April 2010 Archives

Hmmm, I am getting the not-so-subtle vibe that Darnton is not a fan of digitized books. If I was supposed to pick up on this before, I appologize. I'm a slow analyzer. There are two different instances that Darnton refers to Gutenberg's invention of the press and modernization of the book.

"I love books, old-fashioned books, the older the better. As I see it, book culture reached its highest peak when Gutenberg modernized the codex; and the codex is superior in some way to the computer. You can leaf through it, annotate it, take it to bed, and store it ocmveniently on a shelf" (60).

His description of the physicality of books is what he admires. He enjoys the fact that it, unlike a digitized book, is visible and can be handled. He can mark in it, draw doodles on the cover. He can literally "cut & paste" words and letters if he wants to. A digital book, not so much without a few alterations (like digitally copy and pasting...much simpler...if you would even want to do that to a book...).

At the very end of Chapter 4, he says, "...the electronic book, which will act as a suplement to, not a substitute for Gutenber's great machine" (77). The man loves his book, but again, he is attached to the physicality of the book. I don't blame him and I do agree with him, but he doesn't seem to have a strong argument about the digital accessible information. The information is going to be the same, in text or on a computer. The words will all be the same and the context and how you take the meaning will all be the same.

Perhaps Darnton is unwilling to admit that he is addicted to the smell of books just like in his comical example of French students.

"According to a recent survey of French students, 43% consider smell to be one of the most important qualities of printed books--so important that they resist buying odorless electronic books. CafeScribe, a French online publisher, is trying to counteract tat reaction by giving its customers a sticker that will give off a fusty, bookish smell when it is attached to their computers" (39).

This made me laugh. It is very interesting to visualize people sniffing books. We all have done it, but to think that people need to read the physical book in their hands just to smell the pages. At first I thought, that might be pushing it. Then I reconsidered. People really do enjoy the smell of books or they are afraid of the transition into the digital world. They used to have a physical book and its perks still outweigh a digital books' perks. They don't want to lose what they have always known. Quite a simple psychological assumption, but that is what I am getting out of it.

I would rather turn a page too than scroll down on a computer screen, but I wouldn't say that it is because I want to catch a whiff of musty paper while reading. I think this weird book-sniffing is about value as well. I remember Shellie talking in class about how she does not like marking up books, but does not mind scribbling on a computer print out.

Although Darnton clearly is a fan of original books and not afraid to admit it, he is willing to accept the change of technology. He knows that not everyone is excited about the rising of digital texts but with a look at history, we always progress no matter what comes along. He said, 'Through trial and error, we must inch forward toward the creation of a national and the an international digital library" (57). The scaredy-cats who aren't moving will have to. He is pretty optimistic about the idea, because it's inevitable although he wish it wouldn't happen.

Back back back.

As I read "As we may think" from the 1945 edition of the Atlantic, each new machine or concept Bush mentioned, I felt like I could relate to. Sixty five years ago, he was talking about the future. In the present day, many of his "predictions" are a reality. I chose this quote:

"In the Bell Laboratories there is the converse of this machine, called a Vocoder. The loudspeaker is replaced by a microphone, which picks up sound. Speak to it, and the corresponding keys move. This may be one element of the postulated system," (Vannevar Bush).

Bush is talking about the futuristic recorder. By recording someone's voice, say in an interview or courtroom, that is taking out one step, the writing step. I thought about the process of how I interview a person for a newspaper article. I meet with them and write down their responses. I hardly use a recorder unless it is for a speaker. Still writing down responses for an interview is a use of old technology and I had not realized it until I read this. In 1945 it was fairly difficult to write an article for a newspaper without every picking up a pen or pencil. Now, it is almost normal to never use a writing utensil to write an article. Many people record an interview or event and sit at their computer to type out their information, never once using their pink feathered pen and Post-It notes.

