3/2/2010

Xanadu is similar to Hollywood movies; it refers to the imaginary space and time of worlds that are created in a story.
Diegesis names the part of the story that stays the same throughout different translations.
Where is xanadu?
1) It was the capital city of Kubla Khan
2) It was the “holy caves of ice” in Kashmir
3) It was Mount Abora
4) It was Alachua County, in Gainesville, Florida
Chora is a theoretical invention that has been revived in Electasy
Mystory is a personalized, secularized cosmogony
Present location is psycho-geography; it is part physical and part spiritual
The xanadu comsosgram updates the memory palaces of manuscript literacy. The all important difference between manuscript and digital pedagogy is that the memorial practices of the former aided the living memory of orators, while the latter aid the artificial unconscious egents.
The following schemas are listed in the preferred order for literate American culture, passing from most highly controlled to loosest mode of order.
1) Argument
2) Narrative
3) Character
4) Musical
5) Image

2/23/2010

Narrative
Widesite composition is a narrative process.
Mystory in the context of the EmerAgency brings the egent into an explicit relationship with the process of identify formation, both individual and collective.
Home (Page) Sick
Homepage has become an obsolete term. It is essentially the same as calling a car a horseless carriage.
Making a decision is a focused sequence with foru elements recalled by the acrony TOTE:
1) Test or reality check of my desires
2) Operate
3) Test (Repeated)
4) Exist
Students start out in the home and are raised there; they likely stay there as well if it were not for the driving force of society compelling them to a university.
Mystory is working to replace the purpose that allegory has served in the past. It is there to allow people of the modern world to find their place in the world and in history. This similarity between the two has caused many medieval comparison of allegory to mystory.
Allegory popcycle
Literal=School (elementary through secondary levels)
Allegory=Entertainment (commercialized information and story)
Moral=Family (biography of the individual)
Anagogy=Career (disciplinary knowledge)
The mystory of James Joyce was structured as followed
1) History (school, community)
2) Church
3) Family
4) Career
Micro Narratives: No more than 300 words, establishes the key details of a situation, locates and develops the key features of a scene.

2-16-2010

The transference of information from one medium to another often gives rise to another layer of understanding of that information, neither literal nor figurative. The relationship between otherwise insignificant details and the memories, associations, and emotions of the person viewing this information is what enriches the transfer. A picture can be described in words, but the person doing the describing may miss the one key detail that makes it all click, puts into perspective, for the person hearing the description. It's important to remember that all the information was there from the start; it was simply less visible in one medium than in another. It makes me wonder if, despite this new and rich knowledge coming out of the transfer, there was some other layer of information lost from the original. Putting a spoken tale to print gives the reader the ability to look back to refresh their memory on any part of the story previously told, and it allows for the visual quality of the words to be seen, but is that worth the tradeoff? Speech offers the sound of the language, and while words can be spoken again once they're recorded, those who have not heard the original story may emphasize or emote differently from the original.

Basho's haikus teach us to make use of productive ambiguity, the choice of words through which we may convey a secondary meaning. This is common practice in poetry, but it's only useful in the original language of the poem. Any translations, using a new language, will result in new and different ambiguities, completely apart from anything the author originally intended. This is an interesting parallel to the medium translation - the transference from print to film, spoken word to digital recordings, must be done with great care to ensure translation of intent and meaning as well as literal words. The use of this productive ambiguity can be a great asset or a terrible drawback. Essence is not affected by appearance, but appearance can convey mood, atmosphere, and feeling. There's also this idea of a revelation or epiphany as a device to share mood.

Much of this chapter is dedicated to the discussion of content versus intent - content is a result of and reveals intent. However, intent is widely interpolation from content, which reveals at least as much about the reader (the interpreter) as the writer (the creator, whose intent is being assumed). This raises an interesting question for the mystory: when you are both writer and reader, can you be trusted to find your own intent accurately, or are you reading yourself and your works and guessing at your own motivations?

