Within Your Eyes This Post Shall Live

First I found this little gem of a post from actor John Cleese on the terrorism alert levels in the world. And before you get to reading it, keep in mind McCloud's imparted wisdom that when you read a text you make it alive... can the following descriptions evoke images for you (and it's not the most image invoking piece) but still, are sentences just strung out icons for pictures, moving images rambling almost like a movie through our head as we read? Anyway here it is (more from me after).

 

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Libya and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada. 

The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years. 

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France 's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability. 

Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides." 

The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbor" and "Lose." 

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels . 

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy. 

Australia , meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be alright, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!" and "The barbie is canceled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level. 

-- John Cleese - British writer, actor and tall person

I mean I chuckle after every time I read this. The ability to put "voice" within a text, not someone just rambling on, but actual voice. Where you can envision someone saying it to you... 

McCloud had a wonderful perspective on cartoons, icons, and how the human mind can do truly remarkable things when it comes to assigning subjective animations to seemingly inanimate object 

;) <---- a semi-colon and a parenthe...is that the singular half of parentheses? is the universal symbol for a sly, sneaky, suggestive face used daily in millions of texts. 

Our ability to assign relatable values and similar experiences to symbols, icons, images, ect... is super cool in and of its self; but how about when two people from different sides of the globe, from different worlds, are able to communicate through drawn symbols representing universal things such as a tree, or a flower, or a jar of peanut butter...?  I mean we have to give ourselves a little more credit than that I suppose, the fact that humans can represent through symbolsiconscartoons--images-- that they create (as long as not completely abstract) is a feat all by itself... 

Another interesting point McCloud brings up is the separation of great art and great literature and how the two are viewed apart in the serious world of art or literature. This brings me to a tangent, this is much like how our school's grades are split apart in this country. We determine that a child should be in a grade based off how old they are, not based on any other critical factors? I feel the best way to explain my point is to show you where I got my point from and it's use of a variety of different tools that we have discussed in class and it's completely eye-opening arguments that it makes: Enjoy-

Skimming in Cybertext's Oasis

It was interesting starting to read Sonoski's article, he talked so much for his love of reading off of a screen, yet there he was creating an essay to be printed and yet here we are reading it off the screen, like some skewed circle. It also dawned on me that while he was talking about the inevitability of skimming while reading hypertext, that gasp I was skimming it. I was skimming the whole text. And he does provide such a great point that skimming is viewed with such a (perhaps aptly assigned) taboo of loosely gazing at the text with daydreams skyrocketing behind your eyes. I will admit it though, I skim when I read, but rather I consider myself a fast reader not to fawn over myself but I gather words and sentences together in a way that I wont even try to to explain, but it works rest assured Professor Downs.
Another interesting point in this article was Sonoski's thoughts on people "keeping up in their fields" and how, especially in the scope of this class, it seems an insurmountable task. The endless cyber desert contains so many relevant and irrelevant items that you can be stuck for hours on tangent stacked on tangent tabbed on tangent new windowed on tangent...you get my gist. However, we focus, within this desert, oasis's that contain the sweet vitality of sought information, yet it is a "discrete hypertext" that only I have the map to get too (and all of you of course) and of course the stray soul who happens by and either stays and shares the oasis's wealth of stock or moves on to other, perhaps better, oasis's. Is there a complete mastery to this field? I would say that Professor Sexson would be a strong claim to this, yet how can any one person or even a group of people decide what defines and encompasses mastery over the written English language.
 In Jakob's article I was fascinated (if not not a little exasperated) with his brief, yet great, description of Memex. Of having a camera strapped to your forehead that recorded everything you saw or heard and arranged it in to a semi-cohesive pattern? Ok having a camera strapped to your forehead would be a little annoying, but with today's advances in technology could the use of a microchip formed to tap into your five senses and then record and assimilate what is important to you and all the other stuff. How many times have you had a mind blowing realization slip through your fingers, or could not quite remember how reading a certain passage made you feel in relation to relatable subject. It's funny, most of you (including me) thinks this an improbable possibility that will happen when there are flying cars and all that jazz. Put this into perspective though, Ted Nelson came up with his universal knowledge-managment and information-production system called XANDU. It was, if I skimmed read correctly, wikipedia. And that was in 1965... 

