compost for final paper

I think I am going to revise my fourth essay. I wrote about the “rate of change” that Birkerts spoke about in GE. I want to take this idea further and explore an actual timeline of technologies, hopefully as far back as writing. I also want to take a look at future technological goals (gas-less cars?) and goals that we thought we would have  achieved by now (flying cars!).

tech is a way of life and cannot be ignored or denied.

New machine vs. old machine. Is there any newer technology that has not totally replaced an old machine? Paper? The fork and spoon was not replaced by the spork.

I might look at technology’s impact on the classroom/education…

2nd draft for writing project 4

Rate of Change
Life is affected by technology in an infinite number of ways, but everyone has a different opinion about whether those effects are positive or negative. Sven Birkerts, a critic of electronic text, wrote the novel The Gutenberg Elegies to emphasize his negative viewpoint on technology.  He states, “The rate of change, social and technological, has surpassed exponentially the gradually escalating rates of previous periods.”  Everyone can agree with Birkerts’ assertion that technology is advancing because we have witnessed the advancement of phones, music players, television, and other electronics during our lifetime.  The Internet in itself is a huge milestone, and, less than 20 years after its introduction to the public, phones can be used to access the Internet to check email, download music, and play games.  It is obvious that society is constantly changing as a result of technology, but is it changing too quickly?
Technology is a powerful tool that helps society advance and become more sophisticated.  Without it, the world would be quieter and incredibly less connected.  Many people cannot even imagine what life would be like without television, phones, and computers.  These devices allow faster, more convenient communication between people who may not even live on the same continent.  Information can be transmitted from place to place at the click of a button, allowing everyone in the world access to knowledge that they would not otherwise have.  Technology is extremely influential and has helped the human race achieve many goals, from non-invasive surgery to accurate weather predictions.
While many people adore the Internet and utilize it everyday, there are still those, like Birkerts, who are strongly opposed to society’s increasing dependence on technology.  There is a piece of technology to achieve almost any goal, and as long as we have access to that technology, we would rather use it than do things the old-fashioned way.
Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl demonstrates how rapidly technology has advanced in the past decade.  The Internet allows people to link to countless sites with just the click of a button and, while Patchwork Girl does this to some extent, it is much more limited than society is accustomed to.  The StorySpace program allows the user to navigate to different text boxes without having to follow the traditional line-by-line format that most novels use.  Jackson purposefully uses the program in order to intrigue the reader and give him/her a different type of reading experience.  Instead, its non-linear format confuses the audience and leaves them with no true sense of what the story is about.  While it may have been an exciting program to use when it first came out, those who utilize it now deem it limiting because they are so familiar with the Internet.

“I see instead a steady displacement of old by new, a generational pressure that escalates, its momentum gathers as the members of the old dispensation age and die off.”

[I'm still working on the organization. I need to incorporate the last quote somewhere in the last unfinished paragraph. I still need a conclusion, also.]

paper 4

Rate of Change
“The rate of change, social and technological, has surpassed exponentially the gradually escalating rates of previous periods.”  Sven Birkerts, the author of The Gutenberg Elegies and a critic of electronic text, emphasizes how quickly our society is advancing.  Life is affected by technology in an infinite number of ways and everyone has a different opinion on whether those effects are positive or negative.  Everyone can agree on the fact that technology is advancing because it has happened during our lifetime and we have witnessed the advancement in phones, music players, and television.  The Internet in itself was a huge milestone, and less than 20 years after its introduction to the public people can use their phones to access the Internet to check their email, download music, and play games.  It is obvious that society is constantly changing as a result of technology, but is it changing too fast?
Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl demonstrates how quickly technology has advanced in the past 15 years.  The Internet allows people to link to countless sites with just the click of a button, and while Patchwork Girl does this to some extent, it is much more limited than society is accustomed to.  The StorySpace program allows the user to navigate to different text boxes without having to follow the traditional line-by-line format that most novels use.  Jackson purposefully uses the program in order to intrigue the reader and give him/her a different type of reading experience.  While it may have done that for people when it first came out, those who read it now find it more frustrating than intriguing.

compost for 11/14

I will be using Birkerts to refute the effectiveness of Patchwork Girl.

