Technologies of Text (S12)

If you were wondering, the “star wars, one letter at a time” is still driving me nuts; for multiple reasons. It’s an indescribable frustration that is agitated more and more every time I hear the key stroke sound effect of the typewriter. A big part of it comes from the idea that Dr. Cordell brought up in class about how our brain reads one word at a time, not one letter at a time. This makes perfect sense after you watch the video for longer than 2 minutes and you begin to get frustrated as you can no longer put the letters together fast enough to formulate a word before the next word starts.

There were a few possible meanings and perspectives offered in class that could apply to the star wars program but it is still unclear what the original intentions were. Having known the story, it becomes extremely frustrating when the story doesn’t start matching what you are envisioning. We all know how spectacular star wars, it’s an legitimate fact, look it up, so when we start to see it broken down into its bare roots it becomes an immediate failure in our minds when it doesn’t reproduce the same sensation. Stepping back into a philosophical mind set, by seeing each letter at a time we are not able to see the greater good of what the letters are representing as a whole.

The second time around, the “everybody dies” program was also extremely frustrating. It was confusing, unclear, and it had a path already decided for the player. You could make multiple decisions to do something or go certain places, but ultimately you were destined to die. Just when you get stuck at a point when you aren’t sure what to do, you die, then come back to life, get stuck in a new way, then die again. It really exploited things that we don’t realize in many video games we play. We think there is a vast multitude of different possibilities but really our fate is already predetermined. Basically any first person game results in the player doing some activity, dying, and then coming back to life to do the whole thing over again. The only thing that separated “everybody dies” is that the options were extremely slim and the way you die was already chosen, you just had to find it. One thing I did notice is that the everybody dies program had one essential characteristic that makes any good game, good; it could frustrate you to your last nerve and then give you a new hope and new direction that makes you want to keep playing. The example from the program was after we drown in the river and came back to life and were seemingly stuck in a bathroom scrubbing toilets, (which I initially thought was a type of hell to the character) but then you pull a knife on someone who doesn’t like you in the bathroom and they come back and shoot you and your boss, then you come back to life in the streets of some neighborhood. It was an extremely bizarre and unpleasant experience.

I think both of these programs helped me step outside of the game or the story to see what its deconstructed roots look like. For star wars, you lose the special effects and graphics in exchange for the individual letters of the storyline. For everybody dies, your role playing game is broken down into what it essentially is, a game in which you basically find ways to die, you magically come back to life, and then you find a new way to die. Both push our brains to view the games we play and the stories we view in a way that exposes the building blocks used in its creation, whether we want to see them or not. Just like how we would rather not see where the hamburger meat for our juicy double cheeseburger comes from when we go to McDonalds.

For my final project I decided to interview Father DePeaux. A quick background on him: He came to school here in 1944, became a Priest, started teaching at St. Norbert High School for ten years, continued his studies in France for eight years, came back and taught foreign language classes at St. Norbert college, and today, still remains on campus. In other words, he’s been here for a while. One of the most interesting parts of the interview was when I asked him what he did for fun.

From today’s perspective, it’s hard to look back and wonder what students did sixty to seventy years ago at school. There were no such things as laptops, iPods, and even cell phones for people to communicate. The library was just one small room and people didn’t have access to any other sources. So what was there to do? What did students do for fun? Because Fr. DePeaux was studying to become a priest, he was not allowed to be on any sports teams. That’s one thing he would have really liked to do but with his conflicting schedules, it just would not have worked out. He did however play intramural sports such as basketball and football. At the time, the football team at St. Norbert College was undefeated so when they played intramurals and everyone got involved, it became pretty physical. There were also Fraternities and Sororities on campus for people to join and socialize. In that aspect, DePeaux claims that the student atmosphere has not changed much at all and that it’s still all about having a good time and socializing with your friends. In the basement of the Union, there was actually a hangout spot called “Knightclub” which, until the drinking changed from 18 to 21, served alcohol to everyone of age. You could also go to a wide variety (similar to today) of off campus bars to socialize with friends.

On my Omeka website, there are also videos that provide further information on what Fr. DePeaux has done. It was very interesting talking to him and learning about St. Norbert College. I never knew so many things about this campus and that interview was definitely one of the highlights of my semester.

Since we’ve spent the past semester blogging and as it comes to close it has had me thinking about where blogging fits in the academic world. Earlier this week, IDEA.org posted an article on this topic. A professor from Open University in Britain wrote a post reflecting on his blogging and where he sees it fitting in the academic world. He reflected on a larger scope in terms of the “academic ecosystem”. As a professor, he said his outlets for academic work have included books, online courses, research efforts, university projects, and blogging. Out of all of those, blogging has been the most important to him. It’s been important to him for many of the reasons the digital and online worlds are important to others. These reasons include experimentation, fast pace, and increased collaboration. They’ve become so important, that he points to his academic identity as not just include formal publications, but his blog.

