Monthly Archives: September 2014

Reflections

New Media Definition

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New media is the transformation of old media into numerical data, to be stored, distributed and exhibited in a digital medium to a global audience. Equal to being exhibited to a global audience is the aspect that new media has the ability to be manipulated and reproduced in an unlimited amount of variations. From Lev Manovich’s theories about variability and modularity, new media is now the forefront of communication and distribution. With the variability of new media Henry Jenkins adds that “consumption [of new media happens] within a larger social and cultural context [where] consumers not only watch media; they also share media with one another” (68).  While the New Media Institute defines new media as a “catchall term used to define all that is related to the internet and the interplay between technology, images and sound”, they neglect to acknowledge the important new sphere that new media creates in our world. Jussi Parikka, in his article The Geology of Media, details not only the invisible media sphere that connects devices and creates new media but also the physical one that will be left when devices have perished. Media is so wide spread that “we might also acknowledge that the Earth is a communicative object” (Parikka, 5). New media ultimately is a tool that is used everyday to create, destroy, and modify media using technology thus “allowing more people to create and circulate media” (Jenkins, 258). With the invisible communicative realm and the behind the screen transformation of data into new media, new media is ultimately a faster more accessible tool for distribution and creation of other forms of media.

Citations:

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. London: The MIT Press, 2007. 10-61. Print.

 

Parikka, Jussi. “The Geology of Media”. TheAtlantic.com. The Atlantic Monthly Group, 11 Oct. 2013. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-geology-of-media/280523/

 

Socha, Bailey, and Barbara Eber-Schmid. “Defining New Media Isn’t Easy.” NewMediaInstitute.org. New Media Institute, n.d. Web. 22 Sept 2014.

http://www.newmedia.org/what-is-new-media.html

 

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press, 2006. Print.

http://books.google.com/books?id=RlRVNikT06YC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Reflections, Uncategorized

Defining New Media

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New media is an ever-changing, broad term used to describe the emerging digital, computerized, and information technology. Continually evolving, new media brings with it not just new information, but the accessibility of new information in an easier and more user-friendly way. Using Lev Manovich’s principles, new media has “tendencies” to remain modular, meaning that new media can be broken down into smaller components. Additionally, new media has a great amount of variability as one webpage can be transformed into another by changing the HTML code. A recurring theme about new media is the amount of customization that we are presented with. In contrast to old media, which was more geared toward mass production, now we are a more individual-focused society. Consequentially, this is demonstrated through a main component of society’s culture-technology. When I googled “new media” this definition came up: “means of mass communication using digital technologies such as the Internet.” While this definition highlights the use of information accessibility, it does not go deep enough to convey the interactivity and variability that Manovich cites as critical components of new media. 

Sources besides Manovich:
http://www.newmedia.org/what-is-new-media.html
http://www.festoonmedia.com/whitepapers/images/New_Media_Branding.pdf

Reflections, Uncategorized

Video Presentation that is now possibly redundant

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Once again, the embedding eludes me

MY PRESENTATION

Hello everyone,

This is my makeshift presentation

I’m sorry this is so late and so long. I have been trying to get this right for two days now and it is always way too long.

It’s 10 minutes long, so it probably too long to show in class, but I thought I would post it anyway. In the event that there is no time for it to be played in class, I will probably present on wednesday.

I hope you like it!

Announcements, Assignments

Manovich assignment

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For Wednesday, September 24th, you must finish reading the chapter from Manovich and use that as a basis to write a definition of “New Media” in your own words as a post on our site.

You should research this term further through our other readings (especially the “Geology of Media” article) and by searching for this term online. Please use scholarly sources, such as those found using Google Scholar and your library databases, and use them to critique the popular definitions found in the media. Your goal is to write a thorough definition of this term that we can use as a basis for further discussion in this class. You should use and define the vocabulary you have familiarized yourself with by reading Manovich and others in your post.  Cite all of the sources you use in MLA format and through hyperlinks when possible.

Post this as category “Reflections” and tag it as “New Media.”

Reflections, Uncategorized

An Overly Personal, Slightly Confusing Digital Literacy Narrative.

