ENGL 680M: New Media

I've been cat-sitting for Morgan R. and I took advantage of her offer to play with her Wii. My spouse came along and we bowled and played tennis. I had tennis lessons a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago, but it was funny how I remembered how you are supposed to play the game; it's different in meat space, that's for sure. For one, in meat space tennis you aren't supposed to take more than one swing. I think changing the direction of your swing helps in Wii tennis; also I did manage to figure out how to serve an ace, but we figured it's someone unsportsmanlike in Wii.

What is the difference between a journal and a weblog?

I loved Turkle's article, but did anyone else notice the sexist examples she used for her discussion of open-ended role playing on page 50?

I laughed when I first got to the 1906 National Phonograph Co. ad on page 77 of _Always Already New_. "When a man leaves home in the evening it is because he seeks amusement. The best way to keep him home is to give him the amusement there." The message, aimed mainly at the lady of the house I'm guessing: Keep 'em home and entertained with the Edison Phonograph. I can't imagine the image of a rope tying a man to a house having any appeal to a guy.

As I was reading _Remediation_, I kept admiring the book layout. Wow! the footnotes are right here, in the margins! And they are at a decent size so I don't have to squint! Look at the references to other pages! And then I realized, duh, it's a hypertext in handy print form.

It’s funny to think about Grandpa Socrates scoffing over the young kids with their fancy alphabets and words and written texts. Back in his day they had a thing called "memorization" - and it worked just fine for him. I don’t feel so bad that I can remember the days when floppy disks were actually floppy – or disks at all, for that matter. But the alphabet, literacy, is a technology. It’s handy to be reminded of that.