SeanMaiolo

Wow. My only educated guess is that this Memex thing may have been an incredibly early version of Wikipedia. After watching that video, I really hope that's what the whole idea is about because otherwise I'm more lost than a polar bear in the African wilderness. I mean, if it is the first ever Wikipedia idea and it's from 1946 than it is, in the words of Dick Vitale, "Awesome baby, with a capital A!"

But in all seriousness, I cannot definitively say with any confidence that I have a clue what Vannevar Bush is talking about. I don't even know if it's Vannevar Bush who's talking! For one of those rare moments in my life, and yes Tiffany it's an incredibly rare moment that I can't stress enough, I am utterly and hopelessly lost with this whole thing. I really want to say it's cool and that I totally know what I'm going to be talking about in Tuesday afternoon's class, but most likely I'll just be blowing wind out my ass, figuratively speaking of course. For that, I do sincerely apologize.

As a result, I'm just going to attempt to focus on the positives of his idea and assume, for better or for worse, that it really is the fetus of Wikipedia. In this instance, Bush is a genius. Is it weird that I get an odd chill down the back of my spine saying that a person with the last name of Bush is a genius? Probably.

"The belief that new...technologies are in and of themselves democratic is not only false but dangerous...there is no reason to believe that the increased complexity of our technologized lives works toward increased equality for all subjected to the technology." pages 167-68 of Espen J. Aarseth's Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature

Is the fact that I agree with Aaresth's above statement make me at all paranoid? It just seemed like a very relevant statement today even though his book is thirteen years old now with the exponential expansion of the Internet and talk in Washington about its regulation. When books were first introduced centuries ago they were only made available to not only those who were literate but by the few printers who pulled the puppet strings.

The Internet is very similar. Just about anybody can post anything online with little if any regulation. Although most pay for Internet access in some way shape or form, thousands of coffee shops across the country offer free wi-fi to their patrons. In this instance there really are no limits to what people can do online. Why do we enjoy such extensive Internet freedom? It's because all its users in some way shape or form can control Internet content.

The whole idea of net neutrality that's being thrown around is hardly an increase in fairness and freedom on the web. It would actually force providers to display an equal amount of content from opposite viewpoints whether users want to see it or not. This is why control over the medium needs to remain in its users' hands in order to ensure as much freedom of choice as possible.

"Clarity is a value that is created by society and that society must work hard to maintain, for it is not just hard to write clearly. It is almost an unnatural act." page 141 of Joseph Williams' Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace

Anybody who thinks writing clearly is easy has their head stuck where the sun don't shine. Reading through Williams' entire book has made that crystal clear, no pun intended. I discovered several little things that I didn't even realize were things at all that could drastically affect my writing for better or for worse. I thought I knew plenty about clear writing but Williams' deep analysis really opened up a whole new world of written clarity to me.

Clear writing isn't about following every obscure rule in the book either. In fact, clear writing often displays which rules to follow and which ones to ignore. Being an expert in language and its construction doesn't guarantee great writing. A good ear can go as, if not farther than, a grammarian's brain when composing clearly written pieces. But that ear also must be trained and the pen must follow.

I don't know if I would call clear writing an unnatural act. If it were then I don't think it could be an acquired skill. It is, however, reserved to a certain group of people who have the raw writing skills and talent to begin with that can then develop that into clear and concise writing. Those people and their works are still admired today. I'm not saying I can get there someday, but I know that I can harness all of my talents together to produce a pretty darn good product. 

"Attempts to apply the perspectives of literary theory of the adventure game genre have been sparse and unconcerted. Over the last decade...several individual attempts have been made to put the genre on the agenda of literary studies, but perhaps understandably, no breakthrough has yet been made." page 108-09 of Espen J. Aarseth's Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature

I really hope Aarseth isn't too surprised at the absence of breakthroughs for adventure games into the agenda of literary studies. Adventure itself never made for great literature even in the traditional sense. It's had slightly more success in American literature thanks to authors like Mark Twain, but he's in a very small company. Do you typically associate adventurous literature with Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, Poe, Williams, Austen, Hawthorne, Whitman and Steinbeck?

The lack of legitimacy among the literary elite is an enormous problem to overcome, but, as in the case of Twain's literature, can be done. Adventure games' biggest and most irreparable one is that they are games. They won't be accepted as a genre of literary studies because they are not literature. It really doesn't matter how great a storyline is produced. Nowhere in Merriam-Webster's definition of literature does it mention anything about digital stories created for interaction with the audience as being literature.

Without a change in the definition, which I can't see ever happening, adventure games will only exist as a medium of entertainment outside the scope of literature. If those who create adventure games have a problem with that, tell them to go write a book. Maybe then they will understand the separation of the two and let it remain as is. 

"The most striking feature of elegant prose is balanced sentence structures. You most easily balance one part of a sentence against another by coordinating them with and, or, nor, but and yet, but you can also balance noncoordinated phrases and clauses." page 120 of Joseph Williams' Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace

I like to think that my writing is smooth and elegant. Of course, I like to think a lot of positive things about my writing but not all of them are true, even if my ego says otherwise. In the past, I've always found using conjunctions to be an easy way to elegantly coordinate the flow of my sentences. If I ever came across a sentence with a pair or more of clauses that didn't coordinate I simply broke them apart into separate sentences to avoid trying to balance them. It never occurred to me that they could be coordinated without the use of conjunctions, which in my writing have a tendency to emerge quite often.

That's really something I might need to try and reexamine in an attempt to add more eloquence to my writing. I'm not one who likes to repeat the same words over too often when I write. Most of the time, however, I focus not repeating adjectives and words that start sentences. Constantly repeating conjunctions can make it look like you're going for something too complex and that your thoughts are too broad to be gathered.

Once again, simplicity reigns supreme in Williams' ninth chapter. Conjunctions are fine when used somewhat occasionally and properly. When you can subtly use other words to create elegantly flowing sentences, that's when your writing becomes something far better than average.