response to amanda.

Amanda, thank you so much for your thoughtful insight into this interesting – and slightly scary – topic!  I immediately thought of being a little kid again, when you asked your friends what superpower they wanted if they could have one.  I remember dreaming of being able to fly, teleport, bend spoons by sheer brainpower, and read minds…basically, I wanted my family (and life) to be like The Incredibles.  Because who doesn’t want to be a superhero…right?  (I’m thinking where too much power could corrupt and destroy us…a la Voldemort.)

Similar to the fMRI technology article I came across last month, this machine could offer great advantages if used appropriately.  But, isn’t it the same with all issues in technological usage?  Computers are either a great way to communicate or to exploit, social networking sites are either an advantageous way to stay in touch or an easy way to let you procrastinate, just to name a few.  Having several friends in fire services and a little brother interested in pursuing a career as a firefighter, the thought of how much safer this technology will make them (allowing them to locate where and how many people are inside, rather than stumbling through collapsing rooms) heartens me greatly.

But I especially enjoy your ending line, where you relate this new advent in technology to social networking.  So often, we think that increased knowledge translates directly to increased power or advantage.  In reality, I think that knowing too much about others will only hurt us – not only because there will be things we will only realize we don’t want to know until we already know them, but because in focusing so much on others in order to hide our own insecurities, we will forget about knowing ourselves.

monitoring order.

monitoring order: visual desire, the organization of web pages, and teaching the rules of design.

I can already tell that Anne Francis Wysocki and I would get along just swimmingly.  And, for those of you who know me – I’m actually not being sarcastic.  Her clean-cut lines and modern simplicity are way ahead of the fashion and design disasters I remember from 1998.

Particularly, when speaking about composition and its changes from paper to Web, Wysocki says that she longs to make others think about “how that compositional ordering [of words] affects our senses of ourselves and each other.”

i think someone looks like they could use a hug.

I personally love the idea that how we write for a paper differs from Web writing – what new, or different, aspects of ourselves are we discovering? reflecting upon? growing? changing?  How do we feel about this new, different self, or selves?

Personally, I have fallen in love with blogging – and I’m not just saying that for extra credit.  I feel really cool when I can insert hyperlinks to my favorite music videos and say what I really want to say when I really want to say it.  Let’s face it, I can be more colloquial here than I can for my ENGL 300 Review of Literature, or my PSYC 515 personal health behavior assignment paper.  And it’s all for academic purposes.  Just thought I’d point that out…

the order of book pages.

Wysocki makes an interesting point when she points out our diction concerning the Web: “we speak almost exclusively of web pages, not of web frame sequences or web movements or web sculptures.”  Granted, I think web “sculptures” may be going a bit far…

does this count as a web sculpture?

But she does make a good point.  How much have the physical forms of books shaped our conception of what the objects on which we find words to look like?

one of these things seems a lot like the other...

Even on our infinite interwebz….are we really free of the nature of books?  The Web is undoubtedly a new movement, and a website is nowhere near the same thing as my physical textbook.  But…has the printed word shaped the way we conceptualize and process visual information?

Wysocki summarizes the principles of the written word as follows:

“The words on the page are to approach immateriality.”

“Words are to appear on the page so that they visually convey our sense of what knowledge is.”

“The printed books that result from the desire to see ideally are to have words that melt into even, repeated lines on evenly presented pages.”

“Such repetitions and homogenization of form keep books from calling any attention to themselves.”

“There should therefore be no decoration.”

Words, therefore, are meant to transcend the pages on which they are written.  Websites, on the other hand, bring in whole new dimensions of design, layout, colors, images – all potentially distracting from the words and hindering the potential of transparency.  Is this why we try to standardize websites with our boxed-in conceptions of how the written word should be displayed?  Are we that insecure about the power of words – our words?  Do we think they’d be so weak as to be overwhelmed by a pretty blog template, rather than enhanced?

Wysocki asserts that “we should also question the effects of design structures that we see as frequently as we see the pages of books.”  I would be inclined to agree.  We should not passively accept any one thing, but curiously and critically question all until we find an answer, some big-t Truth.  Whether you believe in one Truth or many subjective truths, never stop questioning…

the composition of two-dimensional space.

Wysocki quotes Kress and van Leeuwen, who note the significance behind the binary opposition of the meanings words and images possess depending on whether they are placed at the top or bottom of the page.  The top is the “ideal,” the bottom is the “real.”

with smoker's lungs, *could* he walk a mile?

