of English in the curriculum because of its “devaluing its engagement with writing at work in public life” (154) and, thus, makes an argument that College English must evolve, to become “literacy studies” instead of English studies (153). This evolution includes the embracing of new media in particular. Jeff Rice’s “Networks and New Media” falls in line with this philosophy as it embraces the idea that the proliferation of College English is rooted in its networking abilities.

In “English Studies in Levittown: Rhetorics of Space and Technology in Course-Management Software” Darin Payne vilifies the “education-in-a-box” that course management tools like Blackboard offer students. Even broader than this is the criticism Payne delivers to computer software in general reinforcing iconography that privileges middle and upper class business culture.

What these articles say about the future of schooling, specifically schooling in College English, is the necessity in evolving and moving away from the “ivory tower” that creates a disconnect between the professors and students. To prolong the life of literacy studies, instructors must connect with students and incorporate identity and passion into the classroom, not ignoring the real-world benefits that literacy studies offer students.

2007-04-09T22:35:00.000-07:00

“To speak on the Internet, there are no age limits, no gender limits, and no religious, ethnic, or national requirements. Indeed, there is no way to discern these traits in most Internet discussion forums, from Usenet to chat rooms, from Listservs to blogs.” (42)

“The commonality of identity theft leads to some amusing and interesting speculations concerning the future of “identity.” With the high frequency of the crime, even the criminal cannot be certain of the security of his or her own identity, or that the identity he steals is not already stolen.” (91)

“The security of identity in the digital world is, as a consequence, a different matter from safety in the physical world of extended objects. What is stolen is not one’s consciousness but one’s self as it is embedded in (increasingly digital) databases. The self constituted in these databases, beyond the ken of individuals, may be considered the digital unconscious.” (92)

“What needs special emphasis in the context of my effort to make sense of the new crime of identity theft is that individual identity is being transformed, by dint of information media, into something that both captures individuality and yet exists in forms of external traces.” (111)

Three Quotes from Information Please

2007-04-03T22:05:00.001-07:00

“My contention is that information increasingly appears in complex couplings of humans and machines. Culture can thus no longer be understood as separate from technology. If this is so, many assumptions long held in modern society require revision. One such assumption is that cultures are in essence national. Yet the emerging mode of information, tethering humans and machines, is recognizably global” (p.1).

Hybridity of cultural objects and their continual transformation in planetary exchanges now form the matrix of human experience" (p. 23).

The Internet enables planetary transmissions of cultural objects (texts, images, and sounds) to cross cultural boundaries with little “noise.” Communications now transpire with digital accuracy. The dream of the communications engineer is realized as information flows without interference from point on the earth to any other point or points. As Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver theorize: ‘The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point’ (Shannon and Weaver 1943,3). Cybernetic theory is seemingly fulfilled by the Internet: both machines and the human body act on the environment through ‘the accurate reproduction’ of information or signals, in an endless feedback loop that adjusts for changes and unexpected events (Wiener 1950).

Posting Poster Quote

2007-04-03T13:55:00.000-07:00

"One characteristic, then, of the new media landscape is that positions of enunciations now extend throughout the globe (of course, not equally), bringing into contact multiple and heterogeneous cultures . . .
Transculture is emerging as a major aspect of media exchanges. Cultural objects increasingly find their way across their territorial point of origin . . .
At the same time, networked computing promotes interactions among the like-minded, within subcultures of all kinds, groups that do not wish to open themselves to a larger world." (40)

All kinds of opportunities for a broader view, but also the opportunity to create enclaves of all sorts. Tearing down walls and putting them up -- with the same tool.

Toby's 3 quotes

2007-04-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

1) “Global conditions, one might say, signifies transcultural confusion. At the same time, the network creates conditions of intercultural exchange that render politically noxious any culture which cannot decode the messages of others, which insists that only its transmissions have meaning or are significant.” (11)

2) “Hybridity of cultural objects and their continual transformation in planetary exchanges now form the matrix of human experience.”(23)

3) “The psychic, the political, and the cultural unconscious are all registered in a field of human relations; by contrast, the media unconscious includes the dimension of the thing. The media unconscious estranges the human from itself, introducing a symbiosis of human and machine that destabilizes the figures of the subject and object.” (36)

4) “Others are hopeful that globalization is not simply an extension of capitalist markets but the beginning point of a new form of collective human life.” (47)

5) “If I am granted such a modest epistemological poster, I propose here to discuss the assemblage of networked digital information and humans in relation to globalization. I intend by this combination of humans and machines to designate not prosthesis, not a machine addition to an already complete human being, but an intimate mixing of human and machine that constitutes an interface outside the subject-object binary.”(48)

6) “Digital culture enables the transformation of any text, image, or sound, so that fixed objects like books and films – a fixity that has been taken for granted in modernity – are no longer default features of art. Digital conditions of cultural life also bypass physically determined identities, including disabilities (even paraplegics can communicate on computers), bodily characteristics, ethnic origins, national citizenship.” (52)

7) The Internet is virtual not in its lack of territoriality but in its departure from space-time configurations associated with earlier forms of communication” (55)

""

2007-04-03T09:24:00.000-07:00

I don't do Apple Crumb Cake, but it does remind me that I need to branch out from boule's of soup and apple cider. Without further ado, a price fixe menu:

Appetizer: Scallops and Bacon:
"Only in the digital age can social markers of the physical world - gender, class, age - be nullified" (99). Perhaps true, but this quote, part of Poster's dialogue on identity theft, takes too narrow a view of the identities constructed by analogue mediums. Fluctuating identities beyond physical markers are not, or should not be a new concept.

Entree: Grilled Ostrich in a bourbon glaze, sweet potato mash, szechuan green beans:
" The degree of autonomy of each culture is significantly reduced as a consequence of global information exchange" (1). While I don't necessarily agree with the basic premise, I like that Poster acknowledges the danger and reckless means by which a constrained local works to maintain autonomy - I see your President Bush and raise you a second term.

Dessert: Chocolate Mousse, in a tulip truffle shell:
"The conflict of the colonizer and colonized characterizes the entire trajectory of Western globalization, but in each phase of that history, the figure of the colonizer and the figure of the colonized take on different dimensions and are fraught with different patterns of strife" (28).
I agree wholeheartedly with this, but argue that the overemphasis on this pattern, or the excessive weight placed on the historical implications of this pattern, are drastically affecting the way we approach relations today, as for example in race relations, interactions with the Middle East, and to some degree, feminism.

Gratuity will be included in the check!

3 quotes from Information Please

2007-04-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

1) "One can never be absolutely certain, then, of the identity of one's interlocutor. While not unprecedented, the ethical issue of identity in online exchanges is new in its systematicity. The interface of the computer, coupled with the ease of communicating through the network, renders identity in question in every case. Messages sent through the Net are always suspect. What is the ethical value of this unrelenting suspicion?" (Poster 151)

2) "In the world consisting of electrons and light pulses, the virtual space of the Internet, narrative and narrator are impossible to specify. The hypertext of the Internet and the Web evacuates all meaning from the term narrative" (Poster 135). But does it, really? And in all cases? Aren't weblogs narratives?

3) "At a second level of television's place in the larger culture, it is possible to recuperate narrative theory. In John Rowe's view, 'Television is merely participating in the larger rhetoric of an economy of representation, in which the principal aim is not the marketing of commodoties but the production of narratives capable of being retold by their viewers' (Rowe 1994, 101)" (Poster 136).

