Research Essay #2

After reading the entire book, and discussing it in class, I have realized that O'Gorman was leading his readers by the hand and guiding them, with baby steps, through his theory. I thought this was funny, since the book was written for scholars, but O'Gorman knew that some scholars could not be trusted to make it to the end of the book with an open mind. So instead of presenting his theory outright, he hid it in the chapters, only allowing it to be shown a little at a time. However, this approach made reading E-Crit more enjoyable for me, because it isn't an easy read, and the baby steps allowed me to follow along with his theory by taking in a little at a time and understand it.



In Chapters 1, which was one of the hardest chapters for me, O'Gorman talks about the repressed remainder. In this sense, "the remainder is the 'other' of academic or scholarly language. It is deemed as nonsense or rubbish, classified as cute or juvenile, the stuff of children's literature, fantasy, and folklore, and, lately, unstylish poststructural writing" (O'Gorman 4). The remainder that O'Gorman is talking about here are words and phrases that evoke textual imagery. Words that are often seen as frivolous by the Republic of Scholars, and therefore not recognized, but in his opinion they shouldn't be and can't be ignored anymore. He described these types of imagery as hypericons, which he describes in further detail in Chapter 2.



Chapter 2 was another confusing chapter for me, but not as confusing as Chapter1. In this chapter of E-Crit, O'Gorman talks about the hypericon. A mental image, both visual and textual, that encompasses more than one idea. Here is where O'Gorman really starts making his case about academics needing to change. He is posing the theory that what was once just a pretty image is a whole world in and upon itself, and that this world does indeed have a place inside the University, and its high time that was recognized.



Now for my favorite chapter, Chapter 4. I was able to follow along with this chapter much more than the previous chapters. Perhaps this is because the information itself was not entirely new. We have talked about what effects New Media has on society in several classes, and I have watched T.V. shows, an influence in and of itself, about just this. When I read this chapter, I was aware that the idea of how New Media is changing society and therefore needs to academics was the crux of what O'Gorman is writing about in E-Crit, but to take this theory out of general society and resettle it inside the classroom is not a notion that I feel has been discussed in as much detail before. Sure, I have used New Media techniques inside the classroom, much as I am now, but I have never really thought about how it has changed the way in which I learn. For instance, right now I am sitting on my couch typing this blog. Sure it is a research paper, but its not the typical research paper. There are as many strict guidelines that my blog has to be constrained by. This allows more creative freedom which makes it more enjoyable to do. The more enjoyable something is, the more I want to do it, and the more I'll remember it.



In the last chapter, O'Gorman pulls together all of the baby steps that he has uses to bring the readers to the end into one hop. Here O'Gorman proposes that there should be a happy medium between New Media techniques inside the classroom and traditional teaching methods, such as the essay. It wasn't until it was pointed out to me that this is what, as seniors, we are doing. We have to write a twenty page essay that follows strict guidelines, but we also get to use our skills in a practical way too. We get to create some sort of technical aspect that represents or sums up what we have chosen as a topic. In the paper I have limited creative leeway, but with the technical aspect, which I have chosen to do a film that is riddled with hypericons, we get almost total creative reign. Which do I like better? Why the technical aspect of course, but I don't completely not like the essay portion either.



My film is visually representation of the five stages of grief. Without the research, I can't represent it accurately. So do I necessarily need to write a paper? I think that I do. If I wasn't writing the paper, I wouldn't have stumbled across the five stages of grief in the first place. To me essay writing is not so much busy work, but rather a way to get students to think and to expose them to new ideas. So perhaps a balance between New Media and tradition is a good idea.

Works Cited

O, Marcel. E-Crit: Digital Media, Critical Theory, and the Humanities. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2006.

Note: I have not finished with this yet. I know it was due today, but I really don't like the way it flows and so I will be changing it on Friday.

A Picture Says A Thousand Words

Marcel O'Gorman talks about the hypericon in his book, E-Crit. At first, I wasn't sure what he meant by this, even after we discussed it in class. I had a general idea, but wasn't altogether sure. Then it hit me... a picture says a thousand words. It is a saying that I have not only heard a hundred times in my life, but I have used just about as many times. That got me thinking. With everything that I have learned in my life up to this point, with every experience, how do I interpret icons that I see every day? So I made a list of what I thought to be everyday icons and looked them up on the internet. Each time I found one, I examined it in two ways.

First, I glanced at it briefly and wrote down the first thing that popped into my head. Then I looked at the icon again, but this time I spent three minutes looking at it and then wrote down everything that I could think of that the icon meant to me. It was fun. After about the fourth one, I began to see what O'Gorman was trying to get at. No longer can everything be seen as cut and dry. New Media has and is seeing to that. The best example I can think of to illustrate this is the internet.

The internet allows what seems to be infinite amount of information to literally be at your fingertips. The ease of accessing the information, and its quantity, immerses its users and crams them with many different cultures, experiences, etc. It changes that way people see what is around them. No longer are people left in the dark, so to speak. Of course whether or not they choose to use this knowledge is up to them, but it is there. So why not use this inside the classroom? Why not change what once was to coincide with what is? Education should no longer simply look at the pretty picture, but touch it, smell it, stomp on it... use it. After all a picture says a thousand words.

Being Digital - Fatal Reaction

When I read this section, I thought about my computer. It would be wonderful if my computer recognized me and my needs. Then I remembered that my mac could be set up to work on voice command, so I decided to try it out. First, I scoured the internet to read what others thought about this feature and then set up my computer to do it. I tried to write the first research paper without typing a single word.

At first, I thought this would be exciting. I wouldn't have to constantly backspace because my typing is horrible. I could just sit back in a relaxed state and let my creative juices flow while my computer did the rest of the work. However, it didn't quite work out that way.

It started out fine, I simply started talking and the computer started typing. I was elated. However, when I am writing a paper I often think out loud, and low and behold the computer was typing my thoughts as well. It couldn't distinguish between what I really wanted typed and just my random thoughts. I had to sit and think about this for a minute. This wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. Instead of the computer doing what I wanted, I would have to change my normal paper writing habits to what the computer would respond to. But this wasn't the only problem I discovered.

When it came to wanting a sentence set in quotes, I figured that I could just state that I wanted it that way by saying something like, "Begin quote." However, it didn't work that way. I tried for about twenty minutes all different combinations of words to get my computer to type exactly what I wanted. Finally, I decided that I would look on Apple's website and find out how to do it. I decided to try to do this by using the voice command. This process took another thirty minutes, because I had no idea of the voice commands to use to navigate the page. Finally, I found what I was looking for. There was a list of things to say to get what you want, so I printed them out. I was irritated by this point and wondered why in the world anyone thought that this was such a great feature. It would be if, as Negroponte points out, people would spend less time on making the physical design better and more on advancing the computer so I wouldn't have to look up a list of things to say. My computer would know what I wanted.

I plan on researching this feature further. I want to know what is being done, if anything, to advance the technology that will allow my computer to one day know what I want. I will continue this blog when I have found more material and have had more practice with my computer.

Update

Since this blog was posted, I have researched more about this feature, and have discovered that there is a way that I can set up the voice commands myself so that they match exactly what I want. This is a touch, but now I have to spend my time to set up each and every command and then I have to remember them too, so it still doesn't eleveate the problem completely. It doesn't make my computer anymore interactive than if I simply sat down and typed it all myself. I will continue to research this feature by reading up on any improvements, if there are any at all, on the functionality of the program, and by using it myself. Except, I am not currently using it anytime that I am doing school related work on my computer, because it is so time consuming to use since I am not used to using it yet.