-pg 214 of GE:

“I see instead a steady displacement of old by new, a generational pressure that escalates, its momentum gathers as the members of te old dispensation age and die off.”

“The rate of change, social and technological, has surpassed exponentially the gradually escalating rates of previous periods.”

-pg 219 of GE:

“By degrees — it is happening year by year, appliance by appliance — we are wiring ourselves into a gigantic hive.”

Society is constantly changing as a result of technology, but is it changing too fast???

I’m not going to go into depth about the actual story of Patchwork Girl; I’m going to focus more on the StorySpace program and how things are set up. People are not satisfied with Patchwork Girl as a technological text. It was only published 15 years ago, but we’ve come so far in so few years that it seems archaic to us. We need more! PG is very limiting and only allows you to link to different parts of the text; we are used to being able to link to anywhere on the internet. The internet is a vast network of information that we surf and browse around every day. We are not used to having limits on where we can travel to and what information we can learn about. Our society constantly craves more; we want things faster and better than they were yesterday.

Is it really such a bad thing that we’re putting ourselves into this electronic “hive”?

What are some possible negatives about electronic dependency?

-human interaction has changed: it’s becoming less personal (less face-to-face interaction) but also much more convenient and easy to communicate with others (telephones, cellphones, AIM, video chat, etc)

-people are less productive

-increased dependence on technology (calculators are a good example for this)

Possible positives include:

-more convenient communication

-quick and effective ways of getting information

For example, I just searched the internet to find articles which state the positives and negatives of technology. It doesn’t get much easier than typing a few words in a search engine… =]

I’m thinking about looking more into the Domino Effect. Wikipedia’s definition- “The domino effect is a chain reaction that occurs when a small change causes a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence.”

writing project 3 as of oct 22

Creativity and Sound
Creativity is an imperative component of all enjoyable films and novels because it engages the audience.  The human imagination is limitless and no two people think in exactly the same manner.  Everyone has different ideas, morals, and experiences, causing each individual to interpret text in a manner that is unique to his own self.  The author of a novel inserts his own ingenuity into the novel when he writes it.  The reader then creates his own distinct picture in his head and sometimes infers unwritten aspects of the story with a bit of prompting from the author.  What, then, happens when one of those readers decides to create a film that conveys his personal interpretation of the story?  How can he get the audience to agree with his point of view?  In the film version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the director attempts to convey unusual concepts about the novel to the viewers by way of sound, a technique that is exclusive to the film version of the text.
While immersed in a novel, the reader develops his own idea of what the setting and characters look like.  Imagination plays an important role in the way the story is interpreted.  Even though every individual who reads Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is looking at the same words on the same pages, each person interprets the story in a different way.  While some may believe the book focuses on Victor and Elizabeth’s relationship, others might think that it is mainly about the monster’s loneliness and seclusion; neither is wrong.  There are many different aspects of the story that the audience can become interested in.

These are notes:
The use of music and sound in the film version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein helps dramatize the story and enhance the audience’s reaction to the text.  While reading a novel, the reader develops his own idea of what the setting and characters look like.  They have a creative part in the story.  When watching a movie, the entire audience is seeing the exact same thing.  Interpretation of the film may be different for each individual, but it is much more uniform than a novel’s interpretation.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein movie, for example, looks at the storyline from the director’s perspective; it is one unique approach to the novel that the director wants everyone else to understand.  Some movies may leave certain aspects up to the audience’s imagination, but for the most part the film makes people come to the same, if not similar, conclusions.
There is a lot of setup in a film which is meant to evoke certain emotions from the audience.  Dramatic music leads up to a scary scene and a loud, sudden noise sounds when something pops out of the shadows.  Watching a horror movie without sound is much less frightening than watching the same film with the volume turned all the way up.

Compost for 3rd paper

The use of music and sound in the film version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein helps dramatize the story and enhance the audience’s reaction to the text. While reading a novel, the reader develops his own idea of what the setting and characters look like. They have a creative part in the story. When watching a movie, the entire audience is seeing the exact same thing. Interpretation of the film may be different for each individual, but it is much more uniform than a novel’s interpretation.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein movie, for example, looks at the storyline from the director’s perspective; it is one unique approach to the novel that the director wants everyone else to understand. Some movies may leave certain aspects up to the audience’s imagination, but for the most part the film makes people come to the same, if not similar, conclusions.

