composition stuff

Hello all,

I’m going to try something different this time in my discussion of the text.  Instead of just running down what the text said, I’m going to approach it a bit more personally.  By this, I mean that I want to compare the process introduced by Syverson to the process I went through in learning College Comp 1 as a freshman 6 years ago at Rowan.  For this week, we read the first 3 chapters of Margaret Syverson’s The Wealth of Reality: an Ecology of Composition.  I have to say that based on the title, I really had no idea what to expect. Based on the bookcover, which looks like a printed picture of synthetic wood grain, I was expecting even less.  Still, the old saying, “don’t judge a book by its cover”, rings true.  I know that sounds cheesy, but for anyone that’s seen this cover, it’s certainly one of the most ill-advised pieces of graphical work you’ve ever seen.  Still, the book is informative, and presents a way at looking at composition studies that I had not yet been exposed to.

Syverson presents a different way of looking at composition.  Instead of explaining that writing is a contained process on the part of a writer and his text that exists within a vacuum of isolation, the author argues the opposite.  Instead, writing is a culmination of many things: author, ideas (notice the difference; in Syverson’s estimation, the author and the author’s ideas are separate entities), sources, upbringing, prior experience, emerging experience, context, physical environment, mental environment, and peers.  While Syverson may have mentioned more, I have at least presented the basic idea.  What Syverson discusses most is how these various factors interact and react with one another and how the author negotiates these considerations and produces a text.  Essentially she argues that the composition of a text is an interplay of sorts, with the author being a facilitator and organizer rather than a creator.  While I don’t know if I agree with this entirely, I do like the fresh perspective.

First, Syverson talked about the experiences of Charles Reznikoff, a Russian Jew that grew up in New York in an era when the population was exploding.  Reznikoff’s experiences and by extension, his writing were an amalgamation of his social and economic situation, his religious beliefs, the influences of his Russian-born parents, of his fellow Russian Jews, and of social hardships he faced by Jews that came to the US before him.  Against this rich social tapestry, we can see Reznikoff’s development take turns that may not have made sense otherwise.

After presenting this example, Syverson talks about some of her experiences teaching a first year writing class at a first-rate state university.  From what she was saying, the university she taught at was probably a little more selective than Rowan, probably more on par with TCNJ, with most students in the top 12% of their high schools in California.  Still, I think I can roughly compare my experience with that of the students Syverson discusses.

Syverson explains first the importance of composition in a college setting, and how this class was set up to best equip students in negotiating the news spheres in which they would be expected to write.  The class was small, with no more than 16, and students were then broken into groups of three or so.  Writing was a highly collaborative and communicative process.  While the essay about noise in the dorm room was perceived by most everyone involved as lackluster, I thought the process was interesting.  The students, who all seemed to be pretty motivated and responsible, worked together on all of the essays.  They bounced ideas off each other and the professor.  I think they developed a more well rounded idea of the writing process and the importance of dealing with opposition than I did at that age.

As mentioned before, I think that I was somewhat shortchanged as a freshman, and this came back to haunt me later.  While these students had to constantly rework and rewrite things, I think that looking back, this process helped them all as writers.  On the contrary, it seems that CC1 and CC2 at Rowan were more concerned with just getting the students at a certain level of proficiency, as opposed to teaching them about the process.  When I came into the classes, I was ahead of the curve, and I got A’s in both classes without any problem.  Later on, with my history work, I faced a pretty steep learning curve, and it wasn’t until the end that I feel it all “clicked” for me.  Maybe it’s not fair that I’m criticizing my CC1 and CC2 (college composition 1 and college composition 2) classes, as they certainly made sure I was good enough to write in college.  I don’t know.  I do know that while I had a good sense of diction and wordplay, my organization skills needed a lot of work.

hypertext–perfect for the add generation

Hello All,

After being exposed to some of hypertext’s theories, we were introduced to hypertext literature, and I have to say, I’m confused.  I understand the concept of a branching storyline, and I think that’s great.  With a branching storyline, everyone starts in the same place, but will end up in one of several destinations.  Decisions you make in the text will determine where the story takes you in this type of setting.  While this makes sense, and sounds really cool (at least to me), the hypertext literature that our class was exposed to was not so much.

