‘Super Sad True Love Story’ is kind of sad.

Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story delivered on its title’s name, but more so in the “sad” department.  Admittedly, I am in the process of finishing the last half of the novel; however, from what I have read, I can attest as a reader that the novel evokes sympathy, second-hand embarrassment and sadness.  Numerous characters and passages pulled on my heartstrings, and honestly, not much so far has hinted that there will be redeemable human actions or moments of joy towards the end of the novel.  Such issues that lead me to this belief include the abusive family life Eunice is a product of, the overwhelmingly shallow society that berates those who are not youth-obsessed and flawless, the value of money and material over human life, and the sheer disregard and reluctance for human emotion and feeling.  Eunice’s mother’s GlobalTeen messages were one of the saddest parts of the novel for me thus far – you can sense she wants to say something more, to express how much she is hurting to her daughter, but she quickly catches herself and talks about mundane or lighthearted things.  “Eunhee, Today I wake up sad.  But no problem!  It will be OK!” (72). “Daddy promise that if he not feel well FIRST we pray together to GOD for guide us THEN he hit…I just learn how to make happy sign.  Do you like it?  Haha” (47). I think Eunice’s mother is an interesting character in that her personality and seemingly erratic nature can be attributed to the abuse she has sustained as a wife, the helplessness she must feel as a mother of abused daughters, and also the societal context in which she lives – a world where displaying emotions is foreign and not encouraged.

            Another part of the novel which induced empathy and second-hand embarrassment from me revolved around the extremely shallow world Lenny inhabits – the Cervix bar/Form A Community (FAC) scene.  While I’m not so naïve to say people do not judge others, especially in bars where many are looking for “fuckable” partners, I will argue that not everyone is so inherently shallow that there is no possibility for conversation or actual kindness to occur between people.  In Lenny’s experience at the bar, however, he is labeled the ugliest male there and is fully aware of this collective female decision – and yet he stays (the horror!).  I felt so uncomfortable for him and so sad that the passage was almost unbearable to read.  I recalled feeling that out of place and insecure in grade school – the boys in my 7^th grade class would rank the girls in our grade and essentially they decided only the 8^th grade possessed attractive girls.  It also made me assess the bullying situation in our country now – only accelerated by technology – and the consequences of FAC existing in a world where children are already vulnerable enough.

            The final example I think is worth noting, which qualifies categorically (for me) as the value of money and material over human life, comes in the form of Aziz Tompkins – the displaced bus driver living in a shack on a hill.  (Winstanley, anyone?)  The handmade sign alone broke my heart:  “A sunflower had been painted on it along with the words ‘my name aziz jamie tompkins I worked bus driver kicked out of home two days ago this is my space dont shoot’” (105).  Aziz became displaced due to a visit from the Chinese Central Banker – such poor people could not be seen by these wealthy and powerful figures and thus are discarded as easily as carbohydrates and books.  The first half of Super Sad True Love Story exhibits quite a heavy dose of sadness which – if it could get any sadder – is not so far fetched for the world’s future.

2 comments November 20, 2011

Frustrations and Awakenings with ‘Facde’

I played Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas’s Façade before reading the excerpt on the game from Wardrip-Fruin’s Expressive Processing – I think if I had read the piece on Façade before playing it, I may have had more appreciation or patience for the game.  Initially, I decided I would act/enter text exactly as I would if I were a real guest in this particular situation.  I closed the door politely, avoided eye contact from the side of the room where Grace and Trip were arguing when he went to get her and answered graciously when spoken to.  This did not last, however, because I soon realized a) I would never be friends with people like this and b) Trip and Grace are ignorant, uptight psychopaths.  They would force you to choose sides and then, later, in some dramatic fashion, one would rehash what you allegedly agreed to with the other one.  The music was extremely dramatic and the facial expressions made by Trip and Grace started to terrify me.  I was so scared of them during the one game, I restricted myself from saying hardly anything – they didn’t seem to mind my silence and it resulted in Grace confessing she slept with an art major, Victor, the night before Trip proposed, thus jinxing their fabulous marriage.