A quote and some response

2007-04-02T05:25:00.000-07:00

On page 57, Poster says, "The understanding of networked digital information and human assemblages must not become the basis for a new totalization or metanarrative. However compelling the new media may be, they do not constitute the only basis for understanding contemporary conditions, and they are not the only component of the larger process of globalization." The idea of "human assemblages" interests me: what counts as an assemblage, and how do we define it? Also, he's looking for multiple narratives, which I like. One way to think about such narratives is through the concept of palimpsest, which would permit a multiple layering of narratives conducive to a fuller understanding of change--and stability ;)

Poster Quotes to Ponder

2007-03-31T13:41:00.000-07:00

#1:
"Television changes us into creatures with visual dominance not by what it says but by its (technical) mode of communication. And so it is with all media, although I would argue that the pertinent object of change is not the sense ratio but rather the human-machine interface, the general construction of the self, indeed the basic features of culture" (p. 38).

#2:
"One danger to be avoided in this process is to configure the non-Western societies as victims of advanced technology. Quite the reverse can be argued: those who benefit most from the dissemination of global media are those whose local values are most put in question (Chow 1996). They are the ones who might gain significantly from the foreign 'invasion' in having the opportunity of critical self-reflection and developing the most innovative responses and adaptations for the benefit of all" (p. 83).

#3:
"The digitization of narrative that enables an extreme separation in space between narrator and listener, as well as an instantaneity of transmission of the narrative and response to it, and requires a globally networked machine mediation that envelopes the narrative" (p. 129).

Quotation Please

2007-03-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

Here the magnificient bitties are. Enjoy them as you would a crumbly and hot piece of apple crunch cake.

Fantabulous Quotation Un:
"Hybridity of cultural objects and their continual transformation in planetary exchanges now form the matrix of human experience" (23).

Fantabulous Quotation Deux:
"The conflict of the colonizer and colonized characterizes the entire trajectory of Western globalization, but in each phase of that history, the figure of the colonizer and the figure of the colonized take on different dimensions and are fraught with different patterns of strife" (28).

Fantabulous Quotation Trois:
"In the end, Samuel Beckett's 'What does it matter who speaks?' poses the challenge of a planetary system of networked information machines and human assemblages. Until we develop a critical theory that is able to raise this question in our media context, we cannot expect to contribute significantly to the formation of a discourse of postnational democratic forms of power" (65).

Three pithy quotes: "Information Please"!

2007-03-28T04:13:00.000-07:00

p. 158: "...I urge a Nietzschean perspective that explores the good and the bad in the culture of the virtual. The moral positions of the master and the slave, which Nietzsche analyzed so trenchantly, take as their communication context oral and print culture. Moralities of good and bad, and good and evil, growing out of these contexts apply at best partially to information society.... He proposed a "transvaluation of all values"with an eye to the enhancement of "life" ( italics mine)[ Nietzsche 1966]. While his project contains many difficulties, his method of cultural transformation may serve as a starting point for rethinking ethics in an information age" AND... (Nietzsche)"One must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star"-- Nietzsche's moral elite charismatically (italics his) and without force (PULL!) draws others within its moral circle, thereby enhancing the "life"or affirmation of life for all."

* * *
p. 173: "The home has become infinitely permeable to the outside world, with the result that the coherence of the culture of the nuclear family (i mine) has been fragmented into what I call the segmented family (Poster 1991). Each member of the family [for "member of the family" substitute here "student in the classroom- as per Tuesday night's discussion about the lack of a 'mainstream' identity among students--- as evidenced by classroom discussions of films seen/ music heard etc.] now sustains a separate cultural world (i mine) within the family."

* * *
p. 197: "Copyright law (mine) is the chief means by which large corporations in general and music firms in particular attempt to control culture ("). In the words of Kembrew McLeod, "Intellectual property law reinforces a condition whereby individuals and corporations with greater access to capital can maintain and increase unequal social relations" (McLeod 2001)..." Digitization threatens the media corporations because one no longer requires great amounts of capital to produce, reproduce, modify, and distribute cultural objects... Copyright was instituted to promote innovation in society, to improve the quality of life for all."
( from Peter Barnes' Capitalism 3.0: "... the U.S. Constitution gave Congress authority "to promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Shortly thereafter, in 1790, the first American copyright law gave authors the same deal as in Britain: exclusive rights for fourteen years, with an option to renew for another fourteen. After that, their work entered the public domain.The idea wasn't so much to expand intellectual property rights as to set boundaries on them. Indeed, what we call intellectual property today was then considered a monopoly privilege granted by the state, not a right belonging to a creator" (119).
The word which keeps popping in my head is "territorialities".
Poster, p. 33: "Postcoloniality depended on a stable geography of nations" (and of values, of religious proscriptions, of family structure, of property, of law--) "... the nation remained the matrix of the political... the nation state and the corporation ... individuals no longer form identities exclusively through local practices."
What all of this is saying to me is that real estate, including geography and cultural practices are shifting from the analog version to an unanchored digital one. We are truly adrift in some new sea whose boundaries shift with tide and storm---- both forseen and unforseen events.

Remediation, Genre, and Motivation: Key Concepts for Teaching with Weblogs

2007-03-20T18:38:00.000-07:00

In "Remediation, Genre, and Motivation: Key Concepts for Teaching with Weblogs," the authors make an argument for the use of weblogs in the writing classroom. Using Rebecca Blood's vision for blogging as a classroom tool, the authors presented a study of students which examined their behaviors and attitudes toward blogging as a class assignment in various writing courses, for example, "Creative Writing" and "Poetry of Rock." Through survey data and observation, the principal investigator examined the motivation, willingness, and enjoyment of blogging. As the article progresses, the authors introduce the following key terms: remediation, genre, and motivation, and then discuss how each term applies to their study. Their driving question was, "which weblog genre(s) (if any) engage or motivate students to make significant contributions to their personal or class weblog?” They assumed that students would find academic value, as well as personal satisfaction. Their results were not conclusive but they discovered students did value the personal and expressive aspects of blogging, more than they recognized the scholarly benefits.

My initial response to this article was that blogging should be used in writing classrooms. However, I believe that the authors entered this research project with an extremely idealized vision of students' attitudes, typified by Rebecca Blood's overly optimistic vision of blogging. As I examined their results, it was interesting and affirming to see that my hypothesis would have proved accurate. First-year writing students, on the whole, did not see the academic value of blogging as a scholarly pursuit whereas graduate students had a better grasp on the possibilities.
Regardless of the way it is presented, blogging was still considered a class assignment by most.

I feel quite sure that blogging does remediate, in a sense, other writing tools in the college classroom. However, it was noted that students appreciated the social quality of the blogging world more than a technique to improve academically. Given the social networking among most college students, it is apparent that blogging is familiar and accessible. Educators should attempt to meet students where they are - and if their world is collaborative and online - then that is a place where learning can occur. However, technology alone is often expected to do more than it actually does. Teachers must create the possibility for blogging experiences to extend students' critical thinking skills in a way that capitalizes on the social aspect while also adding depth to their knowledge.

