Cooke Blog

Colleague Blog Post Reflections

I have responded to the blogs of Mathieu Reynolds, James Gregory, Susanne Nobles, and Laura Ray. It’s fascinating to see how the concept of “the remediated self” overlaps with Baudrillard’s ideas of simulacra (as Susanne had been responding to Suzanne Sink and Sarah Spangler’s wiki page), Hayles’ idea of the body as prosthesis, and Mathieu’s take of Facebook users’ selecting iconic images to represent themselves.

James had read Remediation as did Wil LaVeist and I. James in essence stated he doesn’t view the internet as different enough from traditional broadcast media as to allow it to go unregulated while broadcast media remains highly regulated. I suggested that the approach to regulating the internet is already in place by virtue of the fact that people’s habits are being monitored. So, perhaps the internet is not quite “the wild frontier” it was perhaps twenty years ago and both are indeed being regulated.

Susanne’s blog was a treat as she’s employing the metaphor of a world explorer in her CSS entries. She also has a way of using light yet highly applicable imagery to support her written text.

Laura’s and Cheri’s wiki page on How We Became Posthuman had been fascinating, so I wanted to see if there was any supplemental angle or info in Laura’s blog. She definitely gave me something to think about in her discussion of Hayles’ quote on analogy, connecting it to material Laura had learned in sociolinguistics. The idea that “[a]nalogy is thus constituted as a universal exchange system that allows data to move across boundaries. It is the lingua franca of a world…” (pg. 98) makes more sense to me now that we’ve read Brooke’s Lingua Franca book. Laura’s entry in particular I found very informative.

I had no idea she has educational experience in Wildlife Biology. Her discussion of how entities (such as frogs) construct what they perceive to be in the world around them made me think of an interesting video on a robot that “learns,” (as well as walks and runs), ASIMO:

James May – ASIMO Robot learns object identity *HQ*

Canonical Book Wiki Page Reflections

I have never read How We Became Posthuman so everything I know about that book comes from the entry I just read. I’m glad I was assigned that work as it is another piece (besides Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) that asks the question “What is human?” To actually consider the body as a type of prosthesis blows my mind! So if being human is actually to float around the shell you’ve been given, then how is that tied to being a type of machine? That sounds more like the idea of spirituality is possible, since it would appear that our humanness is distinct from our materiality. I might pick up this book later. Although now that I’ve read the “Cliff Notes,” maybe I’ve already got the main take-away I’d have gotten if I had read it.

Lev Manovich’s book, The Language of New Media I had read before. I chose to review it because I had read it before. Consequently, I think I made more pointed criticisms of the wiki page, although I thought the draft was a capable start.

Having read these other wiki pages, I think our page would benefit from a table of contents and a small area with the authors’ backgrounds listed.

How I’m Feeling these DaysImage from http://www.digital-delight.ch

Peer Review Reflections

So we’re supposed to write a reflection of our peer review experience? I can see reading other people’s recaps as helpful. Giving others input may be helpful, sometimes maybe not. However right now, taking precious time to write out a reflection on the process we just went through (critiquing others with a rubric we were handed and answering these questions) is something I do not anticipate needing to return to six months down the line as I work toward my dissertation. I can see going to the wiki pages other people created, but not the process of my critique. If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy to admit it as soon as I find out I need this information.

I’m just feeling a bit overwhelmed right now as I’ve done nothing but work on all the components of this course and there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. Personally, I don’t know how anyone who’s taking more than one course right now is keeping up. The course has been great and I’ve learned alot; this is probably just the worst week in terms of workload because of all the collaboration and prep for our wiki pages, prep for our presentations, reviews of others’ wiki pages, reviews of 4 blog posts, a rhetorical analysis of something in JavaScript, plus more tutorials on learning Javascript, and then finally, all our reflections on all of the above on top of that.  Nope, not enough hours in the day; I’m not that fast a reader nor writer. So, I figure I’m allowed to feel a little overwhelmed this week.

