I Quit!

I hate running. I absolutely hate it. It hurts my feet, my knees, my back, and even my shoulders. But for some reason I always sign up to do it. I was on the track team for two years in high school, and I quit the team twice. I ran hurdles, which, although completely ruined my lower back, I didn’t mind. However, I would do everything possible to get out of the several mile warm-up and cool-down. Whenever my hurdle coach told us we had to join the sprinters or long-distance runners for a practice, I would usually run once around the track and then run straight to the locker room.
This goes completely against my perfectionist and competitive personality. I’m haunted by that whole type-A thing because, usually, if I set my mind on something, I follow through. Perhaps that is why I joined the track team again. But then I quit, again. Last year, I set my sights really high and decided I wanted to train for a half-marathon. I bought new shoes. I went to the gym every almost every night. I would get up early in the morning to go running. I even looked up training schedules online. I quit that after two weeks.
As much as I hate running, I hate quitting even more. So that is why I have promised a couple of my friends that I would run with them in the Crazylegs race on April 28th. It is an 8K, which is a lot more achievable than a half-marathon. However, I’m still a little worried that I’m going to fall back to my old ways of taking a nap instead of going for a run. And if I don’t feel like a nap, gorging on Cheez-its and catching up on old episodes of the Real World always seems more enticing than pounding on pavement, being out of breath, and sweating.
But this time, I have support from my friends, which might just make the difference.

How Very Complex

Before last week, I had heard of chaos and complexity theories before but I never really knew what they entailed. From Victor McGill’s website, The Complexity Pages, I learned that chaos theory describes a circumstance in which very simple things come together to form something very complex. Complexity theory, on the other hand, looks more at how something very complex can work with other complex things to self-organize and create something simple. Some examples that were brought up in class are an ant-hill, and all of the cells that make up a body.
When I first viewed the website and read chapters from Mark Taylor’s book, “The Moment of Complexity,” I felt like these “theories” were kind of useless and didn’t have any practical application. While I still think they are useless, I started to realize how many different ways these theories can be applied, especially in science.
The one thing that I am having difficulty applying the chaos and complexity theories to is architecture, which was Taylor’s focus. I understand how today’s “network culture” is “between order and chaos” and is “emerging” from this “moment of complexity”; however, I do not understand how this relates to the architecture that was brought up in the chapter (Taylor, 25).
Kurt, Becky, Kristin and I agreed with Taylor that architecture often represents the social, political and economic state of the time something is built. Taylor brings up how several architects used a grid model after the introduction of the assembly line. Taylor uses Mies van der Rohe’s Illinois Institute of Technology, which is where my brother attends, as an example. I thought this was very interesting because I did not think there was any architectural design behind IIT, unless boring is considered a design.
Taylor then goes on to say that the new, complex network culture is giving rise to more flowing architecture, such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. This is where Taylor lost me. I did not understand how this new architecture had anything to do with the complex theory. After viewing the video I found on YouTube.com about the museum, I thought it is perhaps because all of the parts that make up the museum are complex, but they just organize into a simple building. I’m still a little skeptical of Taylor’s argument, but it is definitely intriguing and has forced me to think about how complex theory is applied.



The narrator is a little boring and the giant dog is kind of creepy, but I thought this video was interesting.

McLuhon=Crazy?

Confusion is the only word that comes to mind when I think about the pieces we read and discussed by Marshall McLuhon. While I was reading “The Medium is the Message” and “Media Hot and Cold,” I had a very difficult time understanding if McLuhon supported the new forms of media that were making on impact on society, or if he felt they were damaging. In class we discussed how McLuhon embraced new media and believed that it would unify society and encourage participation, while print literacy supports fragmentation. In the first chapter he seems to praise the movie, or the medium it represents, by saying that it “carried us from the world of sequence and connections into the world of creative configuration and structure” and encourages “involvement.” (McLuhon 27-28). This information seems to support the fact that McLuhon was a proponent of new media. However, McLuhon suggests in the same article that we are “numb in our new electric world” (McLuhon 31). In the next chapter “Media Hot and Cold,” McLuhon calls the movie a “hot” medium, which he says is one that involves little participation, which is a complete contradiction to what he said before.