Freire in Blogland

2007-03-20T16:54:00.000-07:00

Summary
In “The Spirit of Paulo Freire in Blogland: Struggling for a Knowledge-Log Revolution,” Christine Boese discusses two issues associated with blogs: first, the impact of a journalist’s personal blogs on professionally affiliated organizations, and, second, the “disruption” klogs cause in a small workplace. The discussion is grounded in the connection Boese makes between blog culture and Paulo Freire’s notion of “critical consciousness.” Boese’s expectations for the role of blogs in the workplace are not met, as media competition, posting anxiety (fear of publishing what ought not be published), and internet discomfort and unfamiliarity problematize many writers’ blogging practices. Finally, Boese suggests that, in line with Freirean theory, that blogging media set alongside mass media is the “key to an open society,” that it’s a checks-and-balances system on the Internet, and that it’s not yet functioning as it should—and can—because of hierarchical forces similar to those described in Freire’s work.

Reflection
I was excited to see Paulo Freire’s work as a part of this text because I’d recently finished Pedagogy of the Oppressed for the first time, and I wanted to see whether his ideas coalesced with blogging practices the way I’d anticipated. Having just finished a Freirean text, I could easily follow the examples Boese provided, and I found her Freirean addition to the critique to be quite useful as an argument to question blog censorship (or even discouragement, if we can’t justly call it “censoring”). Boese’s discussion of blogs as being “dialogic” (Friere) and as being “oriented toward humanization” resonated most with me because I’m interested in enhancing the distance learning classroom though Freirean pedagogy, and much of what Boese writes coincided with work I’ve been doing that discusses the importance of acknowledging student identity and making connections with them on a personal level in an effort to educate them and bring them into the ongoing conversation that is academia and scholarship.

Response
I’m interested in further investigating the notion that “[b]y design, logs are oriented toward humanization” mostly because there seems to be a stigma (especially in academia) that the computers depersonalize the classroom, that we sacrifice the face-to-face with the implementation of technology in the classroom, that even in PowerPoint presentations, the removal of the self is inevitable. I disagree. I think that the majority of students are more at ease posting comments than they are espousing them in person in a crowded classroom (each of my courses has twenty-two students), and this is direct result of their participation in technology outside of the classroom. One of Freire’s arguments in Pedagogy of the Oppressed is to meet people where they are—in the villages—and to make the education useful and relevant to them. If it doesn’t connect, they won’t connect. Online communication is comfortable for incoming college students, and making use of this has its advantages: they are able to speak freely and to create an identity in writing. In this way, technology-equipped and online classrooms afford students voices they might not have (or wish to withhold) in the traditional classroom.

Can I Get a What What?: Journalists cope with being cool

2007-03-20T16:35:00.000-07:00

Brian Carroll's essay, Culture Clash, focuses on the struggle of "old media" journalists to adopt and adapt to the Age of the Blog. While arguing against a dichotomous relationship between the two, Carroll emphasizes the need of traditional journalism to adapt to not only the method of blogging, but also the unique demands of its audience.

Looking at both the positive and negative social consequences of blogging from a journalistic perspective, Carroll provides a couple of interesting examples of journalists and executives practicing both personal and professional blogging. In one of these examples, he makes use of a case from The Virginian Pilot newspaper, which used blogging to provide live coverage of the sniper trial of John Allen Muhammad since TV and radio coverage had been banned by the judge. The blog was wildly successful. Carroll points out several notable features of this case study in regards to the effects of blogging, including:

* The blogger enjoyed the experience, because it brought his role in the community in which he was participating to the fore.
* Despite not having the same internal review process as a regular news article, blogging still allowed for an important revision process that also contributed to the relationships between members of the blog community. The author received instant feedback regarding errors, etc. that he instantly posted to the blog as corrections.
* Readers indicated they not only were they more pleased with this type of experience than with simply reading a newspaper article, they found it to also be more accurate reporting

Carroll was unable to address certain key concerns in this article, including how newspapers might use new media such as blogs to their financial advantage. While it may not have been "within the scope" of his essay, I think the issue of profit is necessary to address if one's argument is directed at a business industry, especially a struggling one like print newspaper.

In the comment section of the chapt-o-blog, Dennis G. Jerz notes that it might be more useful to deal with the issue from a "revolutionary" perspective rather than a democratic one. We have beaten around both those bushes in class, and I think that the case can be made (or should at least be explored in an article like this) that the convergence of these media might be a serious threat to businesses (like newspapers, but also like the RIAA, book publishers and the pro-new media corporations like Google as well) because of its inherent tendency to, as Carroll puts it "encourage [and reward] the values of the communal ethos." Not only is there limited economic incentive, but the authority of institutions can be entirely (?) undermined in the blogosphere, where the audience and authors have not only an instantly amplified voice, but also more say in the norms and practices of the group. In regards to journalism, which in an ideal world is motivated by information more than money, an entire heirarchy of practices, from information gathering, to writing and editing, to dissemination, is wiped out by blogging.

We have seen this battle before with Jenkins and television examples such as Lost, American Idol and Survivor, and have discussed the limitations of new media relationships between producers and audiences, which seems to come back to the threat the audience poses to the institution's authority and ego as the mastermind. If the dynamics of new media and old media are to be qualified as a "culture clash," as Carroll's title suggests, although I understand the motivation to seek an amicable resolution, I question the merit of avoiding dichotomy entirely. It seems as though new media have a lot to offer our culture, and while they are not without their drawbacks, it seems unfair to let them drown under the weight of bloated corporate egos rather than take the chance to discover the value and meaning these relationships can really have.

Promiscuous Fictions

2007-03-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

Tyler Curtain initially focuses on the anxiety that is produced within the blogosphere in his article Promiscuous Fiction. He contents that anxiety is “a subspecies of the reaction to the thick of information that pours out of Google’s search space, and ultimately the Internet itself” (2). He argues that we blog as a way to make the unthinkable, this infinite amount of data, into a space where information can be shaped into knowledge that is created through a communal effort. Curtain concentrates specifically on “queer blogging” as a location where cultural, intellectual, and critical discourses are emerging outside of the world of academia. In order to make his point, he focuses on a blog, Jonno.com, that responds directly to an article written by professor Glenn Reynolds. Here Curtain points out that not only is Jonno questioning the traditional knowledge system, the university, but he also illustrates how it is the interactive nature of the blogosphere, the ability to contribute, question, and/or defend the knowledge being produced, that gives blogs their dynamic quality. “Queer knowledge making has always been a strategy of remaking and remarking: it is not simply recycling images and ideas, but rather of reconstruction” (7). For Curtain, the queer blogosphere, and blog communities in general, produce and are produced by a public that challenges the stories told by our culture.
I do agree with Curtain on a number of points, and more and more as I read/learn about the vast diversity of blogs and blog communities that are out there. The knowledge making, which according to Habermas, whose theoretical work Curtain draws on, creates a certain reality that is accepted by all members of the group to which one belongs. And while I agree that there is both power and benefit in creating these communities and producing knowledge, which could change the broader community (society more generally), I can’t help but feel this little niggling in my gut. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but still it persists. I think it must have something to do with the fact that these groups are still so distinct, that while it is clear that Jonno has gone out into the vast depth that is the Internet and brought back to the “queer world” some artifact that he addresses, it is unclear if Reynolds has any interest in hearing what Jonno says. Or it could be that these communities are producing knowledge, more often than not, with like-minded people. But even here I have trouble because Jonno has gone out of his community. Maybe it is that it seems so one sided, at least in the case of the queer community.
I come back to our blogging assignment and think about what I found. I investigated gay blogging communities and must say that I didn’t find very many blogs that addressed these kinds of topics. Even so, in a world where the blogosphere may be the only place where you feel safe to speak your mind, to stretch your thoughts, and exercise your voice, it is easy to see how powerful blogging could be/is. But somehow this sentiment seems to argue against those concerns that I stated above. Could it be the anxiety that Curtain talks about bleeding into the rest of our lives (or perhaps it was always there and is just becoming more apparent)? As you can see, I haven’t quite got it down yet. Blogs are powerful, I agree and we agreed on this in class, but for this case, the gay community, I just don’t see that power so clearly. On an individual level, where a gay person feels safe talking about gay issues, I can see it. But I am just not seeing that power present itself in society in general. And maybe that is the problem I am having. If these worlds remain distinct, will anything change? I guess it is just a matter of time. After the voices have been exercised and the ideas supported by the collective community, I doubt that these worlds will stay so distinct and maybe then that niggling feeling will go away. So this may speak to my own questions and to Becca’s. That knowledge can, and maybe should be, produced anywhere, but when it is it will, I think, be brought to challenge the existing system (whether that be universities, government, or any professionalized world) and will then have to be judged, evaluated, and rejected or incorporated…and that leads to a whole other conversation I realize, but (luckily for me) one that is just past the scope of this argument.