2/9/2010

According to Ulmer, the first step in creating a mystory is to create a widesite, or "website version of your image of wide scope." The concept of wide scope was developed by Gerald Holton, who argued that every person possesses a guiding set of images that contribute to the person's state of mind or being. He also argued that this wide scope is developed by the time the person reaches the age of 18.
One of the goals of the EmerAgency is to change the school system so that people are assisted in developing their wide scope before entering the work force so that they can better prepare for their career. TheEmerAgency recommends doing this by way of website: hence, the widesite.
The widesite is made up of a series of websites that are each devoted to different areas of one's life. The person doing the work can then look for connections. The first installment of thewidesite relates to the person's career or field of disciplinary knowledge. The assignment Ulmer suggests doing focuses on gathering detailed (not generalized) information aboutpivotal moments in your career or field. He says that it resembles a research topic, except that instead of forming an argument, you are attempting to identify with the information. The project is meant to be personal, subjective, and related to an individual's specific specializations.
Briggs discusses Gerald Holton’s idea of themata. According to Holton, themata are gut assumptions that scientists have about the universe. He believes that these assumptions about the universe start early in childhood and are fairly consistent over time. Themata are not abstractions, but are perceptions that give the person a concrete feel for the surrounding world. Ulmer notes that themata has been found across professions and isn’t just limited to scientists.
DQ: What do you think could be the ideas that shaped some of
the popular superheroes view of the world? Ex. Batman, Superman,…
Interesting point: Page 24- Ulmer believes that “the proof
of the value of an invented term is its use.” He makes a strong point, but he may lose his overall message using invented terms instead of terms that are familiar to his audience. Ex. Language and grammar
Popcycle- the ensemble of all language or meaning-producing
activities into which members of a society are hailing. Hailing- the social or psychological process by which our identity is constructed. I had a teacher in high school who said that most people identify themselves off of the identity of others. This is probably because it is nearly impossible to identify yourself thoroughly without the involvement of your social surroundings. People see themselves reflected in others. We always see ourselves differently than how others see us.
This reminds me of the importance of society. People on their own are pretty much a blank slate; with people to interact with, personalities develop.
Dominant Institutions of the Popcyle: Family, Community,
Entertainment
The actual popcycle is the way ideas that are important to
the culture arise in the institutions
Note: Hailing needs more explanation
According to Ulmer, every institutional discourse has its
own icons which act as emblems for “scripts of normative behavior.” Pg. 26
DQ: What happens when the emblem doesn’t perform as
expected? Or does this never happen because that it the purpose of the emblem?
Grammatology-In this section, Ulmer forewarns readers that a number people do not agree with the following claims that he makes. Ulmer claims that most books are written in a disciplinary voice, that the internet is a book that is written in first person, and he feels that this allworks together to create a practice of electracy and emergancy. Ulmer provide the following as a backing for his stance. He explains how overtime the simplification of Aristotle's and Plato's discoveries and schools have lead to electracy. Ulmer uses the alphabet as an example, which was invented in the 19th century, and was invented to serve as a new type of recording device. This he says is an example of electracy.
Ulmer claims the goal is not to adapt digital technology to literacy. Instead he states how we should discover a new practice that can adequately develop and display the potential of new technology, and not adapt old practices/literacy to new form of technology.a

2/2/2010

Gregory L. Ulmer's text Internet Invention plans to teach us about Electracy. He explains that "electracy is an image apparatus, keeping in mind that 'images' are made with words as well as with pictures" (page 2). The idea of using the internet for the high held "literature" is still new to us. "Literature" with a capital L is usually still seen in society as a published book. We still have more respect for the quality of those pieces than what we find online. Ulmer tells us that now is the time for change. "We should consider this moment as a time for invention" (page 5) and it is us, the students who are here to help invent the future of writing.

Ulmer proposes a plan of education in which we create a mystory. Here, we wish to say "a plan of education that culminates in a mystory" but it cannot culminate as the creation of the mystory is as much a process of the learning as is reading the text. Through the mystory creation process we are to be learning. In this way, discovery and invention are tied together. He is almost creating a perpetual motion machine of creativity. The idea is one of a self-fueling lesson. He asks only that we suspend our disbelief and participate.

