Right Content, Right Medium

Throughout the term, we have been discussing literacy and transliteracy revolving around the question of how we have changed the way we consume and produce content in an era of advancing communications technology. A significant underlying tension in our readings and discussion has been the use of print media versus digital media.

Through focusing on transliteracy and examining new media narratives, it has become clear that those who use new media effectively have moved beyond the format of text to communicate ideas using a variety of formats: text, visual, audio, animation, video and interactive content. But perhaps in retrospect it is a good idea to look back at the format of text and how new media is changing the way we explicitly interact with it in the new digital age.

In the article, A Book Club of Billions: 52 Ways to Die in a Cave and Other Lessons in Social Media Marketing, Tammy Nam discusses how two book publishers have used social media to promote their works. In the case of James Tabor’s book Blind Descent, the publishers produced a two page Scribd document that was distributed virally to help push book sales. The book Marijuana is Safer by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano and Mason Tvert, was actually released in full and for free on Sribd. In two days, “the book was read more than 100,000 times and downloaded more than 11,000 times” (Nam, 2010). According to Nam, these publishers, “are using Scribd to take advantage of what's so great about the web for book marketing” (2010).

In the article Google puts $1m into academic research projects for digitised books, Jemima Kiss shows how Google is working to digitize older print content and to add relevant geographic content to the files. “Researchers say the project will help to open up interested in history, classics and archaeology, but will also help develop new tools and research methods as well as expertise in using data in this way” (Kiss, 2010).

It is well recorded that people read differently with digital text than they do with printed text. There is a higher propensity to scanning material and there is a bias toward shorter pieces. For me, in an attempt to sum up the term, there needs to be a recognition for the benefits and limitations of each media. It would be ineffective to simply publish a book or long academic article that is meant for attentive sustained reading in a digital form that looks identical to its published form. The use of new media should take advantage of all of the strengths that the media offers – in integrating video, sound, animation and interactivity. The richness of the content will come not from the length of the text but instead from the accompanying media. The corollary is also true, formats that require and work well with long text are best served in traditional print. Academic pieces that require in depth consideration and attention as well as vivid fiction for which the imagination on the reader is vital should remain in print formats.

To Jessica, the authors that we spoke with and my classmates, thanks for this course.


References:

Nam, Tammy H. (2010, July). “A Book Club of Billions: 52 Ways to Die in a Cave and Other Lessons in Social Media Marketing.” The Huffington Post. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tammy-h-nam/a-book-club-of-billions-e_b_645527.html.

Kiss, Jemima. (2010, July). “GooglePuts $1m into Academic Research Projects for Digitised Books.” The Guardian. Retreived from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2010/jul/14/google-books-funding-re%20%20guardian.co.uk.

Week 13: Review and Conclusions

Week 13: Review and Conclusions

Narratives can be published in various online ways: 

• Voicethreads
• Skype
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Social Bookmarks/Folksonomy
• Diigo
• Evernote
• Flickr
• Netvibes
• Twitter
• E-mail
• Google Pages
• Facebook

Anyone Can Publish

A timely example of how even the youngest learners can demonstrate transliteracy (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/3-little-pigs/id357980333?mt=8). Henry Dewey created his own illustrations to interpret “The Three Little Pigs” and then with the assistance of his father, created an iPhone app for people to read his version of the story, which includes Henry’s narration of the tale.

Henry Dewey is a typical 8-year-old. He loves to build with Legos and annoy his little sister, hoping to someday own a reptile to terrorize her with.

The first-grader at Trinity Episcopal School in Rollingwood is also doing some nontraditional things: Henry just released his first iPhone application, an e-book version of the folk tale “The Three Little Pigs.”

Using pen and ink, Henry spent the entire fall semester creating the illustrations for his book during an after-school art program at Trinity.

“I like being creative, making bobbleheads on paper,” Henry said.

Early in the process, he decided he wanted to transform his project into an iPhone application to provide more options on the gadget for children.

He told his father, Mark Dewey — himself an iPhone application developer — about his idea. When Henry finished the illustrations, the drawings were converted into a digital format. Then his dad helped turn the project into the application, rewriting the story and having Henry narrate it.

“At a young age to know you can be a creator, in the mainstream of American culture, that can be powerful,” said Mark Dewey, whose digital media company, Geoki, published the app. “We hope that carries on through his growing and his life.”

Does machinery inhibit artistic culture?

In 1927, at a time when new media like the radio, telephone and motion pictures were still novel and the television was just being invented, Aldous Huxley wrote an article in Harper’s magazine on ‘the machine age.’ In it he says:

In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity (Huxley, 1927).

The argument is essentially suggesting that people prior to the machine age were creative because they were idle and needed to amuse themselves. If you had nothing to do, you were likely to pick up a musical instrument, or a paintbrush or a pen. In this understanding of human behaviour, we create not because we have talents or a need for self-expression, but because we need to amuse ourselves – to fill time.