Visual Blogs by Meredith Badger

2007-03-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

In her essay, Meredith Badger from Royal Melbourne of Technology discusses about the different ways of viewing on the different mediums. In her article she compares paintings, television programs and films with the Internet. Based on her discussion, the Internet is different than the others since it allows our eyes to skim over the screen. With this action, as readers or audiences, we can find the thing that relates to our interests. In other words, on the Internet, the sources are readily available and accessible to us. This function makes the Internet different from the other sources of visual texts, such as films, television programs or paintings. According to her, weblogs -or blogs- are included in this medium. Also, based on her discussion, blogs deliver the information on a daily bases like newspapers. For me, the difference between blogs and newspapers is their reliability. (The information in the blogs are more personal.) Referring back to the issue about what Badger discusses, weblogs function as conjunctions throughout the Internet. Here, her point is that blogs give different opportunities to the writers or creators to use their own personal preference for the representation (photo, personal information, and so on.) Also, I would like to add that blogs provide different opportunities to readers or researchers to choose from. During this process, we generally feel, as readers, we are in face-to-face discussion forms with the voice of individuals. It is obvious that even though this process seems as private, the Internet makes it communal. People place their daily journals or “blogs” for the world to read and no longer keep a sense of privacy in their lives.

Additionally, this article suggests another important information. For instance, blogs do not care about the gender, age, or race of the writer or information provider. Photographs among other images, if they are used, show this in its entire aspect. Not only for this issue, but also for the visual, the article states that images make the statement stronger. At this point, however, Badger provides more information by comparing words and images. For her, images are the tools to fill the gaps in written text or to make more vivid statements. At this point, I definitely agree what she points out and where she is coming from. Image by itself cannot be enough to make the argument in the blogs. Furthermore, images can create the wrong effects, as she exemplifies in her article with three different pictures related to the Iraqis. Starting from her approach, we can say that images can be used to give false information or itself can create the wrong information. This shows the strong impact of the images on the readers or audiences. Therefore, if blogs flourish with images along with the texts, they become more effective, secure, and trustful. Another point that author added, is how unstable images are serialized. Giving more than one image or picture of the same object, but from different dimension and adding different objects to turn this to a representation of a story, as we see in page 8 of the article. Almost like a flip book of images that represent a story line. Although, as mention previously this can be a false representation of the a story, for instance, the example given in the article about the pillow that was left on the side of the steps. Therefore, one image is not helpful to understand the main concept. Moreover, one image can create a conflict to understand the main issue.

As a conclusion, Badger states that image is the key tool to remember the context, even after we read or research it. I definitely agree with her for this point. For my personal experience, visual blogs attract me a lot and they are not possible to forget. For me, as well, one image is not enough to understand the context since everybody can interpret this with their own experience. Also, without text, even though it is more than one image, images are not useful to reach the target.

SSR for March 20 "Visual Blogs"

2007-03-20T13:07:00.001-07:00

Captain, there’s a rift in the space-time continuum

In her essay Visual blogs, Meredith Badger makes the claim that the use of images in weblogs presents a “new aspect of visual literacy grammar, where images must be read in direct relation to the passage of time and as indivisible from the personality of the blogger themselves.” I question the notion that the use of images we see in weblogs is, in fact, new. I also submit that images in weblogs do not force an interpretation that requires a relation to time, that there are instances where the visitor can chose to alter the sequence in which images are viewed, and that this ability has been an option for viewing images long before weblogs.

In any discussion of time, one will naturally be lead to involve a discussion of space, which will lead to a discussion of place. Badger frequently uses these terms without definition, which complicates the reading of her essay. Of space, Badger says that,

“[t]he Internet feels like an intimate space. We tend to view it on our own, and up close; the computer screen is like a face, watching us as we work. The weblog format propagates this sensation; the first person narrative with its confiding tone can make us feel that we are partaking in a one-on-one exchange.”

The interchangeable use of ideas of space and place is common, but it is necessary and useful to separate these two concepts and clearly define them. If we agree with the most widely accepted notion that the idea of place is a subset of the idea of space, then we must immediately question Badger’s first statement about the intimacy of the Internet. I believe that what Badger means to say is that blogs on the Internet feel like an intimate places. The Internet itself is a public space, while any individual site on the Internet is a place, blogs become a more private place than, say, a commercial site, due to the rhetorical voice of the content usually on blog sites, what Badger describes as a “confiding tone.” While I will agree that the social networking of blog rolls and interlinking between blogs can create a sense of community or space within the larger space of the Internet, each blog is an individual place within that community and any moderate investigation into blogs will show that each blog speaks to its audience in varying rhetorical stances. This is why I argue that it is more appropriate to say that some blogs can create a sense of intimacy with their readers rather that the universal statement that blogs do create a sense of intimacy. The Internet is inherently a public space and that the blog only creates a sense of privacy in contrast to what is, by the very nature of its design, a public place. Yet, the question remains, how do some blogs create a sense of intimacy and, further, how does that complicate the separation of the public and private?

Is that your aura or are you just glad to see me?

Badger goes on to say that, “[w]hen we encounter images in weblogs, the sense of entering a private space is enhanced.” Throughout the web, sites use images; how then can we agree that the simple use of images enhances this feeling of privacy? Consider her later statement that, “images give us information about the blogger that text alone may not impart in the same way that our gestures and expressions may give away things about us not reveled by our speech.” Here we can see that Badger is pointing towards images imparting information. There is also the hint that images revel a hidden message, yet later she makes the point that when we encounter images on the web, they cannot always be trusted. She says, “[a]ll we have is the text describing the image and the images vouching for the words.” Here her claims about images producing a sense of intimacy contort and we get a sense that this intimacy can be betrayed. Badger offers a reference to Benjamin’s essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that may explain this idea further.

In his essay, Benjamin posits that as the work of art is removed from its original location by the act of reproduction, it crosses from the private to the public and hence, the lost of importance, or aura, associated with the original. The key idea here is the connection with place that creates the original. In Badger’s claim, the textual reference surrounding the image is an attempt to recreate the connection to original occurrence and hence, a reconnection to its aura. This is a very interesting idea; one I wish she had spent more time. This connection could prove to be one of the reasons why some blogs can create the sense of intimacy.