This equipment that has transformed our way of writing is also benefitting us. Everything is much faster now and more accessible. Bush also mentioned a photocopier as "going out of style" which is a large assumption 65 years ago. We definately still use photocopiers today, but the internet and laserjet printers has also taken over the photocopier's tasks. There is not just one way to spread the word anymore....which is fairly obvious, but it's also more overwhelming when you measure how much equipment and technology is out there doing the job of what one printing press used to do. If Bush predicted these advancements years and years ago, imagine what else we have in store for us in the near future.

Back to class

For our assignment, I surely did not have a problem finding a passage that completely blew me out of the water from his book, Cybertext.

"What we call computer literature should more accurately be called cyborg literature, and it is therefore in need of a criticism and terminology with less clear-cut boundaries between human and machine, creative and automatic, interested and disinterested. Cyborg literature, then, can be defined tentaively as literary texts produced by a combination of human and mechanical activities. in presenting a tenative typologyce of cyborg authors, I hope to encourage and aesthetic theory nuanced enough to deal with cyborg narratives as a separate class of texts rather than as failed pastiches of 'human literature'" (Aarseth 134-Chapter 6).

WHAT?!?!

Aarseth is giving a new name to computer literature. He is not only describing a new term, but a term he has invented. Unless cyborg literature is something that is common and I just don't know about....I understand that he is emphasizing the computer lit's "newness" and infancy, but he also does not want anyone to attempt to undersstand it and fail because of its unfamiliarity? That is a complete stab in the dark. I defined the "iffy" words and placed them in context, but I'm still not sure what his main point of cyborg literature is. I'm not sure why he is comparing "human and machine, creative and automatic, interested and disinterested."

A more comprehensible part of his work....

"In my constructive approach to the field of ergodic literatures, I feel it necessary to focus on broad, highly visible issues, such as the conflicts between the desires of users and the ambitions of creators or the problems of old terminology and theory when brought to bear on new objects. These are grateful perspectives to engage in, and although they are necessary in an initial phase, their durability is correspondingly brief and must be followed by a subtler, less-dilated approaches. I hope I have added a little to the increasing awareness of these literatures and strengthened the argument for their growing relevance to the broader fields of aesthetics and communication" (Aarseth 183).

Ironically, I chose the very last paragraph in Aarseth's book as a comprehension paragraph. Throughout this entire book, I had no idea why he was lecturing his readers about these detailed aspects of technology and the web. I know he was attempting to reach a point....obviously...but he was establishing conflicts and offering solutions and his opinions about the desires of users and ambitions of creators and etc. Plus he did meet his goal of raising awareness to these issues that may have surpassed the brainwaves in technology lovers. I think his attempts steered our class away because we were already familiar with the technology he was talking about. His target audience really was newbies and we were fortunate to have the foundation of this technology advance and evolve right in front of us.

Read my equally-confused classmates' responses.

For my second portfolio in Topics in Media and Culture, I worked more on length and depth for this section of the semester. I wanted to be able to give more than one opinion in each blog and bring up several ideas. I believe out of every portfolio I have ever compiled, this one includes the most blogs in the depth section, which is what I was going for...so mission accomplished. :)

Past porfolios:
October 2006 (Writing for the Internet)
November 2006 (Writing for the Internet)
October 2007 (Newswriting)
November 2007 (Newswriting)
December 2007 (Newswriting)
December 2007 (Media Lab)
February 2008 (Intro to Literary Study)
April 2008 (Intro to Literary Study)

February 2010 (Topics in Media & Culture)

Coverage
I made sure to cover each assignment with a blog entry. Even if I had to I compacted a few readings into one.
Write at a standstill
Revolution of the pencil = to Revolution of the computer
You can't describe the unknown
Printing Press opened doors for art too
Short & Sweet, the name of Calvino's game
Calvino in the mind of the reader
Calvino creates confusion
Preservation of culture in today's libraries
Bibliographies help detract inaccuracies
Omnicient Calvino strikes again
Mysteries of reading are mysteries of the world
Cybertext development
Linear vs. non-linear
Reactions to ELO collection
Interactive fiction strikes again
Allegory of the Cave