I played Façade with serious intentions about four or five times.  I was kicked out during one game because I kissed Trip and told him his wife sucks – this seemed like a good idea at the time because Grace was down the hallway pouting – and Trip didn’t mind the first few times, but his guilty conscious must have caught up with him.  The other three or four times, Grace walked out and Trip stood there shoulda-coulda-woulda-ing before the curtain fell.  I tried everything to get them to reconcile – suggesting therapy (this was met with defensive responses), suggesting Grace was sad (“you’re saying I’m depressed?”/psycho face), suggesting they divorce (horrified faces/defensive responses) – I also said they should kill themselves because I lost all patience with them at one point.  Whoops.  There were numerous times my interjections were ignored and responded to with a “Let’s talk about our relationship” which also was frustrating to me but now makes a bit more sense after reading the article; Wardrip-Fruin explains that not playing into the topic that Grace and Trip are on can result in Façade mixing in a JDB that deflects the player’s action.  Thus, “Let’s talk about our relationship/Let’s talk about Grace.”

Wardrip-Fruin’s point that no computer program can understand arbitrary human language made me reflect back on my frustrations with Façade and acknowledge it was not a flaw in the game that Trip and Grace could not fully interact with me when I spoke.  Instead, as the excerpt on Façade states, the game’s statements are limited to “discourse acts” – agreement, thanking, referring to a topic and so on.  Clearly, Trip and Grace categorized my statements by such discourse acts – when I said something polite to what they said, they reacted warmly (only at the very beginning of the game) and would acknowledge if I said something about a topic they were familiar with – drinks, art, romance.  Overall, as the excerpt on Façade acknowledges, agency could be obtained in the game through accuracy in natural language understanding, however, such agency is limited due to computer programs lacking the ability to understand arbitrary human language which makes up daily interactions in people’s lives.

2 comments November 6, 2011

Transmedia and the ‘Dollhouse’ Franchise

This week’s secondary source, Henry Jenkins’ “Searching for the Origami Unicorn:  The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling,” expanded my opinions on the Dollhouse franchise; specifically with Jenkins’ discussion on reading across the media and providing fans with options for consumption.  Jenkins relies heavily on the network of media links The Matrix franchise provides – there are the films, the computer games, web comics, etc. – and argues that narratives, such as the complex one found in the Warchowski brothers’ script, need to branch out and find their way into various forms of media for a few reasons.  “The Matrix is entertainment for the age of media convergence, integrating multiple texts to create a narrative so large that it cannot be contained within a single medium” (95).  Jenkins goes on to explain how viewers or fans so deeply invested within the narratively complex world will seek multiple entry points into this story line in order to expand on their knowledge or harvest more clues.  “The most committed consumers track down data spread across multiple media, scanning each and every text for insights into the world” (95).  This is where I began to think about Whedon’s Dollhouse.  There are, of course, the two televised seasons of the story; however, there are also the comic books and, at one point, an interactive web game launched by Fox for the show.  Dollhouse, like The Matrix, had a narrative so large it needed to inhabit more than one form of media.

In other words, like The Matrix, Dollhouse is a transmedia story.  “A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole.  In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best – so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics; its world might be experienced through game play or experienced as an amusement park attraction” (95-96).  The Dollhouse narrative supports this definition of a transmedia story; the story was introduced in a televised format but also, prefacing and then running simultaneously with the show’s debut, offered fans and those interested in multiple mediums for Dollhouse’s story, an interactive game centered around Dollhouse.  The game was a part of Fox’s marketing plan which had players attempting to “save Hazel” – a girl trapped in a room connected to the Dollhouse world.  The Dollhouse comic books were introduced shortly thereafter and expanded on new storylines inspired from the televised narrative.  This also supports Jenkins’ thoughts on depth of experience influencing more consumption and how redundancy – a pitfall of constraining a narrative into one form of media – can kill fan interest, and, consequently, the franchise itself.  While Dollhouse essentially encompassed what it means to be a transmedia story, it still failed as a franchise.  I suppose then there are more factors to having a successful franchise – like The Matrix – aside from employing transmedia qualifiers.

