Friday, November 18, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Algorithms...
All this algorithm stuff is kinda bizarre I think. It’s weird to think that a code on a computer can control so much…and it’s kinda scary. One of the videos was saying how we do all this work to connect a wire from New York to Chicago so that an algorithm can do something a little faster than another…but to the point that we humans won’t even be able to tell what it did. We just won’t know. How can a mathematical equation control so much? I know that I am stupid about this kinda stuff…like it just kinda blows my mind and it’s hard to think about and understand for me…but I just honestly do not understand.
And it’s one thing to have an algorithm that someone creates to see what movies you like to watch best so it knows which ones to promote to you, but what about the ones that humans don’t create? One of the articles was talking about how all of the sudden all these people got blocked from posting their opinions on facebook, but facebook says that they didn’t do it. It kinda just started happening and they weren’t quite sure how to fix it. And one of the videos was talking about an algorithm in stocks I think where like 9% of something (sorry…I didn’t quite understand the details, I understood it to be money though) just disappeared because of the algorithm and no one knew where it went or why it disappeared. It just did. I liked how Slavin put it…we are writing things that we cannot read…and that’s scary to me.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Tools and Networks
I know that the internet has helped us accomplish a lot...but these two videos (Anderson and Dash) showed me in much more detail what has been and still can be accomplished.
In Anderson, i thought it was really cool how the internet has helped so many industries grow. Even if they are just unusual hobbies that most people wouldn't have social networks for. With the internet, they can. They can connect with both people who have that hobby and ones who just think what is being shown is awesome.Which kinda means that youtube was a site that helped this a lot. I don't honestly know if there were many video sites out there before youtube, but Anderson was saying that millions of hours are spent on youtube today and that in ten years, 90 percent of the info on the internet will come through video. And those millions of hours on youtube are not all just spent looking at stupid stuff...there are informational videos on youtube. With Anderson, i just found it really interesting what a little "light" as he calls it can do when there is a group with desire.
I thought that Dash's video was really interesting too. The whole idea of tools and networks...and not just internet. He said that the printing press helped his grandfather connect to Ghandi. But just the ways that people can learn how to use the tools that they have access to and can change things for society. This was shown in the Anderson video too with the man from (africa?) that was able to use TED talks in his own way and produce food to help hungry families. And now we have tools that can help a high school kid give his idea to someone who may be able to actually do something about it through just a twitter to the whitehouse. Its amazing what someone who some kind of tool and knows how to use it right can produce its own network and go on to accomplish something great.
In Anderson, i thought it was really cool how the internet has helped so many industries grow. Even if they are just unusual hobbies that most people wouldn't have social networks for. With the internet, they can. They can connect with both people who have that hobby and ones who just think what is being shown is awesome.Which kinda means that youtube was a site that helped this a lot. I don't honestly know if there were many video sites out there before youtube, but Anderson was saying that millions of hours are spent on youtube today and that in ten years, 90 percent of the info on the internet will come through video. And those millions of hours on youtube are not all just spent looking at stupid stuff...there are informational videos on youtube. With Anderson, i just found it really interesting what a little "light" as he calls it can do when there is a group with desire.
I thought that Dash's video was really interesting too. The whole idea of tools and networks...and not just internet. He said that the printing press helped his grandfather connect to Ghandi. But just the ways that people can learn how to use the tools that they have access to and can change things for society. This was shown in the Anderson video too with the man from (africa?) that was able to use TED talks in his own way and produce food to help hungry families. And now we have tools that can help a high school kid give his idea to someone who may be able to actually do something about it through just a twitter to the whitehouse. Its amazing what someone who some kind of tool and knows how to use it right can produce its own network and go on to accomplish something great.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Intertextuality
In Porter's piece, i really liked the idea about how all texts are interdependent. We understand something we read in light of what we have read before hand. People write what they write in light of what they have read and how they understood it. This definitely reminded me of T.S. Eliot and Tradition, which i learned about in my lit crit class last year and probably one of the only things i really understood in that class. does this mean all writing is unoriginal though? i don't think so.
I thought the part about texts containing other texts was really interesting. Hearing someone tell someone else to 'open the door' contains the assumption that that person is more capable of opening the door at that moment. Hearing the phrase "once upon a time" automatically indicates the beginning of a fictitious tale.
With the Johnson-Eilola piece...that was a rough one. I basically never want to have to worry about copywriting in my life because it seems very complicated and there seemed to be a lot of court cases described. One thing i found interesting was the discussion of search engines in the piece...i never really thought of those as writing...
I thought the part about texts containing other texts was really interesting. Hearing someone tell someone else to 'open the door' contains the assumption that that person is more capable of opening the door at that moment. Hearing the phrase "once upon a time" automatically indicates the beginning of a fictitious tale.
With the Johnson-Eilola piece...that was a rough one. I basically never want to have to worry about copywriting in my life because it seems very complicated and there seemed to be a lot of court cases described. One thing i found interesting was the discussion of search engines in the piece...i never really thought of those as writing...