Depth
The best section, loaded with several ideas and thoughts rather than just simple opinons.
Write at a standstill
Revolution of the pencil = to Revolution of the computer
Printing Press opened doors for art too
Short & Sweet, the name of Calvino's game
Calvino in the mind of the reader
Calvino creates confusion
Preservation of culture in today's libraries
Omnicient Calvino strikes again
Linear vs. non-linear
Reactions to ELO collection
Interactive fiction strikes again

Interactions:
I think I need to work on interacting with my peers a little better. I do often read their blogs, I just have not been commenting. :(
In Jessie's blog, I had an epiphany about writing improving communication versus claiming that writing is communication.
In Sean's blog, I mentioned how interesting it would be to study the actual syle of writing from Old English to online slang and how that evolved.

Discussions:
In Megan's blog, we both talked about how we grew up writing and the influence it had on us then and now.
In Jessie's blog, we discussed Calvino's expectations in his book and how he does not meet any specific standards.

Timeliness:
Printing Press opened doors for art too
Calvino in the mind of the reader
Cybertext development

Xenoblogging:
The Comment Primo:
Sean's blog
The comment informative:
Megan's blog,
The link gracious:
Revolution of the pencil = to Revolution of the computer

Wildcard:
I hardly connect past blogs with newer ones, because I'm rarely on the same train of thought on different topics. So after establishing this idea, I linked to a previous blog of mine for reference.
Calvino creates confusion

In reference to Allegory of the Cave, by Plato, his theory can be applied to several instances as we progress from an analog era into a digital world. If we were to see ourselves as the people in the cave who only know what is projected to us, we would be alot like Plato's Socrates, who most of us disagreed with at the beginning of the semester. Plato's Socrates only favored oral communication since that was all he ever experienced. He never tried to step out of his comfort zone and experience the culture of writing.

Had he been drug out of "his cave" he would have resisted just like the prisoner, but he would have seen the light as well and accepted his improved life. We can all put ourselves in Plato's Socrate's & the prisoners shoes. When have we not been a little "iffy" when it comes to experiencing something new and innovative? Especially with technology when we only see it as a mere invention and not something that can completely solve all problems?

We are also weary of new technology because we cannot possibly believe what we do not know or have yet to experience personally. New advancements are our "distorted reality" as we cannot be told about its glory and innovation until we have experienced it first-hand.

"The adventure game is an artistic genre of its own, a unique aesthetic field of possibilities, which must be judged on its own terms. An while the apologists certainly are wrong, in that the games will never be considered good novels, they are right in insisting that the genre may improve and eventually turn out something rich and wonderful" (Aarseth 107).

The thing about IF games is that we can choose our own path and examine what we want through text and a literary genre. In a novel, we are forced to endure each and every part of the book until the end...if we choose that as our goal. We can only judge IF gaming on its own terms because of the extreme differences from print. I still think these games are fun but they certainly were innovative during the birth of computer technology. And it's sad that they really have not become a phenomena because we advanced so quickly into graphic and visual games. Computers were not as widespread when IF games were born so not many people were introduced. I feel bad because they were simply...skipped over and the opportunity to become "rich and wonderful" was revoked.

As I played the game, Deadline, I continued examining the most basic things. Like the cabinet, the pantry, china. I didn't find anything intruging with those objects so I started roaming around the house, which I try to avoid because I often get lost in games (and in life in general) so I don't tend to wander far. In this game, I felt like direction was important as well as characters because they both developed significantly as I progressed. I leanred alot about Mrs. Robner's son and her husbands will, but that's all the farther i got. Now that I think about it...why were there police at the house? Fishy. I don't want to look up any cheats or spoilers because I may go back and play it.