This raises many questions. While it is a new outlet, where exactly does it fit and what role should it play? Should it replace old forms of scholarly activity? The professor highlights a book to answer these questions. I can see this book as being a great companion to our class. The book is titled “From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: What You Really Need to Know About the Internet”. It argues that these forms should not directly replace the other forms, but somewhat serves as alternatives and develops them. To quote the book: “Each new technology increased the complexity of the ecosystem.”

The professor goes on to talk about how blogging is not the perfect outlet for everyone. With many online platforms, people can use things like YouTube or a podcast instead of blogging and they can serve the same purpose.

The professor believes that as an academic, his blogging serves as scholarship. This is a topic he has actually written a book on. He has released it for free. It is titled “The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly Practice”. This leaves people with the question of how this scholarship in blogging should be recognized. Should administration look at it when they consider tenure for faculty? Universities are started to address this due to the importance of a good online presence for their university.

His blog can be found here: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/

These ideas are not isolated to this one individual. These feelings have also been expressed by other scholars. Joshua Fershee said on the impact of blogging on scholarship:

“Blogging can’t, and shouldn’t, replace other forms of scholarship. But in addition to traditional scholarship, it adds to the overall depth, and especially breadth, of knowledge. At least, it does for me. I truly believe my scholarship and my teaching have improved because of blogging, even if, sometimes, it feels like a lot of “extra” work. As long as it is making me better at what I do, it’s work I need to do.”

So, do things like twitter count as scholarship? William Pannapacker wrote about this on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website. He is an associate professor of English at Hope College. He believes that publishers are now using Twitter to identify authors. He believes this will play into a scholar’s academic standing and advancement. I’m curious to hear everyone’s opinion on this question.

I came across an interesting little post that talked about another article, written by Brian Fung, which looked into what the brain looks like as certain people are performing certain tasks, using an MRI machine.  This post was referencing the part of the article that discussed what the brain looked like when an actress recited T.S. Elliot’s, The Wasteland.

http://anniemurphypaul.com/2012/04/brain-scanning-t-s-eliot/

It is said that when the actress was performing a simple task, like counting a sequence of numbers, her brain behaved just like any other normal human brain.  But, when the actress began reciting lines from The Wasteland, the result was quite different.  “When actors assume a role, it’s often as if they’ve flipped a switch and become a completely different person.”  When looking at the brain through the MRI machine, researchers saw that the infraparietal sulcus, which is the part of the brain that deals with spatial memory, was triggered when the actress began playing the role of the character.  This suggests that actors remember large sections of readings by actually placing themselves in the world of the character.

I found this post to be pretty fascinating, especially since we just read The Wasteland in class.  This reminded me of that video clip that we watched in class, that was explaining the iPad app for The Wasteland.  We discussed the role in which the actress played when reciting the poem compared to if we were just reading the poem to ourselves.  It seems that most of the students, including me, were able to make a much better connection to the reading when we listened to the actress recite the lines of the poem because it was easier to distinguish who was saying what.  By emphasizing certain words or lines, The Wasteland was much easier to understand, thanks to the actress.  And the only difference between the actress and us, readers… our brains.  By putting herself in the setting of the reading, the actress was able to convey the story unlike any other person could do.

Google+ was just started almost one year ago at June 29^th, 2011, and then it has become one of the most popular social networks across the world. Now, the Google+ is getting into the school, and become a part of the classes for a lot of courses. Kelsey Brannan, a twitter I follow, posted an interesting article “Student Reflections on Google+ In The Classroom” at https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/kmb256/, and the video at http://vimeo.com/41037458. The article and the video explain how the students think about “the Google+ In The Classroom”. It is impressive how the Google+ is so helpful to improve the communication among the students. This is one thing Dr. Cordell may want to try in his next class.

However, another most popular social network, Facebook, does not receive so much positive reviews. Many companies think Facebook diverts the employees’ attention from work, and lower their work efficiency. Therefore, many companies’ internet bans Facebook. It is interesting how the Google+ helps study, but Facebook obstructs the work. Or, in fact, Facebook can help work, too; the employers just do not do it in the right way. The social networks are obviously a port of the digital humanity culture, how the different social networks make different effects on work and study is a interesting topic to study.

Those works might have been somewhat impressive and interesting if they were written and presented on Apple II circa 1989. Simply put, these “works” use technology sooooooo old, that it is beyond me. I reference people to works of Android Jones and Rob Seward (may the Google be with you) . I do not endeavor to comment on “humanistic” value of this art, but its is a technological macaroni art of preschoolers when contrasted with what people were doing even 10 years ago.