Open Internet. Insert time. Repeat until desired effect is reached.

Badger uses the example of images presented in blogs in serial progression is an example of how these blogs ask us “that the images not be viewed alone, but considered in relation to what has come before and what follows” and that “emphasis in weblogs is less on individual images and more about series.” This may be the case in some examples of weblogs, however, this is not the case in all blogs and the navigational options of the visitor to the blog site enable the viewing of images in any order the reader chooses. I believe it is important that our focus should not rest simply on the media choices of some blogs, but on the rhetorical elements we see at work in this larger area of digital composition. The idea of the representation of images as a means to re-create the original aura of the moment captured and of serial images as a attempt to re-create the original time sequence of the event is the real question these rhetorical maneuvers point towards. Blogs, like diaries and journals before them, seek to freeze time in a recoverable medium and yet, with their date stamps or serial images, show the progression of passing time. Blogs are the active production of time in the space of the Internet.

Wrap it up

Although I have made arguments to complicate Badger’s points, I do agree with her when she says that, “[t]he blog medium is one that allows disparate elements and contrasting styles to co-exist harmoniously, rubbing up against each other and influencing that way we respond to the other elements contained there.” No matter what we choose to examine in the blogging community, we must remember that blogging is an actively evolving medium as varied and complicated as the authors that compose them.

Response to "Permiscuous Fictions"

2007-03-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

First off, hats off to Becca for starting this conversation. While reading her post it was like she was inside my brain. I, too, was drawn to this essay because of the art of visual grammar. I especially am interested in how it could change academia and public schooling overall. I loved Becca's assessment that navigating the blogosphere can make one feel both "smarter and dumber" at the same time. This paradox is true in many instances when it comes to me and the crashing waves of technology that threaten to wash me ashore. So, Becca's assessment was spot-on and refreshing, and fun to read. I thank her for giving me a springboard for my own discussion.

Other than the art of visual grammar, I was immensely fascinated by Tyler Curtain's discussion of deep vs. surface web. At times, I feel I am simultaneously immersed in them both. While at other times, I feel that, on some level, all web experiences are of the surface variety. There is always the opportunity to dig deeper, do more research, and ask more questions. I was easily seduced by Curtain's definition of promiscuity: "accretion and re-articulation without regard to proper boundaries." I am fascinated by the notion that this "promiscuous fiction" that is blogs, connects people on a level that face-to-face conversation and print publication does not allow. Curtain is also concerned with "queering" and the travesty that its import is often ignored within the hegemonic powerstructure that exists even online. Sexuality and desire are even commodified in unimaginable ways within the blogosphere. Curtain says, "Our hits mean we're hit on." This provocative play on words signals an intimate link between sexuality and online textuality. Furthermore, the link is the primary mode of making a gesture, sexual or otherwise. Finally, Curtain ends with his definition of "public" which entails an "ongoing, unfolding history of readers." Queerblogging, warblogging, techblogging, and other forms of blogging, each form their own niche in the world of blogging. Curtain would suggest, as would I, that these online universes need not exist seperately, but rather collaboratively.

I am totally fascinated by the terminology used in this essay. Curtain's visual grammar is quite striking. The idea of hitting the "refresh" buttom as a discursive means of reproducing time, hoping for new posts, and feeling the incessant need to connect with strangers on a daily basis makes a striking comment about the necessity for human interaction while on a machine. Curtain almost makes this need sound nuerotic; yet, who among us does not refresh our email while reading it to make sure we haven't missed anything new? I think its a combination of the fear of being left out of the loop and not having the most current, up-to-date information available. Technology has allowed us to find out things almost as quickly as they are happening. The need to hit the "refresh" buttom is communal amongst the blogger generation. For some reason, we need to feel like we are informed about what's going on as soon as possible as not to miss out on some opportunity, whether real or imagined. Perhaps it is nuerotic. Or perhaps we are just products of our webiverse and have no control over this kind of impulse. Or do we?

This essay was quite interesting to me because of its treatment of the gay community online. We always hear about and talk about online communities, yet we rarely talk about them in terms of gender and desire. Jonno makes the excellent point that when we ignore "divergent" community's opinions, we are missing out on the opportunity to gain new perspectives and learn something different about ourselves and the communities we live in. Why are we so afraid to try something new and denounce the unfamiliar?

When given this assignment, I immediately printed it out so I could mark it up while reading. But when I got home, I realized that the right side of each page was missing a few words. Determined not to kill another tree, I actually sat at my computer in my robe and read online. I must say, that I have NEVER read an essay online because I do not like sitting in front of a computer for an extended period of time. But I must say, it was rather painless and over before I knew it. It actually may have even been easier to read online since I was able to simultaneously distract myself with various links that I found rather interesting. Of course this is not possible using my old standby material practice.

As far as blogging is concerned, I think everybody, at some point in its development, is partly right about blogging. Its both personal and private, social and academic, and is still in its infancy, I believe. The range of possibilities for online publishing, pedagogy , and other important issues surrounding blogging will continue to unravel for decades to come. This is only the beginning.

Wei: “Formation of Norms in a Blog Community”

2007-03-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

The blogosphere as a rhetorical space; once again it’s impossible to avoid the tendency to see the virtual world in architectural/geographical terms, with paths, locations, planned and unplanned communities, deserted, semi-deserted, and populated places; and the purpose, parameters, and conventions of any given space shape the communication going on within. Wei investigates how a blogging community’s culture influences the development and practice of its ‘norms’ – its rules and practices, stated and unstated. She looks at the Knitting Bloggers’s webring, an example of an active community that functions in the real world, the virtual world, and various combinations of the two. Wei explains her method, which involved two coders – herself, familiar with the webring, and another, who was not. She examines stated norms and compared information found in the webring to them. The most interesting finds (for me) were that the English-only rule originated in the desire to protect the ring from being linked to porn sites, something that never would have occurred to me; and the suggestion that at least some communities in the digital world, as in the real world, do the expected (create conditions, parameters, and rules) but also the unexpected. We’ve already encountered the idea that we bring old practices into a new medium, and then find new practices shaped by the medium, and Wei’s study seems to reinforce this.

I’m trying to think about blogging communities in relation to, or in terms of, real or offline communities, while at the same time as unique constituencies boldly going where no group has gone before. They are at once real ongoing interactions and more-or-less permanent records of the same – a historical record of interaction being created simultaneously by groups of people from two or three to thousands. They are human meetings and actions that aren’t merely temporal, occurring and then departing at discrete points along a linear time line; if I joined the Knitting Bloggers’ webring today, I could go back and read and comment on activities that happened a year ago, seeing them as they happened. Time travel is now, in a sense possible. This new space has lost some constraints, even as we try to establish some norms for it.

Wei found that the level of participation (one norm was set for this) varied pretty widely, and this to me is another interesting aspect of blogs that makes me think of virtual reality as an enormous bustling cosmos with as many or more deserted storefronts, parks, and homes as places of activity. Blogs, to paraphrase Woody Allen, are like sharks: they have to be active and moving forward, if not to survive (since I imagine they just stay out there, even if deserted), then to thrive. People simply stop reading blogs if no new material is posted. And yet they remain – as if you wandered into a deserted café and could see a detailed image of all the evenings hosted there.