McLuhon also states that we are in a “TV age of cool” that has “turned the hot American culture into a cool one that is quite unacquainted with itself” (McLuhon 36, 40). If McLuhon supports new media and feels that is will unify society, why does he feel that movies do not support participation and that television is damaging society? Why does he group television in a different category of media than movies? Perhaps television was different at the time that McLuhon was published, but now I feel like television is very similar to movies, especially with dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy,” and “24.”

Usually class discussions help to clarify a confusing reading, but I left Tuesday’s class in bewilderment and questioning McLuhon’s sanity when he wrote “Understanding Media.”

Attempt at Writing Cool

This is going to be interesting…

Today in my genetics lecture, my professor mentioned that bananas are going to become extinct in less than 10 years. These beloved fruits are no longer resistant to several diseases and pathogens due to years of genetic engineering so that consumers can get bigger and sterile (seed-less) bananas to go with their ice cream. However, the rhetoric my genetics textbook uses suggests that fruits were originally genetically engineered to help world hunger. And that world hunger, in Faigley’s opinion, is caused by the fact that we are consuming our resources too quickly because of our technological-based, fast-paced lives. It is basically a never ending circle: we try to use new technologies to fix problems, but that just creates more problems, which we then try to fix. And uniform circular motion has constant velocity and centripetal acceleration… I tried to get physics in there, but it doesn’t really relate…

This has become the "Real World"

This week, to advance our exploration of the rise of the blog, we read and discussed an article titled, “Blogging as a Social Action: A Genre Analysis of Writing,” by Carolyn R. Miller and Dawn Shepherd. The article outlined the main points of blogs, such as their purpose in society, their “ancestors,” and reasons as to why they have become so popular.

What I found to be the most interesting aspect of the article is the term that the authors have coined as “mediated voyeurism.” The authors theorize that, especially in the 90’s, there comes about a “peculiar intersection of the public and private” spheres because, “…as people relinquish control over increasing amounts of personal information, they expect increasing access to information in return” (Miller et al.) With the rise of reality TV and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, society has become increasingly obsessed with knowing about the private lives of celebrities and “regular” people. The line between private and public information has not only been crossed, it has become extremely fuzzy. Today, thousands of people are willing to share very personal issues on TV (or just act completely ridiculous), as well as on their blog. As “regular” people are becoming “celebrities,” there is an ever-increasing demand for information to show how celebrities are regular people. And people, me included, can’t get enough of all of this “private” information. The list of reality shows and celebrity magazines that my friends and I can’t go a week with out seeing is a little embarrassing (we quote Vh1’s I Love New York on a daily basis).

One interesting point that was brought up in discussion was how, as a society, we are becoming more skeptical of what is considered “reality.” We know that what we see on The Bachelor or The Apprentice is not an adequate representation of real life, and what we read in magazine about celebrities is most likely not true. This is where I think the genre of weblogs is separating itself from the other types of media included in “mediated voyeurism” and “mediated exhibitionism.” (Miller et al). I’m going to ignore the example that was given in the article about the women who lied about the child with cancer, but I think that most people tell the truth when writing in a blog. I don’t think that blogging has really caught on yet with people my age, but I think that others blog so that they can share their thoughts. If they wanted to seek attention by fabricating stories they could just go on Real World or one of the other hundreds of reality shows.

STS Class: Wikis, Blogs, & Podcasts

Yesterday I attended the Wikis, Blogs, and Podcasts class provided by STS. The class was fairly straight forward and the instructors were very helpful. We spent the first hour and a half learning how to record our own podcast using Audacity, which is a free program, and then we uploaded the podcast onto the internet. After that we set up a blog through wordpress.com. I really liked this weblog provider because it had a lot more options than blogger. After blogs, we moved on to wikis, which, we learned, is Hawaiian for quick. We kind of rushed through this section because there wasn’t much time left. Basically they showed us that there is a special code for writing in wikis, and it is very easy to edit what other people have written.

I think that the class would have been very beneficial if I hadn’t already set up a blog. The podcast section was a little complicated so that took up most of the time. I would have liked to learn a little bit more about wikis because they mentioned how wikis can be very useful for collaborative projects.

Overall, this class was okay but I think I might attend a Dreamweaver class for more software training.