1 comment October 30, 2011

Mittell Expertise Project

In “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television” Jason Mittell discusses the “formal attributes” of television shows that are narratively complex, highlights reasons for the emergence of the genre of narratively complex television in the 1990s, and explores the patterns and trends within the genre as a whole. Changes in technology in the 1990s, like seasons of television programs on DVD, video recording, and the Internet inviting “participatory engagement” through message boards and fan websites, are reasons Mittell attributes to the rise in complex television (“Narrative Complexity” 31). In the essay “All in the Game: The Wire, Serial Storytelling, and Procedural Logic” Mittell examines the characteristics of the complex narrative in The Wire, looking at the show through the lens of both a novel and a videogame. In defining narrative complexity, Mittell utilizes definitions produced by David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson. His own definition of narrative complexity is stated as: “At its most basic level, narrative complexity is a redefinition of episodic forms under the influence of serial narration—not necessarily a complete merger of episodic and serial forms but a shifting balance” (“Narrative Complexity” 32). Mittell emphasizes that television needs to be examined as its own medium, not through the lens of cinema or any other media.

Mittell establishes many characteristics of narratively complex TV. One such characteristic is a shift from episodic narratives to the serial narrative. He writes that shows with complex narratives do not always have closure with every episode. Instead, they expand the story arc across episodes and even seasons. This demonstrates a shift from episodic tendencies in television, where a plot issue is constructed and solved within the episode, to serialized television, which may not offer closure at the end of each episode and requires viewers to pay attention as a certain plot may span across seasons. In “All in the Game” Mittell argues that The Wire dedicates seasons to a particular aspect of the city life, and over the course of the following seasons, culminates into a coherent story arc.

While many shows blend episodic and serial narrative, thus making them complex, Mittell also applies the term “serial procedural” to The Wire. He uses Murray’s observation on the relationship between the procedural nature of videogames and the digital narrative to explain how The Wire uses this in its own narrative mode – “its ability to capture experience as systems of interrelated actions” (“All in the Game” 436). Mittell writes, “The Wire is on the other end of television’s narrational spectrum, with each episode in the series demanding to be viewed in sequence and strict continuity.  Thus, The Wire functions as what might be television’s only example of a serialized procedural” (435).  It is the focus on procedure that allows for narration within the rules of the game:  “procedurality…offers a probing social investigation of the urban condition” (437).

Other issues that arise with narratively complex television, like The Wire, are “rewatchability” and “replayability.” Being able to rewatch a series from the beginning allows the viewers to further engage and participate in understanding the complex narratives. Mittell argues that The Wire cannot only be rewatched, but replayed. In examining The Wire as a videogame, Mittell notes the importance of replayablity in simulation games, stating that The Wire’s offering of replayability comes from learning new characters, variables, and rules through which to play the game in the later seasons, that can also translate back to the first season’s narrative.

Procedural literacy is another characteristic of complex narrativity. In order to fully understand a program with complex narrativity the viewer must understand the underlying procedures the show is utilizing.  An example we thought of concerning procedural literacy occurs with Lost.  Lost utilizes flashback, a trend in conventional television programs. However, the flashbacks in Lost often do not provide clarity, but raise more questions for the viewer. Though flashback may be seen as a conventional narrative device, the season three finale of Lost also subverts this convention by shocking the audience with a flashforward instead. Because the viewers have mastered the procedure of Lost—knowing that each episode will have a flashback—episodes like the season three finale become all the more shocking because the procedure is changed.

Other characteristics Mittell attributes to narratively complex television include the viewers’ appreciation for the construction of the complexities of the narrative. Because the viewers are aware of the form, reflexivity becomes an issue. Mittell writes, “We watch these shows not just to get swept away in a realistic narrative world, but also to watch the gears at work, marveling at the craft required to pull off such narrative pyrotechnics” (“Narrative Complexity” 35). Not only are the plots themselves engaging, but also viewers are similarly engaged by watching how the writers will pull off the narrative. Lost is an example of this: while being involved in the plot itself, viewers are also engaged in watching how J.J. Abrams and others will conclude the complex story lines they put forth. Websites such as the Lostpedia exemplifies this. Mittell also uses the example of the Lost episode titled “Orientation,” where the characters watch a video that explains the origins of the hatch, and Locke remarks that they must watch it again (line occurs around 2:56), mirroring the audiences viewing experience (35). This scene demonstrates the rewatchability as well as appreciation for the complexity of the narrative.

