I wasn't really able to use it in any other blogs except the one where we were specifically asked to make the connections. If I were given infinite time and resources, I would try to extend Ong's article to the digital age. I believe that just as writing did before, now hypermediation in the form of websites, video games, and other digital forms (save for the traditional) are restructuring our consciousness. This would be quite the undertaking because it would involve surveys and cognitive ability tests of different age groups and different computer habits. As for the final project, I don't know if I'll be able to work it into my final project. I would have loved to have done the theory I stated above, but when I tried to research it, I didn't find much information to help support that claim.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Blog post 11
Throughout the course we read a bunch of interesting articles, but the ones that I found most interesting were the ones by Ong, specifically how "Writing Restructures Consciousness". It's strange for us to think about writing as a technological advancement and the cognitive side effects that came about because of it. I also found it interesting how Ong described the evolution of the alphabet, as well as other scripts and writing systems. Even though I'm a linguistics major, a lot of this information, the writing systems and the timeline from oral to literate cultures was completely new to me and furthered my knowledge of historical linguistics.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Generation X, Generation Y, Generation Digital (Final proposal)
Through history we have gone through many media phases. We started out as an oral culture, then with the advent of writing, we saw how writing has restructured our consciousness and changed us into a literary culture. Now we have come to the digital age and with it, many new mediums. I believe that humans are migrating away from pure text or speech cultures and are becoming a digital culture.
I will use Ong's "Writing restructures Consciousness" to show the similarities between the switch from an oral culture to a literary one, and the switch from a literary culture to a hypermediated one. Just as Plato argued that writing subjects down "enfeebles the mind the mind by relieving it of too much work", the baby boomer generation and perhaps some in Gen X believe that the internet does the same thing.
The next thing I will do use use a University of Idaho page to reference what makes a culture unique. http://www.cnrhome.uidaho.edu/default.aspx?pid=88955 . I will use the bullet points (Communication, Space, Time, Social organization, etc) as my main catagories of proving that this new digital culture is unique.
Then I will use "Language and the Internet" By David Crystal, to talk about how the internet has brought about a new language and what the new language entails. Crystal uses the term "Netspeak" to describe the language that has emerged from the internet and other digital mediums of communication and discourse.
Because there is no physical space in a digital environment, I will use the idea of internet privacy, or lack thereof, to talk about the idea of the use of space as a culture. I will use Anne SY Cheung's article titled "Rethinking Public Privacy in the Internet Era: A Study of Virtual Persecution by the Internet Crowd" as a source of the current state of privacy on the internet and how it differs from current American ideals.
There are many different subcultures on the internet. They range from more real world type societies, like myspace or facebook, where the social structures might seem relatively normal, to online communities, like digg, reddit, 4chan and the pirate bay, where anonymity allows all social norms to go out the window. Ya-Ching Lee's article titled "Internet and Anonymity" talks about how being anonymous on the internet has allowed a culture of brutally honest people to prosper.
I will then talk about how this culture is becoming more prominent and things like Twitter and Facebook are now staples in news reporting. Then and talk about possible naysayers and how it's just a subculture instead of being a fully formed culture on its own.
I'm hoping to find at least one more source per culture point for my final paper.
I will use Ong's "Writing restructures Consciousness" to show the similarities between the switch from an oral culture to a literary one, and the switch from a literary culture to a hypermediated one. Just as Plato argued that writing subjects down "enfeebles the mind the mind by relieving it of too much work", the baby boomer generation and perhaps some in Gen X believe that the internet does the same thing.
The next thing I will do use use a University of Idaho page to reference what makes a culture unique. http://www.cnrhome.uidaho.edu/default.aspx?pid=88955 . I will use the bullet points (Communication, Space, Time, Social organization, etc) as my main catagories of proving that this new digital culture is unique.
Then I will use "Language and the Internet" By David Crystal, to talk about how the internet has brought about a new language and what the new language entails. Crystal uses the term "Netspeak" to describe the language that has emerged from the internet and other digital mediums of communication and discourse.
Because there is no physical space in a digital environment, I will use the idea of internet privacy, or lack thereof, to talk about the idea of the use of space as a culture. I will use Anne SY Cheung's article titled "Rethinking Public Privacy in the Internet Era: A Study of Virtual Persecution by the Internet Crowd" as a source of the current state of privacy on the internet and how it differs from current American ideals.
There are many different subcultures on the internet. They range from more real world type societies, like myspace or facebook, where the social structures might seem relatively normal, to online communities, like digg, reddit, 4chan and the pirate bay, where anonymity allows all social norms to go out the window. Ya-Ching Lee's article titled "Internet and Anonymity" talks about how being anonymous on the internet has allowed a culture of brutally honest people to prosper.
I will then talk about how this culture is becoming more prominent and things like Twitter and Facebook are now staples in news reporting. Then and talk about possible naysayers and how it's just a subculture instead of being a fully formed culture on its own.
I'm hoping to find at least one more source per culture point for my final paper.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Video games vs Electronic literature. FIGHT!
In reading the first chapter of Hayles' book titled "Electronic Literature: What is it?" you get some mixed signals about the validity of video games as a form of electronic literature. Hayles even says, "The demarcation between electronic literature and computer games is far from clear;" My question is, after reading the first two chapters of Hayles book, where do you stand on video games as electronic literature?
On one side of the argument we have people like Markku Eskelinen who were paraphrased to say "with games the user interprets in order to configure, whereas in works whose primary interest is narrative, the user configures in order to interpret." I on the other hand, believe that video games have just as much literary validity as any other form of electronic literature. Electronic literature is literature that is "digital born" and is made on and usually read on, a computer. Hayles goes on to describe interactive fiction by saying "The interactor controls a player character by issuing commands. Instructions to the program, for example asking it to quit, are called directives." I believe that video games are just an expansion of interactive fiction.
Let us go back to the Eskelinen quote for a minute. The order that he has for games are interpreting in order to configure the story. While this might be true about some of the old games like Super Mario, games in the 21st century have become more complex in the story and how it's presented. In modern role playing games, or RPGs, you guide your character from narrative to narrative by solving puzzles related to the theme of the story, or perhaps by fighting, but no matter what you do to progress to the next narrative section, it helps progress the story. It helps you configure the story so that you can interpret it.
While there might be video games that lack any story telling mechanisms, and believe me a lot of games today do, there are still a lot of games who's fundamental goal is to tell a story. In that aspect I believe that video games are indeed a good example of electronic literature.
On one side of the argument we have people like Markku Eskelinen who were paraphrased to say "with games the user interprets in order to configure, whereas in works whose primary interest is narrative, the user configures in order to interpret." I on the other hand, believe that video games have just as much literary validity as any other form of electronic literature. Electronic literature is literature that is "digital born" and is made on and usually read on, a computer. Hayles goes on to describe interactive fiction by saying "The interactor controls a player character by issuing commands. Instructions to the program, for example asking it to quit, are called directives." I believe that video games are just an expansion of interactive fiction.
Let us go back to the Eskelinen quote for a minute. The order that he has for games are interpreting in order to configure the story. While this might be true about some of the old games like Super Mario, games in the 21st century have become more complex in the story and how it's presented. In modern role playing games, or RPGs, you guide your character from narrative to narrative by solving puzzles related to the theme of the story, or perhaps by fighting, but no matter what you do to progress to the next narrative section, it helps progress the story. It helps you configure the story so that you can interpret it.
While there might be video games that lack any story telling mechanisms, and believe me a lot of games today do, there are still a lot of games who's fundamental goal is to tell a story. In that aspect I believe that video games are indeed a good example of electronic literature.
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