At the beginning of this semester, I didn’t know what to expect from the class, having received a description from my adviser that was vague at best. What I did not expect however, was a computer and internet oriented class that would completely change not only the way I viewed new media and the internet, [...]
Category Archives: Readings
Unthinkable?
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
One of the most interesting claims made by Clay Shirky in his article is that we are living in the midst of an internet revolution. While I can see how the idea may connect with older generations, I feel that this revolution is not as significant with younger generations. As a member of a generation [...]
Alien Education?
Thursday, April 9, 2009
I started out this blog originally with just a summary of what we had read, but naturally, I found it hard to push out much further than that. So instead, I decided to ponder: why are we reading this story? Education has been a recurring theme in our class, and pushing the boundaries of modern [...]
McCloud Revisted
Monday, March 23, 2009
So after our discussion on Thursday, I went home and watched the TedTalk that McCloud had done that Dr. C. had mentioned briefly. Unfortunately, about 5 minutes into the 17 minute long video, it stopped working. However, the first 5 minutes gave me some excellent insight into McCloud. He began by talking about his father, [...]
The Hidden Message in Peanuts
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
So I haven’t really got much to say today about McCloud aside from the fact that I’m not sure I buy it. Frankly, I am not blown away every time I read the Sunday comics (and outside of that, I’ve never read a comic). At the moment, I can’t seem to fathom such depth to [...]
Turtles and Legos
Monday, March 2, 2009
So I am currently unable to find my book, though doubtless it will reappear conveniently sometime tomorrow. Consequently, for the moment, I am unable to read Papert’s essay. I have, however, done some research, so hopefully I won’t embarrass myself in class tomorrow. From what I understand, Papert, aside from creating a brilliant programming language, [...]
The Irony of the Block
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
So today, I am having massive writer’s block. I can’t think of a single thing to write about that I could stretch beyond two sentences. I thought about writing about McLuhan and the idea of the medium as the message, but, to be frank, I can’t think of what to say. McLuhan already said everything, [...]
Licklider Is Obviously Moonlighting as a Writer for Will Smith Movies…
Monday, January 26, 2009
J. C. R. Licklider’s (3 initials? Really?) article on the man-computer, while somewhat outdated in terms of the modern technology that has now been created, posits some interesting questions about how man and machine might work together. As a linguist, the most interesting of these hypotheses, to me, was the idea that computers could recognize [...]
Choose Your Own Adventure: The Ultimate Story
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The first thing I thought of when I read this short story was those Choose Your Own Adventure books with various hypotheticals and endings. And they are actually somewhat similar, though I suppose Choose Your Own Adventure is a much less sophisticated version of the hypertext novel. However, once I passed my childhood reminiscing, I [...]