Mittell argues that the narrative strategies used within narratively complex television shows are what most engages the audience. Viewers are engaged because of the ways the tropes of conventional narrative are broken. Conventional narratives utilize techniques such as flashback, voice-over narration, and dream sequences, in order to provide clarity for the audience. Narratively complex shows are not afraid to confuse and disorient viewers; they make viewers wait for the moment of clarity when the plot all comes together. Viewers must engage actively and “master each programs internal conventions of complex narration” (37). Mittell writes that The Wire “avoids flashbacks, voice-overs, fantasy sequences, repetition from multiple perspectives, or reflexive commentaries on the narrative form itself” (“All in the Game” 435), further positioning itself as a narratively complex show that does not use traditional narrative conventions.

Finally, though Mittell argues that The Wire needs to be examined as its own medium, he also declares that  it is also a useful critical strategy to examine The Wire as both a novel and videogame. David Simon, creator of The Wire, believes The Wire to be novelistic in form. Mittell writes, “The Wire’s novelistic qualities are most directly linked to its storytelling structure and ambitions” (“All in the Game” 429).  However, Mittell contends that The Wire fails in one main area that is directly associated to the novel:  character development. The characters of The Wire, Mittell argues, are usurped by the institutions of both society and Baltimore (the police force, drug trade, government, and education systems) and are therefore denied individuality or mobility. The shift from focus on character development to plot development is a characteristic of narratively complex television rather than the novel.

Mittell also examines The Wire as a videogame. While video games are predominantly interactive, Mittell comes right out and says “Let me preemptively acknowledge one significant limitation here:  watching The Wire is not interactive” – but rather, it is spectatorial, like a baseball game (“All in the Game” 431).  The show, if viewed as a game, produces a game within a game theme for the characters are often seen playing and referring to the urban struggle and drug trade in Baltimore as “the game.”  Finally, Mittell positions himself against Simon’s declaration of The Wire as a televised novel by saying the complex issues regarding the institution are better represented by video games:  “While Simon imagines that the televised novel is the form best suited to accomplish such goals, in today’s media environment, video games are the go-to medium for portraying complex systems” (“All in the Game” 432).  Examining The Wire as a videogame makes the complexities within the show more apparent.

We noticed many similarities between what Mittell is arguing in both narratives in relation to Dollhouse. Dollhouse blends a serial narrative with an episodic narrative. While in the first few episodes of Dollhouse, the narrative is simply being established and the audience is being shown how the Dollhouse works as a whole, from the middle of the season on the narrative becomes more serialized, with overarching plots. Questions are left unanswered in Dollhouse: the season one finale utilizes a flashforward. It is giving the viewers a glimpse of the future, demonstrating the complexities involved in the narrative, and leaving the viewer with more questions than answers. Finally, as in The Wire, Dollhouse is more focused on plot than character because the main characters are dolls. They have no personality of their own.

Resources:

-Mittel blogs about Dollhouse: http://justtv.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/jump-starting-dollhouse/
-Caroline Levine responds to Mittle’s essay on The Wire: http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/serialrip
-A question and answer session with David Simon about The Wire: http://www.borderline-productions.com/TheWireHBO/exclusive-1.html

1 comment October 22, 2011

Literacy and the Human Network

At this point in the semester (and with the help of the
explanatory draft assignment), I’ve begun to connect the primary sources to the
numerous theories we’ve encountered and also to class discussions – blogs, tweets
and in-person conversations.  The latest
assignment – reading Burgess and Green’s YouTube:
Digital Media and Society Series – connected some previous ideas from the
class to this book’s content.
Specifically, the passage in chapter 4’s “YouTube’s Social Network”
entitled “Literacy and the Social Network.”
Here, Burgess and Green examine the history behind literacy, from print
to media, and the significance of human involvement in new forms of
literacy.  Being part of a “participatory
culture” (70) makes up a great deal of YouTube’s successes and its longevity in
this digital age – and, as Burgess and Green further discuss, defining literacy
should rely on the notion of a participatory culture.  “…’literacy is not a self-evident thing
individuals can possess, and nor are any of the possible specific ‘literacies.’  Literacies, rather, are produced by, and
practiced in, particular social and historical contexts” (71).  It seems that Burgess and Green are arguing
for individuals to interact with new media in order to become literate in it,
to teach themselves a new language almost.