The argument is flawed – primarily because it dismisses the fundamental reason why one creates. People have an innate need to express themselves and people will express themselves in a way that fits their talents within the means they have available. For some, that expression may come from a creative pursuit – an artistry – for others it may be through oral story telling, invention, craftsmanship, human relations or productivity. People are inclined to tap into their strengths and use them to the best of their ability. Artists are a certain subset of people that generally express themselves well through a specific set of creative media: music, theatre, dance, visual art or writing (including prose and poetry). But these artistic people would likely find a way to exercise their talents regardless of the media available to them.

Justin Bieber, YouTube music sensation.
CC: Kevin Aranibar of Kerosene Photography

For instance, in the times before musical instruments the musician might have sung or banged out rhythms with sticks or rocks. Yet at another time in history, they might have played an instrument or conducted an orchestra. And again in more recent history, they might have been part of a rock band or a deejay or record producer. Finally, in today’s very digital age, they might be a digital composer, an artist who remixes found audio or a young man singing in their bedroom and posting their songs on YouTube. The artist does not seek to create as a means to amuse themselves or pass time; the artist creates because they need to express themselves and want to send a message. To that end, they will use whatever technology suites their talents and allows their audience to sense the message. As Marshall McLuhan says, “the serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception” (McLuhan, 1964, p. 208).

Marshall McLuhan at the CBC.
(c) - marshallmcluhan.com

McLuhan also says, “we shape our tools and soon after they shape us” (McLuhan, 1964). In that statement he is suggesting that technologies form such a significant role in our society that people adapt behaviours as they become more prolific users. This notion might support Huxley’s assertion that people become passive because of the passive nature of consuming content that is enabled through machinery. This would be true, but technology does not seem to fundamentally change the character of the user. Technology may change the way that one behaves or engages, but it will not substantially adjust the character of the person. Someone who has artistic talent will find a way to use the technology available to them to express themselves, and those who have less artistic inclination will not suddenly become artistic because a new medium is available. There is likely to always be a segment of people who are performers and a segment of the population that will be part of the audience. This is not to suggest that being creative is a trait that is binary, but rather that people might sit on a continuum related to their level of creativity, exhibitionism or artistic talent.

Transliteracy? A One man band (circa 1865).
Photo by Knox, O.C.

The interesting thing about artistic talent is that those who are strong in one art tend to be strong in others as well. A musician will play multiple instruments; a visual artist is likely to create using collage, sculpture and different paints on different platforms; a writer might write fiction, poetry and essays as well as plays. Similarly, it would be very common for a musician to excel in dance, for an actor to take up writing or for a sculptor to dabble in architecture. People who use multiple mediums and platforms for creativity would have done so in the time before machines, in the time of Huxley and they continue to do so in today’s very digital age.

The ability to communicate in more than one medium is not exclusive to artists. In fact, it is a set of skills of growing importance in our increasingly digital world, accurately described using the term transliteracy. According to Sue Thomas, transliteracy scholar and author of transliteracy.com, “transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks” (Thomas et al, 2007). As more technologies emerge, humans are not becoming more passive, rather they are becoming more active. Howard Rheingold is quoted as saying, “[w]hat we are witnessing today is [thus] the acceleration of a trend that has been building for thousands of years. When technologies like alphabets and Internets amplify the right cognitive or social capabilities, old trends take new twists and people build things that never could be built before” (in Thomas et al, 2007).

The advent and expansion of machinery, as Huxley calls it, has not inhibited artistry in any way. Some people still pick up the guitar for amusement, others don ballet slippers and now some people open their laptop and create stories using the full power of the tools available to them. Andy Campbell is a digital writer and author of the website Dreaming Methods. As a new media author he publishes stories that take full use of the digital technology and incorporate multiple media into a single cohesive narrative. The “reader” will read printed words on a screen that might be written overtop of a static image while music plays. When a hyperlink is clicked, the screen transforms, words fade or emerge and a video begins to play. These digital narratives effectively incorporate text, sound, music, visual arts, graphic arts, animation and video into one piece that creates a rich narrative experience. Campbell is a prime example of a transliterate creator. Rather than sitting still and allowing professionals to entertain him, he is using the tools available to him in complex, integrated and creative ways to express himself.

Aldous Huxley was perhaps limited in his perspective in 1927 about the power of machines for creative purposes, but nonetheless his assertion of machines by their nature affecting passivity amongst the creative class is simply incorrect. But, perhaps Huxley’s message needs to be heeded as a warning. There is a risk that in a society with pervasive content where creativity is not nurtured and where skills of transliteracy are not developed, we could end up with more and more citizens who are lulled by entertainers into an atmosphere of passivity. Combating this risk would require ensuring that citizens are taught a set of skills that encourage activity using digital technologies.

