Echo Hypertext

It's still being fine-tuned (I'm not even remotely good with web stuff), but here's the link to my hypertext if anyone is interested:

pages.pomona.edu/~csp0200/echo

The Blogging Experience

So I suppose it's about to time include the whole "what my academic blogging experience was" post to my repertoire.

I'll start with the pros of the process:
1) I liked reading the posts of other people in the class. While I may not have commented that much, it was always interesting to scan the aggregator page before class to see what other people were thinking about the readings. And sometimes it was surprising just how much I could predict about the course/ tone of the class discussion from reading the posts beforehand.

2) The informality of blogging was a real boon. It felt liberating to write about academic readings in a not-typically academic way. So often we read for class and write papers on the material and bind ourselves to formal structures and argument-proving that some of the more interesting ideas get lost in the mix. A lot of the ideas that I have while reading dead-end and/ or won't fit in an essay with a particular topic, so a lot of the interesting material goes undiscussed. Limited class time has the same result. But with blogging, classroom discussion can, theoretically, move outside the classroom and stay informal and only semi-structured.

3) I enjoy the concept of using new media in a class about new media. We aren't just talking about blogs or the communities that surround them; we actually become a part of those communities to some extent.

Now for the cons:
1) In regards to number 3 above, that community never really formed. Probably because we were all too busy or forgot to blog or something of that sort. Usually internet communities form because of a real passion for a topic or discussion, but in this instance, we were required to blog, and sometimes about material that we disliked, which removes some of the motivation to write. Additionally, this experience is different from other typical internet experiences because of the fact that we all see each other in real life twice a week. We know, roughly, who the people are who are blogging, so anonymity or a semblance thereof is thrown out of the window. Also, the conversation is related to something in real life, an extension of a real discussion and not conducted entirely via computer. So this alters our perception of the blogs in a fundamental way, I think.

2) While two posts may not seem like much per week, I think the informality of the blog that I spoke of early makes it even easier to dismiss, which may just be a personal issue. But I found that, when faced with writing a blog entry versus writing an essay for a history class, the essay seemed more pressing, more "real." This is not to say that the blog, in actuality, is any less real, but the informality of the internet can be deceiving. Also, two blogs per week on top of the class discussion was sometimes difficult, especially when I disliked the reading, because I didn't want to merely reiterate the thoughts that I expressed in class, nor did I just want to give an opinion of the reading, which was tempting to do (see the informality issue again).

3) Because the community surrounding the blogs never developed, it rarely felt as if the posts were accomplishing anything. There was no real connection between my classmates and myself except for the fact that we were writing about the same material. It still had the "I wrote a reading response for class" feel, except for the fact that we were getting to read other students' responses.

Overall I really liked the blogging experience, but until the assignment-ness of it fades away (and I'm not sure how this would happen), I'm not sure that it can be a real instance of online community or achieve more than the position of a higher-tech, less formal way of submitting reading responses and occasionally, interesting sites or articles.

Presentations: Day 1

I really enjoyed seeing everyone's presentation today. It gave me a chance to see all the cool ideas that other people have had and have been working on this semester. I find that that's one thing I've liked about the media studies classes that I've taken: there's usually an element of creation involved with the academics. Don't get me wrong, I love English and History, but with my majors I've felt that I haven't really produced much of my own work (academic papers are just now getting to the point where they don't feel so structured and rote), so I've really liked that aspect of this class the most, I think. Getting to dive deep into something creative of my own.

Anyhow, to stop the prattling...or least to switch prattling topics...

I'm going to talk about two of the presentations right now, not to play favorites, but just because they were the ones that got me really thinking about things that I am dealing with in my own project or in my own academic interests. 1) Lily's project: earlier in the semester we talked about what a hypertext book would look like and the fact that it is actually possible to translate print into something more associative and choice-conducive. It was really nice to actually see that being put into practice. And while it would be difficult to implement on a large scale (i.e., printing a million copies of Lily's book), I really enjoyed that she explored the fact that even artistically, print and writing aren't confined to typical spaces. The concept of books that are created for artistic value, except in select circles, has faded away in our culture. The average person couldn't care less if a book was a paperback or a leather-bound book, especially not for the disparity in price. And I'm, in many instances, the exact same way. But I really value books that are made in beautiful and time-intensive ways. When I was abroad, watching bookmakers in Italy was one of my favorite moments. Just seeing the time put into the crafting of the book was amazing. And something about how the change of form not only leads to new forms of expression but also a revitalization of the idea of a book for art's sake is really appealing to me.