Colleague Feedback Reflections

Regarding the input received on our wiki entry for Remediation, Jennifer Buckner and Suzanne Sink were our official reviewers. I was surprised that captions were requested because if they had put their cursor over the images, captions would have (should have?) popped up. The ALT tags are there and they worked for me in IE, but not in my version of Firefox. Granted, I don’t have the latest version of Firefox. Another surprise was the comment that there was a shift in the Conclusion paragraph, which I’m not seeing at all on my computer. I’m happy people liked the images and the decoration. I agree that the decoration should have been used on a few of the latter sections so they didn’t look like they were part of Section III. Overall, I’m thankful for the input.

Tutorial Reflections: JavaScript

I watched 20 videos from the Javascript Essentials Training course from 2001 on Lynda.com. Ironically, the more the course went on, the more I realized it wasn’t telling me what I as a potential programmer needed to know– which was a real-life example. I decided to go back to the JavaScript wiki page of our class to see if the team that did their presentation on Javascript had suggested any other useful tutorial resources. Again, ironically, the one I found that helped me the most came from information on the CSS-XHTML page!

This greatly surprised me as I have always found Lynda’s tutorials very clear, and I did learn some things from Lynda.com. However, the Essentials course was so enmeshed with an assumption that I knew more than I actually do, it became garbled for me and I started to freak out that I wasn’t going to understand JaveScript enough to create my project.

My confusion really picked up when the instructor started talking about what “the DOM” is. It sounds like a Mafioso, but it stands for “Document Object Model.” The way he explained it, the DOM is basically how you consider, frame and assign the components of your programming into a useful structure. That idea is a little abstract, and although I think I have a sense of what it is, it wasn’t what I was needing to create what I wanted to create. I guess I won’t understand how important it is until I work with JavaScript a little more.

I had never heard of Educator.com, but after watching one module on the “IF Logic” in Javascript, I had a very basic framework for an acronym generator that did what I wanted it to do in straight-forward language. I know I’ve still got farther to go, but getting something to work on this basic level brought a much-needed moment of exhilaration! These tutorials on Educator.com made much more sense to me. Not that I’m greedy, but I’d like to figure out if JavaScript will allow me to generate acronyms using some kind of loop and a chart that it retrieves information from. I see there’s a module for loops on Educator.com, but I’m not sure about the $35 price tag when I already basically have what I need to create something useable. My code at this point is admittedly not the most efficient, but it basically works! I also want to have it work with a form instead of a pop-up “alert.”

We’ll see.

Still to come… my rhetorical analysis of something in JavaScript.

Remediated Spaces, Actors and Animatronics

The second installment of Remediation by Bolter and Grusin explored how several media reform, refashion, improve on older media. This list of media included virtual reality, computer graphics, and remediated spaces such as Disney World. When I was a child, I wanted to work with audio animatronics when I grew up. That is, until I realized I had zero interest in learning the principles of electronics (which you probably should have if you’re going to work in that field). Nonetheless, the idea of a remediated space such as Disney World, offering remediated figurines of actual persons in history or actors from films is pretty mind-boggling. Add to that, the A-100 animatronic figures they are using now are “just like A-1 animatronics, only better!” “Compliance” (the body’s ability to absorb shocks and sudden gestures, yet still maintains its balance) is what makes the A-100’s better than the original A-1 figures developed for the World’s Fair in 1964. The geek in me absolutely loves this video:

As Bolter and Grusin say, the two logics (of transparency and hypermediacy) “are alternate strategies for achieving the same goal of the real or authentic experience” (233). So when Uncle Walt (Disney) decided that there needed to be a 3-D experience of animated characters, and the goal was to expand on that “illusion of life” in his animated films, he was remediating earlier media, such as 2-D animation, film, photography, audio recordings, and even wax figures which didn’t offer the 3-D, life-size, moving and talking illusion of the person standing in front of you, not on a screen.

The Remediated Self

The last section of Remediation brought Bolter and Grusin’s ideas to how new media impacts the concept of the self, especially the Networked Self, The Virtual Self and The Remediated Self. This of course echoes questions brought up in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? where the main thing that differentiated humans from androids was empathy. What makes a human perceived to be genuine or artificial?