Notice the top: beautiful woman seductively caressing a pack of Camels.  Notice the bottom right: Surgeon General’s warning.  Each cigarette takes six minutes off your life.  Half a pack is an hour gone.  That’s the “real”…not the ideal.  She is the ideal – and, by sexy association, the Camels.

conclusion.

Wysocki concludes that “visual designs can…be expressions of and means for reproducing cultural and political structures, and that such visual orderings are likely to be those that are repeated—and that hence can become invisible through constant use…whether they are intended to be invisible or not” and that “we nonetheless encounter designs individually, based on our particular bodily histories and presents.”

Basically, we replicate what we know.  What we know usually comes from our sociocultural and cohort socialization.  Simple enough, right?  So, if you make a Kindle book page look like a physical book page, the words will have the same transcendent power because it arrives to your eyes and mind in similar forms.

She also poses an interesting question:

“What if Web browsers had been designed in a culture whose central religious text, in the 12th century, could be presented like this (with right-to-left writing)?”

(q'uran.)

What would the Web look like if it weren’t dominated by our left-to-write, marginalized (no pun intended) Western culture?

response to stella.

I sometimes wonder if I just happen to always be attracted to research articles on social networking…but my goodness, Stella, this is ridiculous!  Thank you so much for the points you make in response to the postulations set forth by the researchers in this study.  It does surprise me that the researchers didn’t find anything about any changes in the frontal lobes of the brain, connected with personality (since people often report personality changes after spending so much more time on the Internet) or the hippocampus, the primary storehouse of memory (the size of which decreases with stress…and, as Facebook often = timesuck and an increase in social drama, in my opinion, it can cause a lot of stress).

I also wonder what other physiological and neurological areas that researchers could cross-check on comparable equal-sized groups of students.  What about the lifestyle choices of students who spend x amount of hours a day on Facebook versus x-2, 5, 7 hours?  I’m sure that the study habits, social habits, personal hygiene habits, and various other behaviors both personally and socially would be vastly different.  And, if it would be ethical, what would change for the better/worse/stay the same when the students who didn’t spend as much time on Facebook suddenly started becoming more socially active in the online realm only?

But, most of all, it definitely raises the question of how, like you said, the Internet really does impact the structure of the brain.  Is it as bad as we believe it to be?  Maybe not – but that certainly doesn’t mean I’m about to go out and friend random people in the hopes that I’ll get 5 more points on my next ENGL 300 essay…

interactive textbooks?

high school it: e-textbooks, macs, and android. 

Welcome to the future, folks.  Only difference is…it’s the present.  Yeah.

and you thought *this* was high-tech, interactive stuff.

If you’re worried I’m about to make a sarcastic comment concerning the supreme level of modeling skill in this picture, don’t worry.  I’m not.  I would merely suggest that the models above get in touch with Tyra and learn how to smize:

because we should leave such important matters to the experts, after all.

At Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, California, Kindles are not necessarily good enough for what its teachers want to accomplish in the classroom for interactive textbooks.  Similar to the ideas expressed in Kay’s and Goldberg’s article on “Personal Dynamic Media,” or English’s and Engelbart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect,” the teachers at Archbishop Mitty actually give their students iPads upon enrollment in order to offer students something that traditional textbooks can’t: a way to truly interact.

this isn’t your grandmother’s textbook.

According to the IT director, the faculty toyed around with the Kindle at first, but they soon figured out that the Kindle can do little more than…well…read textbooks.  The solution?  iPads, with the Kindle app as a free download.  With the iPad’s textbook applications, the student can actually write and record audio annotations onto the electronic text.  Archbishop Mitty began using an Algebra I/Geometry textbook on the iPad that correlates with the page numbers in the students’ print versions.  The difference, though, is now students can actually watch videos to elaborate upon more confusing concepts, or listen to lectures that will help them walk through a proof (oh goodness…I’m having a flashback to the trauma that was freshman year Honors Geometry) step by step.

...and in sticky situations like this, those videos may not be the worst thing...

The faculty also tried Android technology, but having something that was so easily personalizable wasn’t exactly what they wanted for their students.  They wanted a predictable, stable classroom experience – which is what the iPad offers.  So, Kindle was too simple, Android was too complicated, and iPad is the happy medium (?).

so, doc, what’s it all mean?

As great as it all sounds…and as much as I would love to, say, have had a personal proof-helper in my Geometry textbook, will it really help us form connections?  How is it more effective than annotating textbooks?  Yes, I understand that going from this:

upside: arm workout. downside: dislocated shoulder(s).

