Varsity's Play

So, I already wrote one post on the Ben Franklin’s biography that I am reading for Business 1301 and a connection I found in one of our readings from the New Media Reader. Well, I found another one…. Maybe it’s because in his own way Benjamin Franklin formed many different forms of media and invented new mediums for these ideas and forms of media to travel.

Viola writes “Our cultural concept of education and knowledge is based upon the idea of building something up from a ground, from zero, and starting piece by piece to put things together, to construct edifices. If we approach this process from the other direction, considering it to be backwards, or subtractive, all sorts of things start to happen.” Ben Franklin also spoke of this idea when learning foreign languages. He stated that when he learned Latin in school as a boy, it was difficult (and was supposed to be) because it is the basis of many common languages. However, when he started learning French he found that working backwards was the most helpful to him. By learning French, and then Italian and Spanish, he discovered he could then go back to Latin and found it much more clear to understand and write. He continued with this thought process throughout the rest of his book on several topics and encouraged others to try this method as well.

I know these topics aren’t completely related, but when I read this section my brain immediately went to Franklin’s autobiography. Maybe if I try this someday with something I can blog about it. Both Viola and Franklin were(are?) very intelligent men.

For my business class we are reading the biography of Benjamin Franklin and I found a chapter of the book that praises Franklin for his self improvement techniques and his self-education in many different areas.

“For him [Franklin], all education was self-education. Though he enjoyed a few years of formal schooling, he taught himself most of the really valuable skills.” During the short time he was actually in school, Franklin explains he was terrible in the mathematic field. However, he decided to overcome this failure later in his life and succeeded in teaching himself and understanding mathematical concepts he could not before. Franklin also taught himself marine navigation, geometry, further developed his vocabulary, Socratic dialouge, and more. There are many chapters following this where Franklin’s goal is to better himself and his abilities. I really admire this quality of his. He taught himself how to do all these things not because he had a certain goal he wished to accomplish, but just so he could become a well rounded person and understand the world better a little at a time.

Being sick, having three tests, and working three times last week put me behind a little bit…. So, I still need to blog over Kay and Goldberg’s Personal Dynamic Media.

However, I only want to make a few comments about the beginning of this essay.

What I got from this piece wasn’t so much about the Dynabook, but about completely understanding the definition of a medium from the section “Background, Humans and Media.” We have been talking about different forms of mediums all semester, but Kay and Goldberg’s explanation of a medium was a really strong definition. “Although thinking goes in one’s head, external media serve to materialize thoughts, and through feedback, to augment the actual paths the thinking follows.” People have been using different mediums to represent their ideas from the beginning of time. Kay and Goldberg explained however that these mediums have been mostly nonconversational and “do not change in response to the viewer’s wishes.” I thought it was interesting that they chose to use the word viewer instead of author. This was one of their goals with the Dynabook. This reminds me of Dr. C’s Wikicentral that we, cough cough, are supposed to be editing and adding to- so the site can be changed in response to OUR wishes, the viewers’ wishes.

So, now that we have that advantage, we should probably take advantage of it like we’re supposed to

I read the wrong thing for today’s class…whoops!

I really enjoyed the latest FYS reading (even though I’m pretty sure I missed some of its main points….) But that’s ok.

It was refreshing because it was a different type of reading than the normal essays and was a good change of pace. There is so much about the interworkings of comics and the abstract thinking involved in making them that McCloud understood. Maybe that’s why the intro calls him the “Aristotle of comics.”

I found it fascinating that simply lengthening or shortening the panel or using “bleeds” can insert a different sense of time in the comic to the reader. It kindof reminded me of color associations. (For example, green is associated with calming, and red is associated with aggression.) (That was kindof random.) ANYWAYS…

My favorite part about this piece was on page 722- “But, UNLIKE other media, in comics, the past is more than just MEMORIES for the audience and the future is more than just POSSIBILITIES! Both past and future are REAL and visible ALL AROUND US!” I found that statement cool because you can look at the past, present, and future all at one time because theyre right next to each other. In a movie for example you rely on memory to remember the past events and you have to guess the future till it presents itself. In a comic you can look at three panels at a time and see them all at once. Cool.

Can’t wait to finish the discussion from TuesdaY!

I found this reading assignment much easier and more enjoyable to read than the other. Perhaps it is because Nelson wrote it for the average  Joe…. Anyways, I liked the personality and the diction Nelson used. He was honest and upfront about his opinions on computer experts, the education system, etc.

I like the bold statement “EVERYBODY SHOULD UNDERSTAND COMPUTERS.” It is absolutely true, and is definitely necessary in today’s world. In 1974, the average human could get away with being ignorant about computers. Today, however, computers are keeping our daily lives going. Everywhere you turn there is some type of computer at work.  They are integrated into almost every part of our lives.

Laer, Nelson also talks about education. His views on how education works reminded me of some of the discussions we have in class. Nelson says “Education ought to be clear, inviting, and enjoyable, without booby-traps, humiliations, condescension or boredom.” He also mentions “Students should develop, through practice, abilities to think, argue and disagree intelligently.” I think this is one of the main goals we have in our class. Maybe it’s even one of our learning objectives

So, I started out reading this very late because I’ve had SO much to do in the past couple days, so forgive me…

But I found this class day’s reading very hard to concentrate on when I got to the middle and end of the essay. I ended up basically skimming through it :/. The technical stuff went over me head and at 2 o clock in the morning, I don’t necessarily have time to concentrate on it and break it down. I know, not good.

BUT, I did find the first and second pages very interesting. Engelbart and English tell about this experimental labratory built around an “interactive, multi-console computer-display system, and is working to learn the principles by which interactive computer aids can augment their intellectual capability.” Their objective in this experiment was to develop principles and techniques for designing “an augmentation system.” This relates to Engelbart’s last essay we read.

I found it cool that they used the researchers themselves as the subjects to get their results and to develop a complex computer-based system. Engelbart and English mention that their goal in the research lab is to get to a point where they can do EVERYTHING online… We can definitely do that today. So, I guess their plan worked!

WORDLE!

Here, I want to connect to Adobe’s blog… Hope it works :]