In his essay, Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies, Howard Rheingold writes, “if the humans currently alive are to take advantage of digital technologies to address the most severe problems that face our species and the biosphere, computers, telephones and digital networks are not enough. We need new literacies around participatory media, the dynamics of cooperation and collective action, the effective deployment of attention and the relatively rational and critical discourse necessary for a healthy public sphere (Rheingold, 2007).” Rheingold provides a compelling case for a new pedagogy that helps ensure the full participation of young people. In talking about important participatory literacies, he does not speak specifically about the need for creative but others do. “Expanding literacies for learning include criticality, metacognition, reflection, and skills for creating and publishing content” (Asselin & Maoyeri, 2011, p. 1).

In conclusion, let us not take Huxley’s doubt “that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity” as a fait accomplis, instead let us take it as a call to action to ensure that our artists, and citizens in general, may maintain a creative edge in this new age of machinery.




References



Asselin, M. & Moayeri, M. (2011). The Participatory Classroom: Web 2.0 in the Classroom. Practical Strategies – Literacy Learning: the Middle Years: 19(2).

Huxley, A. (1927). The Outlook for
American Culture: Some Reflections in a Machine Age. Harper’s Magazine, August, 1927.

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill.

Rheingold, H. (2007). Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies. Retrieved April 3, 2011, from: http://freesouls.cc/essays/03-howard-rheingold-participative-pedagogy-for-a-literacy-of-literacies.html.

Thomas, S., Joseph, C., Laccetti, J. Mason, B., Mills, S., Perril, S., & Pullinger, K. (2007).  Transliteracy: Crossing Divides. First Monday, Volume 12 Number 12 - 3 December 2007. Retrieved March 23, 2011, from: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2060/1908

Week 11: Libraries and Transliteracy, Questions from Bobbi Newman

One of the questions I am repeatedly asked about transliteracy is - what are the set of skills for transliteracy? I understand where the asker is coming from - in a world where we base to much on standardized tests, having a list you can check off and mark complete is something we have been trained to expect. We need it for validation.


You don’t need me to tell you that the world is changing around us rapidly. That approaches to teaching and learning are changing and that the “old” way of doing things isn’t working any longer.



There is no defined set of skills for transliteracy. That is not because Sue or others researching, reading, writing and talking about transliteracy have not bothered to create one, it is because transliteracy is a moving target. It is fluid. As the world around us changes so much we change with it. We must continual learn, unlearn and relearn. This process is more than a set of skills, it is a process and journey.


Watch this slideshow and consider the messages. Transliteracy is about more than technology.

Transliteracy is 3D

View more PowerPoint from Bobbi Newman

Week 9: Transliteracy

During this week you will want to refer to Professor Sue Thomas's guest lecture.

“The ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.”

The word “transliteracy” is derived from the verb “to transliterate,” meaning to write or print a letter or word using the closest corresponding letters of a different alphabet or language. 

The idea of transliteracy is really about promoting a unifying ecology. As Thomas explains, 

“The concept of transliteracy calls for a change of perspective away from the battles over print versus digital, and a move instead towards a unifying ecology not just of media, but of all literacies relevant to reading, writing, interaction and culture, both past and present.

 It is an opportunity to cross some hitherto quite difficult divides.” 

Transliteracy asks key questions about communication:

1. How were people remembering and communicating for the thousands of years before writing?
2. Where are the similarities with the way we communicate today?
3. Has our addiction to print made us forget skills we had before?
4. Can digital media reconnect us with those skills again?

Watch “Social Media Revolution” on YouTube:  

Literacy is not linear. ““Part of the confusion about media convergence stems from the fact that when people talk about it, they’re actually describing at least five processes” (Henry Jenkins, 2001). 

• technological
• economic
• social or organic
• cultural
• global
  

MEDIA CONVERGENCE
Another term which has become widely used about these kinds of experiences, especially by the media and gaming worlds, is “convergence.” In 2001 when Henry Jenkins noted the confusion about media convergence actually is because of the various processes that are at play (it is not one single required literacy). For Jenkins, “these multiple forms of media convergence are leading us toward a digital renaissance - a period of transition and transformation that will affect all aspects of our lives” (Jenkins, 2001). 

Sue Thomas often refers to the Asheninka tribe as an example of a transliterate group. For them transliteracy imbues every aspect of their culture:

“Everything we use has a story. Each drawing which is passed from one generation to another is our writing; each little symbol has an immense story. As one learns a drawing, one learns its origin, who taught it, who brought it to us.”




Discussion Questions:

Q1. What is transliteracy? Give examples of how transliteracy appears in your daily life.

Q2. How does Coover’s “The End of Books” (originally written in 1992) align with a contemporary thinking of transliteracy and the development of the web into web 2.0?