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After a lot of thinking and a whole day away from internet connection HERE is my (very late) digital literacy narrative. I’m hoping that what I lack in punctuality I will make up for in honesty and quite cute pictures of my dog.

I found this assignment extremely complicated to write. Reading, writing and internet are the three most important things in my life, and in many ways each of these things have saved my life in their own little way.

When I first wrote my timeline it was almost all about books. Three pages of a love letter to novels and fiction. Fiction is my greatest love, and reading is my greatest passion, but in the end my timeline barely mentions my love of books. As you’ll see if you read my timeline, I share a lot of my life online, and sometimes I feel as if my passion for novels is the one thing I can keep private. It’s completely unconnected from the internet or anything to do with ‘digital literacy’ and as I tried to trim down my excessively wordy first draft of my timeline I decided to put my love of The Great Gatsby and Nancy Mitford aside for now. The box in my head titled Twitter is very far from the box titled Fitzgerald. And I think as our world gets increasingly digitalized and put online it’s important to keep some things offline, on your bedside table with a mug of tea and a nice new pair of pajamas.

So then what is in a timeline that’s supposed to be about reading and writing but doesn’t actually contain anything about reading? Well, quite a lot actually. From the age of 14-19 I had a pretty complicated time (if you scour the internet enough you can find out why), and as my real life grew smaller and smaller my online life grew bigger and bigger. As you’ll see in my slightly over-emotional timeline posts, I really love the internet, and I really love writing, and I’ve managed to find a way of combining the two to create a small corner of the internet that I’m pretty proud to put my name on.

I found the process of making this timeline quite a complicated one. I liked the website Tiki-Toki without loving it. My experience on Wordpress definitely translated to Tiki-Toki and I found it very easy to operate but I felt it definitely had some faults. One of the things I liked least was how small the boxes for typing the entries were. Having such a small box meant I didn’t focus so much on what I was writing and I noticed after the first few entries that my writing was becoming sloppy and tired, more like writing a tweet than writing a journal entry or a blog post. I ended up writing all my posts on Pages and then copying them across as I found it easier to organise my thoughts this way.

I also found it hard to gather all my thoughts on the internet together. My online world has become pretty big and as I googled myself I found entire little pockets of things that I’d written or made and completely forgotten about.

I’m quite used to writing online and writing blog posts and I chose to write this assignment in the same voice I would use elsewhere online. So it’s quite personal and it’s quite relaxed in tone, and while this may not be as professional I feel it’s definitely more honest and more true to the narrative of my life that’s already online.

There’s obviously a lot that’s not included on this timeline. But hopefully what I have included can give you an insight into my history of reading and writing online. I didn’t even get started on my writing offline but I’m pretty sure you’re all better off without seeing pages from my 13 year old self’s diary.

I hope you enjoy what I wrote, and I hope it makes sense.

 

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Varsha’s digital literacy narrative

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After immense personal struggle, I have finally accepted the fact that I cannot embed the timeline. here is a link, I admit defeat.

I don’t remember not knowing how to read. My mother, when going through the old storage boxes of childhood artifacts during her biannual cleaning ritual, usually pulls out the book Are You My Mother by P. D. Eastman, and starts reminiscing about how it was the first book I ever read. This is what I remember most about the book- not me reading it for the first time, but my mother explaining that it was my first book. The pages are torn in a way that is so familiar to me that when I see the book in stores it seems weird that they aren’t torn like that. I was (am) an only child, which kind of explains a number of phenomena surrounding my childhood (such as the dreams). The most important of these and the theme of this narrative is my love of stories.

What I think is most ironic about this whole thing is my lifelong hatred of writing. As a child I would dread putting even a few words down on paper, it was an agonizingly boring process. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t know what to say, or because I simply hated spelling things out on paper. I think it was a combination of these things.  This, of course, did not mesh well with my constant spinning of wild tales in my head and the vast and confusing nightmares that plagued my childhood. I think if I had kept a journal I would have had a lot more clarity of mind.

