All posts by jbm446@nyu.edu

Final, Uncategorized

Annotated Bibliography: Josh

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Deno, Stanley L. “EFFECTS OF WORDS AND PICTURES AS STIMULI IN LEARNING LANGUAGE EQUIVALENTS.” Journal of Educational Psychology 59(3) (1968): n. pag. APA PsychNET. American Psychological Association. Web. 24 Nov. 2014. <http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/edu/59/3/202.pdf>.

Stanley Deno is a PhD in educational psychology who has been studying the effects of pictoral language learning since the late 1960’s. His thesis is that image-based learning helps people learn language more quickly than word-based learning. In this specific case, he is looking at learning a second language. His intended audience is teachers and curriculum writers who hope to improve their ability to teach people language. Given how quick he is to dismiss conclusions that would even support his thesis, so long as they are within standard deviation, I would argue that the bias in this article is negligible.

The strengths of this article lie in its thorough transparency and its comprehensive results section. Everything that went in to this study is available to look at and criticize, so the results are under no suspicion as far as how they were reached. The results specifically indicate that pictoral learning offers specific benefits in terms of learning languages, which supports our thesis that our product would help people learn languages. This study is very relevant as far as a base outline for why the product would be beneficial, however, given that it is about learning a second language rather than a first, it is more useful in the context of the product aiding those who have already learned a language rather than children. That said, it doesn’t disqualify our notion that it would help children, rather it supports a secondary goal of ours.

 

Klinger, Walter. “EFFECTS OF PICTURES ON MEMORY & LEARNING.” EFFECTS OF PICTURES ON MEMORY & LEARNING (2000): n. pag. University of Shiga Perfecture. University of Shiga, 2000. Web. 28 Nov. 2014. <http://www.usp.ac.jp/english/pdf/wk00-EffectsPictures.pdf>.

Walter Klinger is a researcher for the University of Shiga and has been publishing papers since 1996. This paper is about what effects images as teaching tools have on learning. He concludes that they are very useful for teaching people who are unfamiliar with the subject matter they are being taught. He compares using them to instruct children to their effects on college students, and he concludes that children learn much better with images than adults, but the study doesn’t address adults who aren’t already familiar with the subject matter. It is consistent with his research that Panache could be used effectively for adult literacy as well as child literacy.

There is very little bias in the paper. He tends towards the middle, as his overall conclusion that images are helpful for some but not others. This kind of lack of lopsidedness indicates that there is likely very little bias. The strengths of this article lie in its child literacy support. It is a comprehensive, peer reviewed paper, and as such, it is at least somewhat reliable. There is information in the paper that both supports and opposes the objective of Panache. That said, most of the relevant information supports it, and the parts that refer to Panache’s weaknesses simply conclude that we shouldn’t expect it to be popular with groups that we hadn’t considered our audience.

 

Canning-Wilson, Christine. “Article 48: Visuals & Language Learning: Is There A Connection?” Article 48: Visuals & Language Learning: Is There A Connection? By Christine Canning-Wilson. Center for Excellence in Applied Research and Training (CERT College), Higher Colleges of Technology – Abu Dhabi, Feb. 2001. Web. 04 Dec. 2014. <http://www.eltnewsletter.com/back/Feb2001/art482001.htm>.

Christine Channing-Wilson has a masters degree and is a regularly invited speaker at conferences. She has been the chairperson of multiple academic committees and has been published numerous times in both article and book form. Her thesis is that there are unexplored capabilities of images in teaching language to non-native speakers. In her case, she specifically uses English in the United Arab Emirates. This article was written for people intending to teach second languages. It specifically references what kinds of visuals help in what contexts for language learning and why those kinds work better where they do.

Given the author’s seeming intent in writing this paper, there is definitely some chance for slant. The cited studies all appear to be unbiased, but given that the paper concludes on one side, there is definitely a chance for selection bias. Given the nature of the studies cited, though, it appears to be unbiased. The strengths of this article lie in its clarity. It uses charts and concise writing to summarize the points of the studies that it is citing. The information in this paper lean heavily in favor of our thesis. She concludes that “more emphasis should be put on the possibility that visual images affect how learners learn and how teachers teach.” This is extremely relevant to our project, as it directly supports the idea that Panache would be a valuable resource for teachers and students.

Final

Keyboard 2.0

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The keyboard is a problem. From long term stress issues in the arms and wrists of people who use it, to accessibility for those with limited fine motor skills, to restricting design of technologies that need to interface with it, the modern keyboard is incredibly flawed. Even things as simple as key placement were designed to slow down the user. The keyboard is big, it is static, and it is a relic of past technologies that is affecting our ability to progress. We need something that will revolutionize how we think about interacting with computers.