For the Unknown reading, we were presented with a block of text.  Fair enough.  However, the page had approximately 20-30 hyperlinked words on the page.  Whenever you clicked on one word, the rest of the passage would change.  It was really a never-ending, meandering story.  It was cool because I’m sure that everyone that read the text would have either a slightly different or an extremely different experience with the reading.  They bad thing is that we probably didn’t read the whole thing.  If our class read something from Eliot, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, or Lewis, we would all be talking about the same text, the only difference is that we’d be talking out our own interpretations of the text, or our likes or dislikes.  Hypertext is more akin to one person reading Eliot, another McLuhan, another Chaucer, and another, a wikipedia article.

Trying to read the Jew’s Daughter was worse.  While clicking on the Unknown text caused the page to change, just scrolling over the hyperlinked words of this text entirely reconfigured it.  It was extremely difficult for me to follow it, and it was extremely jarring as well.  I would there to be a somewhat linear path that I could deviate from at my leisure as opposed to this wholesale reconstruction.

I thought the Landow book was a bit dryer this time, though there were some things I found that were extremely exciting.  Landow’s explanation of how (in the due process of time) every book were put online, it could change scholarship forever.  For example, Landow says it would be possible to look at a book online, and see a footnote that seems to be interesting.  You could then click on the footnote and the whole text would come up.  For that book, many others were consulted, and the search would continue.  This conceivably could make research easier than ever before.  The prospect of using the inherent strengths of the computer to make research easier is very exciting for me.

However, as good as the prospect of making research easier online is, I fear that it could erode the set of checks and balances we have with the current academic peer review system.  If one wants to publish a book from a university press, it must first be peer reviewed by other experts in the field.  This process is indispensable to maintaining the high level of scholarship we enjoy in our academic books today (wenger and fleck notwithstanding–haha).

This democratization of information is great, the potential bastardization of information is not.

The Information Age and the Democratization of Information

Hello All,

I had my first computer-related mini tragedy last night. I was working on a post about the information age and politics and the democratization of information. I was very happy with the post, and I was developing some ideas that I had been mulling around for some time. Then, my windows updates restarted my computer, and it was lost. I didn’t save it as I went, so I lost the whole thing. I thought the wordpress program saves it automatically, and that I didn’t need to. I thought wrong.

Anyway, I will try to piece together the piece I was working on last night.

The Age of Information has ushered in an exciting time. With the advent of the Internet, much of the world’s knowledge is at our fingertips, and this canon of prior knowledge is growing online, as is the canon of human knowledge in general. One may now read news (both mainstream and from other, lesser hear points of view), read literature, history, encyclopedias, use dictionaries, see maps, learn about math, physics, chemistry, biology, or any other academic discipline. In the past, one had to be wealthy to afford college, and needed to own a large library of books. This is no longer the case, and all one needs now is a computer and an internet connection. Actually, you don’t even need a computer, just a library card, then you may use the internet and read a great many books.

Knowledge, then is no longer for the elites, it is for the masses. Karl Marx would be beside himself. Recent developments make his work and that of his co-writer Engels less relevant all the time. Knowledge is quickly becoming democratized.

Many feel that the growing wealth gap between the rich and poor is an unfortunate situation and needs to be amended. The Liberal/Democratic response to this is to implement a graduated income tax in which more wealthy people are taxed a higher percentage of their income. This effectively punishes wealthy people for their success. The “Conservative”/Republican response to this is to give the wealthier people tax breaks so that they may have more money to invest, creating more jobs for less wealthy. This is my rudimentary understanding of the “trickle-down” effect. I use the term conservative in quotes because I don’t think that the Republicans are representing conservatives well, and have effectively branched out into another ideological sphere. The only “real” conservative that attempted to nab the Republican nomination is Ron Paul, but that deserves another post. Anyway, the point is that we have a problem, the growing wealth gap, and we have two competing parties that have very different ideas as to how to remedy the situation.

Some have hailed the information age as the beginning of the end of social and economic inequality. I hope that this is the case to an extent, but I’m not confident that it is. I don’t think that social inequality in and of itself is the problem. A perceived lack of opportunity is the problem. With more and more information available online now costing essentially nothing, people have more opportunities to learn outside the classroom than ever before. The ushering in of the information age will essentially make more people more competitive for better schools, and in turn, for better jobs.

This “new world” of more equal opportunities will undoubtedly change many things about the spheres of education and the workplace.  This is a good thing, to be sure.  It will turn our society into more of a meritocracy, a society in which people are awarded solely on merit.  It will not however, act as a socialist-style implement to redistribute wealth just because the opportunity is there.  The sad truth is that even though more people can become successful, it does not necessarily mean that they will choose to.