If it were 1982 and this is the type of entertainment I had, I'd be excited. IF is exciting and who really needs graphics to illustrate a story? I do agree with Aarseth, that IF games would make a good novel. Writing a story for a novel or an IF game is the same concept as we use language to do so. Just the structure is different and the multiple opportunities and pathways differ. The idea of a story is interchangable, but the medium in which it exists is not.

Back to class

Play my hospital game. It has a crazy ladyin it!

Initial Reaction:

My first reaction to the ELO collection was intimidating, because I clicked on "Bad Machine" which had a bunch of coding and jumbled mess as its image. And as a person who does judge a book by its cover strayed farther away as I read the discription about being in an unusual futuristic society with a central Queen. Then my worries faded as I clicked on a more simple picture...with just the letter "d" and found it to be a creative twist to the "Star Wars" game. Although, I am not a Star Wars fan, I found it less scary as the description did not bombard me with a mass of detail. It actually sparked my curiousity and made me want to give it a try.

Possible Exploration:
Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw-- I would be very interested to see how a graphic game portrays a demonic possession. This could be the PS3 game of The Excorcist.
Storyland--This is a narrative game that says it is highly unlikely that two stories will ever come out to be the same. I kind of want to prove them wrong, although I agree with the description.
Landscapes--This game involves ...landscapes and portals. I'm interested in seeing how those two things tie together.

Reactions to Explorations:
Storyland--Weird, not very engaging and I didn't understand how the plots of these stories fit in with anything at certain moments of time...which is what the description claimed.
Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw--This bizarre game was freaky because it did have creepy music associated with a horror film and the characters were strange and decrepid...in my opinion. The characters didn't move, but the girl did spit out strange stuff when I clicked on pink flowers. There were two monsters...maybe unstereotypical demons that hid behind bare trees. They were not interactive. Both times, my screen went blank, so I'm not sure what that meant or if I did something wrong, so I never got very far.
Landscapes-- The Landscapes was just a neat way to read proverbs and important quotes from the past from a different perspective...like a desert background or in the city life. Destinations all around the world. It wasn't interactive from a player's point, but the graphics were constantly changing.

Interaction with Redridinghood
I spent some time looking at Redridinghood and I liked the portrayal of this author. She did it from a feminist perspective but what i liked was the modernization of it. The moral of the story is still the same, but it takes place in a city and the character development was neat to see. I watched it 3 times and it was the same every time because there was only one option during each scene. There was no conversation or text, but there was background beat and expressions on the characters faces. So that was definately a different way of expression than from what we have been studying all semester.

Aarseth
The Redridinghood expression was a nonverbal animation. No text or narration. Looking at Aarseth's communication figures between the narrator and the reader on page 93, how would that even apply to this age of animation? In each figure, he shows an author, a narrator, a narratee, and a reader. There narrator and narratee seem to be non-existent in this graphic animation, unless the entire product of Redridinghood is soley the non-verbal narrator. Then there would be author, non-verbal narrator, viewer...because even reader would lose it's name and consistency.

Even before we began reading Cybertext by Espen Aarseth, I mentioned several times in my blogs about books and texts being linear, especially during our Calvino escapade. We were angry with his writing because he was not writing in a linear fashion. He would start a story, digress off subject and eventually finish the story or never mention it again. And that bothered most of us, even me who sort of enjoyed his witty style.

Aarseth said, "If the paths are simply parallel, never meeting before B, then multilinear is the natural choice, just as linear describes one such path" (44). This would be the natural path for a hypertext format as there is more space for interior and additional information.

So that got me to thinking, nonlinear text in books does exist, although I disagree with Aarseth who only calls it "random access." And it even exist in our minds, which we can associate to daydreaming as our brains wander from topic to topic. (Though, there is no permanent record of those immediate thoughts. What do you think about that Socrates?) And then there is nonlinear hypertext which I agree with Aarseth is most effective with a computer/database with unlimited storage space. This allows for almost unlimited additional information if there are consistent links and passages available.

