Ree-ding

The Jacob's article was interesting in how new a faculty deep attention reading is. Since the advent of Gutenberg and the printing press we have been bombarded by books, to the point of information overload.  The great insight into St. Augustine's life presented us with a picture of a time when books were an absolutely precious commodity.  Having a collection book's then is the equivalent of being on the cutting edge of technology today.  Except now today we can collapse a whole library's worth of information on to the width, length, and height of a book. Since there is such a plethora of available knowledge we have to be careful and more peculiar about where we divert our attention and for how long.  Such a remarkable transition has taken place over the last 150 years that we still haven't really caught up to it.  This is a point Jacob's article does a good job of pointing out by framing it from a teachers perspective who loves to read and wonders why her students do not.

I personally only like to read things in which I know the context surrounding their creation. The date and what was happening in the authors life and in society at that time.  I think that one who loves to read, also loves history.  For example the epic saga that the adopted J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, crafting a rich history of a world that dates back generations.  It is a creation story in itself.  One must start from The Silmarillion, works published posthumously by his son Chris, in it's fantasticly detailed lineages from the very creation of the elves themselves to the well known introduction of Bilbo of the shire in the Hobbit.  Hundreds if not thousands of years imagined into existence. That is basically a history lesson in mythopoetic fantasy terms.

Among other great novels I have come to deeply appreciate are Zorba the greek,  and Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  Both of these novels were recommended to me by my brother, some one I respect and look up to.  I otherwise may not have explored these two books.  Having an influence like that has given me a deeper respect for reading books.

A main reason kid's do not like to deep read today could be because of the information consolidating yet, attention diverting devices combined with the internet.  In order for someone to cherish reading, I think they have to read what they like and build up a "history" of books.  Once some one has established their repertoire they can draw from it as they take in new information and compare ideas of people who lived before, during, or after the author.  Even to talk about books with other book worms there is always a reference to other books.  If an individual doesn't want to build up their library of read books then they won't enjoy long form, deep attention reading. I believe it is important for schools to supply the context of the book in an enjoyable, engaging way. 

Kress's article was attempting to tackle  the difficulty genre's bring when different modalities are used in the same piece and which is more effective. This article was a drag for me which is why I am not writing much about it.

Thanks for tuning in!

The rise of the Algorithm

As this world of algorithms and high speed wireless internet becomes ubiquitous, what are the implications for the future?  They are many, especially considering that the smart phone in your pocket is a million times more efficient in processing than computers were twenty five years ago.  Imagine in the next twenty five years the implantable microprocessor in blood cells or the brain.  Maybe imagine isn't the word but waiting.  This seems to me to be the inevitable march of human progress and evolution.

Computer algorithms are capable of mimicing the process of natural evolution's mutations, selections, and inheiritance.  Now nobody commented on my last two posts about genetic engineering, and I am EXTREMELY curious what people think about it.  Anywho, algorithms can also be used to track your "social capital", basically what networks you are connected to and how many people you reach through your networks is known by algorithmic websites such as http://klout.com/home and http://www.peerindex.com/.  Some hotels have even researched the guests "Klout" and give them VIP treatment in hopes for a return of that individual publicizing how well they were treated on their social networking sites.  Sort of like a Social capital currency if you will. 

When it comes to algorithms making decisions or at least guiding them, it is, as I see it, and unstoppable force that will continue to reduce competition to milliseconds and nanoseconds (if those even exist lol!) As far as I see it either jump on the bandwagon or throw your communications device out the window and go back to writing letters that take days to deliver.  The world is getting smaller because of the reduction of time it takes communications to travel.  I guess time really is money as Slavin points out so well with the mega algorithmic sky scrapers that have the millisecond advantages on trading and info due to their placement on the now "motherboard' like cities. 

Here is a video interview of Ray Kurzweil, a very intelligent man who has made some startlingly accurate predictions.

Please take the time to view this, Thanks for reading!

P.S. -don't mind the dutch : )

Re...re...re...REMIX!

Networking. Networking. Networking. 

The world is growing ever smaller as our technological innovations remix culture on a daily basis.  It makes me think of Led Zeppelin taking old american blues songs and revamping them with the new electrification and amplification of their instruments.  Taking the old and reworking them into the new and re-creating legendary music with a huge network of fans.  This theme is especially prevalent in Anil Dash's video.  The implications this has for us as writers is huge! I feel like remixing harry potter and twilight into one huge conglomeration of magic, fantasy, werewolf, vampire, fictional epicness that borrows from both stories...NOT! I really don't, J.K. Rowling already did that with Larry Potter and some how got away with it...