When I started my undergraduate work, people would often ask me what I was studying.  “History,” I would reply, quickly adding, “but I want to be a lawyer.”  I felt strange for telling people the truth,  “Yeah, I want to be a lawyer, but I enjoy studying history because I enjoy knowing how the world became the way it did.”  People thought that was strange.  Even other college students thought it was strange.  History students thought it was strange as well when I told them I had no interest in becoming a history teacher.

While my experiences should in no way serve as a yardstick for our culture, they do illustrate a certain point: the quest for knowledge for the sake of knowledge is perceived in many circles as strange, if it does not directly correlate to a more lucrative career.  With this assumption in place, I can see the wealth gap increasing.  This gap will not be based on racial differences, gender differences, religious affiliation, or sexual orientation.  A new gap will emerge, based primarily on two groups: those that wish to learn, and those that wish to remain ignorant.

Lasers are cool, but expensive, and finicky. Controversy surrounds Laser Defense Systems in Israel

Hello All,

Perhaps I should look to news outlets that are not wired.com and the BBC for my information.  Maybe not.  To my knowledge, they haven’t led me astray, and I have as much respect for mainstream US news as I do for drug dealers that sell to kids, or for prostitutes that talk about their “career” or for people that don’t tip.  This week, I stumbled upon several stories about the prospect of using some sort of laser defense system in Israel.  The newest story talks about how the Israeli town of Sderot is suing both its government and that of Egypt’s for damages it endured after terrorists’ rockets hit the town.  Several other stories on wired.com show that there is an ongoing controversy whether to use the THEL laser defense system or not.  This brings to mind the “star wars” missile defense system that was researched by the Reagan administration in the 1980s.

I thought it was cool reading, because everyone raised watching Star Wars or Star Trek loves lasers.  However, the whole situation brings up some interesting questions.  For one, I have to ask at what cost are these laser defense systems costing?  Also, I wonder how long until these types of defense mechanisms are viable.  While they seem to be just barely viable now, considering how technology improves so frequently, it should be expected that defense systems like these will only improve.

Still, I worry about a world in which lasers and rockets and bombs are so necessary.  As a student of history I understand the crucial role that war has played over the years.  War has been a very necessary part of human history up until this point.  When one country decides to overtake another, a war needs to be waged on the part of the victim to ensure freedom.  When one colony wishes to cast off the yoke of its imperial oppressor, it too must take up arms.  When one powerful nation wishes to wipe out another, this too may be a cause to another powerful nation to wage war and prevent a genocide.  In history we see very just wars fought frequently.

However, this line between what is a just war and what is not a just war has become blurred over the years.  In this country, the question over who has the authority to wage wars has been blurred as well.  In the past, a war could only be waged if the Congress agreed.  Now, things are different, and the President may take action in the event that he or she deems it necessary.  The War on Terror has opened up more questions about war.

I think it is necessary to ask the tough questions before going to war, as do most people.   I also think that people should look into these issues regarding the warmaking powers of the president.  While we may or may not agree with the war waging presently, we owe it to ourselves to begin taking steps to take this power away from the president and restore it to the Congress.  I haven’t the answer now as how to implement this idea.  I know only that it must be done, somehow. I will look into this, and if anyone with political or legal experience that eclipses my own (I imagine that is many of you), I am willing to listen.

Virtual Worlds and Real Life Questions

Editor’s note: I published this before I spell-checked, and needed to fix some problems.  My apologies to online purists, but I couldn’t stand to leave these problems unfixed.

I have to first address the “Rape in Cyberspace” article. I was having trouble putting myself in these people’s shoes, and got very frustrated with the article. It kind of reminded me of a bad horror movie. “Stop!” “Don’t do it!” “Run.” “Kill the jerk!” Those are my typical responses to seeing a horror movie, and they were the responses that I had when reading Julian Dibbel’s “Rape in Cyberspace.” I couldn’t understand how these adult women would allow themselves to be put in an uncomfortable position by a stranger many hundreds of miles away. It was surreal to say the least. However, when I got past that, I was able to understand the thrust of the article better, namely, that people take on personae in the virtual world that is somewhat different than the real world, and that the rules of the Virtual World do not always match up with the real world. It was interesting however to not the pseudo-sophisticated social structure that had developed between the 30 or so players in the MOO.

The Engelbart demos were really cool and showed technologies that we now take for granted in their early, prototype-state. Seeing that demo in 1968 must have been like walking onto the set of a science fiction movie. Super cool.

