Mikala's+Musings


 * Q.** What did I learn in creating the TLM?

**A.** Other than assigned PowerPoint presentations in high school, the Techno-Literacy Memoir was my first fully electronic assignment. Although I was intimidated about the expectations of the finished product and scared about my ability to create a multi-modal hypertext, since I didn't exactly know what either of those things were, I can honestly say that I've never learned more about technology. Having to retrieve memories of my first technological interactions proved to be entertaining and intellectually stimulating. I had forgotten all about Pac-Man and Speak-n-Spells before being given this project's specific requirements.

In constructing my TLM, I began by drawing, on paper, sort of a time line about my technological evolution over the years beginning with chalk and ending with vast electronic databases. Then, I drafted the stories behind each of the devices in Microsoft Word. Next, I surfed the web to locate pictures of each of these technologies to use as link icons throughout the project (Using the whole "ex post facto" thing as support, I wasn't familiar with Internet copyrights, so I guess I didn't technically break any laws, right? Sure.). Finally, I chose to use the wiki as my medium for presentation, and that's where the real fun began.

Never before having used "wikispaces" or any other collaborative site, excluding myspace and facebook, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to navigate the space. Dr. Pace and I spent a little time together in which we both tried to figure out how to position icons in the correct places. For the most part, I think wikispaces provide users with many options to choose from, but some of the tools could be improved upon. Or then again, maybe I just didn't know how to use those tools properly. Who knows?

At the end of this rather arduous yet enlightening process, I realized that I do have the capabilities to create a completely electronic text and would feel confident in doing so again. **Q.** What do I predict about the effects new media will have on writing in the 21st century?

**A.** Despite my personal bias toward authoritative traditional print against those texts who claim authority, such as Wikipedia, I believe we are headed in an e-age where not only will sources exponentially expand, but also have the capacity to be great collaborative spaces in which credible knowledge is shared and stored. I have not yet read any electronic-literature, but I look forward to doing so. I predict that e-literature will become increasingly popular because of cost efficiency, and since we are an electronic generation already.

Just like people of olden times were intimidated by the new technology of print, (or to go even farther back, by the invention of fire) we will learn to embrace electronic writing and the new media that influence and enable it. I have not taken the time to consider e-fiction and other web-based genres, but look forward to doing so in the future. I see the emergence of this new and popular writing as a sign of our electronically advanced times. Since the proliferation of text is much easier in an electronic environment, I think we, as readers, need to be reflective on the quality of the material we read, and be just as scathing and critical on electronic writing as we are on traditional print. In other words, just because it's easier to write online doesn't mean the skill of writing should be compromised at any time.

It's human nature to be unsure of the unfamiliar or uncertain, but we always seem to come around, and I'm sure the advent of new media will be no different.

**Q.** What are my thoughts on the Web-Text transition?

**A.** Firstly, I chose the academic paper I had the most fun writing and felt the most comfortable manipulating for the purposes of converting the traditional essay into a hypertext.

I had a lot of ideas about where the hypertext could eventually lead, but given the time restraints of the project, I decided to abandon those ideas, at least for now. Since the play I analyze in the text, __Woyzeck__, was written fragmentarily, and never fully completed, I thought of having a separate wikipage within my tragedy-of-thought-wikispace in which I allowed readers the freedom to navigate through the different chapters of the original text, and let them decide how the text best fits together. After all, as our studies have shown, that is in essence one of the advantages of hypertext.

Since most people have never heard of __Woyzeck__, I attempted to make the links to each of my individual paragraphs (individual blogs) as reader friendly and interesting as possible. For example, in my critical analysis I discuss how the relationship between Woyzeck and the mother of his child possesses tumultuous tendencies, but instead of trying to get all of that stuffy rhetoric into a link, I chose to modernize the subject line with "Baby Mama Drama," or something to that effect, making the link both borderline humorous and stimulating to the audience's interests. **Q.** What ways have I changed as a writer?

**A.** Most specifically, I have become much more conscious of audience. Whereas most often I write for an academic audience, (a professor) I have tried to adapt my voice according to the specific medium that I'm using at that time. I actually discuss some of the evolution of my writing over the past semester in one of my blog posts, and emphasize the idea that electronic composition is, in many ways, more efficient than the old stone and chisel.

I've also become more aware of the stylistic options an e-writer has at their disposal. In my TLM, one of the comments Dr. Pace made was that there should be some rhyme and reason in the presentation of a text; that is, writers should try to achieve some unifying element that makes the text flow easily from one topic to the next, just as in normal academic writing. Color choices are important to consider, as are the placements of icons and titles. I never gave these concepts much thought before, and now I've become a little anal-retentive when viewing my own blog posts.

Also, just as in writing fiction or poetry, I've become more conscious of creating and effectively manipulating a consistent voice throughout my posts, wikis, and other projects. Because there is no real interface or interaction when reading people's work online, I try to show some of my personality through the insights I choose to share. There is a yearning to be a part of a collective whole in writing relevant and interesting things that I've never experienced before.

One of the things that writers pride themselves in is the ability to adapt their skills to fit any genre or medium, and this class and the introduction to new media has definitely aided in the expansion of my skills.

**Q.** Which theorist helped unjumble all the multi-media madness?

**A.** Without a doubt, Katherine Hayles was my favorite theorist covered in class. Not only is her article relevant, it's also very easy to understand when compared to Harraway's article, where I needed a dictionary every other word. In observing the world around me, I find truth in Hayles' idea that although there are "very real differences that exist between humans and machines, especially the different embodiments that humans and machines have...the natural and the artificial are increasingly entwined" (8).

Hayles proposes her ideas in a very straightforward manner, explaining each new idea as she introduces it. There is no debate over whether she is right or wrong; she simply states that humans and machines are continually merging into a like-minded body, and if we take a minute to consider this statement, she's absolutely right. In noticing just how dependent we've all become on our prized technologies, I find her article interesting and relevant both to the discussion of this class and in life in general.

Although Hayles and Harraway have some of the same ideas about the fusing of human and machine, I found Hayles' article more descriptive and explanation-oriented of the "cyborg" metaphor. It's not that humans are going to become robot-like and perform tasks like machines with no subjectivity or error, but that our reliance on machines, computers specifically, is becoming more evident and common. I can only imagine what the future will hold, both in the advent of new media and the ideas of these new age theorists.