Because of these accessible paths in which text can take, "nonlinear is purely the observable differences in the behavior between text and reader use" (59). True, due to the ability to choose one's fate, circumstances, and consequences.

I think the text on paper and in books has to follow a structure and standardization because it is what authors have practiced and produced for centuries. It's imbedded in our minds of how we as humans like to read and understand things. As for hypertext and digital formatting of text, it is still under experimentation and it is still in its infancy. We're still exploring the options as there are many more than those limited to books. There is still more time to pinpoint a structure to our liking of the text in the digital era.

Back to the class website.

For my second paper proposal, I have been thinking about working with the Na'vi language from James Cameron's Avatar. As much as I hated sitting through that movie (and never will again) I figured I will write about it. In this movie, Na'vi is the Avatar language which Paul Frommer, created after studying linguistics. He made this language realistic so it is has typical conventions familiar to humans for learning. There are established charts for learning consonants, vowels and pronunciation, which would be a vital part to include in the paper. Language is the basis of communciation and two people have to at least be on that level to begin communicating. In the movie, there is a noticable barrier in which the humans do not understand the Avatars.
To create such a language, Frommer had to use realistic linguistics and phonetics and that language is just as realistic to learn as English is. If everyone were to learn Na'vi, it would also evolve from oral to print, to manuscript and digital with all of the same challeges our world faced with the revolution of language.

"As the cyber prefix indicates the text is seen as a machine-- not metaphorically but as a mecahnical device for the production and consumption of verbal signs" (Cybertext 20).

So I'm going to try to make sense of this and I'm going to admit that I did not understand this chapter. There were a few paragraphs here and there I could relate to, but even after looking at definitions it was difficult to understand the majority of this chapter's concept.

I chose the quote above because I carefully analyzed the triangle illustration. For digital text, it must have a medium in order to see, dissect and comprehend the text. Words do not just appear in the air in front of you. I thought about traditional books too. They are the mediums in which we pick up to read the text on their pages. They are just less innovative than a computer, digital billboard, cellular phone, iPad, etc.

These mediums also cannot be operated without a human, so a third source is needed. The complexity of digital culture has evolved greatly from print, however the communication triangle remains the same. Even the linear versus non-linear reading is a new concept which expresses more depth in the digital era.

With the evolution of digitial media, text is always going to need an operator to express words and text. That connection cannot work without both parties. The only changing aspect is the medium which continues developing more and more depth and complexity.

back

"All the keepers of commonplace books from Drake to Madan, read their way through life, picking up fragments of experience and fitting them into patterns. The underlying affinities that held those patterns together represented an attempt to get a grip on life, to make sense of it, not by elaborating theories but by imposing form on matter" (Darnton 173).

Each author writes their work based on an emotion or experience from their own life. They themselves are trying to make sense of an idea or attempting to fill a void by creating a plot. By human nature, we seem to relate to one another on all kinds of different levels and areas. As we read books, journals, articles or any kind of writing, many times we feel a connection to what is being said, from the author's words to the paper to our eyes and into our brains. We ponder on these phrases or paragraphs and reflect on their meaning and how it applies to our everyday lives. Why do we feel that way? What have we done that is similar? Do we want to experience the same thing?

I feel like these brief moments of wonder are very common, yet very unique, because not one is ever the same. I seem to find similarities between Darnton and Calvino. There are techniques and mysteries for writing as Darnton often expresses and he can say it all he wants. Though, I think Calvino has been great at executing these techniques and mysteries. He is getting down to the nitty gritty and applying what actually works for the readers' mind.

Why do we feel the way we do about certain characters or events that alter the plot significantly? Are they too close to home and similar to our own lives? Why do we have that sublime moment while reading a an excerpt about our lives as a microcosm in a large world. We want to solve the mysteries of the world and the closest we can get is through imagination and theory. Two components of a great book.

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