I thought the wired article by Sherry Turkle, “Who am We?” was also highly Germaine to our discussions. The discussion of how people act different in virtual spaces as opposed to real life was fascinating for me. This was probably the first time any sort of psychological study was in any was interesting to me. I also tried to understand the perspective of the kids that Turkle interviewed. From what I gathered, the kids she interviewed were between 10 and 13 when she did her research, and when that paper was published in 1996, I was 12. Another thing that was interesting to me how the one kid didn’t quite understand all the rules of the game, but didn’t care, and plowed forward anyway. He didn’t care about how things operated, and was content to think that mastery of all the rules of this complex game were out of his reach, and thus irrelevant. I think that says something about my generation. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to continue with the game if I didn’t fully understand how it operates.

I think Wired.com (and by extension, the magazine, or vice-versa, maybe?) ought to get some kind of award for being totally and utterly relevant to this generation. The magazine seems to touch on things at every turn that intelligent people living in the information age should/need to know. Every time I visit the site or read the magazine I find something worth reading.

Kevin Kelly’s article, “We are the Web” was also super-interesting to me because I have developed a new-found interest in the history of computers, the internet, and the technologies that make them possible. Kelly’s article is essentially that. It’s also the story of short-sightedness. It seems that in the process, the big media companies lost much in the process, and that young upstarts were able to make a name for themselves with the aid of the internet.

Vannevar Bush was a visionary and his description of far-away technologies would become a reality 50 years ofter his death. I think that is pretty cool. He talks about how knowledge is increasing at a dizzying rate and how methods need to be developed that will allow researchers to retrieve it quickly and easily through unconventional means. By this, Bush is talking about an information retrieval system that works by association, just the way our minds do. He was probably thinking of something like a keyword search that have now become the bread and butter of internet searches, database searches, and have really taken the place of traditional searches in the library. Bush, like Engelbart, was ahead of his time.

The Hypertext 3.0, by George Landow was also somewhat illuminating for me. I have to say first that I especially like Landow’s style in that it conveyed complex ideas, but in a way that were coherent and relatively easy to read. For a big about heady communication, literature, and computer theory, this is the best-case scenario. With a less skilled writer, the text could have been rendered unreadable, or worse, it could have been dummied down. I think Landow struck the write mix in his presentation.

On of the important aspects of hypertext is malleability. This text is not really text, but code, that can be manipulated at will. I never understood in the past how copy and pasting worked so well, or how I could adjust the font on my browser so easily. Now I know, and have an even deeper appreciation for computers in general and the internet in particular than I had before.

Another thing I thought was really interesting is the idea that all documents ought to be footnotes to other footnotes online. This will probably create the most thorough cross-referencing system ever developed, and will certainly save space compared to earlier methods. I can tell you that conventional citation methods such as footnotes are a pain and can be anathema to a stream of thought. I never liked adding footnotes at the end, and would insist instead on putting them in the beginning. This incessantly disrupted the flow of my work. If we can ensure that better quality controls be put on the internet, perhaps this super-cross-referencing thing can become a reality. We are well on our way with the online databases.

One thing does alarm me about all of these changes. It seems that computers are doing more and more of our difficult work than before. While this is great when doing searches, enabling us to find information much more quickly than ever before, I wonder if there will be a backlash, and if the level of scholarship could become “soft” with all of these amenities? If computers are simply removing obstacles to enable us to do our jobs better, then that’s great, but if we rely on them do essentially do our work for us, I think we will find ourselves in trouble.

Dungeons and Dragons creator passes

At first glance, this story, found on wired.com here, may not sound at all germaine to our discussions of virtual worlds, but it really is.  Gary Gygax and his associate, Dave Arneson, created the table-top role-playing game in 1974, according to the wikipedia article.  Though not exactly virtual in the sense we discussed in class, Dungeons and Dragons was highly influential to early computer lingo, using the word “dungeons”prominently.  Also, the game was highly influential in spawning the entire role-playing videogame genre.

RPGs are extremely popular both in Japan and in the West.  The World of Warcraft is currently home to 10 million online subscribers.  RPGs such as Guild Wars, the Elder Scrolls series, and Mass Effect are also popular.  According to this wiki article on the top-selling videogame franchises, the Final Fantasy series has sold over 80 million units in its 20 years in existence, Pokemon has sold 165 million units, and Dragon Quest has sold 43,000 million units.  The Sims series, though different from conventional RPGs, was still certainly influenced by D&D, has sold nearly 100 million units.

This does not touch on the direct influence of virtual worlds that are not related, which I admittedly, know little about.   Judging from the high degree of “role-playing” we read about in the “online rape” story, I would venture to say that D&D has influenced these spaces as well.