Q3. According to Aarseth’s “Nonlinearity and Literary Theory,” “the text...entails a set of powerful metaphysics...the three most important ones are those of reading, writing and stability” (763).  Having read about and discussed the idea of transliteracy, would you suggest adding or changing any of the three elements that Aarseth notes as most important? Must “users” (readers) “learn to accept their position as agents of the text” or might they play a more decisive role (as in Andy Campbell’s works)?

Does Posting Text Qualify as Transliteracy?

Posted on behalf of Jonathan:

After reading Sue Thomas’ post (Thomas, 2012) and watching her video

lecture (Thomas, 2008), I found myself contemplating the concept of

transliteracy amongst young people and giving consideration to the

question she posed at the end of the blog post: “Imagine that you have

been asked to measure the transliteracy levels of students and

teachers at your school. How would you do this?” (Thomas, 2012).

Immediately, I thought about the young people that I taught when I was

an active classroom teacher, just over four years ago. I felt that so

many of those young people were quite adept at using a number of

tools, but yet the default mode for expressing ideas seemed to be

text. Whether it was using email, posting to facebook or sending an

SMS message – the dominant mode for expression was text regardless of

the medium used.

Brian Hulsey’s video (Hulsey, 2010) also raises the question of mode

versus medium (if I may use those terms to describe these ideas). In

all but one of the instances being described by Hulsey, the dominant

mode for expression is text (or at best hypertext). He demonstrates

his concept of transliteracy by discussing the sharing of a blueberry

smoothie recipe and shows how it can be sent by email, posted to

Twitter, shared on Facebook and written on a sticky note. The only

time he illustrates the use of another mode besides text, is when he

discusses using the telephone to tell his grandparents about the

recipe.

So the question for discussion is this: is transliteracy accurately

described by using multiple tools to express oneself using a single

modality or does transliteracy also indicate a use of multiple modes –

text, speech, music, film, dance, drama, etc. Based on Thomas’

definition it would. She says, “transliteracy is the ability to read,

write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from

signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to

digital social networks” (Thomas etal, 2007).

An important measure for determining the transliteracy level of

students in a school setting then must include their amount of

exposure to arts education. Students would need to be able to express

themselves using pictures, film, theatre and music as well as text in

order to be truly transliterate, otherwise they are simply using text

with different tools. As a math teacher, I would also say that

students should be well versed in communicating using numbers,

symbolic logic, charts and graphs. All of this speaks to a public

education system that emphasizes a variety of literacies and includes

a strong emphasis on not just English language arts and mathematics,

but also art, music, dance and drama.

Guest Lecture from Professor Sue Thomas

Transliteracy: what is it and how can we measure it?

Hello everyone, it’s a pleasure to work with you this week. I’m writing from the heart of England, where I live in a small cottage about 15 miles from the city of Leicester. Spring is about to start here, so the first flowers are starting to appear and the days are getting longer. It’s great that the internet allows us to communicate so easily across the world and I’m very much looking forward to talking about transliteracy with you this week!

Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. To put it another way, being transliterate involves being open to difference and prioritising what unites us rather than what divides us.

From your point of view, transliteracy is especially important in terms of your learning experiences. A 2010 article said this about my research at De Montfort University:

The media's teenage stereotype is that of a girl watching Hollyoaks on television while simultaneously discussing its plot lines on the social networking site Facebook, listening to music on MySpace and texting her friend to discuss home study. Sue Thomas is exploring the impact that transliteracy is having on higher education and pedagogy. In transliterate terms, many academics are in essence illiterate, which matters if their teaching relationship with hyper-transliterate students is breaking down because of an inability to communicate fully with each other. If academics cannot show themselves to be transliterate, will they lose the respect of their students?

It continues:

Meanwhile, a committee looking at the impact of the "Google generation" on HE (Higher Education) has found that 95% of students are members of an online social network and that more than 50% have a blog or website. These transliterate students arrive at university with a set of assumptions about how they will use these skills in their education, and have difficulty if such assumptions are questioned.Should tutors be expecting, even demanding, that students communicate with each other electronically? Communication tools such as Second Life, the web-based virtual world, involve creating alternative identities. Should students be expected or required to generate these for themselves? Professor Thomas believes that as transliteracy travels up the HE agenda, academics will be obliged to add new forms of communication to their portfolio of teaching methods. There is a debate to be had with applicants. The evidence is that students still want face-to-face contact, and value that. Some do not see new technology as the core of learning, even though they may spend two or three hours a day on the web. What do they expect? What do they want? What are they prepared for? A transliterate study style incorporates a range of learning modes, combining traditional face-to-face lectures, seminars and tutorials with online classes via the web and mobile media. [ from ‘Getting In Getting On! A Guide to getting into Higher Education’ by Rob Brown & Mike Chant 2010)

Do you agree with their conclusion that young people of today are transliterate?