The Remediated Self mentions how some people have come to view their bodies as a canvas to use as a form of expression, much like putting on a particular style of clothing. However, these individuals often make more permanent changes to their physical bodies, through plastic surgery, bodybuilding and/or tatooing. Their examples of people like Orlan demanded that I find out more about what Bolter and Grusin were talking about:

Bolter and Grusin’s chapter on The Remediated Self, was very interesting but it also displayed the drawbacks of traditional books. When the whole discussion is about visuals and multimedia, and there aren’t any actual examples you can see in the book (not even a photo), one needs to turn to another medium. Thank God for Youtube.

That led me to find this comparison of before/after plastic surgeries which is interesting because I hope it echoes a growing sentiment that plastic surgery doesn’t always yield a natural appearance, “only better.” Unfortunately, those that pay for it seem to be the last to know since they often go for repeated surgeries, remediating the aging process. And yet most of the time if the person is trying to look younger, the surgery doesn’t make them look like they did when they were younger. Bolter and Grusin talk about the extremes of hypermediacy which creates a more “artificial life” (218). This artificiality definitely can be seen in the surgically-altered faces of many celebrities and socialites.

Uber-Hypermediacy leading to Artificiality

The idea of plastic surgery conjured up a scene from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil that has haunted me ever since I saw it. As it’s from a Gilliam movie, it’s not a pretty picture, but I think he makes his point quite well.

Next, a word from a self-proclaimed “dude” who argues that culturally gals wear too much makeup because they have forgotten who they are and think the makeup is what they look like. He’s forgetting that a lot of this idea comes from the stupid women’s magazines that make money on making their readers feel inferior so the advertisers can sell more products. Did I mean to stay “stupid?” You bet I did! You’ve GOT to love this kid!

I haven’t worn makeup since the week I got married nearly 22 years ago because I married a guy with a similar opinion. I personally don’t view my body as a canvas, so I think the only thing I lost was opportunities to spend more money. I can live with that.

Finally, returning to the idea of hypermediacy and extremes, a video from the classic show Mystery Science Theater 3000 which warns against the extremes of technological advancement. As McLuhan says in Laws of Media, any medium becomes the antithesis of itself if given enough time and resources (McLuhan):

Tutorial Reflections

As I stated earlier, I am interested in developing an acronym generator in Javascript for the place where I work. The place uses a lot of them, so there has to be an efficient way to call up each acronym description for each acronym. For now, I’ve gone through the first hour’s worth of Lynda tutorials and I’m excited that I’m beginning to see the basics of Javascript structure!

For instance, I’ve seen “==” and “===” but now I know that “=” merely assigns something and is not meant to calculate a tally. “==” means equals in the way you’d expect. “===” means that for the script to work, there has to be a STRICT equality of one thing to another. Little things like that and “!=” (meaning “is not equal to”) are going to be very helpful to make heads or tails out of any script I come across.

The biggest thing I found valuable in this week’s learning session is why there are tiny little “.js” scripts that have to be in the same folder as the HTML file but that are not part of the HTML file. This is sort of like CSS where you are manipulating the script in its own file rather than trying to do so within the HTML file. Therefore the HTML file has to have a line that defines where the script is coming from. Javascript is still a user-side language, so that cleared up a lot to me.

I am starting with no experience with Javascript, but I can tell having HTML under my belt along with a little ActionScript 2 (and a 6 week Fortran course back in the 1980’s) experience is helpful. I’ve been looking to see if anyone has any Javascript code for an acronym generator, and I found a couple. However, neither is exactly what I want so I’m going back to finish more of the Lynda.com tutorials so I have a better sense of the type of code to look for and see how to manipulate it. I’m sticking with my acronym generator idea for now, but if it turns out I can figure it out sooner rather than later, then I’ll be trying to configure a really nice looking one and one that will function properly in our LMS at work. I started outside my comfort zone, but it’s beginning to make sense!

Bolter, J.D. and R. Grusin. (2000). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

McLuhan, M. (1989). Laws of Media. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

I’m glad we were given the chance this week to comment on each others’ work. Granted, the only thing stopping us from doing this before was the lack of time due to all the other components of our lives and this course. Through this assignment I was able to see how my colleagues are assimilating the information we’ve been going through. For the most part, I concentrated on posts regarding Brooke’s work, as I felt I needed to hear other people’s views on this very dense, scholarly writing. I posted blog responses to Eric, Mathieu, Susanne, and Jennifer. I also made a couple of comments on other readings as well to the blogs of Amanda and Smitha.