There is a lot of setup in a film which is meant to evoke certain emotions from the audience. Dramatic music leads up to a scary scene and a loud, sudden noise sounds when something pops out of the shadows. Watching a horror movie without sound is much less frightening than watching the same film with the volume turned all the way up.

draft for intertext

Labeled
This flawed world is filled with an infinite number of imperfect people. But if nobody is perfect, why do so many people feel the need to pass judgment on others? It is an inevitable occurrence and usually happens before one realizes it. Everyone forms an opinion when they first meet someone; we like to call this our ‘first impression’, which makes it sound much less severe than a ‘first judgment’ or ‘first label’. Whether they will admit to it or not, everyone forms opinions about other people based upon their appearance, style of dress, friends, etc. Everyone is liable to be subjected to these labels, as well. The monster of Frankenstein is no stranger to judgment, and suffers major consequences as a result. Even when the monster acts with good intentions, others fear him and refuse to give him a chance to be accepted.
“I was scarcely hid when a young girl came running towards the spot where I was concealed, laughing, as if she ran from someone in sport. She continued her course along the precipitous sides of the river, when suddenly her foot slipped, and she fell into the rapid stream. I rushed from my hiding-place and with extreme labour, from the force of the current, saved her and dragged her to shore. She was senseless, and I endeavoured by every means in my power to restore animation, when I was suddenly interrupted by the approach of a rustic, who was probably the person from whom she had playfully fled. On seeing me, he darted towards me, and tearing the girl from my arms, hastened towards the deeper parts of the wood. I followed speedily, I hardly knew why; but when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at my body and fired. I sank to the ground, and my injurer, with increased swiftness, escaped into the wood” (122).
The rustic man judges him before understanding who or what he is, what his intentions are, and what he has gone through in his life. Unfortunately, many people do not take the time to get to know and understand others before they label them as a certain kind of person. Oftentimes, labeling results in the person becoming exactly what people believed he was in the first place. This phenomenon is known as the labeling theory. It is a sociological theory defined as the hypothesis that “the labels applied to individuals influence their behavior and, particularly the application of negative or stigmatizing labels, promote deviant behavior.” The monster is becoming the “self-fulfilling prophecy” that the theory describes (wikipedia- entry for ‘labeling theory’). He attempts to be helpful, but he becomes very frustrated when the rustic man shoots him while he is trying to save the girl. The man’s assumption that he has bad intentions dispirits the monster and provokes his resistance to people.
“This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. But the agony of my wound overcame me; my pulses paused, and I fainted” (123).
The monster’s rebellion is a result of the way he has been mistreated during his lifetime. Everyone he comes into contact with is afraid of him, including his creator, and this causes him to commit crimes and other deviant behavior. If the monster had not been forced into such a lonely life, he would not have become a murderous, vengeful creature. He was never given a chance to be accepted because others were extremely quick to judge him.

compost for intertextual paper

There is a definite parallelism between the monster in Frankenstein and Satan/Lucifer in Paradise Lost. Both characters were fine when they were created and become negative products of their environments. Lucifer was an angel turned devil, as was the monster. After reading Paradise Lost I’m really starting to wonder if the monster decided to react the way he did to Frankenstein’s neglect because of what he read in Paradise Lost. The monster was so loved while he was being constructed and then so feared and loathed when he finally came to life after years and years of work. It’s like the poem planted the seed in the monster’s head. Lucifer leads a war against God, while the monster pretty much wages war on Frankenstein. I get that he felt neglected, but did he really have to kill everyone that Frank knew and loved?!

The way that the monster was treated definitely made him become that evil killing machine. I think that both characters, Lucifer and the monster, just wanted to be accepted. They were both rejected from society and were friendless. “To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate.” It’s obvious that he craves affection when he requests that Frank make him a female companion. Both the monster and Lucifer want to be equal to their creators, which leads to their banishment. Lucifer did not understand why he could not be God’s equal, just as the monster did not understand why everyone feared him and did not understand him. Obviously he cannot be on the same level as his creator. Sure, he can read, speak, and whatever. He was an experiment. Maybe Satan was an experiment, as well. They were both failures apparently.