This section, providing also the examples of Paul Oakley,
an elderly British man who videotaped his first experiment with a webcam and
published it on YouTube, along with Geriatric927’s lessons for nursing home
residents on using a computer, triggered my memory back to the beginning of
this class where many of us were nervous to engage in new forms of media.  I remember numerous blog posts from the class
saying blogging and tweeting were foreign and new and kind of scary, but look
at us now – we blog and tweet weekly, leave comments on blogs and can now
engage in conversations about the affordances of digital media in the
classroom.  The fact that Oakley’s first
video post – “First Try” – garnered so much traffic on YouTube says something, at
least in my opinion, about the human race.
We all get overwhelmed by new things and fear failure, or looking stupid
in front of our peers, and our sentiments from our first blog posts about
feeling nervous and inexperienced speak to this universal truth.  Yet, we all encouraged each other or said we
felt similar things through comments and tweets and this emphatic notion is
probably the biggest reason why Oakley’s post was viewed more than two and a
half million times.  The human connection
can still be found on the web.

1 comment October 16, 2011

A human bond to Elephant

Gus Van Sant’s Elephant is, understandably, a polarizing film not specifically for its content, but largely due to its production. The production, for me, is what garnered my sense of interactivity – this film inserts you, unapologetically, into the monotonous grind that is a suburban high school day.  Immediately, I noticed the production quality of the film; its tracking shots and long takes of the student you are paired with for that segment mirrors a home video quality in which you interact without the glossy editing or the powerful score playing out in the background.  Elephant barely offers the expected production quality of modern day films which struck me instantly and gave me the ‘fly on the wall’ feeling while viewing the movie – there is no safe guard between me and the film, a wall has not been built to separate me from the beautiful movie stars and high production value – I am a student at this Oregon high school with these nonprofessional actors (most of whom didn’t even change their name for the film).  Bassett argues in “’Just because’ stories: on Elephant” that the interactivity of the film is presented in cultural format, a medium of everyday life which is similar to the trend of reality television – one that offers identification and involvement (168-9).

The identification and involvement do not come simply or directly though a strong character development in the film which attaches the viewer to a character(s), but rather (especially in my case) from the connectedness of humanity and the ability a person has to realize the greater picture at hand.  Yes, Van Sant does not offer much more than a character’s name and that particular, surface perspective for segments of the film; however, it is the known impending horror that will befall these students that binds you with them regardless of having a connection to them based on an expected, complex character development.  The shifting perspectives, repetition and loops which Van Sant utilizes, fuel the interactivity we have with the students whose fate we are privy to.  We play the waiting game with them, yet we have the gift of foretelling the future.  As Bassett states, “It is clear from the start that these lives are at risk, that these intertwined lives are about to be ripped apart, and some of them ripped to pieces.  Since the audience knows that some of these characters will not come through, the repeated trajectories, and insistent returns to the same points of intersection begin to take on a certain cruelty” (181).

My voyeuristic experience with Elephant left me certain that this film was interactive but not in the standard fashion.  We know the outcome and are given different pathways to view the event, yet the answer is not clear cut and instead of offering a few different conclusions (like Memento), only bigger questions emerge from the smoke.  Van Sant inserts his viewers in the corridors and cafeteria and promotes a human connectedness we all seem to find in large-scale tragedies.  Everyone wants to feel connected somehow in the wake of close to home terror, and as Bassett explains, “Elephant at least engages with that desire for ‘real’ connection that is seen in…disasters…where each of us reaches for our link to the tale, to make it our tale” (185).  This interconnectedness people seem to project during tragedy is a driving force in the interactivity of Van Sant’s Elephant.

3 comments October 2, 2011

Using Manovich to examine ‘Memento’

The first reading of the Manovich article introduced me to interesting concepts concerning databases and the relationships they forge with narratives – or challenge, as Manovich argues.  Manovich suggests that database represents the world as a list of items with no cohesive order while narrative produces a coherent trail of seemingly unordered events; hence, the two are at odds with one another.  He explains, with references to literary scholar Mieke Bal’s definition of narrative qualities, that narratives are linear and contain connected events which draw from a database of choices (or items) to do so.  And as the article continues, Manovich discusses the twentieth century’s narration take over with the sequential format of cinema and its place at the intersection between database and narrative.  Overall, my first incident with the article was informatory and did not really jolt me to make comparisons with media I have experienced; especially in the case of film structure.

