Landow asks American undergrads, since they are surrounded by analogue and digital information, "What kinds of books do they experience?" He estimates that their reply is very different than what he would have answered three decades ago (215).
Landow believes that although contemporary novels and reference books will become digitalized, the classic books will always remain printed. Manuals and encyclopedias would undoubtedly be more useful online than in print.
"Fragmentation and Cybercascades" by Cass Sunstein, Writing Materials, page 453
People like to see advertisements for what they recently purchased. The advertisements comfort them because "they confirm the wisdom of the decision" (456).
Sunstein relates this to filtering. People prefer to read news that comes from organizations that are in favor of the same political party that they are.
Instead of using links to further information, political websites use them to show how disreputable the opposing view is.
Group polarization: discussions engaged by people of similar views "will end up thinking the same thing that they thought before - but in more extreme form."
Social cascades: information can spread fast; much of it is not reliable.
"The Return of the Word" by Adam Gopnik, Writing Materials, page 180
This essay was all about the Internet's effect on writing. Gopnik compares digital culture to the literary period of the eighteenth century. He relates Internet writing to writers like Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope because they wrote their pieces and published them in magazines and newspapers that they had created. So they were editing and publishing themselves, just like people do online.
He believes that they would have loved to write online because they wrote rants, "short essays and anonymous accusations." "Two of the most popular Web forms - the rant and the quote page - are pure eighteenth century revivals" (181).
Gopnik said that "the Internet was the first new medium to move decisively backward, for it is, essentially, written" (180). When someone tells you they've been online, it means that they've been reading and probably writing as well.
E-mails are the new letters
Gopnik thinks that people will eventually read the e-mails of notable people like they read collections hand-written letters of Virginia Woolf or Henry James. He believes that e-mail makes us just as conscious of our words as letters did.
All of my blog entries fall under the category of Coverage because they all include a direct quote from the reading, identify the source, and link to the course website. All of my blog entries also fall under the category of Timeliness because they all occur 24 hours before class.
Coverage and Timeliness:
Interaction:
Depth:
Discussion:
Instead of being concerned with how much information we can access from our hand, the characters of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom access them via their brains. It may seem unnatural, but all technology does at first. Are they more human or more machine?
]]>Whuffie sounds like Facebook. What happens if no one likes you or you run out of Whuffie points? I guess unpopular people must be the hobos of the world. This is sci-fi on crack.
He goes on to call text an "event" instead of a "material thing." I'm not sure how text can be defined as an event or a material thing. It's not something tangible. It's an event in the sense that's it is something taking place.
All technology is digital now. Technology cannot be defined without being called digital. Digitalization creates speed and efficiency.
Storage is more important than ever because we have access to so much information. We want to save it all so we can gain access to it at any moment, no matter where we are. That's what new media means to me. The convenience and availability of information in the form of handy gadgets.
Twain's essay was about his experience of being one of the first people to own a typewriter. He eventually gave it up because it "degraded his character." I think he meant that all the defects annoyed him that he was in an unpleasant mood all the time. He pawned the typewriter off on someone else and his "morals improved" (p. 502). Then typewriter didn't have the same owner for very long. It went through many different sets of hands.
I don't think we'd ever reach the point that people would honestly have trouble distinguishing fact from fiction. Besides, not many people are familiar with these enormous virtual societies or even aware that they exist. So it's not like they're a popular trend.
]]>All of my blog entries fall under the category of Coverage because they all include a direct quote from the reading, identify the source, and link to the course website. All of my blog entries also fall under the category of Timeliness because they all occur 24 hours before class.
Coverage and Timeliness:
Interaction:
Depth:
Discussion:
Jeremy Barrick's "EL-336. Orwell-1984. I always feel like, somebody's watching me, and I got no privacy"
I think the appendix is supposed to show that Newspeak and the totalitarian society is in the past and that society has changed. It says, "Newspeak was the official language" and "it was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak."
They're constantly altering every piece of recorded history. Currently, books are routinely altered and updated, but obviously not to the extent as the world of Orwell's 1984. It's the same with telescreens. They exist but are not used as extensively.
The Party owns the media, which is not unlike the publications that lean towards a political party in preference. Double speak reminds me of politically correct speech. One department spent all its time faking photographers. I wonder if they used Adobe Photoshop.
McLuhan says that democracy didn't exist until print because it created ideas about representation and equal rights. It did this through the communities it created. Also because of the standardization of language (typography).
It had many effects on their literary customs. There was an emphasis on memorization. Words were taken down diligently, without room for error, and reading was an oral experience. They were read to communities. It was before the printing press so reading was not yet a private experience.