One comment Eric had made in his post on Brooke’s chapter on Perspective (style) somehow was a great reminder. Eric connected all that Brooke was doing in the later chapters back to his originally-stated comment on page 15:  “A rhetoric of new media, rather than examples of the choices that have already been made by writers, should prepare us as writers to make our own choices” (emphasis Brooke’s). As I said on Eric’s page, “We don’t have to be merely examining theory OR merely examining texts (although that’s very helpful for people like me), but rather Brooke is looking at the spaces in between theory and application, where the decisions are made.”

Jennifer did a great encapsulation of the final chapters of Brooke’s book. Her synthesis of his chapter on Persistence (Memory) reminded me of Pierre Bayard’s book, How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read. In it Bayard makes the case that it is humanly impossible to read and memorize all printed/published/produced content that is available today. So what is more important in this era is the ability to contextualize the content rather than memorize it. As Bayard sees it, when a reader discusses a book, the content of the book is used as a springboard of conversation about some particular topic; the conversation is generally not a detailed line-by-line reviewing of the entire work.

Amanda and Smitha made me consider the wisdom of using the new Facebook timeline as a chronicle or a sort of way to journal my life. Granted, it may be an easy way to not only follow the events and posts in one’s life, but with all the additional media possible, a journal created in Facebook makes a journal a multimedia experience. In the end though, I have chosen to keep to the old-fashioned way of journaling with a pen and a book simply because I prefer to maintain control of my content and I don’t like the idea that Facebook owns the content I or my friends provide them.

Tutorial Reflections

As a 766 student, I will not be required to create a webinar for class. However, I have been thinking it would be useful to create an acronym generator for my place of work.  I would have preferred to use Ruby, but Ruby doesn’t work in older browsers and unfortunately, that’s all we’ve got at my job (which shall remain nameless). Therefore, I guess I’ll have to try it in Javascript.

It sounds like a simple application, but I am not familiar with Javascript, and since this project could be a useful, applied tool around my job, I think it will be worth it. One concern is that I can figure out how the application is uploaded to my job’s website, given there could be some firewall issues with the application. I’m also hoping that because of the sheer volume of acronyms around my place of employment, that there won’t be any type of limit on the amount of listings allowed in the code (I suspect not). I also have a project at work coming up that involves using the Javascript Editor in Adobe Acrobat X, so Javascript is probably the way to go. I like applying what I learn as soon as I learn it.

P.S.

Later in the week, I was able to figure out the solution to the second project that did not require using the Adobe Acrobat X Javascript editor. What I was supposed to do was figure out the best way to create a document that allows readers to select an option next to a bullet point and keep a tally of their selections. I figured out the dropdown menu box and was able to assign numbers to the options without needing Javascript. So even if it ended up not requiring Javascript, it was a week well-spent. Back to the acronym generator…

Brooke, C.G. (2009). Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc.

For my canonical text, I am reading Bolter and Grusin’s, Remediation: Understanding New Media. This work first came out in 1999 and it’s amazing how although the general look of the media and images they cite looks very dated (digital technologies have come along way in a short period of time), the general predictions and ideas Bolter and Grusin propose have indeed come true to a great extent. For instance, their discussions of cultural networks (65) and how the internet will bring about a new kind of democracy (74) really speak to the political changes that came after the book was written such as the “Arab Spring” and movements such as “Occupy” and “Wikileaks.”

This week’s reading went through section I:” Theory” and covered the core concepts of “Immediacy, Hypermediacy and Remediation,” “Mediation and Remediation” and “Networks of Remediation.” They use the term Remediation to mean “the way in which one medium is seen by our culture as reforming or improving upon another” (59). They align with some of the poststructuralist views that “all interpretation is reinterpretation” (56), though they spin it as “all mediation is remediation” (55) and “all mediation remediates the real” (59). Whenever a new medium is employed, it is filling in a gap that was left open by a preceding medium.

Bolter and Grusin maintain that new media attempts a dual role simultaneously: “Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them” (5). “The logic of immediacy dictates that the medium itself should disappear and leave us in the presence of the thing represented” (6). Hypermediacy draws attention to the fact that heterogeneous media are inbetween us and the thing represented (34).