     What fascinated me was ODD Future.  They reminded me of how Wu Tang Clan got started, RZA got together with his crew and began producing music in his apartment, beats for the clan to rap on.  He had a plan that in 5 years that crew would be on top, and he was right.  They innovated the rap scene by beginning as a group and selling cds out of the back of their car, then before long Method Man, Ghostface killah, and the rest of them were coming out with solo albums and being successful.  Being a musician it's is great to draw from people who are being successful and to use that to be innovative.  Cure for the Common is not signed to a major record label which has it's up's and downs.  I certainly would not sign onto a label where we didn't have full creative rights to put out what we want.  We do have a CD with all original songs, so we didn't quite go the route of ODD.  You can actually buy it off i-tunes, download it for free from our website, listen to it at www.grooveshark.com, and listen as well on soundcloud.  My suggestion is to buy it! Heck you can even get it from me personally ; )

     I hope that the creativity of our band will influence others, as I have been influenced by all the music that comes my way.  Heck i'd be honored if someone remixed one of our songs!!


P.S.- what do people think about patenting genes?  (previous blog entry)

Who owns what and how do they get paid?

Johnson-Eiola's Understanding Composition as Articulation was an enlightening article on articulation and symbolic-analytic texts in the postmodern sense.  I find that I do this ALL the time.  It seems like such an efficient way to validate your arguments in a discourse community.  The methods hyper-text allows for a reconstruction from linear to an amalgamation of links and sources from other sites.  So many times I have done this through social media sites such as facebook.  Take a link and spin it, as if I had thought of this all along as my own original idea. OR even go so far as to take links out of context to reinforce my argument, although those texts in their original context may argue against my own polemic.   I do this to attract an audience and the audience that most often than not responds is the one that understands the presuppositions, context, and other texts I am referring to (James E. Porter). All the while the articles I post on my page are not my own creative intellectual property, although I may put my own creative spin or commentary/opinion as a headliner to the information (such as in the case Matthew Bender v West Publishing except I am not trying to sell it as my own).  I may argue that my arrangement is creative, but could I really copyright that and publish it without infringing on the copyrights of the documents i have arranged around? 

This type of intertextuality is the norm and is the basis for all knowledge.  Books are based on books, which are based on books, which are based on....books.  Maybe the exception is the bible which is an account of Divine will.  The bible itself is a collection of books but those books are based on the word of God...any who maybe i'm getting myself in too deep of a point I may not be able to back up, so i will digress. As students we are given these grand expectations to understand Emerson and more or less to write like he did.  I am sure he drew on the great classics as did all others in his discourse community of his time as we do today. Yet we truly are freshman and need to cite, refer, and allude to these other peoples ideas.  Maybe this is why I didn't enjoy the class room setting in highschool, we learned about all these people and these books that seemed so foreign to someone who is bombarded with television, internet, video games, and other mind diverting attention grabbing, and shortening, modalities.  We were being taught to think for ourselves by learning about all "other" peoples ideas, this didn't make sense to me initially.  It was only after going back to college after a break in freshman year that I was able to understand the importance of intertextuality and one's dependence in the scholarly academic setting to be able to be aware of, allude to, and reformulate the writings and ideas of others.


In order to be successful in the college academia, one must subject the self a seemingly endless barage of ideas and arguments from people you never knew.

It is truly interesting to examine how Intellectual Property (IP) works in terms of copyrights and capitalism.  What distinguishes creative writing these days as an original idea is as rare a sighting as a do-do bird now-a-days?  When Johnson-Eiola mention, "the collection of pre-existing content, even relatively fine-grained and factual content such as sporting events scores, is increasingly considered to be a creative act, at least in terms of legal and financial aspects.", I was intitally blown away.  Sporting event scores are a creative act???!!!! I guess the news paper has to make money some how but that to me seems ridiculous being able to copyright facts such as those.  While information is not free there is a certain extent of limitation that occurs if this is so.  Such as distribution and who gets access (those with money).  But at the same time info is valued and moving information as a commodity is an economic boon in an economy that sells fragments and portions of texts.  People must make a profit some how. 

What really grinds my gears, moving away from literary analysis, is the copyright or patents of Genes, such as what Monsanto does.  Splicing a virus and a and corn, by taking genes from a virus and implanting them in mutliple corn plants and taking the ones that survive and cloning them, therefore patenting corn that produces it's own pesticide in the field and even possibly inside your intestines.  I mean what kind of alchemy is this?  And to say you are allowed to copyright this hideous franken-corn is like saying you can pantent life because you altered it in a creative way.  Will slavery resurface if I am allowed to patent a process that clones people and therefore own the clones as intellectual property and bid them to do my will?  HAH! maybe that is a little too far out, but do you get my point?  Where is the line drawn in terms of copyrighting or patenting something like genetic modification?  With living entities, and possibly human genetic engineering in the future?  Will there be a company that patents a process or a portion of genomes to use in baby designing so that you can implant w/e genes, blue eyes, black hair, atheleticism, you want in the child you will birth?  This is technically what Monsanto does with corn, soy, sugar beets, and canola, giving them a stranglehold on the world food supply by filing lawsuits against people who, through no fault of their own, end up with some monsanto crops growing in their fields and therefore face endless litigation by Monsanto's arsenal of lawyers meant to bleed your funds.  The same goes for seed sellers.  Where is the humanity in this?  Does this peeve any one else off or am I on an island here?