The Keyboard 2.0 is my solution.

The vast majority of objects that our hands are required to interact with over the course of the day are shaped to be grasped. From door handles to writing implements to bags and silverware, even to our phones, very little demands that we twist our wrists, and when they do, they don’t demand that motion for an extended period of time. Our arms naturally rest such that our palms face one another, and if we are to continue to demand that so much of our society is based around the use of keyboards, it seems irresponsible to force people to stress their bodies in ways that lead to injury.

Fundamentally, the design of the Keyboard 2.0 is based on modern efforts to make the keyboard more accessible. One of the more notable attempts was created by a game developer named VALVe. In part of launching their controller based interface, they created a virtual keyboard system that allows easy typing, without requiring immediate access to a keyboard.

An Xbox 360 Controller, the intended object to interface with the Steam Virtual Keyboard

The way VALVe’s virtual keyboard works is by mapping four letters to eight directions on the left analogue stick. Each one of those letters is in turn mapped to one of the four discreet buttons on the right side of the controller. The way one types, then, is by holding the left stick with your left thumb and tapping a button with your right thumb. The letter M, for example, is inputted by holding the left stick southeast and pushing the blue button.

Steam’s Virtual Keyboard Layout

While this design is an important first step in both making typing less physically stressful and faster. The total amount of movement is significantly decreased, and the default position your hands are in is very natural as compared to a modern keyboard. On the speed front, the letters are organized in an intuitive way, and movement from one letter to another is far less restricted. Each letter requires movement of at most about an inch for one thumb. The problems with this design, however, lie in both how limited it is and in the use of an analogue stick.

While eight directions and four buttons give you access to enough discreet inputs for a standard english alphabet, it doesn’t afford the kind of variety that many applications of a keyboard require. Special characters, capitalization, and function keys don’t have any space on the virtual keyboard, and while they do assign four modifier buttons to be controller by your first finger, they are reserved for capitalization and quick access to a space key. The second issue is that of the analogue stick. Lacking any physical feedback, analogue sticks are imprecise. The difference between angling it north and northwest is physically uncertain, and creates a potential problem when typing quickly. As a result, my design starts with this base, and builds off in a way that attempts to avoid these problems.

The Keyboard 2.0 has the same four face buttons as the above Xbox 360 controller, but it also has those buttons copied on to the left half, replacing the analogue stick. Most importantly, it has sixteen buttons laid out on the back side of the device. Those sixteen buttons are grouped up in to pairs and arranged so each finger not being used on the front of the device has access to two buttons. This new configuration uses the back-facing buttons for key inputs and the forward facing buttons as modifiers. While holding down the east button on the left half of the front of the controller, each of the back facing buttons would match up with a different input than if you were holding down the north button on the right side. This design allows for hundreds of different quickly accessible inputs, most of which would be customizable. This solves the two problems I highlighted earlier by only relying on discreet, tactile buttons and opening up the input possibility space exponentially.

The Keyboard 2.0 also fits neatly into multiple definitions of new media objects. Two of Lev Manovich’s proposed qualities of new media are highlighted, despite this being a technological design rather than a virtual design. Numerical representation and variability are both present. In terms of numerical representation, the Keyboard 2.0 is literally just a binary input device. Every possible state of the device can be represented by a simple series of zeroes and ones, each number standing for one of the 24 buttons. As for variability, the modifiers allowing for customizable keyboards makes the Keyboard 2.0 more versatile than its predecessor. It is no longer locked in to the relatively small number of distinct commonly used states of the keyboard. These new media qualities lend themselves neatly to the idea that Keyboard 2.0 is a step forward.

Additionally, Katherine Hayles highlights some of the ways in which technologies evolve. Hayles discusses how technologies have been adding dimensions to themselves; As we move to an age with 3D printing and highly complex systems governing much of our lives, the Keyboard 2.0 adds extra dimensions to our ability to interface with those systems. The countless different inputs that it affords the user will allow even more complex interactions between the systems and the user.

The Keyboard 2.0 would dramatically change how people interact with computers on a very basic level.  Fluency with it would have to be taught as early as middle school, if not even earlier, but given the theoretical benefits this could have on society at large, I believe it is the right step forward.

Works Cited

Manovich, Lev. “Principles of New Media.” The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2002. 27-45. Print.

