I’m still thinking about multiculturalism…

… because our discussions in class this semester really challenged and questioned some issues that I have not had to reconsider for a long time.  Plus, I found Chelsea’s presentation about her research to be very provocative.  So here’s what brought it to my mind most recently.  I was listening to NPR the other day and Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman were being interviewed on All Things Considered.  They are the authors of the new book, Nurtureshock: New Thinking about Children. The interview was really interesting and the book sounds fascinating.  Most of the interview focused on the parts of the book that were about positive reinforcement (which was very relevant considering last week’s Time cover story), but the end of the interview focused on introducing children to multiculturalism.

These authors argue that children should be introduced to multiculturalism as soon as possible.  They explained it like this: children need to be introduced to multiculturalism in the same way that we introduce children to feminism.  For example, we (I use “we” to show collective ideology here (I have no daughters)) tell our daughters “you can be a firefighter” or “you can be a doctor.”  Starting from the time they are born, we want our daughters to believe that they are just as good as and equal to their male peers.  Similarly, these authors argue that we should start telling our children as early as possible things like, “some people have pinkish-yellow skin, and some people have darker skin, and some people have tan skin, but we can be friends with all people.”  These authors also say that we should talk about injustices (white privileged etc.) with our children early on too in order to show them that it’s not acceptable.

They argue that not talking about these issues early on shows our children that racial and ethnic issues are taboo.  This can be really dangerous, the authors explain, when children get to be older and they are making decisions about who they associate with.  The authors talk about their research of students in schools.  They found that children with social agency (popular kids) can choose who they are and are not friends with.  So if the students with social agency choose to have cross-ethnic or cross-racial friendships, then the students with less agency are likely to follow suit.  However, if the opposite takes place and the students with agency only form friendships with people of their own race or ethnicity, then cross-racial and -ethnic friendships become “uncool”.

Anyway, this is just something I was thinking about.  And maybe it could be helpful to your research, Chelsea?  Below is the link to the interview on NPR.  And I’ve also included the link to Bronson and Merryman’s website about their book.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112292248

http://www.nurtureshock.com/

Don’t Stress. :)

I’ve noticed throughout the blog posts about the e-lit collection–that there is this discussion (again and again) of being “out of touch with technology or behind its influential impact” (to quote Chris). Again and again, we talk about the medium of the future–this hypertext technology. I find this really interesting because many of the pieces in the collection are not the future, they are actually the past. We are reading history.

Let me explain–these hypertexts are technologically behind. Many (if not all) of the websites were written in now outdated web languages and based on outdated design principles–like frames (Twelve Blue) and image maps (my body). Frames and basic HTML have all but been abandoned now-a-days for the seamlessness of CSS (cascading style sheets) web design. Flash is still popular in internet film, but not as a basis for website design. Many designers are working towards a CSS standard. They do this because Google can read websites written in CSS–it cannot read Flash-based websites. It’s intelligent business. Search engines will actually find you. Remember, Google is blind–which means Google must rely on text to tell it what the website is and does. CSS-based websites have text that Google can detect and read. Flash-based websites are built entirely out of images–any text is printed on a digital image (which Google cannot read as it only detects that the image is there–not what it is an image of and with no textual cues, it doesn’t know). So, there is no text to speak of on these sites. No text for Google to read!

I’m fairly certain these sites were written before the days of CSS because CSS is a much easier language to write in and makes for much prettier pages. These pages are bulky, and sometimes, a bit amateurish and even ugly in their design. Yeah, I’m going to go there. (Edit: I think I am going to go back and dig up the code of the webpages–I want to see how they are built. If there is CSS or just HTML–I’ve got a hunch that the code behind this might be unnecessarily complex by modern standards. They had to be unnecessarily complex to produce complex colors and images. Things have since simplified significantly. You don’t even have to build your own web presence anymore, Facebook or FreeCSSTemplates has built it for you.)

Anyway, Galatea was how all video games were written in the 1980s prior to the development of the first computer graphics in a time when a game could be produced by one solitary designer. Now, video games are told primarily through pictures. Instead of one person programming, we have software companies with teams and teams of people building our video games. A game hasn’t been the work of a single person in more than a decade. The people continuing to write text-adventures currently are IF-enthusiasts writing for free. I do not say this to discredit their creative efforts, I say it because–well–it’s true. (Even Emily Short admits it.) Interactive fiction can be published to some profit–but that “some profit” simply cannot compete with modern video games anymore.