2) Lori's project: When we talked about hypertexts in class, I wondered about the other applications of hypertexts and whether they could be used for something other than fiction. So it was cool to see this in implementation. I agree with Lori on the fact that with a hypertext, something is invariably left out, that the argument is inherently incomplete, at least in the sense that the reader doesn't have access to all facets, but at the same time, something about that appeals to me. I think it depends on the type of academic essay that you are using. I mean, it would appeal perfectly to someone writing about bricolage or something of that nature, where a totality isn't assumed. Also, what I really liked about the project is the fact that she offered solutions (or at least what a "good" hypertext would look like). A lot of theorists or critics talk about the flaws in systems, but they rarely describe solutions. So I really appreciated that aspect of the presentation.

All in all, I enjoyed today's class a lot, and I look forward to the other presentations.

Censorship

Please grant me a bit of a self-indulgent rant: I worked as general manager at KSPC a couple of summers ago, and the big issue that summer was FCC indecency regulations. I had to take veteran DJs through new training about what they could and couldn't say on the air, and it was all pretty ridiculous. Basically, the FCC regulation states that indecency can be defined as something that offends someone. This a) is incredibly indiscriminate and difficult to run a station by, and b) incredibly broad for a censorship regulation. KROQ was warned by the FCC for the word "scumbag" that summer, and KSPC had to be incredibly cautious about EVERYTHING being recorded (and still has to be). The fine for an instance of indecency can be up to $10,000, and there was a bill that passed the house that wanted to raise it to half a million. Luckily, nothing came of that (or at least I never heard anything further), but all this being said, it was incredibly frustrating to me just how regulated our media are. I mean, "scumbag"?!?! Come on. (To be fair, the FCC operates off complaints, so someone somewhere had to bitch to them about the term.) And as much as I love radio, it seems that maybe it really is a dying medium, a fact that really saddens me.

In light of my personal experience with the lovely group we call the FCC, I was interested in what Searls and Weinberger had to say about censorship in "World of Ends." Internet radio (and other media on the internet) are not censored, and I would hate to see that happen. But they made the point that as soon as Internet radio came out, it "was shot in its cradle," for reasons other than indecency. The tension between forms of control and censorship and the internet is an interesting one, and I think that S & W are right in saying that the internet doesn't belong to any group ("not any government, no matter how sincerely it believes that it's just trying to keep its people secure and complacent). But does this mean that it can't be owned in the future? I hope so.

The Mindless Husk

As a horror movie lover, some of my favorite parts of Connected were the bits about vampires, zombies, slake-moths, Cthulhu, etc. I really liked the idea of these figures as representations of informational exchange, and above all, the most terrifying of these figures are those that don't just inflict bodily harm, but those that actually influence our minds, our informational processes. For instance, "vampires today are popular commodities, probably more popular than ever, but they are not really terrifying any longer. Rather, they feed our naive hunder for a safe dose of exoticism" (168). Whereas, the slake-moths drink the "fine wine of sapience and sentience itself, the subconscious" (168).

Zombies, too, eat the brains of their victims. Not only are people transformed into husks, a terrifying prospect, but the reason for their huskiness is brought about by something more sinister and frightening: the violation of the mind. It's not merely the human condition that we latch onto; if it were, Dracula would be equally scary. It's the power over our thoughts, our mental processes, our ways of thinking and ways of perceiving that we value; it's the illusion of freedom that the mind gives us; when our minds are bound so are we. The mind is the last bit of freedom that can be stolen.