Do you consider yourself to be transliterate?

This week I’d like to look at various different approaches to transliteracy and invite you think about how you might measure transliteracy in yourself and others.

I have some reading for you, some videos, and a task. I advise you do them in the following order but feel free to pick and mix if that suits you better.

Reading and Watching

1.     First, think about the article extract above in terms of some of the references. Social media has changed since it was written in 2010. Which of the platforms listed there do you use? If you were revising it to publish now, what changes would you make?

2.     Watch my Transliteracy lecture  http://vimeo.com/2831405

3.     Dip into the Transliteracy Research Group blog http://www.transliteracy.com

4.     Librarians are very excited about transliteracy. Find out why from Bobbi Newman’s slideshow Libraries and Transliteracy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk4Cw8vrDuM

5.     Bobbi’s work inspired librarian Brian Hulsey to make an amusing video about making a blueberry smoothie the transliterate way http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h06FZryyQM4

6.     Transliteracy also inspired one of my former students, Mary King, an English journalist living in Japan, to make this very meditative film: Transliteracy - The Spirit of Kanji  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7srRPi5R2Gw

7.     This journal article sums up much of what I say in the video lecture: Transliteracy: Crossing Divides by Sue Thomas, Chris Joseph, Jess Laccetti, Bruce Mason, Simon Mills, Simon Perril, and Kate Pullinger, First Monday, Volume 12 Number 12 - 3 December 2007 http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2060/1908

8.     Check out the #transliteracy tag on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/saved-search/transliteracy

9.     Tweet your thoughts and questions on transliteracy to me @suethomas using the tag #transliteracy

Task

Imagine that you have been asked to measure the transliteracy levels of students and teachers at your school. How would you do this? Post your suggestions and we’ll discuss them. I look forward to seeing your ideas.

Howard Rheingold's five new media literacies provide model for 21st education system.

In his talk with child prodigy Adora Svitak, famed new media scholar Howard Rheingold discusses five fundamental literacies related to digital technology: attention, participation, credibility, collaboration and network awareness. This is a significant shift from the popular 20th century literacies of reading, writing and arithmetic. As a teacher, I recognize that this shift to a new set of literacies (and I would add search and filter as a literacy to the list) requires us to rethink the curriculum for students in the education system. Svitak provides a compelling picture of the types of students that we need to develop.

Recently Alberta Education recognized the need to transform the education system for the 21st century and embarked on a process of envisioning to develop the school system needed for a child born in 2010.

Q 1 - More participatory culture

I would say I have seen evidence of this in post-secondary classrooms.  In the past, teachers were viewed as the holder of wisdom/information.  A better definition of teaching is perhaps the guide at your side, and not the sage on the stage.  Especially in adult classrooms, a teacher can expect that student knowledge will contribute to the learning that happens.  But new media technologies have really changed the class environment at many levels. Students can go to Google, YouTube, Twitter, etc. and bring new, up-to-the minute news and information on almost any subject to the discussion.  I have stopped on more than one occasion to share new information that a student has sourced online.  Teaching them to be critical thinkers about the information they are able to access is a lesson that needs to accompany this ability.

Week 5: Web 2.0

Some key terms we will discuss during this session:
hypertext
hypermedia
web 2.0
network as platform

Required Readings: Tim O'Reilly, “What is Web 2.0?” Michael Wesch, “The Machine is Us/ing Us,”




Q1. How have new media technologies resulted in a more participatory media culture? Give examples of
audience participation and contrast with other theories of the role of the audience. You may refer with examples from your experience at work and at home as you respond to this question.
Q2. How does the shortened character usage (140) of Twitter affect narrative?
Q3. Can Facebook status updates be considered a new form of narrative? Why? Examples?
Q4. What would you say is the greatest impact of web 2.0 technologies on publishing?
Q5. Web 2.0 denotes a shift from “passive use” to “active participation.” If web 2.0 does away with roles of the producer, consumer and end user, where is the text? What is the product? Who is the author?

Week 4: Temporality and Cruising

What is narrative and how is it affected by new media developments. The focus will be on time-based narratives with a close reading of Cruising by Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar.

Basing our discussion on the week’s readings we’ll critique these main ideas:

• feminism
• nonlinearity
• temporality
• transiency
• rhizomatic
• time-based narrative
• multimodality

Discussion Questions:

Q1. How can we define nonsequentiality/multi-linearity, interactivity, narrative?
Q2. To what extent are these aspects determined by the text, the reader, the digital format?
Q3. What kinds of narratives are especially suited for a multi-linear/interactive format? Are there stories that can only be told in an online format?
Q4. Read Cruising. Analyse the structure of the narrative (is it non-linear, multi-linear?). How does it engage the reader? What are the textual mechanisms by which the text achieves engagement?