…to this:

this crowd's smizing skills are much better than the first.

…would be beneficial for our backpacks, and subsequently our shoulders, backs, and arms.  But would it truly be beneficial for our minds as well?  Simply because it looks cooler doesn’t necessarily mean it works better.  Perhaps the faculty at Archbishop Mitty could conduct a study in which they compare their students with a comparison age- and gender-matched group at another high school in the area to determine the true effectiveness (or lack thereof) of their technological advances in the classroom.

If it works, I’m all for it.  It’ll cut down on the costs of textbooks, save trees, stop global warming, and maybe my neck and upper back won’t protest so much during every yoga class.  In fact, I think the only reasons we all shouldn’t make the switch would be 1.) if iPad learning proved to be less effective than traditional textbooks and/or 2.) if supplying students with iPads or at least offering them at some kind of discount to the student body would be more expensive than continuing to purchase traditional textbooks.  If neither of these things are true, then I say: goodbye, 500-page, 20-lb. textbook…and hello, iPad.

response to michelle.

Michelle, thank you so much for raising the questions you do about cyberbullying and sexting.  In the psychology department recently, there has been a flurry of research surrounding “sexting.”  But, just like violence in teens is not caused by violence in video games, (since correlation does not equal causation) cell phones do not make teenagers do awful things to one another.  It’s kind of like the concept of “guns don’t kill people – people kill people.”  However, the gun probably had something to do with it, too….

There is no doubt in my mind that the allowance of anonymity over the Internet with AIM screen-names and email addresses and the physical separation from someone over phone or Facebook allows us to expose more of our base, nasty sides than we would in person.  In Stanley Milgram’s variations on his own classic obedience study, he found that obedience varied with the degree of immediacy the participant had with the confederate.  In other words, if the experimenter told the participant to hurt the confederate by physically touching him, the participant was less likely to comply than if the confederate was in the next room and the participant had to hurt the confederate by shocking him.  We’re much meaner to people when we can’t see them.

I also appreciate the point you bring up about the fact that we don’t do anything now, really, when kids get bullied in school.  So why would we stand up when they’re getting cyber-bullied, which is so much harder to track down?  This is yet another example of how humans take neutral or good things and twist them for our own base purposes.

google+ ==> google-.

invite-only.

Apparently, since Google+ dropped its invite-only system, its traffic has decreased by 60%.  After an initial surge of 1200% (no, I’m not kidding), I can imagine what a blow this must be to Google’s massive ego.  According to the article, once Google+ went public, everyone wanted to be “on” in order to personally test drive whether Google+ was living up to its hype.  Apparently Facebook wins out on this one…few people saw reason to stay on Google+ since it’s basically Facebook all over again.  But isn’t that what we said about MySpace?

a.k.a. the hatfields and the mccoys.

I personally don’t care about Google+ at all, really.  I was “invited” to join Google+ over the summer by one of my fellow summer interns who was absolutely obsessed with it – but for what?  Apparently I can add people as “acquaintances” or “friends” or “colleagues” or “family.”  So, I’ll be one person to my family, another to my work, another to my friends, and my acquaintances get pretty much nothing.  Your boss can’t see you drunk on Friday and your friends really don’t care about seeing you at that conference for work.  To me, this sounds like you’re asking for dissociative identity disorder.  Are we having a competition for who can be the most fake?  Because that sounds like something for reality television…oh wait…

how many trips to the plastic surgeon can you count on one hand from this picture?

The ultimate question is, why do we feel the need to hide ourselves?  I understand that one can be both a professional working woman and enjoy a martini on the weekend, and that these two probably shouldn’t mix – but why is it shameful to enjoy one drink when you’re over 21?  The social pressures and desirability to be seen a certain way by certain people will only serve to drive you insane and cause anxiety if you let your worlds collide.  It’s a juggling act that you’re bound to lose – unless you’re a superhuman (hint: we’re not).

arch enemies.

Google+ and Facebook are natural enemies: two social networking sites offering the exact same outlets for relational connected-ness.  According to the article, a social networking website must have two main components in order to be truly successful:

1.) you MUST stand out and provide something that the limited base of social media users can’t get anywhere else.

2.) features on your site must be unique AND difficult to duplicate.

Because Google+ does not really have either of these, and given Facebook’s reputation for quick (and, at times, frustrating) changes, the future of Google+ is not particularly optimistic.  Many argue that, like a middle-aged man, Google+ has reached its peak….ouch.  Not even a Ferrari could save you now, Google+.