Hayles, Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2012. Print.

Images

“Controllers & Remotes.” Xbox 360 Controllers and Remotes. Microsoft, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. <http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/accessories/controllers/home>.

Kain, Erik. “Steam’s Big Picture Mode Looks Awesome – But It Won’t Replace Consoles [Updated].” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 9 Oct. 2012. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/09/10/steams-big-picture-mode-looks-awesome-but-it-wont-replace-consoles/>.

Reflections

Kari Kraus Questions

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1) Over the long term, what do you think the roles of books in society will become? Since the beginning of the 20th century, we have seen a massive shift in what purpose books serve, do you think they will continue the trend towards being an artifact of nostalgia, or, given that generation z is perhaps the last to grow up with book ever being a large part of their life, they will become even less relevant?

2) What are your thoughts on the death of the author? How does this function in a world where we feel obligated to hold creators accountable for their work, but also give value to free interpretation? At what point does a harmful interpretation become the responsibility of the creator and at what point is it only the responsibility of the reader?

3) At what point does the means and medium become a text itself? It feels like the way we think about books and multimedia has taken on a life not too dissimilar to the actual work presented by those mediums. How can we analyze our relationships with forms and what can we gain from treating those relationships as text?

Midterm, Uncategorized

Gender, Sexuality, and Representation in the Fighting Game Community

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Josh Melnick

The Fighting Game community (FGC) does not have a great track record as far as the treatment of women goes. Dating back to the earliest days of the first modern fighting game, Street Fighter II, gendered terminology has played a significant role in the language of the community. “Raping someone,” “playing gay,” and specifically gendered insults directed at female characters have always been commonplace. Women who choose to compete are simultaneously subjected to huge amounts of harassment and unwanted attention.

So where do these issues come from? Why are women a minority in an otherwise diverse community? The answer to these questions can be found between cultural norms of competition, in game representation, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of entrenched sexism.

In 2012, the FGC’s gender problem became a public issue when commentator and community leader Aris “Aris” Bakhtanians made a series of remarks about sexism and harassment being as fundamental to fighting games as the use of a basketball is to the NBA. Video game criticism and news publication Giant Bomb posted a lengthy article about Aris’ statements. During the lead up to the release of a fighting game, the game’s developer ran a community challenge called Cross Assault. Players auditioned via reality tv like video clips, and would be split up in to two teams. One player, Miranda “Super_Yan” Pakozdi, was selected for team Tekken, the team led by Aris. Over the course of the training for the tournament, which was live streamed not unlike a reality show, Aris made increasingly invasive and sexual comments to Pakozdi, a few times causing her to forfeit the games and walk away. His actions ranged from aiming the cameras at her chest and thighs to sniffing her while she was playing. Later, the community manager of the livestreaming service hosting Cross Assault interviewed Aris about his actions, and Aris defended them, claiming that the FGC is defined by how it treats women.

Miranda Pakozdi (left) with Aris Bakhtanians (right)

Unsurprisingly, this angered some members of the community, and sparked a discussion around why so many women feel excluded and in danger. After Cross Assault concluded, Pakozdi unregistered for a number of events that she had previously said she would attend. She made statements on twitter about how uncomfortable and unsafe she felt in the community following the incident, and a number of other women echoed her statements. Much of the FGC wrote off Aris’ comments as an extreme example of a sentiment not echoed by the rest of the community, but this is not the only example of women in the FGC being treated this way. While explosive moments like these are few and far between, with Cross Assault being the last time this discussion rose in 2012, micro aggressions and smaller scale harassment happens constantly.

Milktea plays Smash Bros. with other members of the NYC community

Recently, this issue has come back in to the forefront of public thought. Competitive Smash Brothers player, Lilian “Milktea” Chen published an article for the TED website about her experiences in fighting games. She talks about the ways people demeaned her and made he separate from the community. When videos of her play would get posted online, they would receive comments like this.She talks about how she put up with this kind of treatment saying she “came to think it was normal” (Chen). Chen talks about the attention that she received at events. Not sure why she was receiving it, all she knew was that she enjoyed it. At the time, though, she was unaware that attention was part of what made some men around her bitter towards her. She goes on, writing “worse: I started adopting some of these boys’ attitudes toward women, thinking, ‘Why is that girl wearing a skirt to a tournament?’ ‘Why does she have to be so girly?’ ‘Why is she giggling?’ ‘Ew, is she even a real gamer?'” (Chen) She begins to touch on one of the main ideas that makes sexism in fighting games so hard to combat. Sexism and misogyny is so thoroughly embedded in the culture, that women become a part of it too. Without realizing it, they adapt to be able to survive in the system, and that adaptation can require women to think in harmful ways too.