The mystory was motivated by the idea of history history being invented in the 20th century, and that if it had been it would have a different aesthetic, "not positivism but quantum relativity; not realism but surrealism." (page 5). The idea of a mystory starts with students mapping out themselves in relation to "Career field or major; Family, Entertainment; community History" (page 6). It will be interesting to see how each of our mystories come to be.

1/26/2010

Blogs as narratives have a unique format because of their structure. Unlike novels, the story of a blog isn’t told all at once. It is episodic. For readers to get the full story, they must read the entire blog post bypost. Each post is simply a fragment, but can offer the reader a view into the blogger’s personal life if the story is pieced together correctly. Rettberg discussed how some blogs have a very clear goal that is stated at the beginning of the creation of the blog. Some examples she discussed were dating blogs and dieting blogs. Each episode or blog post leaves the reader wanting to know what will happen next. The blogger’s struggles with weight or dating become the readers’ struggles and they began to form a connection with the blogger. Unfortunately for the readers, this connection ends when the blogger reaches their goal and ends the blog because he or she no longer has anything to blog about.

Sometimes bloggers who use blogs to tell their story become trapped in the persona that they created for the blog. Rettberg discussed how the author of a blog entitled Chronicles of Dr. Crazy felt limited because she couldn’t discuss her professional

life as much as she wanted, due to the concept of the blog that she had created online. She constantly had to carefully edit her posts. When a blogger feels contained in a space that was originally created for freedom, the end of the blog is near. Dr. Crazy ended up closing that blog and starting a new one where she would feel less constrained.

Dr. Crazy’s blog was a pseudonymous blog. She exposed part of herself, but not enough that anyone would be able to figure out her identity. She was using the blog for self-exploration. Rettberg writes that a reflection of ourselves is created in our blog. Pseudonymous bloggers will expose bits of their personality or crop pictures, only showing the reader what they want the reader to see. However, while Dr. Crazy was using a fake name to keep from being judged for her interests, some pseudonymous bloggers such as Kaycee Nicole create an entire new identity, usually drastically different from their own, as a sort of secret roleplay. The reasons behind this vary, but it seems clear that Kaycee Nicole was an effort for the blogger behind the name to get friends, feeling that her true identity or personality prevented this in some way. However, lonelygirl15's case shows that there are other reasons, such as a team of people experimenting with alternate forms of storytelling.

So far, this book has illustrated several uses for blogs: diary-style recountings of an individual's life, lists of interesting or relevant links, news blogs, a diary for a secretly fictional person, and even an acknowledged fictional diary as a form of storytelling. However, some people use their blogs as a way to make some extra cash or promote their own products. Dooce was presented earlier in the book as an example of a someone making money through advertising on their blog, but now we learn about referral fees, PayPerPost advertising, and spammer accounts. Some bloggers review products and get paid as the agent that referred a customer to the site. Spammer accounts leave links to the product or website being promoted, both in their blog and as comments on other blogs, as an effort to lead readers to the product/website or simply to up the popularity rating of the target site on search engines, which assume that more links means a better site. However, because search engines are becoming more efficient at sorting out spammed links from others, efforts such as PayPerPost, as the name suggests, pays bloggers for each post reviewing a specific product.

While some businesses pay bloggers for advertisement space, others write their own blogs in an effort to gain attention for their products, events, and company. Business blogs are a way for companies to establish, maintain, and grow relationships with their customers. They are also a way for companies to participate in conversations that are taking place online. Corporate blogs allow companies to bypass the traditional media outlets and speak directly to their consumers.

According to Rettberg, businesses try to maintain the personal character of blogs. Very large companies will sometimes try to have separate blogs for different topics, have employees take turns at contributing, or not have an official corporate blog at all, but just encourage their employees to create their own blogs to write about their career experience and interests. Many companies have guidelines for their employees who blog, but sometimes it is the company itself that acts dishonestly. Rettberg discussed the incident the Wal-Mart sponsored blog where neither the couple writing it nor the company sponsoring it disclosed that Wal-Mart was paying this couple to write about them. The lack of transparency shown by Wal-Mart showed the importance of establishing ethical guidelines for employees.