Is it possible that Google+ is simply trying too hard?  When it offered the possibility of “circles” of friends, Facebook duplicated it almost immediately.  That was easy. Does Google merely want to take over the world?  And if you think I’m a conspiracy theorist, ask yourself where you’d be without gmail, Google Chrome, the search engine itself, Google calendar, Google docs…it’s like iPods and iPhones and iDon’tcare, except less narcissistic.  C’mon Google.  You can let someone else win for once.

response to rykia.

Rykia, I am so appreciative that you brought this article to our attention!  Similarly to one of my previous research posts on how Brits prioritize Facebook over flushing toilets, and the Internet over clean water, it seems ridiculous to me how our world’s priorities have turned upside down.  Thankfully, the Nobel Prize ended up being split between Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and two other female African political activists, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman.  I personally might have had an absolute fit if Zuckerberg won…I mean, really?  I’m not sure I could consider the Nobel Prize a legitimate honor if we choose to degrade it to the point where we’re handing it to someone who effectively gave college students an excuse to procrastinate further.  Let’s be real here…

However, I do agree with you that it offers more implications about the progression of our society than ill-placed priorities alone.  Certainly, the fact that something as prestigious as the Nobel Prize was even being considered bestowed upon the creators of Twitter and Facebook demonstrated that social networking as a whole has clout.  After all, Obama raised how much more than McCain, simply by effective use of social networking?  Or, taking it a step further, organizations like Global Giving have actually used Facebook and its “Causes” page to sponsor competitions for nonprofit organizations (like the wonderful More than Me Foundation) to win funds for their respective projects.  Could this perhaps be considered an avenue for fostering peace among peoples or nations?  Of course, this is not why Facebook was created, so I certainly don’t think it should get any kind of peace prize.  But it is comforting to know that, even if it was unintentional, maybe some good can truly come out of all the narcissism.

the end (of books).

fahrenheit 451.

I couldn’t even begin Coover’s article without first imagining Ray Bradbury and one of his best known (and one of my favorite) works, Fahrenheit 451:

ouch. apparently he didn't read that paper is flammable.

Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel shows us his critique of the paranoia prevalent during McCarythism and the Cold War era.  In his world, reading is banned, and firemen start fires in order to burn books.  Incidentally, this just now reminded me of Bebelplatz:

talk about the end of books...what about the end of art that made sense to the naked eye?

Located in the Mitte district of Berlin, Germany, Bebelplatz is right across the street from Humboldt University (where Einstein taught until he was forced to flee the country).  On May 10, 1933, Nazi soldiers and Hitler Youth dragged over 20,000 books from the university library: books by homosexuals, Jews, women – basically, anyone who was not a white male Protestant – and burned them, right there in the square.  The memorial pictured above is meant to represent enough shelf space for those lost 20,000 books, held in a room without a door (no way to get into the room in order to replace the books).  Yeah.  That’s deep. …Only I’m being serious.  It actually is pretty deep down there.

God is dead, and we have killed Him.

And of course, as soon as Coover says that “the very proliferation of books and other print-based media, so prevalent in this forest-harvesting, paper-wasting age, is held to be a sign of its feverish moribundity” – from moribund (adj.): on the verge of termination or extinction (I didn’t want to make you have to open up a separate page just to go to dictionary.com…which is exactly what I just had to do) – “the last futile gasp of a once vital form before it finally passes away forever, dead as God” (706).  Who better to come to mind, of course, than Nietzsche himself?

So many cheery thoughts (obviously) come to mind when we talk about the death of books.  And it is no coincidence that the Holy Bible is the world’s #1 bestseller and most widely printed, translated book out of all the books in the world.  But now I’m just getting existential and bitter – and who wants that?

I do find it interesting, however, to point out the parallels between the move from print to hypertext and from Christianity to postmodern existentialism.  Coover argues that the novel restricts readers between the first capital and the last period of the book, and that “true freedom from the tyranny of the line” is only now possible with the “advent of hypertext” (706).  Later on, he describes the uncertainty of hypertext as a new medium, pointing out that it has “no fixed center, for starters – and no edges either, no ends of boundaries” (707).  This uncertainty he speaks of forces individuals out of his or her comfort zone – because there is a comfort between the pages of a novel.  When I was younger, I found a great sense of safety in the written word:

did i actually understand what it said? ....probably not.

When you read a book, it’s just you and the characters.  No other “real people” to worry about, to answer to, to deal with.  Not that I don’t love people.  But sometimes…the sense of solitude – not isolation – was a true blessing.