Validating Cyber Text

Baron raises an interesting point in his article, where he tells of the changes to writing to preserve its validity. I thought it was rather funny that the monks in England who controlled the development of writing, used to create forgeries to seize possession of private land. Have any of you been witness/victim to forgeries? Anyhow, Baron then goes on to reiterate that in order to validate cyber text, we are going to have to develop a whole new system to serve such needs.
What would the new system look like? What range would would it extend over? And finally what texts in the future will be available when E-reserves have been outdated? Or will they ever be outdated?
I'll now transgress into a completely different tangent, and discuss what we were talking about in class on Tuesday about Society's role in the content of discourse and if there is certain conformity for comfort. (Side-note....I see snow on the peaks of the Bridgers!) Anyway, who decides what is appropriate or not? In the Greek era, there were public bathhouses and displays of public sexual intercouse, now we see a woman with too much cleavage on the sidewalk and we say tsk, tsk...Even now as wrote down about cleavage in my blog for class, I inwardly cringed at the perceived reaction of what people would think. Will girls be offended and think I used a sexist analogy? Will guys be completely distracted thinking about cleavage now? In all regards I shouldn't care the slightest of what peoples reactions should be, I didn't slander anyones name after all... Yet we are all still bound by an invisible shackle that puts a buffer on what is on our mind and what we share with others. Honestly now, how many of you would openly share the top 5 things going through your mind, no silly gimmicks, just straight honest truth....especially if I told you to think about Brad Pitt washing your car...interesting.
Also another interesting tidbit from Baron was his idea of the telephone's introduction intruding upon the privacy of our homes and now how our emails are filled with "spam." Even how there were debates of wether or not we should say "hello" and "good-bye" when beginning and ending a conversation. Now we have anonymous chat rooms hy bb whts goin on, personal dating sights Lisa matches 95% with you!, and even craigslist  -wanted- Used toilet 0$, its amazing how the internet has seemingly broken some barriers of interacting with people outside of your town, outside of your state, and even outside of your country. I myself have a PenPal from England that I started writing too when I was in the 7th grade and we still keep in touch to this day. People talk about how technology is creating a barrier between people, raising digital walls that you can hide behind in the comfort and safety of your underwear and couch. But I will argue that point and say that while there are people affected by the sudden bouts of reclusion and isolation when interacting with the internet; there are also those who take advantage and find groups of people into similar interests, it allows easier opportunities to find out local events going on in the area and sign up for them, you can easily plan a trip with access to the internet. I believe the real problem is that most people get overwhelmed with the internet, even those who consider themselves computer savvy. It is ridiculously easy to be sucked into the cyberpool of information available at your fingerprints, but as humans have and always will do, they will adapt and speed processes up. We are a society of constant stimulus, our coffee line can never move fast enough, the person in front of you wont speed up, the professor is making you stay two minutes after class gets out....all daily excuses that I bet 100% of us have used more than once in a week. We want things now.

Absence of Logos and Ethos in our media today

So who doesn't love to watch Fox News? I mean if you are down, in a shitty mood, lacking the humor of life, turn on good 'ol Fox and laugh along to their attempt to report logical, unbiased news. If ever a media outlet lacked correct and logical euthymeme's, it would have to be Fox. In the link here you can find some examples of this (scroll down a ways). Anyway thought I would share my thoughts, hopefully no one in class actually watches Fox news with any seriousness.

Haha talk about biased rhetoric....on my part. I would rather like to think of it as factual in nature, and true in discourse.

I will always remember one instance of this, two years ago when Obama addressed the nation on the assassination of Osama bin Laden, Fox news had rolling across the bottom of the screen "Obama bin Laden assassinated".... I mean really? Just a small typo to air on national, live news? Like that would have ever been "looked" over by other news stations (most likely).

Iterability, Iterability, Iterability...