Monday, October 24, 2011
Digitalized Text
So, what i got out of Lanham was some of the pros and cons of digitalized text. First off, the author issue. It is so much easier to be able to hold a copyright and claim authorship when your work is in print. It just seems much more official, to me anyway, and one cannot change it. On the internet, however, texts can be changed, and i think it is harder to find the original author of something too. I think that when something is published on the web, writers may not follow citation rules quite as strictly as they might for books and other printed texts.
However, one of the pros to digitalized text is that you can change it...if a text is too small, you can make it bigger. If you don't like the font or color, you can change that too. You can search terms instead of reading the whole piece. You can copy and paste passages you find important into a Word doc to come back to later instead of having to copy them by hand. It is definitely more convenient that printed text in a lot of ways.
I still find print better though. If i need to search a key term, i will go to the digital version of the text, but as far as reading and highlighting goes, i like to have the paper or book in my hand.
I did find some of the things he describes in this article kind of amusing. Like the After Dark program...isn't that just the average screen saver? And a lot of the other things that he describes. He says that some people may call them "futuristic," but he argues that they are very much in the present. Yet to us, they are old news and new and more exciting things have been developed. Its always interesting to read articles from the past that talk about technology, whether present technology or "futuristic."
As far as the Kohl article goes...i have nothing to say. I did not find anything interesting in it and i enjoyed the Lanham one more.
However, one of the pros to digitalized text is that you can change it...if a text is too small, you can make it bigger. If you don't like the font or color, you can change that too. You can search terms instead of reading the whole piece. You can copy and paste passages you find important into a Word doc to come back to later instead of having to copy them by hand. It is definitely more convenient that printed text in a lot of ways.
I still find print better though. If i need to search a key term, i will go to the digital version of the text, but as far as reading and highlighting goes, i like to have the paper or book in my hand.
I did find some of the things he describes in this article kind of amusing. Like the After Dark program...isn't that just the average screen saver? And a lot of the other things that he describes. He says that some people may call them "futuristic," but he argues that they are very much in the present. Yet to us, they are old news and new and more exciting things have been developed. Its always interesting to read articles from the past that talk about technology, whether present technology or "futuristic."
As far as the Kohl article goes...i have nothing to say. I did not find anything interesting in it and i enjoyed the Lanham one more.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Mini Project 2
The other day in class, I believe it was Angie, mentioned something about how you can see one picture in a bunch of different lights depending on how you are told to look at it. So I decided to do my project using different pictures and different ways to look at them.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Design in Writing
When i read this week's readings, i just asked myself, why are me taught in school to simply do MLA formatting when learning how to design your writing can be so useful?
In the Bernhardt article, he wrote how the design and image of his paper helped it be noticed and read. That is what we need to know as students and especially as writing majors. We are going to depend on our writing getting noticed and sometimes, at least it sounds like it anyway, words just won't cut it. I think we need to be taught how to add more style to our writing, even if it is subtle.
Now the Wysocki article i found really helpful at first...but once she went off on beauty, i kind of lost the connection to design and writing. But when she was first writing, she was talking about how our eyes travel and what they land on and how certain elements of design can really draw a reader in. I liked how she used a lot of different fonts and styles. It doesn't have to be just picture images that we use to stylize our writing. It helped me get through each paragraph and onto the next one when i saw that there was a new subtitle and new font. It helped me see, not necessarily that she was moving on to a different subject, but that she was at least moving on to a different point of view or focus. There were times that one paragraph was talking about art giving pleasure and then her next point was that it doesn't necessarily have to be art to give pleasure. This subtitle, while connecting to the previous paragraphs, was in a different font and style. I don't know if this works for everybody, but i think it honestly made it a more interesting read. Style does a lot. This article reminded me of a magazine because it did not just stick to one writing style and format. It experimented and it always kept me interested to see what she said next, if not how she was going to use design and style on the next page.
In the Bernhardt article, he wrote how the design and image of his paper helped it be noticed and read. That is what we need to know as students and especially as writing majors. We are going to depend on our writing getting noticed and sometimes, at least it sounds like it anyway, words just won't cut it. I think we need to be taught how to add more style to our writing, even if it is subtle.
Now the Wysocki article i found really helpful at first...but once she went off on beauty, i kind of lost the connection to design and writing. But when she was first writing, she was talking about how our eyes travel and what they land on and how certain elements of design can really draw a reader in. I liked how she used a lot of different fonts and styles. It doesn't have to be just picture images that we use to stylize our writing. It helped me get through each paragraph and onto the next one when i saw that there was a new subtitle and new font. It helped me see, not necessarily that she was moving on to a different subject, but that she was at least moving on to a different point of view or focus. There were times that one paragraph was talking about art giving pleasure and then her next point was that it doesn't necessarily have to be art to give pleasure. This subtitle, while connecting to the previous paragraphs, was in a different font and style. I don't know if this works for everybody, but i think it honestly made it a more interesting read. Style does a lot. This article reminded me of a magazine because it did not just stick to one writing style and format. It experimented and it always kept me interested to see what she said next, if not how she was going to use design and style on the next page.
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