While thinking about remediation, the hypermediacy of many rock concerts, and how new media remediates “the real,” I recalled a video I had seen a while back while writing a paper on tracing conversations about the Beatles RockBand Video Game during the months before it came out. The video depicts a song from a Paul McCartney concert in Coachella, California, on 17 April, 2009—almost five months before the Beatles Rock Band Video Game was released. From the perspective of an audience member, the video shows a tiny Paul McCartney on stage playing “Got to Get You into My Life,” a song he originally recorded in 1966.

Video still of McCartney Concert, grabbed from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHZIpZCsrwA&

In front of him is a sea of phone cameras capturing the live, heavily amplified performance as well as larger-than-life images from the then-unreleased Beatles Rock Band Game. The 3D likeness of a much younger Paul McCartney displays on large screens behind the actual 60-something Paul McCartney and is most likely the first place most of the audience had seen what the game would look like. On the sides of the stage are even larger screens that show the live concert on the stage. The living McCartney is shown as a gigantic tower on these massive screens. The images of The Beatles Rock Band Game point to a time when gamers and Beatles fans would be able to to interact with the Beatles’ music in ways they never had before.

Talk about remediation!

Witness the whole video here.

These first three chapters discuss how media reforms and refashions earlier media, i.e. how photography remediated traditional painting and art, and how film remediated theatrical experiences, as well as the desire inherent in the gendered male gaze. This is going to be very useful as I’m currently looking at remediation of broadcast television on the internet.

Bolter, J.D. and R. Grusin. (2000). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

This diagram relates a bit to the idea of remediating “the real.” What is reality anymore? Is it what each of these series say it is? Of course not. I really find it intriguing to consider how much of reality television is derived from other shows’ “successes” (and I do use the term loosely).

TV reality show venn diagram, thanks to http://www.uproxx.com/webculture/2012/01/the-reality-tv-venn-diagram-is-as-masterful-as-it-is-depressing/

Enjoy!

Bolter, J.D. and R. Grusin. (2000). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Toad, thanks to http://animal.discovery.com/amphibians/toad/

SPOILER ALERT: A lot of frustrating things happen in the latter chapters of Electric Sheep that sort of left me cold, which could have been the whole point of the author in the first place. The story did a good job at convincing me that the tiniest life form has value in this post-Word War Terminus world. Therefore it was too much to “watch” an android methodically snip (literally) the life away of any creature—even that of a spider. It didn’t fully make sense to me that Deckard should allow Rachael to go when he had the chance to kill her, and of course this led to the death of another living creature. Granted, I think Dick was trying to say that our empathy gets in the way of our reason from time to time. However, I would think that Deckard would know better than that and not be taken in by an empathy to androids, especially with his livelihood at stake.

Later Deckard didn’t even think to check the authenticity of the toad he found? Really?

And was it a such a surprise what Buster Friendly was, even though he was on TV virtually non-stop, day and night?

The whole fusion with Mercer didn’t ring true for me either, and I really don’t have an explanation as to why. I guess it’s because I don’t believe man has the ability to elevate himself on his own terms to what he believes are godly levels. The “reality” of the logic of it for me gets in the way, much like Deckard’s tryst with Rachael. How could just deciding that you can reason what is real from your own logic in any way be satisfying?

And I was further disappointed that it was never explained why the abandoned buildings had electricity and running water. Granted, not everything needs to be explained, but I bet Dick could have come up with a good reason. This made me wonder if perhaps the author didn’t think everything through.

(polls)
I may not have found the ending very satisfactory, but overall, Electric Sheep gave me a lot to think about regarding what is human, what is not human, what is considered culturally “real” and would could be a false, planted memory. The concept of planted memory is an intriguing one, as a core desire of humanity is to be able to operate on the assumption that what one believes is true, actually is.