After watching the mind-f*ck that is Nolan’s Memento, I came back to Manovich’s Database as Symbolic Form (because obviously there is a reason these two were assigned simultaneously!) and started to deconstruct the definition of narrative and its place in cinema.  The first chunk of text that stood out to me was this section in which Manovich discusses cinema as narrative:  “Why do new media insist on this language-like sequencing?  My hypothesis is that it follows the dominant semiological order of the twentieth century – that of cinema.  Cinema replaced all other modes of narration with a sequential narrative, an assembly-line of shots which appear on the screen one at a time…The ‘real’ culture of the twentieth century came to speak in linear chains…the user is following a sequence of elements which are presented simultaneously” (91).  My initial reaction to this (after viewing Memento, of course) was: LIAR!  Memento challenges the very notion of sequential narration or linear endeavors and therefore, Manovich:  you are a big fat liar.  Ahem, I continued to read, however, and realized his inclusion of Peter Greenaway and other revolutionary film directors are indicative of the ability film has to challenge cinema’s conventional storytelling format.  As Greenaway laments, “the linear pursuit – one story at a time told chronologically – is the standard format of cinema” (94).

Nolan’s use of two plot lines – one (the black and white shots) in chronological order and the other (the color sequences) in reverse order – challenge the traditional narrative which dominates film and concurrently works to force the viewer into a state of shared confusion with the protagonist, Leonard.  The sharp distinction between plot and story is what drives Memento to be the whirlwind experience it is; we humans are creatures of habit and such a jarring attack on narrative is foreign to us.  After watching the film, I used my Flixster app to browse what critics had to say about Nolan’s creation (with a 93% approval rating it was difficult to find anything but praise for his distinct choice of format) and found a review which questioned would the film be anything other than a standard crime drama without the use of a nonlinear narrative structure – would it be anything worthy of praise?  While I am clearly no film critic, I must argue that this person’s critique of the movie was missing the mark – what Nolan did here was defy the routine choice of film storytelling and make us question how we can define narrative within the context of cinema.

2 comments September 25, 2011

You Can’t Cuddle a Computer

In finishing up the novel and playing the Galatea game, a few ideas and feelings came to mind that I can’t seem to shake – first, as the other Sarah L. pointed out, Powers’ writing style – his ability to convey visceral emotions onto the page, is something that deeply moved me and made my experience with Galatea 2.2 a rewarding one. (I wasn’t sure if it was me being overly emotional as I found myself tearing up and marking the pages that preempted my waterworks, so I’m glad someone else relates to my sentiments). I think it’s quite ironic for the man who is so detached from the bonds of relationships and feelings to write in a manner that indicates the emotional capacity he truly has/had. Powers’ chronicling of he and C.’s relationship through flashbacks enamored me and at times, I found myself wanting to quickly read past his present day work with Helen and Lentz to get to the fleshed out, raw moments he shared with C. His selflessness to instill comfort and reassurance in her at any cost was one of the plot lines I appreciated the most. Also, his observations of those closest to him in the present day scenes – Lentz and his wife, Diana and her special needs son, and his past relationship with Taylor all elevated the narrative to a text I would lend to a friend and say, ‘give it a chance.’ Overall, the human connections interested me far more than the connection between human and computer. In the game Galatea, I only found myself reinforcing my partial interest or concern for human/computer communication; the game was absolutely interesting and had aspects that excited me, but I grew disheartened with Galatea’s mood swings and inability to actually say something. The predetermined text drove me crazy as I attempted numerous routes of dialogue to reach some level of intimacy with Galatea; however, I could only achieve moments of breakthrough in a sea of disjointed and confusing conversation and actions. I wanted to know if she was lonely or sad because I sensed she was, but I felt inadequate in my quest to ask her such humanly complex questions. The game is very much like Powers’ experience with Helen and the previous models he worked with – the breakthroughs of communication are clearly possible, but the sting of coldness between computer and human appears to be impossible to avoid. There will never be a gratifying, close relationship, and I do not think it has anything to do with humans being restricted to forming bonds with humans; we can communicate with and deeply love our dogs, cats, etc. I suppose I could not suspend my need for emotional closeness in my life to truly latch on to Powers’ journey with Helen, however monumental it was in the world of science and technology.