As much as I hated writing, I loved to read. Through reading stories and relating to them I learned valuable things about myself and the world. When characters in my head did the same things as characters in books, it gave me insight to what motivates people to do these things.  As a child my greatest frustration would be a lack of books. Or the lack of ways to obtain said books. Which is why when I got my phone and discovered ebooks it was a huge deal. I have never met another person that was as excited by them as I was, but the sheer easiness of reading on my single, onmipurpose  device anywhere I went and without people seeing what I was reading (I’m kind of a private person) was great.

Later in my life, my nemesis Writing became more difficult to avoid, as there were always essays to be written and lab reports to be done and proofs to be explained. Mostly the essays, though. It was around this time that I started to enjoy the challenge.

The challenge of writing. Not the writing itself. Very important distinction.

 

About the timeline: I really wanted to expand on the concept of “narrative”, so the bulk of the story is written within the format below. Above is only a brief iteration.

Seeing as this is a more personal project, I decided to write it in a more casual tone that I normally would for a school project. I also thought this was fitting for a project on “Digital Literacy”, seeing as technology and modern communication go hand in hand.

I know that it is supposed to be a visual aide, but the concept of writing a story through the use of a tool like this was very appealing. I am turning this project, which I have made narrative the theme of, into a narrative itself- just as I organize my life, in which stories play a huge role, into a giant story.

I hope it is interesting.

 

Reflections

Adam Schulz’s Timeline Reflection

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The entire process of creating this timeline gave me a new depth in perspective and understanding of my development as a writer thus far. It’s crazy to see where I started, struggling to write my own name to now writing articles for one of the largest online music publications on the web. Not only did this activity give me a feeling of extreme accomplishment, but it also gave me the insight that I still have a ways to go in my development and journey as a writer. Who knows where I will be as a writer in 19 years, I hope it’s as much improvement as I have experienced in the past 19 years of my life.  With that said, let me elaborate on what has occurred in the past 19 years and what it has meant in my development not only as a writer, but as a person as well.

I have always held reading and writing as things that were extremely important and comforting to me; I think that I held both these activities to such a high degree of importance because they helped me escape reality. Now when I was younger I was a lot different than most kids in my town. I didn’t really enjoy sports and had more of a craving for the creative, and what I mean by that is that I was a very imaginative child. Knowing that, its no surprise that later on in life I would come to love and appreciate comics and music so much because both are attributed with imagination and creativity. Music in particular, developed into a huge influence later on in my life. In eighth grade I analyzed and rewrote a rap, which was the first instance where I combined my love of rap music with writing. Reminiscing on these memories, which are staples in my development as a writer, has rekindled the fondness I have for these events, which have played such a huge part in the development of the person I am today. From writing that initial paragraph in second grade to the writing of my first analytical essay when I was a freshman to my first blog post ever as a Junior, mark the key events in my evolution as a writer. It’s funny to think that the first paragraph I ever wrote was a description of myself and my interests as a person and now if someone were to ask me to describe myself I would say that writing is a huge part of who I am and practically defines me.

The major take away from this timeline for me is that in order to insure a better future for yourself, one must have a complete and thorough understanding of the events that made you the person you are today. Now that I have taken time to deconstruct the significant writing and reading events of the past, I now have a better understanding of my roots and the attributes I have utilized in the past that have allowed me to accomplish and overcome these challenges. Overall, I have sincerely enjoyed creating this timeline and remembering the events that led to me becoming a writer. If your interested in seeing what makes me who I am, check out my timeline by clicking here: TIMELINE.

Reflections

Francesco’s Digital Literacy Narrative

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https://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/337466/My-Digital-Literacy-Narrative/

My digital life began early, from when my parents began my foray into the digital age with what would advent my computing career: the iBook clamshell. This seemingly advanced computer pretending to be a creature of the sea provided me with a much-needed outlet for my creative endeavors. Namely the introduction of drawing and key mashing that provides for every 4 year old the necessary activity of pushing his finger into technology.