In Porter's paper he discusses a very interesting point on that all forms of discourse are "composed of "traces," pieces of other text that help constitute it's meaning" (Porter, 3). That is to say that even the very words that I type right now are  have been influenced, shaped, and molded from other pieces of discourse that I have encountered and that have influenced me consciously (or unconsciously). In his example of the Pepsi commercial, his breakdown of the different representational images and phrases that are used to connect the audience and the commercial, are easily transferrable to other product commercials. For instance... I heard if you buy Axe Body Spray, you will be nearly molested by beautiful women (why isn't every guy getting fresh with this stuff?!?!). Or how about if you use Dove soap, you will lose all your wrinkles, excessive weight, and feel like a shining golden god... thanks commercials, thanks.
But it doesn't stop there, Porter goes on to point out the emphasis and applause for the "original" writer that is shared by many but yet there is no such thing as an "original" writer. Many of us seemingly creative types sputter and fuss at such a bold accusation, why else did we spend infinite hours under the duress of a term paper than to develop a new and creative view on what we wrote about...damn. I guess we can be proud that we offered a new discourse pertaining to (said) subject. I suppose you could consider the blogs that we are all writing for this class, they are all on both or either of the two articles assigned to us....we will surely use these articles to discuss in our blogs (since I assume we all want a decent grade in class), yet no blog will be the same. And it would be mightily weird if two were the same...cheaters? parallel universes? telekinesis? Yet we, the voice of the future, all savvy literary students with similar course backgrounds will find different shades of discourse on the aforementioned articles.
And where do we even get started on Fisher's simple and un-verbose discussion of the narrative paradigm and how it breaks down to the argumentative, persuasive theme and the literary, aesthetic theme which does "not deny reason and rationality; it reconstitutes them and makes them amenable to all forms of human communication" (Fisher, 376). In short, what I garnered from Fisher's article is that every form of communication is a narrative of sorts, and the narrative paradigm is designed to function within the pedagogy of narrative influence, with Fisher describing narrative as a "theory of symbolic actions and/or deeds-- that have sequence and meaning for those who live, create, and interpret them"(Fisher, 375). Translated I believe that to mean that every event recorded in history is then relived in the recorders own words, say for instance the bible...?

Searching For The Storyteller: A Tale

And finally movie critics and viewers sigh, as one, in relief to learn that the long anticipated feature film Searching For The Storyteller: A Tale has released a trailer. Youtube has been almost overloaded with video viewers cyboriously clamoring over each other to sneak a peek at the trailer. Comments are already in and viewers and critics rave their opinions:

Alex Sun of the Moonlight Times
"Honestly I don't know what he was trying to accomplish, if the film is anything like the trailer we are in for a ride of gut-wrenching film making and disastrous aftershocks in the cinema world."

Bridget conOndrum of the Out of Print Press
"I was ghastly offended and now I have to schedule even more meetings with my therapist..."

Bill Wolf of the RunningRabit Chronicle
" This is crap."

Click on the movie tab to view Searching For The Storyteller: A Tale 

If it's me...I go with IT

While I am sitting here reading Geisler et al and his views of IT's capability, and evolution and it's role in shaping the current society of today, I feel as though I am part of this evolution, that every person who picks up a device and searches on the internet layers yet another digital coating on the continuing metamorphoses of IT advancement.

How an intended audience (or unintended) responds to a specifically designed piece of rhetoric interlaced into a text used found in "information technologies (that) provide an opportunity to explore fundamental theoretical issues of text in new ways" (Geisler et al, 3) -- be it a uploaded youtube video, a google doc talking on the importance of information technology, or a future presidents inspiring speech to a Democratic Convention. 

Whereas living biological organisms continue to evolve over centuries due to natural selection and adaptation, informational technology evolves over minutes, seconds, even nano bytes due to society's rapidly enhanced understanding of it. "ITexts--in their newly emerging genres, publishing and circulation patterns, and occasions and situations of use--will develop according to the situations, relationships, and activities within which they will be accessed and comprehended" (Geiser et al, 13). So not only do ITexts conform to different societies, religions, and all accessible forms of information technology but conformation is shared by both, with both being equally shaped and influenced by the other. 

The ability of humans to relay a desired combination of rhetoric into a recognized and (though not always) accepted way of learning and communication has evolved into information technology that can be accessed nearly anywhere in, or out, of this world. You realize yourself part of something larger, something more interconnected than most would imagine, part of a changing, writhing digital world. A place where one and all feel some semblance of power because of the information so readily available at their finger prints.

* Could you consider Obama's speech here at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 a form of IT rhetoric?