Shaviro goes more into the economic side of this relationship, one which I found intriguing, but I got carried away by the idea of what actually frightens us about these mythical figures. Cthulhu looms dark, unknown, foreign, not a figure that necessarily overtakes our minds in a real way, but at the same time, he is unfathomable, he subverts our mind's capabilities to perceive the world. Lovecraft likes the discomfort of the unimaginable; in one of his stories he describes a color that does not exist. Even in the figure of Cthulhu, who does not actively destroy or overtake our brains, there is some fear of the loss of the mind, of the inability of the mind to freely understand and think.

Which leads me back to technology. If our fear (at least in the case of horror figures) is rooted in the fear of losing the mind, it seems to explain a bit more some of the technological determism tendencies. We are afraid of that loss of control. Being connected changes the way we think, the way we perceive our surroundings, the way humans experience life. "The insidious thing about electronic networks is that they are always there, whether you pay attention to them or not. Indeed, they assume, and even require, a kind of distracted inattention on your part" (5). This portrayal of the network as a looming, creeping, sneaking monster that quietly invades the mind in its moment of weakness, in a moment when its guard is down, also speaks to the fear that, under the reign of these networks, we will become mindless husks. (Too much TV will rot the brain.)

Mark Danielewski

Tonight was the Mark Danielewski reading (about which I was very elated), and in the question and answer session he said several things that I found interesting in relation to this class.

Someone asked him about the online publication of House of Leaves (to get people to read the book, he put it online in a pdf format originally), and they asked how he felt about technology as a means of publishing/ whether it can replace the book (in essence, although my rewording isn't exact). And I really liked his answer. Basically, the book will have to reassert its place as a three-dimensional object. To read House of Leaves, you can't just read it online. It'd drive you even madder than the book format. One must print it off to be able to flip the pages the way they are intended to be read. And internet texts have to take on new roles as well; to justify their format, they have to assert themselves as essentially different from books.

This idea isn't something entirely new to our discussion, but it made me think further about other ways that the book can assert its position as such, as a three-dimensional object, and I think it's really exciting that we've just begun to tap the full potential of the book. Perhaps the development of internet publications can also contribute to the development of "real" texts. In thinking about the possibilities of the book it's difficult to imagine a radical departure from the left-to-right, up-to-down, sequential-page-turning that we are used to. But Danielewski, for one, has come up with a new form that draws that assumed form into question. And it will just take creativity to create others. Hopefully more of these new book-asserting forms will appear soon. Not that I want every book I read to be a mind-fuck, but I think it's really interesting to see literature that uses new forms to draw old ones into question, that pushes the limits of our assumptions about texts and about what it means to read. There just seems to be so much potential here....

The Online Self

The issue of self is one that I have thought about a lot in my time at Pomona in various history and literature courses, and in one of my history courses the other day I noticed that most people today think of individuation as integral to one's idea of self. However, that's a fairly modern conception. Many people in older societies didn't have the luxury to think of themselves apart from their communities; social interest was crucial for survival.

David Bell brings up an interesting point in this statement: "As people fracture their sense of self into multiple online selves, they paradoxically produce a portfolio of singularities rather than recognizing that multiplicity dwells within an individual self." I haven't ever thought about the progression toward a postmodern self, and the idea that we are moving away from the individual again is interesting. We are dividing ourselves further, compartmentalizing, but in doing so, we no longer see ourselves as a whole, as an individual.

I'm still not sure what I think of this notion. It seems to jibe with the definitions of postmodernism that we've been given, but it's very hard to conceive of a self that is this fractured, that isn't a unified "self." However, just because it's hard to do so doesn't mean that this isn't the case, and I find that when I think about myself, I can see instances in which I compartmentalize my identity, especially online. I think an important question to ask is, how different/ drastic is this compartmentalization from that of previous societies? In the eighteenth century, the distinction between public and private was being articulated more commonly, and nobles had a public persona (a court persona) and a private one, a persona they shared with intimates. It seems that even in the modern self there have been divisions, so does the alteration depend on how sharp those divisions are or in their frequency?