9/30

The concept of imagery and icons is funny to me. As I began reading, I got more excited and relieved. I was looking forward to reading these chapters more so than the readings we have done in the past. Was it the pictures? Was it the large spacing and lack of traditional paragraph writing? Whatever it was, I found myself more ready to read this, and I think that’s a funny connection to be made with what McCloud is saying. He then asks the question I had been thinking thus far in the reading, that is, why is it we are more enthralled with this cartoon imagery? If we accept the definition of cartooning as a form “amplification through simplification” than I think cartooning and cable news have a lot more in common than we think.

When I first read the phrase “amplification through simplification”, I immediately thought of an interview between Jon Stewart and Chris Wallace I recently watched. Among other things, the debate between cable news channels (Fox v. CNN, for example) was discussed. Without going into too much background, Chris Wallace asks if Stewart could say the same things (negative, no doubt) that he does about Fox, about other mainstream media sources (ABC, NBC, NY Times, etc.). Wallace asked why couldn’t the New York Times and Washington Post ask their readers to read the 2000+ page Obama Health Care bill, when they asked their readers to go through Sarah Palin’s emails that were released.

“I think their [the New York Times and Washington Post] bias is based on sensationalism and laziness.” Now to me, these are synonyms (although possibly harsher ones) for amplification and simplification. But it brings to mind that news has gotten lazy. It’s gotten too simplistic. If the media is doing this for the benefit of the audience, aren’t they actually doing them a huge disservice? There is no way a reporter or a  newspaper could read or copy the entire transcription of the Affordable Care Act. Or should the media have some accountability to do that? I’m not sure what the correct answer is, but certainly limiting media to sensationalism is not what news is or should be. Instead, news media is veering more toward entertainment.

You Can start watching at 2:30 to listen to them begin talking about media. Although the whole article is pretty entertaining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrcQJ1FVHx4

Time is an interesting concept with comics. I have always notices how clear the progression of events in comics are, even though to me, quickly glancing at a page of a comic there looks like there is a lot going on. We don’t know the exact measurements of time and space moving along, yet we know, as our eyes are moving so is time. Usually.

In Chapter 6, I really like how he discusses the 1800s Western art. How art was becoming more “visible”, with color and texture, while text was becoming more abstract, more emotional, and more romantic. I have never though of writing and art is now becoming entities on the opposite end of the spectrum. 

9/23/13

In Sosnoski’s ‘Hyper-readers and their Reading Engines, I immediately agreed in that I prefer to read hard copy’s of online texts far more than reading them on a screen. How come we can stand to stare at our smart phones all day long, going in and out of apps, reading news, tweets, Facebook, looking at pictures, etc., but we can’t read long texts? We do pretty much everything else on our phones, all day long (now I know not everyone can be included in this, but a good amount of smart phone users are quite obsessed with their phones, and often I am guilty of this). The argument of whether schools should go completely electronic with their textbooks is no longer a new debate, and I’m sure it will take a long time for the transition (if that is the future of education) to integrate itself.

I really liked the quote by Johnson-Eilola that Sosnoski used. The description of hierarchal arrangement of reading time really interested me. It is true we think of reading and digesting what we learn in a linear, almost constrained way. It is framed, delivered, and then digested by readers. Now, in the postmodern/hypertext context, we are no longer bound by an end or a beginning, or research and reading has no bounds.

These new, constructive ways, however, have their flaws. We take in new information in ways that can be less effective, such as simply skimming a text. I suppose the choice is in the reader, now. I agree in that a theory in hyper-reading is not needed, but I think it is just a matter of time before it is. 

September 16, 2013

In "Pencils to Pixels", the stages of literary technologies are discussed. I really like how this author writes and the issue that the computer is simply the latest step in the long line of writing technologies. That writing technologies transitioned from the pencil, to the pen and now to the computer. I like this way of thinking because I believe it is an easier, calmer way of thinking of the evolution of technology as well as the evolution of us craving it so. People are scared of our increased use and need of technology, and rightfully so. Losing touch of the art of using a pencil (or pen) to physically write on a piece of paper worries (generally) the older population. As Baron notes, "The Speaker of the House of Representatives suggested that inner-city school children should try laptops to improve their performance. The Governor of Illinois thinks that hooking up every school classroom to the Web will eliminate illiteracy."

Certainly there is so much more that goes into eliminating illiteracy than handing school children computers, but  I believe that if we accept this transition of the computer as the primary source of literary technologies, than we can use it to our benefit.

An interesting paradox to note is that Plato spoke out against writing, in fear it would weaken our memory. And now, with the use of computers, smart phones, tablets, cameras, etc. we often rely on technology to encapsulate our memory. Posting pictures, making notes or to do lists, relying on electronic contact lists are done electronically now. I barely know any of my best friends phone numbers by heart, I just look them up in my phone. Plato would surely see this as cutting corners, relying on other things besides our brain to remember.