Similarly, moving from the tradition of Christianity, in which there is one absolute Truth, to postmodern existentialism where there is “no fixed center” and everything is relative, seems to mimic the transition of print to hypertext.  Now, as both a print advocate and a Christian, I will never say that this move is a positive or healthy one, but as an objective critically-thinking (?) student, I will have to say that maybe the similarities between the two stop there.  After all, like Guyer and Petry said in their hypertext fiction “Izme Pass” that Coover quotes, the difference between print media and hypertext “may be the difference between sailing the islands and standing on the dock watching the sea.  One is not necessarily better than the other” (707).

my (attempted) heuristic. prepare yo’self.

one of these things is probably like the other.

I chose to respond to Jonathan’s Values and Criteria Analysis this time around.  I completely agree with Jonathan on the responsible/ethical/moral use of media.  Even in our “postmodern” world (the center cannot hold!) where the popular belief is that everything is relative, including morals, we have to draw the line somewhere.  “Freedom of speech” can only go so far – what about the online “support” groups for girls who want to be anorexic?  Or for suicidal individuals?  No one can tell me that destruction of life is protected by freedom of speech or relative morals…

I would also add in a snippet about originality.  Maybe it’s just the hipster wannabe inside of me that constantly struggles to emerge, but I do believe that original, innovative use of media must be applauded.  For example, Levi’s inclusion of Walt Whitman in their advertising several years ago:

pioneers, o pioneers of the fashion industry!

…is, in my opinion, a great example of combining Ryan McGinley-esque photography with the words of not only one of my favorite poets, but also, arguably, one of the greatest American free spirits of literary and patriotic history, into a refreshing ad campaign that was both modern and retro.  Kuddos, Levi, even if I can’t fit into your jeans.

ryan mcginley knows where the summer goes.

it wouldn’t be me if i didn’t say it….

Last, but certainly not least, I would add in an element of “how did this affect, change, add to, subtract from my worldview?”  I believe staunchly that two things are true about every person we encounter: 1.) they are fighting a hard battle, and 2.) they know something you don’t.  The same could be true, I think, of media.  Well, 2.) at least.  Maybe not 1.)…that might be weird.  What can we learn from new media?  Are we willing to let ourselves be altered and changed by what we interact with?  Whether we realize it or not, everything changes us.  You leave a little piece of yourself behind with everything you touch or affect.  Right now, reading this, you have a little piece of me, whether you want it or not.  (Sorry…)  But when you encounter something you love, it makes more of you.  For example, though I leave pieces of myself in my writing, I love to write.  It makes more of me, not less.  It’s almost like a unicellular organism budding – I say that instead of cloning because budding is natural…cloning, arguably not so much.

drumroll, please.

Adapted from Dr. Cheryl Ball’s New Media Worksheet, here’s my heuristic (with my additions in bold):

Purpose

• What are the significant/emphasized elements in each section/scene or whole of the text?
• What meanings do those elements, when juxtaposed, create?
• What is the intention/point of those juxtaposed meanings?
• How does the purpose signaled by the above questions help determine who the audience might be? How can you tell, and why do you think that way?
• How does this piece of new media add to what is known?
• How does the intention/point of those juxtaposed meanings affect your worldview?
• How much and in what ways has consuming this piece of new media changed you, if at all?

Originality

• In what ways does this piece challenge convention?
• How is this piece a reflection or critique of culture?
• What approach does this piece take to conveying its message? How is this approach “original”?
• Is this piece attempting to be original for originality’s sake, or does it actually have something unique to say?

Responsible/Ethical Use

• Does this piece encourage healthy choices that will lead to a fuller life?
• Does this piece model the positive effects of wholesome choices and the negative effects of reckless choices?
• What moral or ethical standing does this piece maintain, and how is that important to the overall structure of the piece?
• Does this piece promote respectful values that draw us closer to beauty and to truth?

Okay, you can call me a romantic sap for that last one.  I would keep everything Dr. Ball lists as criteria for color, form, etc., because for me personally, I obsess over the content just as much as, if not more than, its delivery.  My adaptations and contributions deal mainly with the message of the media, because that’s what we’re receiving as consumers.  The messages are of course portrayed in ways that depend heavily upon color, form, etc., but I’d rather get to the heart of the matter (and no, I’m not talking Graham Greene or India.Arie here) and ask about what’s going to change my life.

After all, aren’t we all looking for that one thing to change our lives?