"New Media" in the English Classroom

The majority of my experience with “academic writing” comes from high school. I wrote a few papers for various social science classes, but most of the things I wrote were focused on analyzing literature for English class. Most of the essays were structured the same: five paragraphs with a thesis statement in the introduction and a conclusion. For AP English we wrote so many practice AP test essays that were all exactly the same (pick two elements of style in the passage and describe them in a four paragraph essay), so for any other “writing” assignments my teacher gave us a variety of mediums to use. For a couple of assignments we could make videos, compile an album of songs, or make a PowerPoint. I liked the different options we were allowed to explore because they were a nice departure from monotonous essays.

I think that by introducing “new media” into English classrooms, as my AP English teacher started to do, it would allow student to further explore aspects of literature and composition. It would definitely “challenge” traditional writing because it would help to get students more excited about assignments if they are allowed to choose different methods and be more creative. Also, as Jeff Rice described in “Networks and New Media,” which we discussed on Tuesday, different forms of media will allow students to make more and different connections and relationships that simply writing on paper does not provide.

Another benefit to introducing “new media” is that it will give students invaluable skills and experience with up-and-coming technologies that they will be able to utilize as they enter the workforce.

However, I think there are several risks that come with introducing new media into the classroom. I’ll admit that when I first heard that we were going to be using blogs and web design in this class, I almost switched. I have never been computer-savvy (my laptop and I often get in heated arguments, and I usually lose), and I was afraid I was not going to be prepared. Most people still think of English class as a course focused on writing or typing papers and I think it is going to take a while to change this misconception.

Also, especially at the college-level, students have a mosaic of different experience levels with using computers, videos, the internet, and other forms of “new media. By only focusing on these new forms, students that are not very comfortable with technology might be alienated. Moreover, as we discussed last week, students that can not attend schools that can afford newer technology are going to be left behind in this movement.

I really see this use of “new media” as interesting and exciting change from what I always thought of “academic writing” in the English class. However, I definitely think that getting comfortable with it is going to take time.

The Evolution of Writing in My Life

Reading Notes 1: Wikipedia Discussion

The readings assignments for last week addressed two different view points on how the new world of technology is affecting or could possibly change the English classroom. The first reading, “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in New Key,” was from a speech that Kathleen Blake Yancey gave at CCCC. Yancey compared the emergence of this new technological era to that of 19^th century Britain and the invention of a new, cheaper printing press that allowed more people to read novels. At that time, people became excited about reading and often read together in groups. Yancey believes that composition classes need to embrace new “media” of writing and communication, such as blogs, in order to get students excited about composition. She often praises new technology because it constantly evolves and promotes more depth in composition.

The second reading, “Rhetorics Fast and Slow,” which was written by Lester L. Faigley, addresses the negative aspects of using new technology in the classroom. Faigley often compares “slow rhetoric,” which he describes as “lengthy exposition, explicit logical relations, sobriety, and order,” to “fast rhetoric,” which includes all of the new forms of communication we now use in the 21^st century (Faigley 4). While reading his essay, I felt that Faigley was very antagonistic to fast rhetoric. Instead of seeing the flood of information that is easily attainable today as a good thing, he basically states that it is the cause of war, famine, and environmental problems. He states that this new, fast-paced technology “brings risks” and society needs to learn how to slow down (Faigley 5). I was also surprised to learn from his reading that there exists a Rhetoric Society of America.

In discussion, we read an article describing how professors at Middlebury College have banned students from using Wikipedia. The class discussed how Yancey and Faigley would view the ban. I felt that Faigley would support the ban because Wikipedia is another example of fast rhetoric: anyone can obtain whatever information they want but there is a risk that it is not correct. However, someone is the class (sorry, I don’t have all the names down yet) brought up that Wikipedia was proven to be more correct than Britannica and other encyclopedias. I initially thought that Yancey would not support the ban because she was very supportive of embracing new technologies in the classroom. But someone else brought up a good point that Yancey would probably encourage teaching students to make more “rhetorical choices” and how to properly use a site like Wikipedia, without cutting them off from anything.

The end of the discussion shifted more towards what will happen if some students do not have access to these new technologies. Faigley mentioned that digital technologies are available to people with “disposable income.” If they are the only ones with access, then students in low-income areas will not be exposed and an even larger divide in society will exist. I was very interested in many people’s experiences in inner-city schools. Before reading the assignments and listening to the discussion, I never really thought about how much technology has become so important in my education and how, unfortunately, some are not able to have access to the resources that I have all the time. I feel that it is important to expose students to all of the new forms of technology, but something needs to be done so that every student has the same opportunities.