I didn’t mind reading this material online; there were relatively few hyperlinks and I found interesting the way I judged and selected which ones to follow. In principle and most practice, I like hyperlinks because I’ve always been a hyperlink reader even with print, stopping my reading to make notes of something to look up or looking it up if I had the materials at hand. Hyperlinks are just so damn handy.

SRR for March 20th. Herring et. al and "Women and Children First"

2007-03-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

Read the introduction to Into the Blogosphere and then settled on Susan Herring et. al's piece "Women and Children Last: the discoursive constructs of weblogs" out of what seemed like a very enticing group of essays, mainly because I feel like I tend to pigeon-hole myself on certain topics - women and children not being one of them, and because I am sensitive to what I view as the tendency for feminist writings to be overly militant and/or confrontational - I wanted to at least give this one a chance. I was impressed with the comprehensive discussion within the introduction, including the much needed (for me at least) definition of a webblog for the sake of this product - a website that updates frequently with time stamped and reverse chronological ordering - although I still don't know what the MOOS and MUD's referred to are.
Herring's piece catalogues the demographics of blogs, showing that although blogs have long been considered (like the internet itself) empowering and democratic in nature, contemporary discourse about webblogs, whether scholarly or in mainstream media, tend to focus on adult and adult male blogs. Herring "conducted a gender- and age-focused content analysis of a random sample of 357 blogs collected from the largest available blog tracking site, blo.gs. The site tracks blogs hourly from four sources: antville.org, blogger.com,[1] pitas.com, and weblogs.com (the last of which itself draws from multiple sources)." This collection found that the blogs were divided roughly 50/50 between males and females, with adults (25+) and younger (both teens and "emerging adults) again breaking down at 50/50. The key differentiators come in with the breakdown of agegroups - significantly more male adults blog than female, while the opposite is true in younger individuals. Herring also notes that the blog styles show gender and age disparity, with adult males performing more of the "filter" style blogs of linking to newsworthy/mainstream media stories, while most younger bloggers, and most females, have personal "journal" style blogs. Herring's contention then, is that in focusing on the adult male blogs in scholarly research and media portrayals, we are perpetuating a dominant stereotype of male-centered opinions and importance within society, a society that continues to "embrace hierarchical values."
As someone who generally disagree's with the idea and practice of blogging (maddeningly, my wife is now suggesting I start my own), it was refreshing and intellectually stimulating to see the breadth of topics covered, a clear indicator of the wide-reaching social impact blogs will continue to have. In that vein, I enjoyed reading this material as published in "webblog" format vice the book, although interestingly, I still find that many of the patterns of "book" still impact how I read. For instance, I do not touch hyperlinks until I've read the entirety of the central (my view) narrative in linear progression, and after hyperlinking from the introduction, realized what part of my distaste for blogs is built upon (though relatively minor). The blogs I hyperlinked to, representative of many blogs, all tended to be excessively colorful, with clustered arrangements and distracting fonts, pictures or flash images, all of which take away from, rather than enhance my reading of the text (no, I am not arguing that a text is only hindered by images). Also, as I will get to in my reflection, Herring did not include sites such as LiveJournal into the discussion, considering them only precursors to the very "personal" blogs with which see then uses from Blogger.com and other sites. This is not an oversight of websites as much as it is a flaw in argument.
Although an interesting point, I have a hard time buying Herring's idea that because webblog discourse favors adult male blogs, that blogs are not inherently democratic. Why are we criticizing mass media for favoring the "filtered" blog style when reporting on certain stories. There are some realms, such as the political, where these filter styles are more appropriate. As sophomoric as it may sound, is it the adult male fault that most young and women want to have an online diary, and that socially, that online diary is not considered "newsworthy?" I will attempt to reenter the adult conversation in suggesting that it would be far more appropriate to address what outlets were covering what type of blog entry (filter/personal/combination) and even the why's of men writing filter's and women writing diaries, as means of promoting the democratizational abilities of webblogs. And further, in casually discarding online journals like Livejournal, as something less than the "personal blog," Herring and her co-authors are essentially perpetuating the serial hierarchy they seek to undue. Thus, in many ways, I liken the modern feminist argument presented here to those blood donation PSA's on today's radio, suggesting that by closing down a factory polluting drinking water, the individual is partly responsible for costing the jobs of hundreds in the town who know have no medical insurance to pay for health care - ranting, I know, but I think an important marker in the fight for democracy - explore the whole argument, and then approach rationally, as opposed to swinging for the fences on your first try.

Srr for March 20 --Into the Blogosphere and Tyler Curtain's "Promiscuous Fictions"

2007-03-19T11:23:00.000-07:00

Becca Skinner

Dr. Kathleen Yancey

ENC5933-03

19 March 2007

Blogosphere SRR

This is an interactive ‘book’ with lots of clickable fringe and thoughtful savvy commentary about the whole big area of collaborative space and the new practices in publishing. The project is an ambitious overview of the “Blogosphere” and as such follows more than one pathway—this journal is more of an aerial map than a prescription. Not “First go straight, then turn and go uphill- pass three left-hand turns and take the fourth one to get to the museum—but more like “START HERE (or here) and go”.

I did go- feeling at times like poor Gretel all alone in the woods wishing birds won’t eat my breadcrumbs. I confess I printed out what I wanted to read first, made notes all over the pages and underlined like crazy- then I went back online and re-read, following links all over the place. I am both attracted and repelled by the online reading experience. I am made all too aware of the infomerse of unfathomable proportions through this clicking leaping linking process and made simultaneously to feel more smart (“Look Ma! No hands! Looky what I just found!”... and more dumb “Golly- this isn’t Kansas anymore, is it Toto? Are those flying monkeys? Is it getting dark and how far to OZ?”

The introduction makes a good case for weblog as artifact and sets up the dialog around aspects of blogworld like genre, public/private, identity formation and collaborative community. Some of the words I underlined are : self-publishing, overlap, hybrid, interaction, visual grammar, enclave-based discourse and re-articulate. I read the first paragraph of every chapter and chose to focus on Tyler Curtain’s entry “Promiscuous Fictions” because it really stood apart in terms of the aforementioned “visual grammar”, something which to me is a very potent piece of weblog potential.

Curtain deals with the queer-culture subset of blogs and draws analogies between the outsider status conferred by “queering” (“cultural artifacts that sometimes include and sometimes exclude representations of non-normative sexual and cultural subjectivities) and the “accretion and re-articulation without regard to proper boundaries” which describes the blogosphere itself. Blogs are in a sense “queer” and exist beyond what in the introduction is referred to as the “ traditional model of academic publishing”. Blogs are “promiscuous” as Curtain points out; they represent a “self-protective disregard of traditional notions of copyright and cultural power.”

Of course, as comfortable as it is to me to hold a paper in my hand and mark the hell out of it, offline there are no links. Reading again through Tyler Curtain’s chapter I clicked on all the links (some of which seemed to have expired or been disabled or had become defunct for lack of cyber-juice, or whatever techno-malady had overtaken them), as I had done when re-reading the introduction. I went to many fascinating places and (unfortunately) had-- was compelled to, it seems-- clicked on links within those, and then some more links inside of those links! again! until I had totally forgotten where I had come from or what I sought. It’s a linkiverse out there—one could start out like normal and never return. “I want to go home.” I thought--- much like coming to in a frame house upside down in the witch’s garden.