Of course, memory feeds nicely into the idea of persistence, discussed in the readings from Lingua Fracta this week. I will say that the chapter of persistence I found easier to follow than that of perspective because what Brook chose to use in his overview of style and metaphor didn’t flow quite as naturally into his ideas of interface and perspective. Ironically, my background is in Communications and not English Rhetoric and yet that didn’t seem to help. I liked the discussion and examples of interface, but I got lost somewhere in Brook’s discussion on metaphor. Not sure what went wrong, but his discussions of Nietsche and Derrida just seemed to take a very circuitous road for me that weren’t very easily getting me back to style and interface. Sentences like this one meant nothing to me: “Restoring some of the embossing on Aristotle’s use of the word metaphor reveals some interesting connections–connections suggested both in the transmedial development of perspective [?] and in more recent attempts to gather media under the umbrella of polymorphic [?] or mulitliteracies” (Brook 125). He was just getting a little too esoteric and abstract for me at this point, though later in the chapter, his concrete examples were very useful.

His chapter on persistence flowed much better for me as it makes sense that we look at the Plato’s concerns about writing as it relates to memory. It makes sense to distinguish the types of memory we have—the individual and cultural (monuments/memorials). It makes sense to discuss the binary of absence/presence. I think I may be a little fuzzy on the difference between chronos and kairos though. Chronos seems to be that structured, measured and predictable quality of time; kairos is a moment in that time that is perceived as sudden, unexpected and perhaps even uncontrollable.

Brook’s focus is to bring all these ideas back to the canon of memory, so in a way I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t go into how humans are adapting to the glut of information on the Internet beyond how he himself avails himself of aggregators and tagclouds to seek out new information.

In a book I recently read, Curation Nation, author Steven Rosenbaum basically says that with all the glut of information that is out there, with more content being created my multitudes of people each day, technology will have to once again give way to human beings to act as the aggregators and curators of information. Rosenbaum believes that algorithms can only go so far, but humans (bloggers, and the like) will ultimately be combing through the vast array of information and individual users will look to them for useful or trustworthy information. Granted, RSS and Google Reader still have their place too.

I must admit that I am not a fast reader, certainly not with this dense academic writing. So I found it ironic that Brook mentions a quote from David Shenk (actually citing Bjork), “the more things we have to remember or learn, ‘the lower the probability that you’ll remember any of them’” (Brook 153). There is a ton of material in this book that is getting harder to cram into my head as we proceed. Plus, I find Brook spends a lot of time on stating what he’s trying to do, but then instead of that making more sense to me, he skirts over how he’s relating the theorists he chooses with his “p” terms. I should have smelled a rat when he kept citing Derrida. 🙂

Again, the “a coda” chapter went back to his goals and hopes for “this book,” and whereas, I do believe it has reacquainted people with concepts of classical rhetoric and their adjustment and reapplication to new technologies, the main critique for me was that Brook should have spent less time brushing by major theorists and more time explaining the progression of his viewpoints more directly. Perhaps his readers should have known the basics already, and if I were approaching this degree from an English Studies background and not Communications, this might not have been my view. Obviously, Brook assumes whoever is reading this is very well-versed in the canons and historical rhetoric.

He may also assume we have more time to read this than we did in this course. I’m not grousing; I know we needed to jump right in so we’d have a vocabulary for the rest of the course.

Brooke, C.G. (2009). Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc.

Dick, P. K. (1968). Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Del Ray Trade Books.

Rosenbaum, S. (2011). Curation Nation: How to Win in a World Where Consumers are Creators. New York: McGraw-Hill.

A Nubian Goat, thanks to http://greennature.com/gallery/farm-animal-pictures/nubian_goat_face.html

In this week’s readings in Electric Sheep, some doubt has been removed, though not entirely. Deckard gets to finally buys a goat. I would have gone with the pair of rabbits myself. I’m thinking, “OK, so his empathy to take in animals and his experience with the empathy box proves he’s not an android.” And then I think, “Or does it?” One pervasive aspect of the story is that we never fully know what anyone is until they are killed (or retired) and the remains can be examined.

The whole idea of programmed memories is interesting. I’ve got a friend who’s read about about how some scientists want to develop technologies that allow our brains to extrapolate information rather than learn it the traditional way. The idea is to attach ourselves to technologies (microchips perhaps) that store the information.

The British science show spoof “Look Around You” demonstrated what such a technology would have looked like in the early 80’s with “the memory helmet” which takes photographs of information you wish to learn and then you’ll know it if you wear the helmet.

This goes back to a great quote I like from Mark Kennedy: “All of the biggest technological inventions created by man – the airplane, the automobile, the computer – says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness.” Amen to that.