Required Readings:
Espen Aarseth, “Nonlinearity and Literary Theory,” Bill Marsh, "Reading Time: For a Poetics of Hypermedia Writing," Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar, Cruising, Jessica Laccetti, "Where to Begin? Multiple Narrative Paths in Web Fiction."

Recommended Readings:
Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar, “Author Description, Cruising.”

This is hypertext.

I took a look at Bieguelman's, "The Book After the Book" site before doing any of the readings for this week. I found the site to be confusing and with a number of broken links, I suspected that it was out of date. Ultimately, I was looking to find a starting point and then a listing of the different sections, so I would know that I had read the whole book. I left again in frustration.

After that experience I read "The End of Books" article by Robert Coover which discusses a class Coover lead in hyperfiction. The reading was quite compelling. Coover did a very good job of positioning hypermedia as something different from books - more over, something different even than e-books. As Coover says, "hypertext provides multiple paths between text segments" and so the reader is able to create their own narrative, which will be different from the narrative created by other readers and of course different from the narrative envisioned by the author (Something that Bush discussed when he talked about the Memex).

I revisited the Bieguelman site and it all became clear. This time, as I clicked the links I found myself relishing the experience of discovery as opposed to being frustrated about missing the story. I now knew that I had to create the narrative for myself and I had to be comfortable with creating a loop or with missing pieces of text entirely. This is hypertext.

I finished my exploration today by watching the Jay-Z Decoded video that Hillary had posted and the power of hypertext and the way in which it transformed reading and books was abundantly clear.

In the end, hypertext will not destroy or replace books. It truly is a new media. But, that does not mean that it will replace the old media of books. They will still have their place and their audience. Choose-your-own-adventure books were fascinating to read and disturbed the regular process of reading, yet many people still enjoyed to read narratives created by an author. This will continue to be the case. New media has the impact of segmenting audiences or segmenting spans of attention rather than displacing and killing old media.

Don Tapscott hosts ReCivilisation on CBC

CBC Radio One has started a new series hosted by Don Tapscott that should be of interest to students in the class. The website for the show describes it as "a five-part series that examines some of the the biggest challenges facing our world. It charts a path to the future enabled by the revolutions underway in communications, innovation and learning in this new, post-industrial, digital age."

I missed the first episode, which looked at how media is moving from the mass production model to one based on collaboration and citizen publishing, but I am planning to listen to it right away. The second episode, looking at the transformation of education and science, airs tomorrow at 11 on Radio One.

Technology Narratives?

Digital Literacy & Me

Reflection on creating my (video) podcast:

My video podcast was created on my Blackberry, on a Kodak flip-cam, on Windows Movie Maker and ultimately YouTube. It also encompasses a number of online social media apps that I use. This assignment challenged me to work across hardware and software – since the video from the BlackBerry in the first scene, had to be uploaded from a proprietary network. The flip cam video had to uploaded as well, then edited and produced on Movie Maker. I needed literacy in all these technologies to pull it off.

I once heard Windows Movie Maker described as a “killer app” since it suddenly enabled video making by the average person and I agree with that assessment. The video wouldn’t have been possible without it.

Creating this podcast, and the new media it profiles demonstrates that I must take on several roles/wear several hats to do it all including creating the content and producing it.

The podcast was not scripted/written except in a very general sense (something I do all day at work). However, it was developed with a goal to tell narratives about each of the media, primarily to make it a bit more interesting.  However, some stories were cut to reduce the size to under five minutes. In fact, five minutes is long for a video without a strong narrative line or other interesting content.

Question that comes to my mind (completing a university course assignment in this manner) – is there an APA style for video or other online media?! J Should there be?

Digital Literacy and Me

This was a challenging project for me. I've dabbled in imovie before, but haven't really counted audio or video in my skill set, so there was a big learning curve involved. After getting off to a slow start, though, I began to see the possibilities - and also to see where I had gone wrong (and didn't leave enough time to start over!)

Digital literacy is a big topic, and it was difficult for me to find an angle to focus on. It was also difficult for me to find my voice in a new medium. I listen to a lot of CBC, and I have a bad feeling that I've sort of unintentionally modelled my podcast on something I'd hear on Definitely Not the Opera (but with low production values).

Nonetheless, having to think critically about my relationship to new media was a valuable exercise. Please excuse the technical glitches. You might want to have your finger on the volume control before you start. There are a few unfortunate fluctuations along the way!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umVsqFO-7jU

Inner Space Explorers

This course is providing a clarity of insight about new media. It’s making the everyday known - there is so much that we do without being aware of what is actually occurring…the text we click on, the connections within a website, the social experience  we are coming to rely on to provide us with a blanket of familiarity.  It allows us to experience ourselves as ‘inner space explorers’, a particularly significant descriptor that Rheingold provides.

