LeErin

 **__Response to Prompt One__:**

When first given the assignment to create a techno-literacy memoir I was both surprised and intrigued. In the course of my entire collegiate career I could not recall ever having a similar topic. Of course, this was my first web-based project, but writing a paper concerning my own personal education on anything was new. Memories of Lite-Brites, See N Says, and endless hours of playing Super Mario Bros on my Nintendo came flooding back as I was immediately transported to my childhood years. Over the course of the project my biggest frustration would be trying to recall the name of certain toys and games that had been discontinued for more than a decade.

Writing the memoir itself was something of refresher course on blogs as a media for writing - one I had never used for a serious project. Having started and never kept up with a blog on My Space, I was familiar with but had not completely mastered the writing space, resulting in a few technical difficulties I was forced to experiment with and eventually overcome. The process of posting my work on the internet for a grade seemed surreal until the day came to present it to my class. It was comforting realize that although the words of my classmates were different, their memories were a near mirror image of my own. I realized blogs were a medium for more than travel updates or comedic prose, they are a writing space that creates a community in a way print never has.


 * __Response to Prompt Two__:**

We are still only in the first decade of the twenty-first century and already the technology for writing is amazing. From touch screen computers and keyboards on phones to the Dasher Project’s visual typing, the technological advances seem limitless. I remember my dad used to subscribe to Omni Magazine (which I believe quit publishing in 1995) and the things he used to talk about baffled my childhood brain. He had horrible vision and said that “one day” there would be a laser surgery to fix eye sight and he was definitely going to have it done. I also remember him talking about technology that would allow you to plug your computer into your television. This completely amazed me since we still had to physically change our three television channels. Years later and I’m watching episodes of Bones on my television as it plays through my laptop. Simply amazing!

If I were to try and make a prediction for the future of writing, honestly, I wouldn’t know where to begin - I’ll have to take a shot in the dark. When I was learning typing I developed a strange habit: when fidgeting, I’ll often “type” things out in thin air or on the table in front of me. Perhaps something will be invented that slips on our fingertips and will recognize the movements our digits would make on a basic keyboard. Of course it would need some kind of chip or USB drive that plugs into our computers to retrieve the information but who knows. These days, anything seems possible.


 * __Response to Prompt Three__**:

By creating a web-text from my fairly boring research paper on __Daisy Miller__, I better understood how different medias will mold and change a concept - making it a completely different piece of art. At first, my mind could not comprehend what I was supposed to do beyond cutting and pasting my entire paper onto a web page. While I began by doing just that, the result was something I hadn’t envisioned. Taking each section, or subtopic, in my paper I created a page and pasted them separately onto my own little corner of cyberspace. To get the creative juices flowing, I then tweaked and fine-tuned the aesthetic aspects of the page, making it something that fit Daisy as I had imagined her (very girly). The result was fabulous - if I do say so myself. Each subtopic having its own independent section made me realize just how many topics had been in my paper; not to mention, it allowed me to create some interesting page titles, ie Daisy the Floozy. Being able to add photos and links to what had originally been a bland, MLA format English paper, added character to the words and made the whole thing more interesting. However, my favorite change in the structure was beginning each page with a quote. To me, this grabbed the attention of the internet surfer and just added an extra //je ne sais quoi// to the entire project.


 * __Response to Prompt Four__**:

This, my sixteenth semester of college, has by far been the most enlightening. I can truly say I’ve learned things beyond the usual of array of mundane facts and pieces of literature, I had often previously read. Other classes I am taking have aided in making me a better print writer by clearing up questions I had been to afraid to ask about in years. For instance, I can recall both my freshman and sophomore literature professors announcing to the class, “Anyone who uses a comma splice will receive a failing grade!” Don’t laugh, but I never knew what a comma splice actually was - until now. This bit of information (along with many others like it) is something that has been in the forefront of my mind ever since I began writing: never having known if I had inadvertently used it and would consequently fail an assignment. In Multimedia Media J I have learned a great deal on the use of the internet as a writing space. Writing on my computer was always analogous to print, since whatever I was typing would “obviously” be put through my printer and turned into my professors. Now, the entire internet seems to be an open notebook, filled with blank sheets of paper that I may use to create internet-origami (I believe I’ve coined a new term). Simply put, I have changed as a writer because my entire writing space has changed and become seemingly limitless!


 * __Response to Final Prompt:__**

In the course of our reading I have found a couple theorists to be helpful in understanding the confusion of digital media. For a newbie like myself, Bolter's book started out as the scariest thing I ever read. The terminology and theories he discussed were completely confusing and seemed like a foreign language until explained in class; however, once explained, his ideas went from a new language to a whole new landscape of computer knowledge that I felt capable of putting to use.

The other person I enjoyed reading was Hayles. While Haraway's theories are very similar, Hayles lacks the doomsday aspect of the human cyborg. Her writing simply gives new ideas to the thought that humans and electronics are coexisting in a whole new digital world.