What does it mean to be a failure? What does it been to be accepted? Why is it so important to be accepted by the people around you? Why is it wrong to be alone? Why do both characters turn into bad people/beings because they were treated badly? Wouldn’t it be more of a slap in the face for their creators if they just showed how great they were instead of proving their creator’s point? It’s like the labelling theory that I learned about in Sociology. When people are labelled they feel like they must fulfill that label even if they weren’t really that way to begin with. For example, if a kid is labelled as a bad influence as a child, he is going to hear it enough and become that bad influence just because that’s what people expect of him. I don’t know where I’m going with this…

I think that everyone certainly is a product of their environment. Some just choose to go along with the way they were raised, and some decide to rebel, whether that results in them being “good” or “bad”. What are the definitions of good and bad? Good is defined as “to be desired or approved of” and bad means “of poor quality; inferior or defective”. Although the definitions seem to be pretty straightforward, these are very subjective terms. Everyone has their own idea of good and bad. So what are Lucifer and the monster? Of course eveeeeryone is going to say that Satan is bad, but is that because of what he did or just because everyone else says that he is bad? Why are these characters bad? Is it really their fault?

Draft for Autobiography

Maybe our generation has not gotten into reading and writing as much as past generations because we have not been taught that we can read or write at our own leisure.   I have never written anything for my own pleasure; all of my writing has been the direct result of a school assignment.  Nobody likes to be criticized, hence the fact I do not know a single person who enjoys writing papers for school.  The red pen marks are extremely frightening to see when a paper is returned after hours and hours of late-night work, at least that’s how it always is for me.  I have spent countless late nights writing and brainstorming only to see it given back to me a week later with what seem to be millions of red marks all over the pages.  It is frustrating for us as writers to see our thoughts crossed out and relentlessly judged.  This system has made us as a whole very self-conscious of our work; it is difficult to completely show what we are about when we know we could, and probably will be, shot down and told that we are wrong.

Teachers have always tried to tell us exactly how to write.  They have never allowed us to use our creativity and stray from the straightforward and, in my opinion, boring style.  They seem to want all essays to be in the same format and do not let students know that it is possible to be different and still get the point across.  Many of us find it difficult to stay within the boundaries of that generic structure and become discouraged because we have been forced to believe that that is the only way to write effectively.  We do not even realize that it is possible to write about something that we actually care and are passionate about.

As a high school student I was never given a choice about the topic of my papers, that is, until my senior year when we wrote a creative piece.   We had the choice of writing a fable, a short story, or a myth.  It was the most freedom I had ever been given for a writing assignment.  However, it was already too late by then; I had been told that I needed to write in such a specific way for the first 17 years of my life that I did not know where to begin.  The truth is that I did not even write the paper myself.  I got a friend to write it for me and I turned it in after I corrected errors with the syntax and grammar.  I am far from being a good creative writer because I was never taught how to do so.

We were always dissuaded from using personal experiences in our writing, a skill that I believe would have been useful to my creativity.  I envy those individuals in our generation who write poetry; most of us are afraid to show our true emotions and therefore shy away from any kind of creative writing.  Perfection has always been the goal for the type of writing that we do in school and it is difficult to define perfection for creative writing.  Is there a happy medium between creativity and perfection, or is there just a completely different definition of perfection for creative pieces?  Teachers have taught us that there is a thick line drawn between these two types of writing and most of us have yet to realize that we can intertwine them.  Many of us feel frustrated when we write papers for school, and that is the part we remember about the whole experience.

In the Gutenberg Elegies, Sven Birkerts admits that, as he has gotten older, he “value[s] the state a book puts [him] in more than [he] value[s] the specific contents” (pg. 84).  The feeling that a person gets from reading or writing is more memorable than the words themselves.  I do not remember exactly what happened in the books I read when I was younger, nor do I remember the titles of the books that I read.  What I do recollect are the feelings of excitement I got while I read the books, not wanting to put them down because I was anxious to know what was going to happen next.  The same principle applies to life itself.  We do not remember all of the specific events in our life, even if they had an important impact on us.  What we do know is how we felt at that moment, during that period of time.  I was only 13 when my dad passed away; he struggled to beat leukemia and lymphoma for 18 months before he died.  Yes, of course I remember some specific things from this time in my life, but sometimes my mom tells me about things that happened while he was sick, and I cannot remember.  What I do know is how difficult it was for me and how depressed I was during those 18 months and for so many months after his death.   If I cannot even remember details from such a pivotal time in my life, I am not going to remember what exactly happened in a book that I spent 3 hours reading.  All I remember is how I felt.

