ENGL 680M: New Media

Thinking about blogs last week gave me an idea for my studio project. One of the things that occurs to me is how blogging and the web could make for a very interesting and transparent research process. For example, if I am conducting research on how the web and ubiquitous computing affect archives, then the combining the use of a blog on a website could essentially serve as a documentary of the research writing process.

If I my CV is the topic of my blog then can I put my blog on my CV?

I'm just tossing this question out there because it's been an interesting discussion on the WPA listserve this week? Or at least at one point. It's so hard to tell know when information is new. It pretty much becomes new whenever I get to it. But I digress....

In case you missed it, the second season of Boondocks has begun. It airs Mondays, 10:30 I believe.

And for all you new media fans, I recommend "The Real," an episode in which Riley signs up the family for Pimp My Ride and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It's brilliant!

I'm certain we all have a vested interest in theorizing and applying new media to our teaching and composing otherwise we wouldn't be in this class.

But I'm curious to know how people feel about new media in a class like 106. Having new media projects often makes my students more engaged, but I also feel frustrated sometimes by the amount of information I feel obligated to cover over the course of 16 weeks. It seems like so much can slip through the cracks, and we all know that alphabetic texts are difficult to produce as they are.

Any time I can quote Rage Against the Machine I can't pass it up...

"Environment
The environment exceeding on the level
Of our unconciousness
For example,
What does the billboard say?
Come and play!, come and play!
Forget about the movement"

"Freedom." Rage Against the Machine. 1992.

I started my post about four times this week, but I never submitted it because I couldn't figure out exactly what I was getting at. It just sounded dumb. Luckily, there's Zack de la Rocha!

After this week's reading I had to go back and look through Huizinga a second time because I kept trying to define play. It made me think that here we have one answer to the question Nick raised a week or two ago. Can we trick people into doing actual work while they're playing games? (My apologies Nick if that's not the exact question you asked.)

Huizinga's answer appears to be no.

Check your local listings for replays of The Writing Code. It's a really interesting documentary about the invention of written language. What really caught me about it was its connection to Gitelman's Alway Already New.

After reading Remediation I looked up Orlan on Google. Wow. I suppose the notion that even the body can be remediated is very postmodern. Come to think of it, I'm certain that the body has always been remediated in various ways (even through our various attachments to clothes) so it's not a matter of possible/not possible; however, the extent to which the body can now be remediated is mind boggling. Even more so, shows like Dr. 90210 and others about plastic surgery are essentially remediations about remediations.

In "The Medium is the Massage" McLuhan argues that media is subtly persuasive. My first question is whether or not this is something new or this is the way things have always been, perhaps we're just more aware of it now. On the other hand, maybe we're less aware of it, and that's the point.

It's interesting to me that McLuhan stuck with the "massage" print because as I was reading the book I could feel my anxiety growing and growing. I started to feel like information was traveling too fast, like a top about to spin off of a table. Even the book itself is a fast read. I found myself turning the pages so fast that I was sure I had missed some key point or message or massage.