But the lack of gender diversity had to have started somewhere. There have been numerous studies about the kinds of games that men and women tend towards; These studies give us insight in to why there has been a gender imbalance in the FGC since day one. One theory of the root of the imbalance is the idea “that girls like to cooperate in their gameplay, whereas boys like to compete” (Jenson and De Castell).  However, in examining that statement, they discover that the problem actually lies in our notions of competition vs. cooperation. They talk about ideas of benevolent competition, an idea that can also be found prominently in fighting games as well as the folly of placing “benevolent” competition in a dichotomy against “male competition.” They discuss studies showing that “many girls we interviewed (over 80) said that they enjoy the same kinds of competitive gameplay boys do” and specifically listing fighting games as an activity that they enjoy (Jenson and De Castell). 

Another study, conducted with girls aged 9-13, showed that among a selection of 30 odd games, the girls tended towards games with some element of competition in them, specifically a fighting game called Dead or Alive (Carr). Both of these studies show that women enjoy playing and wish to compete, and I was unable to find any studies that showed data to counter this idea. So why then, in the history of Street Fighter, the most popular and longest standing fighting game franchise, has there only ever been one internationally competitive female player?

This is where the issue of representation comes in to play. Dead or Alive is a game with a cast of characters evenly split between men and women. Street Fighter has, at it’s most representative, had about a third as many women as men. While there is a separate discussion to be had about the kinds of representation in Dead or Alive versus Street Fighter, much of the association between Dead or Alive and female competitors comes from the representation in its cast. Street Fighter, in its current incarnation, has 10 female characters to its 34 male characters. Of the 44 characters, two are queer. Featuring a gay man and a trans woman, interestingly, the two largest sexual minorities present in the fighting game community.

The cast of the current edition of Street Fighter, Ultra Street Fighter IV

In small doses, though, representation can serve to reinforce some problems that it can help solve on larger scales. In games with just a few female characters, people who play those characters are subjected to similar kinds of gendered insults as female players. Players of characters like Sheik in Smash Bros. or Morrigan in Marvel vs. Capcom or Poison from Street Fighter are familiar with a small scale of harassment simply due to the characters they pick.

Language plays a large role in how harassment functions in the FGC. While physical abuse does happen, verbal abuse is much more common. Phrases that I listed earlier like “playing gay,” a term used to describe playing defensively and avoiding confrontation, is ubiquitous among all fighting game subcommunities. Similarly, the idea of “raping” someone, meaning to dominate them in the game, can be heard in tournaments and friendly matches alike. Discussion over the use of these terms gets heated, and even those with the best of intentions sometimes miss the problems.

In this clip, a documentarian covering the history of the competitive Smash Brothers scene talks to community members (Including Lilian Chen) about how the language affects them. While many of the statements do help illuminate how harmful the language is, the closing note of the section misunderstands how the issues actually harm people.

Wes, the player who makes the final statement about everyone being raised differently, fails to understand that, in spite of our different upbringings, the way that people use words like rape and gay not only separate those who are impacted by the use of the words, but also solidifies the idea that they are targets. When someone uses the term rape, they are forcing people who have personal histories with the word to deal with that history again. This is a reason why some women who have either been victims or simply know people who have been victims of sexual assault can’t compete. Additionally, while statistically less likely, men can also be victims of sexual assault. Regardless of any specific victims, these words also contribute to a hostile environment that makes people feel like it is an exclusionary space. Community, especially community founded on common interest, does not benefit from this kind of gating, and it is a large reason why we don’t see more high level competitive women. In order to become the best, you have to start local, and when local communities are unwelcoming, people don’t get a chance to grow.