Like I said—smarter and dumber. The almost unbearable poignancy of realizing this worldwide conversation is going on every minute of everyday even while I sleep and every minute not spent sitting at my computer speaking and responding and participating and absorbing and seeking to know what exactly is going on everywhere about everything is an irretrievable moment of being in the flow that is swept away and gone and my chance to say the right thing at the right time with it, and I must be ever-vigilant and never stop- no! Not one minute ever cease from fingers on keys. Seeking learning finding out what the hell is going on with EVERYTHING everywhere! And we are both a “deep Web” and a “surface Web”, mere “nodes of information in the global information network”, and I am glad I have my garden to sit in and smell dirt and pull weeds and watch the way the lettuces grow in Fibonacci sequence and hate the wretched Fire ants. (Did Joyce prefigure the structure of internet discourse?)

The main thing I am left pondering is the fate of “Institutions” of learning and knowledge- as Curtain posits: “How is knowledge to be” (now, from henceforward) “produced out of the infinite archive? Where is the proper place of knowledge production? Is there a way of teaching, of passing it on? Universities have insisted on “universities” as the answer. This is in part what it means to professionalize, and certainly what it means to create bureaucracies to manage the production of knowledge... blogging shares with peer review an insistence that knowledge production is a communal effort. It is an effort that depends on and creates an audience, or as I will discuss shortly, a public.”

In Praise of Browsing

2007-02-21T14:40:00.000-08:00

"There are many who, for one reason or another, prefer to have their books found out for them. But for the complete zealot nothing transcends the zest of pioneering for himself . . . We visit bookshops not so often to buy any one special book, but rather to rediscover, in the happier and more expressive words of others, our own encumbered soul."

Christopher Morley, On Visiting Bookshops

This Says It All. In About Four Minutes Flat.

2007-02-06T07:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r21XxW2KII

Remediation by Defne Bilir

2007-01-30T18:31:00.000-08:00

The author states that, “ Books are not censored as strictly as film and television because for our visual culture the written word does not have the immediacy that a moving picture has” (Bolter and Grusin 100).

Since the authors do not mention about the ideological aspect of the censorship and also they do not back up their statements, this one is the most provocative quote for me.

First of all, books are the oldest form of media so far. As we all know, this form initiated after the invention of the printing press. So, books are also the longest form of media so far. The authors compare the book and film and television in terms of censorship and state that books are not censored as strictly as film and television. For today, this statement might be right since the members of today’s societies do not embrace the reading of book as much as in the past. However, the issue is more complicated than this comparison. If we consider about the history and the functions of books in the long term, we should not forget the events such as “book burning” took place especially during the Middle Ages, where books written by women authors where banded or burned. Margery Kempt is a good example of it. We should also remember that the Bible was canonized. Thus, leaving out other authors and their texts. Omission represents a form of censorship. I believe that even today, we cannot compare the books and film and television in terms of censorship. Censorship is related to politics, ideology, power, and sometimes religion. No matter whether it is a book or a film or a TV show, if it disturbs the ideological structure of a society, most likely it would be censored. For example, many books have been omitting by certain institutions such as the public school system as well as the universities and colleges. Because board members do not like certain authors and their “controversial ideas.”

Art interface

2007-01-30T16:21:00.000-08:00

"High art has been brought into the domain of
computer media, but now it is merely a style"
Richard Wright, 1995
(Remediation,140).
I am sure this point will be argued for a long time to come. It is true as Bolter and Grusin point out that the old rigid hierarchy of the evaluation of art has dissolved... an oil painting is not "always superior to an ink-drawn illustration for a comic book" (140). However, computer generated "art" and graphics look very odd to me. something is missing. There is a hollow sound or tone I hear when I look at them. A perfect example of this is the "nave of chartres" by John Wallace and John Lin on page 125. It is kind of creepy. When I saw the movie "Toy Story" I experienced hypermedia because I was constantly aware that the eerie surreal world unfolding was computer generated. Fascinating and slightly unsettling-- like watching a snake-- and beautiful too like a reptile, or cute like an armadillo-- but odd nonetheless. The description on p.140 about the process of creating digital art tells this cyborg story, art that is a hybrid of machine/human:"The digital artist intervenes again and again, defining digital objects in the image, mixing and adding colors in layers, subjecting parts of the image to a dozen different algorithmic filters, an so on. Although some actions may require nothing more than choosing a menu item, others need considerable manual dexterity. All of them at some point will release the computer to perform a programmed action".( italics mine) My question for education is what will this art-form do to the next generation? Picasso was a classically trained artist before he discovered Cubism.Can art students grow up knowing only this interface with a computer, and what will that do to Art as we know it? Do you think as deeply when choosing a menu option as when pulling something out of your immagination, or filtering a vision through the skill in your fingers and looking to your mind's eye rather than a tool bar? Are we fixing to dumb ourselves down as we get ever 'smarter', or maybe as they- the machines get smarter, they won't need us? Won't want us at all?

Remediation by April McCray

2007-01-30T16:02:00.000-08:00

The most provocative quote from Remediation is in reference to the section on "Sex, Violence, and Computer Games": "Computer games come under attack precisely because they remediate the two genres (film and television) that American society has come to regard as immediate therefore potentially threatening. Books are not censored as strictly as film and television because for our visual culture the written word does not have the immediacy that a moving picture has" (Bolter and Grusin 99-100).

This quote is provocative from several standpoints. First of all, studies have shown that children who play violent video games are much more likely to try and act out this violence, or at the very least accept it as the norm, than those children who do not. Computer games where murder, rape, prostitution, cop killing, and drug trafficking are not "potentially threatening;" they are in fact, an immediate threat to our young generation. The immediacy of computer games is also very real. It is absolutely possible that kids can watch violence in a game and make arrangements to enact that violence in real life.

I also find it intriguing that books are not seen as as much of a threat to our society as television and film because of their lack of immediacy. I strongly disagree with the perceived lack of power of the written word and its agency and immediacy. What about the experience of reading a book and becoming so immersed in the text that everything around us temporarily disappears? When I was in high school, I was reading a novel that had me so entranced that I literally burnt water. I was boiling a pot to make some noodles while reading. I kept saying that after this page I would go and check on the pot. I eventually went into the kitchen and stood next to the pot and even as I stood next to its heat and precipitation, I allowed all of the water to boil out of the pot and it burnt. People, I submit to you that books can excite emotions and actions that one may have never thought possible. For those who are avid readers, books most certainly have a sense of immediacy, and in some cases, moreso than in film and television.

I think it a grave mistake to underestimate the power of books.I certainly am not suggesting that they necessarily should be censored more strictly, but I am, however, suggesting that perhaps we are not fully considering the ramifications of the written word. Books can be dangerous. The transferance of ideas and knowledge is a powerful medium. That is precisely why women and slaves were kept from learning how to read or write for so long. It isn't so much about the book, but rather about the possibilites and the ideas the book creates within the mind. To some, books can be a powerful call to action, or can be a means of totally changing the way we think about our world. Think about it. In some ways, books are more accessible and cheaper to access than film or television. You dont get carded at Barnes and Noble if you are seventeen and are trying to buy a provocative book, and all library books are free. Then there are ebooks, many of which can be accessed by almost anyone, twenty four hours a day. My argument is that perhaps we should be a culture that is more concerned about the possibility of the impact of books on the world than mainly focusing on film and television.