As for Lingua Fracta– So much to say, but not enough time to say it.

I loved Brooke’s logic behind the title Lingua Fracta.

Image of an eco system, thanks to http://mrskingsbioweb.com/ecology.html

I was confused by the term “ecologies” initially, as I had never encountered it before in an English Studies context, but I think Brooke does a good job at explaining it, and for the most part, I can buy it as it feels very rhizomic:

“Ecologies are vast, hybrid systems of intertwined elements systems where small changes can have unforeseen consequences that ripple far beyond their immediate implications” (Brooke 28).

“Ecology examines the web of relations between interdependent organisms and their surroundings” (Brooke 40).

So to consider invention as taking place within vast, intertwined sets of ecologies rather than within a closed, linear process is to acknowledge there is a more organic, unpredictable and intertextual quality to it.

I know in a recent blog entry I mentioned that so much academic scholarship is filled with pages of defending or refuting terminology rather than just picking a term and a definition for the purposes of their arguments and move on, but I’d like to clarify something as it pertains to Lingua Fracta: Brooke makes the distinction that textual references mean traditional written texts. OK, so he made his choice of definition, but my question is “Why? Why can “text” only mean traditional written text?” Perhaps since I’ve been in the New Media track for so long, I’ve accepted pretty much anything as a “text.” I know my fellow students have as well.

One colleague was studying quilts as texts to analyze. Before I was ever in the program, the then director of the program, Dr. Jeffrey Richards defined the term “text” as “any communicative event.” I accepted this definition instantly and never let go. So I thought that idea was more pervasive in modern English Studies than Brooke would imply.

Although I have seen how higher education privileges traditional written scholarship over new media scholarship where the argumentation of the scholarship is done in part through its format. Having already taken New Media II, I was able to experiment with arguing in a new media format and I definitely believe it has its merits.

Here is my example of new media argumentation:
Layering, Legibility and “Arbitrary” Composition by Diane Cooke

Yet, I understand fully the concern over accessibility not only for those who are impaired in some way from experiencing the fullness of a scholarly argument, but also in even being able to access the scholarship in its current format in the future when other technologies make the support of our current formats obsolete. Also the concern of a stable, common experience is lost with a lot of branching new media: “Criticism depends on the shared experience of a text, something that the standardization of print allows us to take for granted” (Brooke 11).

So I’m not convinced traditional written scholarship is going to go away even thought Brooke suggests on pg 23: “Our disciplinary insistence on the printed page, if it persists unchecked, will slowly bring us out of step with our students, our institution, and the broader culture of which we are a part.”

I realize there are accessibility risks with traditional writing as well; a fire can wipe out traditional written texts, but lack-of-support can wipe out texts in the future—which I think is more tragic.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen New Media professors moved to other universities because of differences in opinion concerning their views of what is true, academic scholarship, and the views of their institutions. The stakes are high as reputation and tenure ride on the publishing of scholarly work. I believe there is no simple answer to make everyone happy. As probably all of us who have had a computer for longer than 15 years can attest, the concerns are too compelling since we probably all have lost access to content we’ve created because we no longer have a computer that has that working application on it any more.

I found a good boiled-down definition of hermeneutic vs proairetic here:
Definition: HERMENEUTIC AND PROAIRETIC CODES.

Works Cited

Brooke, C.G. (2009). Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc.

Cooke, D. (2010). Layering, Legibility and “Arbitrary” Composition: Images vs. Sound. http://dcook020.grads.digitalodu.com/assignment3-BAK.html

Dick, P. K. (1968). Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Del Ray Trade Books.

HERMENEUTIC AND PROAIRETIC CODES: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/narratology/terms/hermeneutic.html 

Mark Kennedy quote: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mark_kennedy.html#ixzz1kuMTV0R1

Gane and Beer’s scholarship, again, is to be commended as this book examines diverse perspectives around the main six concepts: network, information, archive, simulation, interactivity and interface. What’s also commendable is that they don’t privilege any one of these concepts, but rather offers them as components toward developing broader ideas around new media that can be used alongside of each other (See Table One, pg. 125). For my purposes, network, interactivity and information are the most interesting to me.

