Blog Assignment 4

I had quite an interesting time trying to figure out what exactly the authors were trying to convey in the article.

The authors argue that many ideas and such knowledge are not only contained within pictographs, but also within their structure, location, orientation, and construction material. I was a bit confused when reading this; I understand how ideas and knowledge can be contained within pictographs, I had a hard time understanding how it could be within the structure, location, orientation, and construction material.

As an avid computer game player, I started to understand how ideas and knowledge are used in pictographs. One game I often play, Starcraft , has been around for a long long time. There are certain aspects of the game that do not offer any explanation, rather it is up to the user to figure out what they mean. For example, many of the controls on the screen don't offer explanations as to how they are to be used or what for, they just make it trial and error. Amazingly, even though there is no instruction on how or what to do, gamers such as myself, don't have a problem deciphering what the picture means.

We live in a society that is driven by multimedia. All the time we are using pictures to tell a story or to explain something. I agree with the authors when they say when ideas and knowledge can be contained in pictures.

Blog Assignment 3

After reading both articles, I was quite amazed by the "10 Reading Revolution Before E-Books" and how it compared to the Ong article. When first reading Ong's article, I was a bit confused when he says "writing has transformed human consciousness". The way one expresses is considered an invention, according to Ong. When applying Ong's work to the reading revolution, I was most interested in parts 7&8 of the article, mainly because it was the transformation of writing and how it was being applied to electronics.

The following sentence really caught my attention: "The development and expansion of computing, too, introduced a few powerful wrinkles, like the conversion of alphanumeric text to binary languages, text written to be "read" by computers rather than humans, and greatly increasing the amount of reading and writing we perform on screens." This is becoming increasingly true when talking about how writing is used in the technology world.

The human consciousness will forever be changed by writing. Everyday we are changing the way people are able to "write", whether it be on a computer or iphone, writing or "communicating" will always evolve.

Blog Assignment 2

Ong discusses in these two readings, the differences in speaking and writing. There are over a thousand languages, but only 106 of them are used as writing or used in literature. Cultures that have both written and spoken "languages", seem to be more advanced than those with just an oral language.

While reading Ong's first chapter of "Orality and Literacy", I came across a small section where Ong talked about "computer language". This immediately caught my attention. With some prior programming experience, I found it interesting that Ong believes that this language is "totally unlike human languages, in that they do not grow out of unconscious but directly out of consciousness." I believe that "computer language" is a remediated form of writing, where we are using precise terms to accomplish a task. Grammar is not usually associated with computer language, while it is very important when writing or speaking.

Blog Assignment 1

I had some trouble deciding what concept or object to choose, after all it seems like everything in our world today has been remediated in some form or another. While driving up to campus the other morning, I was annoyed with the GPS finder we had installed in our car. When I was growing up, my family and I would take many long road trips all over the country. These trips were extremely enjoyable, almost like an adventure, where we were forced to use those fold out maps to find our destination. With advances in technology over the past few years, we now don’t need to use those paper maps to find our final destination. After personal GPS technology emerged people stopped using paper maps. This to me is a sort of remediation. There is no need to ever look for directions on a paper map, when we can just download our travel plans on to the device and presto!-our trip has already been laid out.

I believe that the change in map usage would fall under the first part Bolter & Grusin’s explanation, where they discuss how “each new medium is justified because it fills a lack or repairs faults in its predecessor” I choose this because GPS systems are an improvement on the original paper map, and have many new abilities that a paper map doesn’t. They use the example of the World Wide Web because it has the ability to “repair” simple problems we have today.