ENGL 680M: New Media

Talking about "gendered" games, Journey to the Wild Divine (http://www.smartkidssoftware.com/ndwdn2.htm) is a game I would consider "fem" in that it is not a win loose game. Its not girl-ish (all in pink and bows) and not about shopping and dating. Rather, the game itself is about discovery and self improvement... as opposed to shooting things, or having boobs and jumping around temples. Which is not to say temple bouncing isn't valuable... Wild Divine has a different goal though. Peace,

Mo

this idea of "layers" strikes me as more a convenient way to conceptualize new media rather than a defining principle of it.

my desktop says "do your money!" to remind me to update my financial spreadsheet. other than that, it is black. :-/

before that, though, it was a cool swirly thing using vista's active background feature. that background says about me "you like shiny techie things."

these keyboards are unnecessarily noisy.

note to self - wikipedia game!

Hey all,

Just a quick resource I found yesterday thats worth checking out while we chat:

http://www.manovich.net/LNM_SITE_NEW/lnm_main.html

Peace,

Mo

I was discussing the rhizome in relation to sites that randomly generate pages or screens when I discovered that Rhizome.org is an online resource for people who are interested in new media art. Interesting...

Within the first few chapters of McLuhan’s text, I found my mouth pursing in characteristic skepticism that I associate with graduate school. McLuhan’s assertion that technology has “reconstituted dialogue on a global scale. Its message is Total Change, ending psychic, social, economic, and political parochialism” (McLuhan, 16) seemed to hearken past optimistic arguments of technological determinism.

This maybe off topic of the readings, but I reckon the board will eventually become a free-for-all of new media stuff, and I’m simply fascinating by something. Born sometime before the death of disco and old enough to have bought an original Atari and Commodore 64 off the shelves (or, at least, by parents did for me), I’ve lead a fairly tech-heavy existence. And with a long history of fan boy/geekdom I’ve been in my fair share of internet bulletin boards and community posty-type places.

from Kinneavy. "Discourse and the Field of English."

"Possibly most central (and controversial) to McLuhan's system of classification of media is his division of media into hot and cool, according to whether they involve little or much participation."

seems to relate to what Cat was talking about in terms of something being close to the body...maybe?

Following are some things I have been thinking about since Friday's class.

• The degree to which the dominant power determines the acceptable modes of communication (patterns), of technology, of access, etc. extends into issues of intellectual power and/or manipulation.
• New developments in technology alter the qualifications surrounding the term literate.
• Is it more important to be able to recall or be able to locate information (is that a literacy?)?

as i've been reading manovich, i have been intrigued by his trope of defining against, of delineating new media by offering what it is /not/. given our conversation in class, in which we decided, essentially, that mcluhan's the medium is the massage is actually a new media text, i'm finding manovich's assignation of elements of new media a bit limiting. he suggests that new media texts include "numerical representation," and his explanation is fairly thorough. as i read it, i thought--"yeah, i'm with you." but that would omit mcluhan's text from new media work.

i begin to get the strong impression that i'm among the more socially conservative in the new media group. i'm cool with contrary.

the obsession of the LDSs with record has fascinated me since high school - the families of many of my LDS friends have in their homes near shrines to their ancestry. it's a fascinating tribute to the need for "memory" as a cultural group that the CoJCoLDS exhibits - they're proud of their heritage, for reasons i won't comment on. that'll keep for another post, perhaps.