Sunday October 26, 2008 CRD 704 - Reading 10
Pace wrote
"Pauses, inaccuracies, and other features of the program?s mediation allow the writer to treat the program less as a personal assistant than as a co-writer. And so, in noting the potential for VRT?s mediation to affect and maybe even guide the writing process, we might begin to look at it more as a scribe than as a tool."
which led me to think about what other sorts of software blur the line from "just a tool" to software having a sense of "agency" that force a particular path of interpretation or representation. Of course MSWord is one such program, as are integrated development environments through what languages they allow you to usev ia the languages that they "support". If an integrated development environment (IDE), software used for developing and testing software programs, doesn't support HTML (for instance) then it might mean that developers won't use HTML which could lead to a variety of other design decisions that effect the end user. In this way, those choices could become embedded in the software's design. That's still not a 100% example of agency, like the author points out, but compilers used by the IDE do interpret the code - sometimes in unintended ways.
At the same time, Pace points out that
"writers also have to be open to the idea of the computer as a co-writer in order to use errors as a heuristic device. When errors are used to change the content of text, the composition becomes more malleable than it is when typing or dictating to another person."
Even though Pace's article is about "computer-as-co-author", and some of the issues involved with using VRT software, I think that CMOC can have a valuable influence on the thought-speech paradigm in terms of preparing students for the professional world. Just reading Chandra's conversational-style transcript was painful with its multiple incomplete thoughts. Yet it seems like this is how the current generation communicates -- un-consecutive 15-20 word blurbs (texts, blogs, twitter).
Wouldn't CMOC be a useful exercise for a public speaking class? -- I wrote that before reading Comstock and Hock's piece on sonic literacy. I could see where having to use it to "write" a paper, or to compose a voice-over narrative in Comstock and Hocks' examples, would help students understand 1) how they really sound when they speak 2) the thought required to speak clearly, with clarity, rhetorically, etc. What is particularly interesting is that, at work, I often feel I have to speak the way I have been taught to write: clearly, logically, concisely. I often find myself consciously trying to limit an oral explanation to 2-3 sentences. It's like I write it in my head before I say them, and I speak more slowly to allow that time to think.
In Pace, Chandra' said that learning to use the software helped her with style:
"She felt that changing ?finds out? to ?discovers? made the sentence sound more formal and more appropriate for an academic audience. She, therefore, reflected on the error?s effect on the style in her text. Such reflections and interactions with errors will make students more consciously engage with their own concerns with style."
And I think that sonic literacy is an interesting concept... because my initial reaction was like "what?" but after thinking about it, I realised we have a sonic rhetoric that is transformed by digital media.
Posted by hkvonlud ( Oct 26 2008, 03:32:20 PM EDT ) Permalink Comments [1]
Thursday October 23, 2008 CRD 704 - Reading 9
There's a lot to think about this week because I've been meaning to try to wrap my head around patents and copyright from the industry perspective.
I feel like I have more research to do to fully comment on how this week's topic applies to industry. It's very a very complicated and broad topic.
What I'm really curious about is how copyright, citing, and management of ideas will change as we (the West) becomes even more of a Knowledge and Creative Economy.
Industry focuses on patents - ideas that are in a -- for lack of a better word - consumable form; they are ideas that have some "concretizing" or "attempted concretizing" perspective as opposed to a theory-intellectual idea which can simply be (wave of hands) a communicated idea; a meme, out in the ether. Hrm now I'm even not sure what I'm thinking because theory-intellectual ideas can be concretizable if/when they "come into being, or are considered 'truth'". But anyway, let's just suppose that patents are "concretized, implementable" and other ideas are theory-intellectual that are simply communicated and may not be implementable.
What happens to patents and theory-intellectual ideas as our economy focuses more on creative knowledge building -- and industry in particular begins to see the need that academics have been investigating for many years already -- which is the need to protect theory-intellectual ideas?
It seems like the current policies of copyright and patenting will not continue to hold in this case particularly for industry. (Hrm I smell an idea for our incubator technology program!)