Realizing my potential as a writer at the early age of 4, my parents enrolled me in preschool. Claiming that it would benefit us later on in life, my preschool teacher set out to teach my classmates and myself the ever-necessary art of cursive. Now ignoring the blaringly obvious fact that cursive has never helped me in life, we move on. Out of the clamshell and into the sea, my key mashing techniques furthered with the introduction of typing games on PC computers. Instead of using all my fingers, though, I learned to cheat and type quickly with only two fingers. While at the time it seemed harmless, my teacher disapproved and helped me in time to gradually find my rhythm on the cheap plastic keys that outlined the windows XP interface. Blazing through the Oregon Trail computer games and my first phone (with snake and Tetris demo included), I delved into the world of speed-reading having barely experienced normal reading. In hindsight this was a good idea (mostly for standardized tests). Fluency reading, as they called it, involved me quickly reading passages of writing out loud to my class for prizes. In hindsight, such prizes were not worth the annoyingly fast pace of my speech now.

Persuasive essays marked my ascent into adolescence. Embarking on my first literary journey, I wrote a persuasive research paper on the nature of the relationship between the musicians of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Page, and Robert Plant. Hoping to use my paper as fodder for why they should be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I later found out that they had already been inducted in 1995. Growing up in the 2000s, I always had the option of either typing or writing my essays by hand and I usually chose the latter. Having temporarily lost my hand at physical tasks like typing quickly on a computer, I rekindled it by learning the saxophone and trumpet as my eyes learned to read and register sheet music.

Facebook was when my desire for computers began to wane. Realizing how terribly lame it was, I gave up on poking and forever retired my all my fingers except my thumbs which I saved for my smartphone. Until more recent years, where I picked up a bit of coding, I avoided my computer for all but YouTube and Netflix. This class will be a rebirth of sorts.

Reflections

A Digital Literacy Narrative Adventure – Jimi Stine

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As I began to wrack my brain, trying to think of all the seminal moments in my digital timeline, I realized that I had a problem.  It was not that I was dealing with a dearth of dates, but rather the opposite.  I had never really given the topic considerable thought, but as my mind wandered back, I began to realize just how important reading and writing, as well as their transition into digital forms, are in my life.  I understand that that last sentence may seem obvious, but such activities have are so common place that I tend to forget how critical they are to experiencing life as we know it.  Without them, I wouldn’t be writing this, nor would you be reading it.  Without reading and writing, I do not even know where we could be, if we could be.

Getting down to it, my affair with reading and writing has been, like most men and women from my background, a life long affair.  This narrative not only made me think about my past, but made me appreciate, deeply and truly, the opportunities that have been afforded to me.  Without good schooling from pre-kindergarten to today, or, just as importantly, a family that understood and valued education, I would be leading a much duller life.  From the fat pencil to receiving my first laptop, elementary short stories to twenty-page research papers, I marvel at how far I’ve come and how quickly technology has been running beside me.

Though we do live in an age of the ever faster, slimmer, and sleeker device, there are a few notable moments on my timeline when that trend had been reversed.  Perhaps it is a unique version of simplicity, or maybe it is just want for diversity, but there are some aspects of my literary journey that counter what one might expect.  Rather than type and print certain works, I derive a special pleasure from hammering them out on  a manual typewriter.  Instead of typing and recording all of my journal entries into a nice folder on my desktop, I scrawl them down with pen and paper.  Unlike a larger and larger percentage of readers, I prefer to imbibe my words from a page of pulp, not pixels.  And I am not alone.  Though the wider trend is towards digital means of consuming media, there is also a rising push to preserve certain platforms, if only for the nostalgia or the novelty.  I doubt we’ll ever dig back to the stone and chisel, but older forms of communicating, the letter for example, have certain personal, even romantic qualities to them that set them apart from the digital era.

Stories as well play an important role in my digital literacy narrative.  From early picture-laden tales like Anansi the Spider, to text based adventure games, the art of story telling has always captivated me.  Along the way, longer series of novels received large amounts of time that I was more than happy to give over.

Before flicking through this timeline it is important to understand one thing: this is but a small sampling of those moments in my life that resonated with me until today.  Left unrecorded here are all the small moments where a single word made my day, or where bitter joke ruined it.  Omitted from this digital timeline are all the late night Skype sessions with friends and those who were quite a bit more than just friends.  Left out are all the times simple comments on youtube videos or news articles opened my mind to a new way of thinking.  To include these moments would be to include the entirety of my life, and that is one thing technology cannot do.  At least not yet. 

Enjoy.