Works Cited
         Beauchamp, Travis. “The Smash Brothers: Episode 8 – The Natural (Remastered).” YouTube. YouTube, Nov.-Dec. 2013. Web. 17 Oct. 2014. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2mcEHjOrt8&index=8&list=PLoUHkRwnRH-IXbZfwlgiEN8eXmoj6DtKM&t=1011>.
         Carr, Diane. “Contexts, Pleasures and Preferences: Girls Playing Computer Games.” Digital Games Research Association (2005): n. pag. Http://www.digra.org/. DiGRA. Web. Oct.-Nov. 2014. <http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/06278.08421.pdf>.
         Chen, Lilian. “What’s It like to Be a Woman in Competitive Gaming? A Female Gamer Explains.” Ideastedcom. TED, 18 Sept. 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.
         Cross Assault Sexual Harassment Controversy Overshadows On-screen Combat. N.d. VentureBeat. By Marcos Valdez. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.
         Jenson, Jennifer, and Suzanne De Castell. “Theorizing Gender and Digital Gameplay: Oversights, Accidents and Surprises.” Jenson. Eludamos, 2008. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.
         Klepek, Patrick. “When Passions Flare, Lines Are Crossed [UPDATED].” Giant Bomb. CBSi, 28 Feb. 2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.
         Ultra Street Fighter IV Wallpaper by SBlister on DeviantART. N.d. Ultra Street Fighter IV Wallpaper by SBlister on DeviantART. DeviantART. Web. 17 Oct. 2014. <http://sblister.deviantart.com/art/Ultra-Street-Fighter-IV-Wallpaper-459579779>.
Uncategorized

Technological Beauty

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Kevin Kelly raises a number of interesting and well thought out points throughout his book, What Technology Wants, but as my brain is want to do, I have become fixated on one specific section. In the chapter named “Technology’s Trajectory,” Kelly answers the titularly begged question with 13 things that technology wants (270). The one that I am stuck on, though, is beauty.

First off, let’s take a quick step back from the text and examine that statement. “Technology wants to become more beautiful.” It’s a complicated statement that implies a lot of things that are dealt with elsewhere in the book, but deserve independent consideration in this context. When Kelly says that technology wants complexity or evolvability, he is referring to an, at least somewhat, intuitive notion of purpose. Technology exists to serve a purpose, and thus naturally tends to build off of what came before in ways that allow further building, etc. But beauty is not even remotely similar to “efficiency.” In fact, in a world predicted by much new media, a world of pure objectivity and function, beauty is meaningless.

Beauty exists only within the hands of those who can perceive it, and it is a wholly subjective idea. What is beautiful to one is not necessarily beautiful to another, and vice versa. Additionally, and claims made universally about beauty must be accompanied by disclaimers that that these notions were created within a specific context of time period and general aesthetic. You can’t say something is true about beauty in all cases because beauty is not a universal or objective idea.

Now let’s actually get to the text.

Immediately, Kelly dodges the issue of subjectivity by implying that beauty is that which is viewed as beautiful by a majority of people who view it. He raises this implication by speaking about what is successful in Hollywood film and what cities people have classically described as “eye sores” (318). This definition of beauty is inherently problematic, as it ignores the exception that I raised earlier. Everyone who has ever made a claim about what they find beautiful has been influenced by their context. When a large number of people claim that something is beautiful, all that tells us is that there is some confluence of contextual factors that have made this a common idea. In fact, the more widespread a shared idea of beauty is, the more likely it is to be exclusively a result of some specific cultural factor.

The easiest example to give for this is fashion in present day America. Fashion is one of the most common places that you will hear the word “beautiful,” but the entire industry exists not to serve anyone’s notion of beauty, but to serve capitalism. Capitalism dictates that clothing be perceived as beautiful, and thus it is made so. To make claims that fashion wants to be beautiful and that is why it has become more beautiful as time goes on would be ignoring the entire context in which fashion was created. Similarly, I think Kelly is missing these nuances in what makes technology beautiful.

He then speaks about tools and how craftspeople and workers love their tools. Again, I hesitate to refer to this as beauty over functionality. I fear he is conflating similar terms to make a grander point than he has. Eventually, Kelly wanders off to a discussion of his perception of the internet as beautiful (322). He, as a person who uses the internet as his tool, has lost himself in the internet in the way he has lost himself in beautiful art. But, here, again, he has forfeited his meaning of the concept of beauty. He is relating a secondary sensation caused by his notion of beauty and declaring their causes one and the same.

Maybe I am being too harsh. His arguments seem sound and, while I have issues with them, they serve well as functional norms to ascribe to, even if doing so with a grain of salt. And maybe some of my issues are purely semantic. I could be spending more time thinking about the specific language than the purpose of the language, but my cognitive dissonance needed to be addressed nonetheless.

Regardless, my question is this: What makes new media beautiful? Why do we perceive certain qualities of media more or less beautiful, especially as they do not relate to efficiency? We find beauty mostly outside of realms of functional production, so how can we relate those “unproductive” notions of beauty to aspects of new media?