Getting back to my reference to the easy access of books at places such as public libraries, I have an educational experience that directly supports the idea that books can also be subversive and should be regarded as more than mere paper and print. When I was in high school, I was browsing the "book store" in the public library, trying to buy as many books as I could for a dollar. The one that jumped out to me was The Kama Sutra. I remember looking at the pictures and thinking: Oh my God! Do people really do these things? Am I actually standing in a public library looking at such sexually explicit material and nobody cares? I am not breaking any laws, I am simply browsing a book. To make my experience complete, I had to turn over my dollar for the book to a woman who appeared to be older than my grandmother. In retrospect, in terms of this discussion, I find this memory to be quite fascinating. My parents thought I was "safe" within the rank walls of the public library. They thought I was doing research for a school paper or thumbing through tawdry romance novels. But never would they have suspected that their fifteen year old daughter was giggling at the Kama Sutra. A book, by the way, that I still am too embarassed to open again. I told this story to make the point that at that moment, that book had more immediacy than any film or television show I had ever seen. And I think it is more explicit than Sex and the City and should be censored more strictly. It seems as if our society has somewhat abandoned the power of the novel because its "old world" and television and film are "new world". But I strongly beg to differ.

"Remediation": Getting It Right This Time

2007-01-30T14:43:00.000-08:00

"Remediation can also imply reform in a social or political sense, and again this sense has emerged with particular clarity in the case of digital media. A number of American political figures have even suggested that the World Wide Web and the Internet can reform democracy by lending immediacy to the process of making decisions" (B & G 60).

What is the potential of digital media to help effect political change? On one hand, it seems quite true that when five transnational corporations control the major

U.S.

media outlets,

http://www.justicefornone.com/handbills/media1.htm

the presence and accessibility of an unregulated Web becomes very important to the health of democracy, which depends on a diversity of voices and the presence of dissent. On the other hand, the fact that the WWW and the Internet have the capability of informing and enlightening us does not mean we’ll use them that way. Potential does not guarantee performance. Bolter & Grusin say that we can understand digital media in terms of what has gone before; we did get a warning half a century ago about a new medium:

"Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER." (Edward R. Murrow, 1958)

Judging by what the American people spend hours out of their day complacently watching, while their control over that output grows narrower and narrower, I’d say there’s a big question of whether or not we’ve used that medium wisely. Are we going to do the same with the Web and the Internet?

Remediation - Quote

2007-01-29T10:38:00.000-08:00

More a definition than quote, I paused most on reading Bolter's definition of media on page 65, "a medium is that which remediates."

Within the context of his thesis, this definition of medium makes sense, a product that remediates other media to function, but my crankiness over reading this goes beyond the traditional "never define something with that something as part of the definition." That holds in this instance, but more importantly, I think it presents a medium as nothing/non-existent without prior mediums, and while all media draw extensively upon one another, they are not solely responsible for the creation of new media, nor is the remediation of existing media the sole genesis for the existence of new mediums. Or maybe it is, but feels too limiting in scope.

I consider our discussion on Print/Manuscript/Book culture to be a prime example, as we discussed all the technologies and factors that influence(d) transition from one to the other and the widespread purposes these media serve. Suggesting The book is a remediation of print may be accurate, but it does not fully and adequetely capture book culture.

Remediation

2007-01-26T15:18:00.001-08:00

Hey~~
So . . . what do you think of Remediation? Let's use the comment feature to record your observations.

Ok by you?

k

Keywords from Class Discussion

2007-01-24T05:53:00.000-08:00

SPACES
Place?

Manuscript
Visual
Paper
Scrapbook
Material
Digital Era
Collage
Play

Old World to New
Book-centric
Hierarchy
Consumed
One-one
Quiet space

Author
IP
Circulation
$
Time traveler
Comfortable
Cyborgian
Voacb—cultural contexts; practice-related, from practice
Book as icon

Codes
Genres
Re-mix
The screen
Creativity
Multi-genre
Democratic
Time-traveler
Space-traveller?

Spaces convey and foster and assimilate

The role of the physical in literacy

gina & rachel

2007-01-23T18:19:00.000-08:00

educator
literary critic
communication theorist
known for phrases "the medium is the message" and "global village"
"patron saint" of Wired magazine
1964 book: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (phrase born)
more interested in percepts than concepts
started the journal Explorations
pioneering study of pop culture (Book: The Mechanical Bride)
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Topographic Man (study in field of print culture, cultural studies and media ecology)

wrapped up!

from,
rachel & gina

rachel & gina on marshall what's his face

2007-01-23T18:14:00.002-08:00

rachel & gina on marshall what's his face

2007-01-23T18:14:00.001-08:00

marshall what's his face

2007-01-23T18:14:00.000-08:00

Marshall McLuhan Post

2007-01-23T18:13:00.001-08:00

Marshall McLuhan is considered the father of the electronic age. This Canadian-born scholar was the first to make the connection between technology, popular culture, and how they effect human behavior. He coined important terms such as "media", "the media is the message" and "global village." He discussed technology in terms of an extension of the human body. In later years he developed a scientific term called "tetrad" to apply a scientific approach to his theory.

2007-01-23T18:13:00.000-08:00

Marshall McLuhan, what're you doin'?

2007-01-23T18:11:00.003-08:00

(From Laugh-In, 60's TV show, said in a lugubrious voice).

He and Bucky Fuller (geodesic dome, Spaceship Earth) went to lunch a lot, we think.

Canadian, eh?

"Patron Saint of Wired magazine."

Media theorist.
The medium is the message/massage. That was a new radical idea at one point.

Kathy thinks MM originated the term global village.

"During his lifetime and afterward, McLuhan heavily influenced cultural critics, thinkers, and media theorists such as Neil Postman, Camille Paglia, Timothy Leary, William Irwin Thompson, Paul Levinson, Douglas Rushkoff, Jaron Lanier, Joshua Meyrowitz, Lance Strate, and French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, as well as political leaders such as Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jerry Brown."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan#The_Medium_is_the_Massage:
_An_Inventory_of_Effects_.281967.29

Kathy's Idea of Heaven

2007-01-23T16:11:00.000-08:00

Swimmin' around in cyberspace just isn't the same . . .

New Practices

2007-01-23T15:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, I definitely think that digital technologies are fostering new material practices. I find myself going through a ritual every time I sit down at the computer. However, I still prefer to brainstorm and outline on paper before I begin writing a scholarly or creative piece of writing. It seems like my thinking process and paper are still a better match than my thinking and a computer. One obvious reason - it is much easier to procrastinate staring at the computer (exploring various websites) than staring a blank sheet of paper. With this said, I have often found research ideas and sources as I procrastinated at the computer.

We meet again in cyberspace . . .

2007-01-23T14:54:00.000-08:00

. . . and I think that people try to take the material practices associated with the print/book-literate world with them into the digital one but it doesn't always work -- and so we develop new ones. I have an early-morning-logging-on routine that I think counts as a material practice.

But I have yet to bring the laptop into the bathroom. Kevin Smith does, though.

Musings

2007-01-23T14:43:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I'm lowering my personal standards for a grade. I promised myself I would never blog, and here I am. Somewhere in Hell, there is a seat reserved just for me. I'm going to go throw up now.

Material Practices

2007-01-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

In your opinion, what are the material practices that accompany literacy? And how important are they? Are these practices challenged by the Internet and digital technologies, or are those technologies fostering new practices?

Welcome to Convergence

2007-01-09T06:32:00.000-08:00

We'll be using this blog to share information with each other. Welcome aboard!