These pieces of literature are part of our technological history. They are not the future–we have–technologically-speaking–moved past them. So, please everyone. Do not be so hard on yourselves. It is probably not you who is outdated.

Electronic Literature

The limitations of storyspace as a web authoring program are significant (for example, it has very limited palette of colors and cannot handle sound files that will play on the web). Although storyspace continues to be used to produce interesting new works, it has been eclipsed as the primary web authoring tool for electronic literature (6). My vision about electronic literature is very limited because I did not deal with it a lot I only read hard copy or the book but I have been considering to get the devise where you can download the book or the novel on it and the devise will read the text for you in the voice you like. I think there are a male and a female voice from which you can choose to listen. The problem is I have listened to a sample for that but I think the problem with those is that the tone in the reading is not being conveyed in the right way and this might affect the person analyze the text while listening to it. The tone is very important in the reading because if it not being read in the right tone it might take away the effect of the words especially in poetry.

The Turmoil of My Philological Soul

Long ago, making my choice among the whole range of why-not professions, I preferred to escape from numbers (I didn’t have problems with Math but never liked formulas) and computational sophistications into the world of Humanities promising technologically non-disturbed future. Stir fry texts of high combinatorial complexity with their x^y possible permutations, image-maps, interactive narratives with multiple surfaces, “serious hypertext[s]” (Reagan Library) had never shown any intention of breaking my peaceful existence ignorant of digital media as a sphere of literary analysis. They never did until recently. And here I am puzzled.

It’s useless to argue the importance of computer literacy in today’s world which “stroll[s] with small plastic packets of electronics at their hips” (Twelve Blue) and is highly convergent broadening the notions of a text and a narrative to the point when it’s hard to embrace them. I definitely enjoyed the interactivity of RedRidinghood, Inanimate Alice, Episode 1: China, carrier: (becoming symborg), Deviant:  The Possession of Christian Shaw, 10:01, etc. which are perfectly illustrative of an “[in]exhaustive inventory of the forms of electronic literature” (Electronic Literature, 30) but failed to grasp their metaphors. “That’s the trouble with metaphor; it ends up in confusion” (Reagan Library). So does it mean then that these works simply don’t yield to a traditional mode of literary interpretation or, on the contrary, invite numerous ones – from the point of view of a literary critic, a player, a programmer? And is it possible for a person having no expertise in networked and programmable media to fully appreciate their “conflicting plot[s]” (Electronic Literature, 62) and “electronic textuality” (Electronic Literature, 160)?

I’ve tried to read the book searching for some kind of clarification, but its ideas of “spatialized temporality” (97), “embodiments” (129), “organic selection” (115), etc. confused me even more.

E-Lit Part I: Questions on the E-Lit Collection Readings

These stories were a bit difficult to write questions for–because there is not just “story” happening here, media is happening here also. And often, the media overwhelms the story. When I took Dr. Banash’s Film and Literature class, it was very tough for him to get us students to talk about film as a media instead of film as a story–a narrative vehicle we were familiar with. It took the class some time to learn to discuss film without story, story with film. So, I’ve designed most of these questions to discuss the media of these readings. I did this because I suspect you guys will have no trouble bringing the plot part–the literary messages we, as English Studies student, have been digging at for years.
I do not have a question specifically for “carrier: (becoming symborg)” yet, which bums me out because that was probably my favorite of the bunch. So, I will add one before this evening’s out. Added this question! For now, here are the seven nine questions I have.

General questions:
Part I:
To get started: how did you “read” these texts? Did you:
- Search for familiar medias–did you try to find the “books” here? Did you find them?
- Cheat and read the HTML addresses on the bottom of the browser?
- Click links as they appeared or click back to the “index” page?
- Read the text more than once? How many times?
- Click links as they appeared or finish your page?
- Read beyond the text? Look at the homepage titles?
- Stop reading and just watch how text changed?
- …other?

Also, were there any texts:
- you couldn’t finish because you couldn’t find the ending?
- that had different endings on secondary readings?

Why does it matter that we can read them this way?

Part II:
How was your experience defined by other medias? How much were you reminded of books? Of film? Of radios? Did you use other media to understand this media? Why did you use other media? Did it help?

Part III:
When Dr. Dilger spoke to us about software–he said that software remakes complexity into simplicity–it makes complex processes appear simple. What do these hypertext readings say about complexity and simplicity? How do these concepts play out the in the stories and poetry? Are they typical software?

Part IV:
Is there a point to the sometimes overwritten character of this collection of e-literature?
Are any of these texts “hostile” or purposefully unreadable to readers? Is it the media or the reader that creates this effect?