Reflections

New Media Definition

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New media is an old style of communication through a new form. The meaning of this definition changes as time goes on, but it fundamentally refers to a change in media. Every form of communication, from photography to Twitter to human language started as new media. Manovich outlines how modern new media has changed our relationship with static communication. Things that exist unchanged are becoming less and less relevant to our daily lives. That, however, is not true of all new media, just of a lot of current new media. We have, more than ever, the ability to change our communication with others, but static ebooks and new forms of music distribution are growing as well. While dynamic communication is on the rise, static communication is not dying. Similarly, Parikka talks about new media’s impact on the earth from a geological standpoint, and while he is absolutely right that modern new media has a greater impact on the earth’s wellbeing than ever before, that is an unfair classification for all of new media. New media exists in both high and low tech formats, the recent rise of digital media is not the only place experimentation in form is happening.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001. Print.

Parikka, Jussi. “The Geology of Media.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 11 Oct. 2013. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

Assignments, Uncategorized

Digital Literacy History – Josh Melnick

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http://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline/latest/embed/index.html?source=0AjMJdJLFwuecdHJPQkxEeXVwUmZ4V1FPclE4UlFXb1E&font=Bevan-PotanoSans&maptype=toner&lang=en&height=650

My digital history dates back to my earliest waking memories. It might have been video games that flipped a switch in my brain and triggered my consciousness. My mother brought home a computer from her work and set up a game from 1993 called Myst. I spent as much time as I possibly could playing Myst. I loved it. Looking back, I didn’t interact with it in any ways that the game considered meaningful, but those interactions were still deeply powerful to me. Exploring a desolate cryptic island opened my eyes to what could be done in digital media.

My next milestone was another simple program my parents installed in that computer, Kid Pix. For those unaware, Kid Pix was a very basic image editing program that was based on simple tools, primarily stamps. It was accessible and user friendly; It allowed kids to create things. While they rarely amounted to much more than refrigerator art, it was still creation.

The next few pieces of my timeline involve writing. Writing has always been an important means of communication and expression for me, and it all started with self-expression about games. Almost all of my important moments of writing and digital interaction are in some way traceable to games.

In high school, I started writing for fun. Mostly in a blog that no longer exists, but also largely on Twitter. Twitter became a very large part of my professional networking, and I quickly built a digital rolodex. Once I started speedrunning and playing competitive fighting games, Twitter became even more important in staying connected with distant friends.

In late 2013, I started doing a little PR in independent games for friends who were showing their work off at festivals and conventions. It’s unclear exactly where this history is leading, in terms of a future career in writing or in PR or one of a number of other options, but the influence of games on my life has been dramatic and it seems unlikely that is going to change.

Not only has digital media become my passion, but it also frames my interactions with other people, both professionally and personally. Twitter has forced me to make my writing public and encouraged brevity. I have spent my whole life trying to find my voice in my writing, and Twitter has perhaps done more than any other singular writing tool to help me develop it.

Reflections

The Machine Stops

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I don’t have many thoughts about The Machine Stops that went unaddressed in class, but I didn’t get to discuss juxtaposition in the way I had wanted.

Forster uses opposites in a few interesting ways in The Machine Stops. Mostly, he uses traditional dichotomies to create tension or enforce a point, but something I noticed was that at the end of the first section, he almost severely placed the natural world next to people worshipping the Machine. While the contrast between the Himalayas and the Machine is striking, the most interesting part of this is the idea that praise of the Machine is just as unnatural as the subject of their prayer. One idea surrounding this comparison is that religion is a thing that was, at the time, considered almost exclusively a natural and just thing, and this juxtaposition serves to highlight their religion as different and evil. Modern conceptions of religion are less supportive of this theory, but given the context for its being written, it seems reasonable.

Reflections, Uncategorized

Introduction: Francesco o’Brien

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Armed with a relatively common name and a healthy lack of enthusiasm for social media, Francesco o’Brien spends his days not frequenting Facebook or Twitter. His theoretical Instagram account contains neither filtered landscapes nor pictures of brunch. He seems to agree with the commonplace notion that Google Plus accounts are a waste of time, and opts not to comment on youtube videos (at least under his real name).

Whether by distaste or indifference, Francesco doesn’t partake in the social arenas of Pinterest or Steam. Myspace and Linkedin shed no light on his mysterious life, and don’t get me started on Ello. Be it Vox or Gawker, The New York Times or Whiskey Media, Francesco is nowhere to be found. Perhaps he prefers physical press, or maybe he silently observes the goings on of media dispersed through http. Regardless, Francesco’s online footprint is a slight as one could expect of a child of the 21st century.