Gane and Beer say “[C]oncepts might also act as intellectual interfaces that bring different theoretical systems into contact with each other, and thereby enable new cross-disciplinary work to be performed” (126). I intend to do just that with work which cross-pollinates online education with online commercial industries.

One minor critique of the book is Gane and Beer spend a lot of time arguing at the end about terms, which is not something I’ve only encountered in this book—alas, critiquing terminology is often a common way to fill out any academic scholarly work. My personal view is, “We all use terms differently due to our backgrounds and objectives. Just define what yours is and move on with your point.”

A greater critique I have is with the term “capitalist” peppered liberally throughout the book. Why do they feel they need to make this distinction since they’re talking about developments which have come out of Western society? Capitalist–as opposed to what else? If there is another type of society on the globe, then why do they not ever venture into explaining these concepts within those other types of society? If it’s because Gane and Beer are not as familiar with how new media concepts play out in other types of society, then just say so. I just found that the constant distinction of “capitalist” made me feel they were attempting to make political critiques which may not have been entirely necessary for the purposes of this book. I don’t expect others to agree with me.

The chapter on simulation of course, overlapped with issues in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick. The whole book is a narrative which dances around this concept of evolving technologies and “What IS human?” I’m enjoying Dick’s book immensely, as I never saw Blade Runner (though I can guarantee I will see it as soon as I finish the book and my schedule is freed up a little). I’ve completed Chapter 10 and am enjoying the growing sense of uncertainty as to what the reality of Deckard’s situation is. It’s feeling much like that moment in A Beautiful Mind when all that has come before becomes questionable. I am trying to avoid any spoilers with the book as I’d like to ride the story roller-coaster without any knowledge of what’s to come.

Dick, P. K. (1968). Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Del Ray Trade Books.

Gane, N. and D. Beer. (2008) New Media: The Key Concepts. New York: Berg Publishers.

As for Gane and Beer’s New Media: The Key Concepts, I’ve encountered some of these ideas before, though not as widely filled-out with the scholarship they have done. The concept most interesting to me right now is the idea of the network. I’ve been a proponent of the rhizomic model ever since I had read “Introduction Rhizome” from Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980). Since my dissertation ideas are ruminating around the idea of expanding an audience through social media, it becomes readily apparent that each of us is a hub of some sort. I like the term “node.” However, they are wise to point out that some of our connections are stronger than others.

Piecing this idea that each of us possesses a “node-ness” (I can make up academic terms too!) along with Deirdre Breakenridge’s work on PR 2.0, not all of us possess the same level of power, impact or reach within each connection. Some people have more impact than others. Some networks are stronger than others.

I guess that idea also filters back into the idea of “flow.” Some information or influence flows freely through some nodes, where other information meets with resistance or even blockages. You can just as easily become un-friended on Facebook as you can become friended on Facebook.

I liked Gane and Beer’s take on interfaces. I think we all have a concept of what an interface is, but I liked how they boil down the basic idea that an interface is a translator of sorts that stands between two different (nay, VERY different) entities and allows for communication and information to flow from one to the other. I remember Liza Potts saying that she fully expected that user manuals would and should become completely obsolete as interfaces became more intuitive. I think we’ve already seen that start to occur.

Breakenridge, D. (2008). PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press.

Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Retrieved January 20, 2012 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/62514172/deleuze-guattari.

Gane, N. and D. Beer. (2008) New Media: The Key Concepts. New York: Berg Publishers.

I’ve been slo-o-owly moving my way through the New Media track in the PhD in English program but I have already completed all required courses. However, I wasn’t able to enter the dissertation phase last fall due to great upheaval that occurred in the middle of last year (moving from Virginia Beach to New York, moving from 1800 square feet into 800 and all that entails, finding mold in our Virginia Beach house and having to take care of that, trying to prepare the house for sale, finding a new chair for my committee, finding new employment, having to — you get the idea), this led to my asking for a 1-year extension. This meant that I needed to add another course to my program to stay in good standing. As I wished to get to know Dr. Rodrigo and her expertise, I signed up for New Media I (I had already taken II with Kathie Gossett).

My personal goals are to continue learning about how New Media impacts traditional industries such as commerce, entertainment and education. I’m interested in how industries can borrow from one-another in creating best practices for how people relate to each other and content online.

My Zooburst intro is done.