We should take this time to reflect on the impact of Gary Gygax.

One of the many reasons I like Thrice, my favorite band

The Arsonist, by Thrice

The Alchemy Index, Volumes 1 & 2

There is truth beneath the floorboards;
there is hope in brick and stone.
But they tell me just to shut my mouth;
leave well enough alone.
But I think maybe all that’s needed,
is a match and gasoline;
because I don’t think that any one of them believes that there will be a reckoning.

But I will see this city burn.

There are still good shepherds scattered,
but they’re far between and few.
And the sheep’s skin that the wolves all wear is so thin I see right through.
And I think maybe all that’s need is some gas and open flame,
because I don’t think that any one of them believes that fire can erase their names.

But I will see this city burn.
I said I will see this city burn.

We will burn it down and build it again,
what was buried in flame.
Burn it down and build it again from the bricks that remain.

I love this city, but I’ve set and numbered its days.
I love this city, enough that I’ll set it ABLAZE.

There is truth beneath the floorboards;
there is hope in brick and stone.
But they tell me just to shut my mouth;
leave well enough alone.
But I think that maybe all that’s needed is some flint and hardened steel;
because I don’t think that any one of them believes that the revolution’s real.

We will burn it down and build it again,
what was buried in flame.
Burn it down and build it again from the bricks that remain.

I love this city, but I’ve set and numbered its days.
I love this city, enough that I’ll set it ABLAZE.

It will burn

You can interpret this song, or poem now, that it is being read, and not sung, in many ways.  I think I know what the author was getting at because I am very familiar with the band, with their previous works, and with their idealogy, but my interpretation is different.

I look at the world as a place that shuns truth, and upholds ignorance, mediocrity, materialism, selfishness, and destructive behavior, among other things.  As a writer of any kind, be it a journalist, academic, independent author, poet, or just a blogger, I hope that my thoughts stand in contrast to what society holds as best.

This isn’t exactly the message of Thrice, but they do attempt to stand alone, to be different, and have gracefully accepted that their new, experimental style, will be accepted by some, and rejected by more.  But, that’s okay.  They speak to me, and I hope that more intelligent people can be introduced to their beautiful, yet ferocious, simple, and complex take on society and music.  Check them out here also.

Some things are iffy–some things are not–Abu Ghraib pictures discussed

Whether or not the US should have commenced a war in Iraq is probably the biggest controversy of the last five-or-so years.  This item for many people falls into the “gray” category.  Keeping the US and its interests safe is a priority for the government, while others feel that not blowing up other countries should be equally high on that list.  This post won’t argue either point directly, but instead is here to reinforce a point alluded to in the title: some things are iffy, some things are not.  Just as the decision to begin a war was an iffy choice, recent photos coming out of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq grotesquely illustrate somethings that are not iffy.

The number-one story on wired.com this week includes a story about pictures that came from the Abu Ghraib prison.  I must warn you, dear readers, that these are some of the most upsetting images I have ever seen.  You may view them here.  Aside from being outraged, I don’t know if I can adequately articulate the immense feeling of disappointment that overcame me when I saw these photos.   I won’t insult anyone’s intelligence and explain why I am so disappointed.  These picture speak for themselves.

Here you can see some legal information put together by the University of Pittsburgh Law School pertaining to recent developments regarding Abu Ghraib.

When I was watching the Republican debate back in late November/ early December, Mitt Romney and John McCain disagreed on an issue that I thought was important, though I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, namely, the handling of apprehended enemies in the War on Terror. While Romney was not willing to explain what he felt would be acceptable rules for handling detainees, so as to not let the enemy know what may become of him, McCain, who was tortured for six years in Vietnam stood steadfastly against the torturing of POWs.  This made me respect McCain more, and understand his position better.

I feel that I must condemn the actions by our men and women in Iraq with the greatest fierceness possible.  We are an invading, pseudo-conquering nation (even if we are conquering a clear bad-guy) and foisting upon them a democratic-style government (even if this government we are presenting the Iraqis with is leagues better than the one they were suppressed by before).  I don’t think that this is a value judgment, it is a supportable argument.

For this reason, I cannot categorize enemy troops in Iraq the same as I would categorize Al-Qeada operatives, and for this reason, I don’t think it is possible to justify the treatment some of the Iraqi detainees are receiving.  Whether to treat Al-Qaeda operatives in the manner shown in the Abu Ghraib pictures, in my estimation, is iffy.  Scratch that.  For them, I feel that no mercy should be spared.