Text-specific questions:
(Twelve Blue)

“Everything can be read, every surface and silence, every breath and every vacancy, every eddy and current, every body and its absence, every darkness every light, each cloud and knife, each finger and tree, every backwater, every crevice and hollow, each nostril, tendril and crescent, every whisper, every whimper, each laugh and every blue feather, each stone, each nipple, every thread every color, each woman and her lover, every man and his mother, every river, each of the twelve blue oceans and the moon, every forlorn link, every hope and every ending, each coincidence, the distant call of a loon, light through the high branches of blue pines, the sigh of rain, every estuary, each gesture at parting, every kiss, each wasp’s wing, every foghorn and railway whistle, every shadow, every gasp, each glowing silver screen, every web, the smear of starlight, a fingertip, rose whorl, armpit, pearl, every delight and misgiving, every unadorned wish, every daughter, every death, each woven thing, each machine, every ever after.”

Electronic literature seems to enjoy an awareness of the “fourth wall”–that tenenous glass barrier between the read and the reading. How does electronic literature talk about itself and the fourth wall? In this quote? In others? Why does e-lit breach the fourth wall while other mediums may not?
Also, what themes and characteristics of e-lit can we take from this quote? Is all of e-lit in here? Or more than just e-lit?

(my body – a wunderkammer)
Why does Jackson chose the links she does? Why are some connections obvious and others not? (A link about “breasts” leads to the page about her breasts–phrases with bodily smells often lead back to “armpits”–but a link about “kleenex” leads to the page about her vagina.)
What did it mean to see “used” links in the text? (When a link has been visited already, it will turn purple in this text.) Did the “used” links affect your reading?

(galatea, RedRidingHood, inanimate alice)
Is the “you” necessary? Interactive fiction, particularly text adventures, are told predominately in the second person. Is this necessary? Why?
Does the second person designate “interactivity”? What does interactive mean here? Are these “interactive”? Are any of these more “interactive” than others? (Why? Does the presence of media in the story affect how interactive it is?)
Source 1: a puzzle “map” of Emily Short’s Bronze
(http://emshort.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/puzz10.jpg)
These are the “bones” of Emily Short’s “Bronze”. Interactive fiction (all IF) works in maps. “Bronze” is a small map, with just four endings. (Galatea, on the other hand, is massive–with some 64 endings, I think.)
Source 2: “Bronze” if you want to play it.

(the jew’s daughter)

“At the risk of painting a picture that is too exotic, too dark and goth-luring, I should not overindulge in something that is in no need of embellishment.”

“It is a told story, perhaps banal at this point in time, but nonetheless, they need to be voiced and silencd or there they are again, turning up the soil.”

“She had laid her head on the tracks and the train cut cleanly through her neck. Sh she had laid her head on the tracks and the train cut cleanly through her neck. e had laid her head on the tracks and the train cut cleanly through her neck. In Java she had seen a woman decapitated.”

How does The Jew’s Daughter talk about software here? In the story? Why is it–in Java–we see the woman decapitated? Why Java? (Java is an island in Indonesia, but it is also–maybe more famously–a programming language. Is this merely coincidental?)

(girls’ day out)
What do we think of Lawtynovicz’s textual metaphors? The metaphors that are beyond the words? Could this be reproduced on paper?

(carrier: (becoming symborg))
How is the role and nature of choice “discussed” in carrier: (becoming symborg)? Whether we resist sHe or “melt with [Her]“, much of the core text does actually not change. (Resisting sHe at every turn does make for a longer engagement as sHe takes more time persuading you. sHe cuts to the chase when you accept.) But is the story and the reader different? How does choice work in other stories? Do you have choice in Deviant?

That’s all for now! Carrier question coming soon! Carrier and Text hostility questions posted!

Art of Digital Storytelling

You may enjoy this article, it complements our topic nicely:

http://www.utne.com/Media/The-Art-of-Digital-Storytelling.aspx

Not related to class whatsoever.

Just thought I’d post a little something this week that is somewhat scholarly, but not really.

I had set two goals for myself this week:

1) shampoo the carpet in the laundry room (I’ve done about 5 minutes worth of this)

2) read a book for fun

I accomplished task two yesterday.  Inspired by some students that came into the writing center at the beginning of the semester, I bought One for the Money by Janet Evanovich.  I read it all yesterday.  It was good.  I bought the second one in the series.  I plan to start it tonight.

The end.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!