We are stumbling through this incredible period that reading Bush tells me began well before the time that I thought it had actually began. It wasn’t the 70s, it wasn’t the 40’s; it truly builds on all of the media and thinkers that came before it – the alphabet, the printing press, the work of Charles Babbage and Ada, Boole with his “algebra of logic.

I’m comforted by the fact that it took Boole twenty years after his “flash of inspiration “ to teach himself enough mathematics to write The Laws of Thought. (Rheingold, 2000). It does take time to truly understand what is occurring. We can learn how to surf the web, build a blog and (in a very few days that are left to me) post a podcast. It take time to truly understand what it is that we are experiencing in warp speed compared to Boole. That is what we need to come to terms with. 

Bush says that “truly significant attainment becomes lost in the mass of the inconsequential” and he looks to technology to address this gap. Yet as we harness more and more technology, we are still finding that we are left with the conundrum of having access to more information and yet feeling no closer the attainment of knowledge.

Week 2: The Beginning of Hypertext and the Web

What is "new" about "new media"?

What are the characteristics, both technical and social, of new media? 

How does new media transform and "remediate" earlier media practices?

As noted in the lecture notes, here is an excerpt from Bolter and Guisin's Remediation:

Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R. (2000). Remediation: Understanding New Media. The MIT Press, 1st edition.
 (excerpts selected and titled by course instructor)

Immediacy and Hypermediacy


Immediacy is our name for a family of beliefs and practices that express themselves differently at various times among various groups, and our quick survey cannot do justice to this variety. The common feature of all these forms is the belief in some necessary contact point between the medium and what it represents. For those who believe in the immediacy of photography, from Talbot to Bazin to Barthes, the contact point is the light that is reflected from the objects on to the film. This light establishes an immediate relationship between the photograph and the object. For theorists of linear-perspective painting and perhaps for some painters, the contact point is the mathematical relationship established between the supposed objects and their projection on the canvas. However, probably at no time or place has the logic of immediacy required that the viewer be completely fooled by the painting or photograph. Trompe l'oeil, which does completely fool the viewer for a moment, has always been an exceptional practice. The film theorist Tom Gunning (1995) has argued that what we are calling the logic of transparent immediacy worked in a subtle way for filmgoers of the earliest films. The audience members knew at one level that the film of a train was not really a train, and yet they marveled at the discrepancy between what they knew and what their eyes told them (114-133). On the other hand, the marveling could not have happened unless the logic of immediacy had had a hold on the viewers. There was a sense in which they believed in the reality of the image, and theorists since the Renaissance have underwritten that belief. This "naive" view of immediacy is the expression of a historical desire, and it is one necessary half of the double logic of remediation. (pp. 30-31)
As a counterbalance [to immediacy] hypermediacy is more complicated and various. In digital technology, as often in the earlier history of Western representation, hypermediacy expresses itself as multiplicity. If the logic of immediacy leads one either to erase or to render automatic the act of representation, the logic of hypermediacy acknowledges multiple acts of representation and makes them visible. Where immediacy suggests a unified visual space, contemporary hypermediacy offers a heterogeneous space, in which representation is conceived of not as a window on to the world, but rather as "windowed" itself—with windows that open on to other representations or other media. The logic of hypermediacy multiplies the signs of mediation and in this way tries to reproduce the rich sensorium of human experience. (pp. 33-34)
The logic of immediacy has perhaps been dominant in Western representation, at least from the Renaissance until the coming of modernism, while hypermediacy has often had to content itself with a secondary, if nonetheless important, status. Sometimes hypermediacy has adopted a playful or subversive attitude, both acknowledging and undercutting the desire for immediacy. At other times, the two logics have coexisted, even when the prevailing readings of art history have made it hard to appreciate their coexistence. At the end of the twentieth century, we are in a position to understand hypermediacy as immediacy's opposite number, an alter ego that has never been suppressed fully or for long periods of time. (p. 34)
In all its various forms, the logic of hypermediacy expresses the tension between regarding a visual space as mediated and as a "real" space that lies beyond mediation. Lanham (1993) calls this the tension between look at and looking through, and he sees it as a feature of twentieth-century art in general and now digital representation in particular. (p. 41)

Media Con(Media)tent


Again, we call the representation of one medium in another remediation, and we will argue that remediation is a defining characteristic of the new digital media. (p. 45)
The digital medium can be more aggressive in its remediation. It can try to refashion the older medium or media entirely, while still marking the presence of the older media and therefore maintaining a sense of multiplicity or hypermediacy. [ . . . ] This form of aggressive remediation throws into relief both the source and the target media. (p. 46)
Finally, the new medium can remediate by trying to absorb the older medium entirely, so that the discontinuities between the two are minimized. The very act of remediation, however, ensures that the older medium cannot be entirely effaced; the new medium remains dependent on the older one in acknowledged or unacknowledged ways. (p. 47)
[ . . . ] remediation operates in both directions: users of older media such as film and television can seek to appropriate and refashion digital graphics, just as digital graphics artists can refashion film and television. (p. 48)

What is New About New Media?