1 comment September 18, 2011

SAE in the Digital Age

While McGann’s article primarily focuses on how digital technology can improve scholarly endeavors and assist in exploring works in the humanities, what stood out to me were his references to language in the context of both learning to use IT tools and the overall impact digital technology has, and will continue to have, on the evolution of communication and education.  Having minored in linguistics, the synapses in my brain started firing when I saw the quote:  “our sense of language will never be the same” (xiii).  Although McGann does not fully explore the effects the digital age has had on language, I can’t help but think of this concept myself.  Courses from my undergrad experience like “Language and Culture,” “The Development of the English Language,” and “Principles of Linguistics” have altered the way in which I observe words in my primary language.  One assignment I had in “The Development of the English Language” was to go down a few grocery store aisles and note whether or not aisles were marked canned goods or can goods.  We were also told to analyze the way we pronounced certain words versus the way we spelled them (i.e. iced tea spelling/ice tea pronunciation).  These minor tasks were a part of understanding how language is ever evolving (in these cases based on pronunciation and convenience for the majority of the speakers) and how certain words will become endangered or extinct based on certain factors.

While some words may change (for instance, ice cream used to be iced cream) and some may depart altogether, other words – new words – will enter languages and impact the primary speakers and new learners of it immeasurably.  There were numerous discussions in my linguistics courses about how technology is impacting the language of younger generations – how abbreviations/texting lingo are finding their way into students’ scholarly papers.  Naturally, those who worked in the Writing Center complained about the difficulties they were having reviewing freshmen papers and there were others who mentioned how their younger siblings were having trouble deciphering which language (so to speak) to use when writing papers for school, etc.  Overall, my class took a stand against digital age lingo finding its way into the English language.  My professor found our fervor for protecting the English language to be quite amusing and delicately pointed out that the language we know and use today would most likely had been viewed as slang and outlandish to past speakers.  While those educated in different areas of English most certainly appreciate the proper use of the English language, it is undeniable that language is always evolving and the digital age has, and more than likely will, continue to influence Standard American English.

Here’s a short and sweet article from the Huffington Post on how social media and the Internet has forever changed our language: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/18/sexting-retweet-cyberbullying-concise-oxford-english-dictionary_n_930347.html

Apologies if anyone else in Eng 566 has posted this link in cyberspace!

2 comments September 10, 2011

the times they are a-changin’

Hello, hello. I’m Sarah Lyden – first year grad student/first time blogger.

Take it easy on me, tweeple.

As Kristina mentioned in her blog post, it most definitely feels foreign to be both (in my case) creating a blog and then blogging for a graduate class.  Shouldn’t I be slaving away in a library somewhere – hunched over hundreds of books from decades past?  The tweeting, though new to my academic self, is exciting since I have been accustomed to Twitter for some time now.  My undergraduate experience in Ohio at Youngstown State University incorporated some digital network use within the standard teaching methods; I do vividly remember thinking two of my professors (who were my favorites, to begin with) were the coolest people around for incorporating YouTube clips in a Young Adult Lit and a Shakespeare course.  I suppose that says something about the disconnect in academia and the digital age – most students use YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. on a daily basis – why aren’t more professors or colleges marrying the two monsters?  I’ll chalk it up to the universal truth that progress – in any facet – is e x t r e m e l y  s l o w.

In regards to my personal experience, the digital age didn’t really sucker me in until the beginning of my sophomore year in college.  This was due in large part to coworkers and friends staring at me in horror when I said I didn’t have a Facebook.  Since the push into social networking, I’ve been a pretty decent participant in all things avoiding human contact – I have had a Twitter for a year or so (I made a second one – @SarahLyden – for class purposes), use Skype to talk to my sister for 5 minutes and then attempt to communicate with my dogs for another twenty, and truly feel I would be in a corner psychotically rocking back and forth if my iPhone were ever out of my sight.  However, I have just about abandoned the Facebook I was coerced into making – the incessant complaints and mindless grumblings from my peers frustrate me.  I find Twitter offers me an escape from these ‘friends’ and allows me to have a clean, organized way of viewing who and what I am most interested in.  There, I can
follow organizations that promote causes I care about and people I admire in order to keep perspective in a world where twenty-somethings think getting burnt Dunkin coffee is the end of the world.

Overall, embracing the digital age is an effort which I will continue to make.  I never want to feel alienated from forms of communication and possible routes to education.  And I most certainly never want to be one of those stubborn people who close their minds to anything new for fear of shaking up the status quo.

As Bob Dylan says:

Your old road is
Rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

2 comments September 3, 2011