It seems likely that blogging will continue into the future, though the particular mechanisms are likely to change. People seem to enjoy participating in media and sharing their lives and opinions. It is likely that certain trends will continue - diversity is increasing, implicit data collection sites (such as Last.fm) are only beginning to be used to their full potential, and the customizations from search engines such as Google and Amazon are getting more and more accurate and useful.

1/19/2010

While it may seem that bloggers are writing in a diary or personal journal, the reality is that their blogs are a means of social interaction, ranging from large audiences to small networks of friends. Mark Granovetter theorizes that weak ties between individuals are more important than strong ties, because if a blogger posts something that a close friend reposts, approximately the same group of people will see it; if a more distant ("weak tie") friend reposts, a very different group of people will be able to add their opinions. This is most apparent in the number of links leading back to the original blog - with more weak tie friends, the news gets out to a wider variety of people, who are then likely to share the link with their friends. Having more links is commonly equated with being more powerful in the blogosphere.

Because of this system of bloggers linking to one another, it is clear that there is no central hub in the blogging world; this is a distributed network, the category that is becoming more and more popular. An example of the other main category - a centralized network - would be a news body such as CNN, in which all pieces link back to this central hub. With the interlinking in blogging systems, the tendency of a blog to be like a book is minimized. Despite the blogger not being able to have immediate access to his readers and the blog's persistence in archives, linking among blogs reduces the solo feeling of a printed book and allows for a social network to be created.

Some social networks (for example, Myspace and Facebook) include blogging features but place more emphasis on the other parts of their sites, such as photo, video, and music capabilities. Like some blogs, these websites allow for privacy settings so that only mutual friends or even further restrictions of 'custom friend groups' can view certain content. dinah boyd presents four characteristics of online social spaces that differentiate them from offline social spaces:

1. Persistence - Content posted to the internet may stay there even after the author attempts to delete it

2. Searchability - The internet may be searched for people and used to locate what content they have added

3. Replicable - Any photos or writings posted may be modified or copied without the author's knowledge

4. Invisible Audiences - It is never 100% certain who is viewing the blog and its profile.

One danger of online and offline social networking is that when they collide, the effect on a person may be large. For example, some bloggers have been fired for what they have shared online, and many teenagers do not wish for their mothers to use the same sites as them to conceal certain personal information. Many bloggers are familiar with the constant juggling act required to keep on and offline social circles from intersecting painfully. Perhaps more interesting, however, is the theoretical side of the whole issue - where will blogs and other online social networks be ten, twenty, even fifty years from now?

Bloggers are increasingly being seen as similar to journalists, because both tell a story in every piece of writing they compose. However, bloggers often have more freedom in their writings, whereas journalists are restrained in length and subject area. Yet many people find journalists more credible than bloggers who aren't associated with a publishing or news company. One of the most important differences between bloggers and journalists relates to "gatewatching" - the controls that govern journalism and other forms of traditional media to ensure proper research and writing prior to publication. While there are no stringent or official regulations for blogs, Alex Burns explains that an informal gatewatching occurs simply through viewer interest. Bloggers also can sometimes find fault and/or inaccuracy in traditional media reporting, which adds another levelof gatewatching. B logs written by by individuals do often link to more mainstream media, but it is important to also note that they often link to other blogger's sites on these stories instead of the actual mainstream media. Larger sites suchas Slashdot tend to have more "gatewatching" than smaller sites which does cut down on this.

Overall, blogs can often serve much the same purposes as traditional media. They allow citizens to voice their opinions and bring to light controversial subject matters. Both blogs and mainstream media must gauge the responsiveness of their audiences. Rettberg argues that these two forms of media equally need each other to thrive. Yet only 5% of bloggers consider themselves journalists; this is not yet a common issue and has only rarely been a legal problem. Even bloggers who are experiencing an event first-hand (for example, a student at Columbine during the shootings) believe that they are just sharing their life, not reporting on an incident for all the world to read. The future will probably bring a legal definition for which bloggers are and which aren't journalists, but in the meantime, it may be best to refer to these people in the way in which they refer to themselves