Our primary concern will be with visual technologies, such as computer graphics and the World Wide Web. We will argue that these new media are doing exactly what their predecessors have done: presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of other media. Digital visual media can best be understood through the ways in which they honor, rival, and revise linear-perspective painting, photography, film, television, and print. No medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other media, any more than it works in isolation from other social and economic forces. What is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media. (pp. 14-15)

The Reality of Remediation


The process of remediation makes us aware that all media are at one level a "play of signs," which is a lesson that we take from poststructuralist literary theory. At the same time, this process insists on the real, effective presence of media in our culture. Media have the same claim to reality as more tangible cultural artifacts; photographs, films, and computer applications are as real as airplanes and buildings.
        Furthermore, media technologies constitute networks or hybrids that can be expressed in physical, social, aesthetic, and economic terms. Introducing a new media technology does not mean simply inventing new hardware and software, but rather fashioning (or refashioning) such a network. (p. 19)






SEED QUESTIONS - Please Post Comments Here

Q1. After reading Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” think about Bush as being considered the “father” of hypertext (although he did not coin the term). To what extent can we see his concept implemented in the World Wide Web that for many people defines their notion of hypertext? What are the differences?

Q2. Andries van Dam encourages us to approach hypertext as a new medium and not copy “old, bad habits.” What are some news ways to think about hypertext? How might we use hypertext in publishing, in writing, in thinking?

Q3. Joe Levy, in 1993 said: “if information is available, then any (authorised) person should be able to access it from anywhere in the world.”What implications does this thinking have to our own notions of publishing and the current online environment? You can use examples from your own experience.

Moving Beyond Injured Self-Esteem

A curiosity about the Web 2.0 world and what it means for literacy brought me to the MACT program; a world that I thought I had understood – communications – was changing in fundamental ways and I want to know how it works and even more so, why it works. 

Michael Wesch says in a blog post that "Learning a new subjectivity is often painful because it almost always involves what psychologist Thomas Szasz referred to as "an injury to one's self-esteem." You have to unlearn perspectives that may have become central to your sense of self."

(Subjects or Subjectivites?) 

This resonated with me - even learning to post on a blog this week had a learning curve. 

Transdisciplinarity is a necessity in our new media environment. It’s too new and novel and all encompassing to be held to the rigors of any one discipline and we need all the lenses we can find to come to terms with what it means – engineering, sociolology, psychology, physiology. How does hypertext work? What is the impact of smartphones on classroom? What is literacy today in a world where, as Wesch’s video points out – students might only read eight books but thousands of web pages in a year? What is the impact of giving iPads to infants with regard to their brain development? You can’t address these questions from only one viewpoint. 

The Holy Grail of transdisciplinarity in relation to new media shouldn’t be a singular discipline with rigid boundaries and the kind of arguments that occur in the social sciences as to whether people are sociologists, anthropologists or outsiders. The unified theory of new media should remain permeable; it’s the richness of perspectives that will help us understand a Web-based world that breaks down barriers between video and text and art and games and novels (thank you for the postings about Inanimate Alice, BTW). Also, using a variety of perspectives and analytical frameworks/disciplines to understand a phenomenon/giving equal weight to each. Complex problems and the challenges created by a world mediated through the Web means we have to come at the problems and challenges of communication from many different disciplines. We need to come at them from many perspectives in order to understand them.  

New media takes all the old media and turns them upside down, inside out and fractures our sensibilities about what they are. We simply can’t stand outside of what is happening and opine from one perspective. We are entering into a world of transliterates: “Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.” (Transliteracy Research Group – transliteracy.com) To understand what is happening, we need to understand what that means and how it intermingles with transdisciplinarity. 

Haraway wrote A Cyborg Manifesto in 1985 and was astonishingly prescient about what is happening. We are becoming the “hybrid of machine and organism” she described, with our smart phones in hand (and the promise of a new joint when the old one wears out). We are living in a time when we are constructing new reality all the time and the old lines between disciplines and ourselves and machines are merging and blurring, remixing in new ways.

In closing, I return to Wesch and want to share two quotes from his blog. 

• “New media literacy, like all learning, requires an intellectual throw-down in the mind, a challenge of taken-for-granted assumptions, and a transformation of the self from a passive recipient to an active creator of new information, knowledge, and of the world itself.” (http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=303)

• “There is literally something in the air, and it is nothing less than the digital artifacts of over one billion people and computers networked together collectively producing over 2,000 gigabytes of new information per second. ..nearly the entire body of human knowledge now flows through and around these [class]rooms in one form or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation.” http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=188