Here are a few interesting links, to continue thinking about the pencil v. technology divide:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/03/news/03iht-pencils_0.html

And the toll that technology dependence can have on us:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brainside.html?_r=0

9/9/13

To say that Thomas Jefferson was an effective borrower of traces when writing the Declaration of Independence put things in a completely different perspective for me. I have always thought that all writing is a trace of another authors works, thoughts and words, and so on, but to use the Declaration of Independence as an example was interesting to me.

It is true that Jefferson couldn't have written the Declaration of Independence without sources and other points of reference to go off of. The information, sources and language he collected were then placed as traces throughout the document. Yet his original prose made up the parts of the document least acceptable to Congress.

I have to agree with Halliday when he says, "Creativity does not consist in producing new sentences. The newness of a sentence is a quite unimportant-- and unascertainable and 'creativity' in language lies in the speaker's ability to create new meanings: to realize the potentiality of language for the indefinite extension of its resources to new contexts of situation... Our most 'creative' acts may be precisely among those that are realized through highly repetitive forms of behavior." When we write essays for school, we are often graded on our ability to analyze and bring meaning to literature we read, concepts we learned in class, etc. We are rarely graded on what new sentences we can put together and rarely the invention of a new idea all together, rather, a new way of looking at something, a new angle. The creative borrower is the creative and the GOOD writer.

Introduction Video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFBTR7XjT8A

"Situations do not exist without rhetors"

In "Rhetorical Situations and their Constituents", Vatz challenges Bitzer's assumptions that rhetor's responses are controlled by the situation. He argus that "situations do not exist without rhetors" and that rhetors create rather than discover rhetorical situations. This is a bit of a "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" situation. Vatz' argument then means that rhetors do not react. Rather, they control and create the dialog.

Scott Consigny's response is right in the middle, and that is where I find myself as well. Rhetors definitely have control over the dialog, but to have that dialog in the first place, there must be a rhetorical situation. Rhetors are most definitely just as much a part of a rhetorical situation as the audience, as rhetors have a huge responsibility and job to be a part of the direction in which a rhetorical situation goes.

Political speeches are a great example of the whole scope of a rhetorical situation. The exigence is the issues, whether they politicians are talking about health care, gun control, immigration reform, social issues, etc. It is the issue politicians take a stance on, and in turn hopefully articulate a powerful argument to persuade voters. Political speeches are used as the forum in which politicians set forth their agenda for their upcoming campaign for term in office. The issues they see as the most pressing, the issues they are most passionate about and the legislation they choose to sponsor/co-sponsor forms their narrative for their campaign or term. It is not just one issue, one topic, or one speech that represents them, but rather the compilation that in turn creates a mood and a theme for their campaign moving forward. For example, the issues that Obama spent the most time discussing during his campaign in 2008 forged the narrative of "hope" and this "yes we can" attitude that was extremely apparent in the 2008 campaign.

The audience is much more than the voters, and much more than political pundits and news anchors. However, presently much of the power is with the political pundits on cable television because it has turned into a much more biased, much less qualified conversation that spews opinion and packaged propaganda rather than an attitude in which open debate and discussion is encouraged.

In the book, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents by Richard Neustadt, the issue of the office of the presidency is further explored. Although personal qualities of the individual president contribute to the success or failure of that president, usually the analysis goes no further than examining the individual. What should be focused on more, is the executive branch as a position. The ability for the president to influence others is what makes a president powerful, just like the constraint division of rhetorical situations. The ability to influence the audience can either be positive and negative, just like the constraints in rhetorical situations can lead to modifications and action or halt the action for a change in exigence.

In Geiser, et al, it described rhetoric as a "goal-directed activity similar to engineering and architecture in its regard for practical effects in the future and in its need to be socially responsible and ethical. Now, I don't think that everyone who writes writes to achieve a specific goal. Unless, however, the goal is for school or work. Often writers write to practice the art form of filling up sheets up paper with words that they love, whether it be poetry, short stories, or fiction or non-fiction writing. To think of it as a a field similar to engineering and architecture is both exciting and daunting. However, good writers hone in on their skills in order to create something with practical effects in the future. As discussed in class and by Fish, the correlation between observation and rhetoric I believe are closely related. Rhetoric is often direct observation, because, just as Vatz argues, the rhetor's response is controlled by the situation, thus, the observation is only made by examining the situation.

Introduction

Hello!

My name is Cassidy Geoghegan and I am a Political Science major and an English-writing minor. I am a senior from Madison, Wisconsin.

My interesting fact was that I just finished my Capstone project. That fact really isn't that interesting at all, however, so I probably got off to somewhat of a boring start. I promise I am not boring but I really do love political science, so I will definitely be examining the works of this class through a lens of a political science major.

I love to travel and I hope I can have a career in which I am able to do so frequently. I am not sure what's next for me, maybe law school, grad school, a move to D.C, who knows. I also love music, reading, skiing, working out/hiking, art, and pretty much anything or anyone that can make me laugh.

I am really looking forward to this semester!