We associate those past experiences and feelings with things that we see or hear in the present.  When I get frustrated, my mind brings me back to that time when I could not think of something to write about or when I had to read a tediously long book.  Forced reading and writing causes us to dislike the entire concept of reading and writing, when these activities should truly be done on our own terms and for our own pleasure.  In Gutenberg Elegies Birkerts says that reading, “when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and to set off toward it”(pg. 80).  The real definition of reading, and writing as well, is to do so voluntarily and without being required by any other person or entity.  Too many young writers and readers have been intimidated by society’s expectations of perfection.  We should not have to read 18th century literature to be considered readers.

We read things every single day; we read our e-mails, movies, and newspapers (online or print).  We should not be frowned upon for taking an interest in things other than long, boring novels.  If past generations had had the opportunity to do so, they would have taken it, too.  We have access to so much information, and we are being criticized for taking advantage of it.  We read stuff on the Internet because it is what we enjoy reading, and those of us who can write creatively do it because they like to!  We need to teach ourselves how to be true readers and writers; we should do it for our own satisfaction in addition to completing school assignments.  If we want to get away from those red pen marks and criticism, we have to do it on our own.

Compost #1

So I read “The Woman in the Garden” chapter in GE. Birkerts writes as a completely different person. He seems much less arrogant and even seems to contradict alot of what he said in the beginning couple chapters. I have alot of questions about this chapter because of that…

So, the image of the woman reading in the garden signifies intelligence, but doesn’t the image of someone sitting at a computer convey the same message??? Scratch that, it signifies SUPER intelligence. The book is “unmarked, unidentified– a generic signifier” (pg78). So why does he consider this to be true reading? There’s no way for him to tell what the woman is reading. There is no way for him to tell what we (the computer users and “non-readers”) read while we’re on the internet. Whatever book the woman is reading may or MAY NOT be up to his standards of reading. The same goes for the stuff that we read. How does he have the audacity to say that we don’t read when he doesn’t know what really goes on.

On page 80 he states his definition of reading. “To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and to set off toward it… To open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one’s life or of one’s orientation toward it.” He defines reading as opening a book. Why does it have to be a book? I think that reading is reading, no matter where, why, or how you do it. Is writing not really writing unless it’s about something revolutionary, life-changing, etc? This is the most writing I have done in a while. It doesn’t even really feel like I’m doing it as an assignment because I can just write about what I feel and think. I tried making notes on paper while I was reading, but I would much rather have done my notes on a computer.

I think that technology facilitates the older technologies of reading and writing. “What makes this miracle possible is the shared medium, language. Language is the landmass that is continuous under our feet and the feet of others and allows us to get to each other’s places” (pg82). What’s wrong with doing things the easy way?! I think those commercials about “hitting the easy button” are really funny, don’t you?

I also think that technology has taught us to be much more efficient. He talks about two different “voices– ours and the author’s”. He explains that it takes people a while to really get into books and how we “must activate our sense memories”. Maybe we have just taught ourselves, BY WAY OF TECHNOLOGY, to become fully immersed in things much more quickly so we can “build our own books” faster and without reading as many words. Maybe our imaginations have grown as a result of technology; it’s much easier to be exposed to different types of material and information. We’re sooo much smarter as a whole today than we were before the internet and before any of this other new technology.

pg 84 “If anything has changed about my reading over the years, it is that I value the state a book puts me in more than I value the specific contents. Indeed I often find that a novel, even a well-written and compelling novel, can become a blur to me soon after I’ve finished it. I recollect perfectly the feeling of reading it, the mood I occupied, but I am less sure about the narrative details.”

I must agree with his statement. I am the same way; sometimes I cannot even remember what the characters names are 10 minutes after I watch a movie. So, what is wrong with wanting to get those feelings while spending less time being occupied by the book itself with all of it’s details and whatnot?