work on my paper

Did another visual scan of my comix – I am gathering pictures and news, I want to be really current with my comix and I want to address important stuff – ideas and actions that can be implemented to change things for the better for those who are marginalized in this world of wealth and technology. Here is a sample of my idea.

powerpoint

Hey today I had the greatest time with technology that I have ever had. An exaggeration, maybe but I was so impressed with the ease of powerpoint that I cannot believe it. I am so used to the hassel between microsoft and linux that I had forgotten how easy the web has become to navigate if you are a microsoft user. Anyhow, here is what happened. I had to do a powerpoint presentation for my other media studies and I have never used that program before. So I was a novice today when I approached the problem. I arrived at 11 am after working a four hour shift at my new job, and I sat down and with minimal instruction from the reference librarian and began to enter my essay into the slides. I did not have to read any directions because the slides just showed up and all I had to do was fill them with my content. Anyhow, you probably all know this stuff but it was all new to me. The end of my story is that I finished my project at 2 minutes to 2 pm (due 2pm) and the only problem I had was importing my graphics from hotmail. I did not know how to rotate or stretch them and I did not find out until I spoke with my teacher that I could have used photo shop ( something else I have never used) but it is OK. The project was delivered and my instructor showed me how to modify my graphics to fit into the slide. And finally a successfully completed assignment on time!!!!And no new media anxiety!!

web page blues

Hey I am back after another bout with that flu that seems to be stalking the campus. I have not been able to work and I am spending a lot of time reading. I think that I am going to try to make a web page on each of microsoft and linux and see which is easiest. I am going to draw and scan a picture of my page this weekend and then invite some of my friends to contribute poems,pictures, editorials, whatever that adress the issues of borderlands and marginality. I have decided to make a page that resembles a newspaper and that way I can chunk the information and pictures to make an interesting mosaic of text and visuals. Hopefully! Otherwise I am learninb how to do power point for my other media studies.

Oh yeah, a cool thing happened this weekend. My roomie was downloading openSUSE on his kids computer and it kept refusing to load so he goes into the bios to check for the error and it says error on line 17. So he says to me google error on line 17 and you would not believe what happened. Without hesitation google produced the information!! Imagine, what esoteric information can be accessed if only you know what to ask for. By the way, he was unable to correct the error, the computer was an old compaq, and he could not correct the problem and ended up downloading another program, Mandriva instead. I was absolutely amazed at the versatility of the search engine!! So that is my new digital media story for this week.

chandler

I have been reading magazines and articles trying to define and identify affects of determinism on our ideas of culture and I came upon an interview in Discover – September 2007- with Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist. He is described as a linguistic explorer, hunting around the sentences and syntax of human language for clues to the inner world of the human brain (48). He is interested to what extent language is biologically programmed and he suggests that language is instinctual, partly hardwired in to our brains and partly learned. The interesting point in this interview is how words and language are used – for example – the difference in nuance and meaning between the statements invading Iraq as opposed to liberating Iraq. What Pinker suggests is that the meaning of the statement depends on how the population felt about the former regime in Iraq and whether or not they welcome a new regime. Neither of these linguistics frames is more true or better than the other . Pinker says – it is important to understand the great power of language but one should not overestimate it….we do not live in a fantasy world of our own linguistic creations (52).

Pinker also addresses the idea of education as being a kind of indoctrination of our societys conventional ideas. He says – we must figure out how things work, to know the truth, and to not allow ourselves to be fooled or misled (71). He says that the whole point of politics, ethics, science is to get to the truth to discover and reveal how the world really is. Science and history and journalism are presented as truth-seeking institutions , and these are sometimes in direct opposition to the parts of our minds that want to be walled off from reality. Pinker shows the powerful affect of language on the way we think about truth and lies. This is a scientific determinism stance.

This article and the present state of interest in language and how we perceive the world is very important to our understanding of how media and institutions of the mainstream society define truth. Science and education speak to us through words and concepts – but we must be discriminating with what we do with the information. Excellent article.

facebook

Today I read a very interesting article about Facebook. The article addresses the benefits of this social network. What interested me was the way in which the users of this site created a social community. They used Facebook as a social register, as a way to stay in contact with friends from high school,and they used it to create a loose network of new friends. The article also suggests that Facebook use adds to the psychological well-being of the users.

OK, now I have to say that Facebook does not give me a sense of well-being. In fact whenever I go there I begin to feel guilty that I am not rersponding in the same way as some of my contacts. When they send me gifts and nudges and write on my wall I just feel weird and I feel worse if I have to use the ignore button. I feel as if this social utility is telling me how to relate to my friends. And even more, that I would not be even in this type of relationship willingly. I have friends on that site who have revealed the most astoundingly intimate stuff; and I have somebody who invited me to become a vampire the other day. I know its meant to be in fun, and maybe I am being too straight here, but please.