-- I might write more later --
Posted by hkvonlud ( Oct 23 2008, 09:57:12 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [0]
Wednesday October 08, 2008 LOFI on the web -- CRD 704 - Reading 8
The main theme in the readings is the use of free/open-source technologies for learning.Nothing surprised me in the Reilly and Williams article. It was a study about the extent to which educational institutions use open source software and why. Similar things happen at IBM: the team I work on needs to consider what sort of webserver we'll use to serve content -- Apache (free) or WebSphere (our own, too much functionality and too hard to use -meant for the 'enterprise'). Unfortunately, even open source software can wind up being commercialized. Or because of the search of the next big thing open source can wind up morphing into something entirely different or "go away" completely. Perhaps this connects with Stolley's focus on content producers using basic text and graphics so students would be able to access classroom materials and participate more in discourse (assuming they are technologically saavy enough) without the need for CMT.
Stolley's basic argument seems to be that "the need to use specific software and hardware creates an online environment that favors the producer while preventing real, dynamic discourse by the user". He writes, we need to "create free and open source artifacts that are software- and device-independent" and mentions specifically, in the section of defining technologies, that we should use or retrograde to "Plain text files (.txt, .xml, .htm, .css, .js, etc.)". He calls for an emphasis on the source in "free and open source" and Lanham-esquely wants to ensure users that "source code and media elements are available for inspection, revision, and extension outside the scope of any one piece of production software and any one producer".
What does he suggest happens to or replaces blogs and forums for a second - technologies which at least attempt to create discourse using technologies? It's unclear what Stolley thinks about these which are not "expensive" but do not adhere to his L.O.F.I principles as they are not just text and notepad. Is he suggesting that blogs or forums downgrade to text files editable in notepad which users somehow upload online? Also unclear to me is how using a cludgey, wonky FTP interface to upload notepad files is "forgiving" to the user.
Lunsford concern is delivery. It will be very interesting to see how changes in technoliteracy, and maybe the ease-to-create multimedia discourse, will change an organization like IBM. There is still a very "old school" mentality about communication and I wonder if it is because its a science (logic based) and business (results based, efficiency based, relationship based) in one. I think upcoming generations will (of course) change this but I'm curious about how technology will change to be able to accomodate these new forms of communication to provide communication, logic, relationships within the business context.
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PDF in Blackboard Vista:
* Reilly & Williams, 2006
* Lunsford, 2006
Article online:
* Stolley, 2008
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Posted by hkvonlud ( Oct 08 2008, 09:09:38 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [2]
Wednesday October 01, 2008 Materiality - CRD 704 - Reading 7
Wysocki seems to take some interesting paths in her piece "Opening new media to writing".
One thing I'm never really clear on when I read writing about writing is the reference to creating the self. For awhile reading Wysocki, I kept thinking "what is she talking about? How am I creating a self through my writing?" But I reread some pieces and I get it (I think): I create a self through my thoughts and their (I don't even know what to call it) presentation to others; I situate myself, etc. But this is not unique to writing is it? I mean, when I speak I also present a self. And when I draw, go to the gym, drive around, shop. I'm curiious why I feel like writing views itself as more privileged in creating a self .
But the interesting part of Wysocki is her use of the concept of materiality to define new media. It's a lengthy definition that includes things like socioeconomic conditions, personal conditions, technological aspects, teacher characteristics and relations, university environment etc. And she asserts that to be considered her definition of new media, the "composers" of it need to be aware of the materiality in themselves and in their work. The materials are the Material. Or maybe its the Material are the materials.
That's a lofty goal, I like the idea but I'm not entirely sure why new media makes this is so important. And how can it even be achieved? I liked the map exercise she designed for students and I think this shows some of the concept of materiality to students who create them -- especially because it was so visual and textual... but materiality is a long list of concepts to consider and I wonder just how much of it students, or we, can be aware when we compose new media pieces.
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Writing New Media:
- Wysocki, "Opening new media to writing"
- Sirc, "Box-logic"
- Johnson-Eilola, "The database and the essay"
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