Now, when I am somewhat done with dispensing my contempt, I want to point to the work I have found interesting. Somewhat.

_cross.ova.ing ][4rm.blog.2.log][_

these work is pseudo-pseudo-code.  Pseudocode is a sort-of a programing language, it is often used to sketch ideas in a semi-algorithmic manner where intricacies of the code are omitted and frivolously substituted by informal symbols, but so that humans can grasp what the code should do, but machines cannot understand it.

for example here is C++ code that counts sum of integers from 1 to 100 and displays it to console.

int sum = 0;
for(int i = 1; i =< 100; ++i)
   sum += i;
cout << sum;

using pseudo-code I can restate code above as


set sum to 0
set i to 1
repeat until i is lesser or equal to 100
   begin
      add i to sum
      add 1 to i
   end
print sum


I also want to point that the pseudocode I use is very terse and there are programing languages that would actually interpret and execute this code with minor adjustments. Pseudocode is more useful when it wraps more complicated concepts. e.g.

var resultArray = ArrayOne.Where(value => value != 0).Except(ArrayTwo).ToArray();

VS

Select from first array all values not equal to 0 and not present in second array.

The e-lit work I am referencing uses interplay of these two concepts. Work is written in ad hoc pseudo-machine-codes (there are quite few protocols, standards, markups mixed). This haiku makes me think of Ghost in the Shell: Innocence Lost

7. .ge[a{s}.phasi(a)]sha.

07:11pm 15/01/2008
.
..geisha.aphasia.
…paper.scissors.glock.
….geas, pls.
…..
…
..
.

The text intentionally mimics legitimate machine commands, but these fake machine commands are intended to be read and interpreted by humans.

We use pseudocode, pseudo human language, when we want humans to understand ideas written in the machine languages. These work uses pseudo-machine language addressed to people, so people can understand themselves through machines?..

I have never taken a strictly online course and so when I came across a post on a blog called: All things Pedagogical by Ann Gagne about how students don’t always get to interact personally with an online instructor, I was very surprised at what I read.  Essentially the blog is about a comment one of Ann’s students made about her and a strictly online course.  This student was thanking her for feedback on some assignment and said, “You seem like a great professor, I wish I had the pleasure to meet you .”  This got her thinking about how sometimes in education students need the tangible physical presence of a professor to help aid in the process of instruction.  Part of the solution could be using Skype for online lectures, but apparently some institutions that Ann references don’t allow this type of interaction for online courses, and are strictly limited to email and discussion board interaction.  This seems ridiculous, why wouldn’t this be allowed.  Ann doesn’t state the reasons for such a rule and I can’t come up with a logical reason, other than maybe the online courses’ tuition is much lower than traditional classes and so it is a way to incentivize students to pay more and take the regular course.  Through all of our guest lectures, I have found that video conferencing really does give you a more personal interaction and feeling of knowing the person on the other end of the lecture and so these institutions that don’t allow it should really reconsider there logic.

as we about to discuss hypertext  I recalled works of Rob Seward. He is a computer scientist. A special breed of artist. Instead of moving text into the abstraction of virtual space, he materializes digital abstracts, turning algorithms and virtual objects into… well, judge yourself here.  Please join me in the delight.

Icing on the cake—Android Jones. If you want to visit his website and see more, make sure you put something soft under your jaw. When it drops, you may risk to shatter something. Details are breathtaking.

and my favorite here.

We watched the video of the wasteland iPad application this Tuesday in class, which I call the multi-media e-book; it was very impressive. This application is mostly a digital book plus the videos of recitation. The synchronized recitation and text bring the audiences an amazing experience, which people could experience on neither the traditional paper books nor the text only e-books. This is certainly the power of high technology; it is more than a book, better than a book. However, it is impossible to apply this format to every book. For making the nice videos of recitation, a huge labor cost will be added into the price of the book. Then, the multi-media e-book would lose one of the biggest advantages of e-books, the lower price. I think this format of books is awesome; however, it is only worthy to be used on those valuable books; it will be a big waste to apply it on every book.

Lately, I saw a very interesting picture comparing Printed Books and E-Books at http://www.labnol.org/home/ebooks-vs-print-books/14344/. In this picture, we can see the e-books themselves are lots cheaper, but the e-readers are a little expansive in 2010 (not anymore). The paper books are more expansive than the e-book while the author would receive a better royalty. However, only 15% of the people, who bought an e-reader like the Kindle or the Nooks, will actually stop purchasing paper books. And, the numbers of 2009 publisher sales totals tell us that people still need the paper books, the e-books are not ready to take over.