I am reasonably happy with my relationships and friendships – I admit that my life is not perfect but I seem to get sufficient stimulus and support from my real time, real life community. That makes me feel weird too. Because according to this article most college students depend heavily on Facebook to keep and make friends. The joining of virtual groups is good, but what if you do not want to join groups, does that make you an interloper on the site. Obviously, I am a reluctant user. I have friends who are non-users for reasons having to do with privacy and time. Apparently most of the users studied in this report used Facebook for at least 20 minutes every day!! If I was using Facebook that often, as well as using my hotmail, and messenger, and doing my on-line homework and research – when would I have time to say read a book, go for a walk, talk to my room mate, you know – life. Anyway, good article and very eye-opening – look for it.

Ellison, Nicole B., Steinfield, Charles, Lampe, Cliff. The Benefits of Facebook Friends: Social Capital and College Students Use of Online Social Network Sites. Department of Telecommunications, Information Studies, and Media. Michigan State University. In Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007). 1143-1168. International Communication Association.

interactive museum

I was writing a poem about President J.F.Kennedys assassination in November 22, 1963 and I found this book in our Curriculuum lab. The book titled PRESIDENT KENNEDY HAS BEEN SHOT was created by NEWSEUM the worlds first interactive museum of news. The book has an audio CD that lets you hear events as they happened! This audio CD is made up of analogue recordings that have been transferred to digital media and then included in this interactive book project. The book refers to the CD as a running commentary of the events of that awful day unfold. The book is full of rarely seen photos and the commentaries and memories of the people who were there.

Newseum takes visitors behind the scenes to see how and why news is made.The Newseum is funded by the Freedom Forum, a non-profit, non-partisan foundation. See their site -  www.newseum.org. This book was co-authored by Cathy Trost and Susan Bennett, both award winning journalists. The audio was narrated by Dan Rather, an anchor and managing editor of CBS Evening News since 1981. In 1963 he was one of the first journalists to confirm the death of the president.

What intrigued me about this book/CD combination wa the use of digital technology to produce the artifact – the book and the CD; the idea that news can be interactive in this sense – that we can stop and start the information at our own speed. We can make the news comfortable in a sense. Digital technology can do wonders to transfer information. And it can do wonders to educate and inform those who have no access to news in real time. As a person who was touched deeply by the events of that day in November I found myself remembering how I felt. It was a very powerful news story at the time it happened and this digital reproduction allows the reader/listener to experience this pivotal event in the manner in which it unfolded at the time. On radio and through the media of TV and newspaper journalism.

Astoundingly, the idea of a virtual museum seems to be very slow in catching on. I believe that digital reproduction of news, artifacts, and information  is a perfect way to preservce rare items and to present information and education to people who may never have the chance to travel to see museums and other cultural collections. The idea of a museum to make the news more personal is a very post-modern concept. Information available to all – sounds positively democratic!! Anyhow, this book is not the first of its kind (I have a book with an CD and a DVD about H.G. Wells story, WAR OF THE WORLDS, along with an accompanying broadcast of Orson Welles news-making radio broadcast of the same story. Digital reproduction of analogue recordings is an excellent way of preserving and presenting historical events.

wireless tech

had a great visit with my little sister in Burnaby. She has a disability and spends a lot of time lying on her back due to an auto accident. At her house they are locked in totally to TiVo. They share a common interest in poker, weird accidents and popular culture real life dramas. Anyhow what intrigued me was the wireless keyboard and mouse that she used to control her TV environment. She could do all of the things I am doing with my fancy blue-glowing keyboard but there  were no wires. I just loved the convenience of it. She was able to maneuver very well with it and she used it exclusively to do allof the mundane channel changing things I would do with a TV remote. They have it in the living room in front of the plasma TV and the place looks like a mini-theatre. I spent a night there and we never watched real time TV once. We watched a seemingly unending series of poker championships interspersed with odd videos of bizarre accidents. Whew it was an overwhelming experience. I got the feeling that TiVo had replaced their channel changer. It was like they used it to pick their shows, but it only shows that they want to watch. It was unreal.

But as far as the wireless technology of the keyboard, I like it. Bring on the wireless technolgy – my cellphone was the first incursion into my luddite life but the wirelessness of it is what makes it usefull to me. I see the wireless keyboard and mouse in the same way. It frees up personal space in a way and makes communicating with the computer easier in a way. The lack of wires was the feature I liked the most. Cool tech.

tired but still awake

I have been buried in books all day. Does not sound like a media studies project but for me it is still the optimum way to learn. I enjoy cruising the web but i prefer the comfort of books and hard copy. After I read Jean Healys book I felt almost justified in my attachment to real paper. Anyhow, I am taking a break from study and trying to decide how to make an avatar for Ravengirl. I need to have a consistent personality as a host for my web page and she will be it. So the visual is very important.

another bauman refererence

I found another excellent article on Zymunt Bauman. It is an interview conducted on-line between Bauman and Daniel Leighton writing for the journal RENEWAL – a journal of Labour  politics. I got the article from their archives Vol. 10 No. 1 Winter 2002.  http://www.renewal.org.uk/issues/2002%20Volume%2010/No%201%20-%20Winter/Bauman. In the interview he outlines in vivid detail his ideas about ethics, culture, and politics and of course a much expanded explanation of his ideas about liquidity and society.The author gives a very concise and succinct analysis of Baumans ideas and the interview itself is amazingly stimulating and provocative. I highly recommend this article . Good reading!!