Rachel+Q.

Class Work
blog: [|Semisagacious Meditations of an Autodidactic Polymath] web-to-text: [|Computer-Mediated Communications](literature review) annotation: Mixing Media: PowerPoint

Prompt Responses

 * 1) Reflect on the process of creating the technoliteracy memoir . ..
 * 2) Make at least one prediction . ..
 * 3) Reflect on the process of creating the web-to-text . ..
 * 4) In what ways have you changed . ..
 * 5) Which theory/theorist have you found . ..


 * 1) Reflect on the process of creating the technoliteracy memoir. What did you earn from presenting this project in a mod other than traditional print text?**

I found I was disappointed with myself after I had created it. I grew up with most of the technology available to me and the rest of the class, and I take pride in my experience as a web designer and a film student. However, I have never used a blog for anything except a random assortment of my own thoughts, directed (to some extent) to an audience of friends. The idea of order and organization over several posts was still foreign to me, and I found myself floundering in that design. My final adjustment to it has been having all the links together on my blog's side bar, but even then, I'm not happy. I don't know if I'll go back and repost in an order I prefer.

On the other hand, I feel challenged to make a blog that "works" and is dictated by a particular subject and direction. This class and the memoir project have given me my first shot at it, but I know I can do better. I've started a new blog outside of the class to try and master blog organization again.

**2) Make at least one prediction about where new media will take writing in the twenty-first centry.**

Keyboards are so integrated into computer technology—//We demand them on our cell phones!//—that it's no surprise that typing is taught at younger and younger ages. I can see touch typing taught alongside beginning reading classes. Print will still be required learning, but it will take a back step to the keyboard as long as the technology is available.

Writing in all fields will become much more casual as people utilize the availability of all varieties of information. The ability to write to a lay audience will be a valuable asset, and the mastery of that ability will be the measure of academic writing success.

Finally, the mass market paperback business will crash. Two media for book-length works will dominate: trade paperbacks, though slightly more expensive, will be increasingly better designed and target marketed; and online collaborative works (collaborative between the author and the site designer, and on occasion, one person doing both) will offer cheap, or even free access to works and cater to the tastes of the popular culture.

**3) Reflect on the process of creating the web-text. How did the text change in its transition from silent print to the "noise" of cyberspace in terms of stylistic choices and audience concerns?**

When I moved the text from print to hypertext, I divided the work up into much smaller chunks, allowing a user to peruse through it topically. A linear option is still available using the two links at the bottom of each page—equivalent to "back" and "next"—but I think I included these only because I had trouble myself making a transition to something nonlinear. Had I initially made this work online, as opposed to on paper first, I doubt I would have included them at all.

The bulk of transitory sentences and phrases were removed from the original text.

The style remains generally academic, and after having completed the project, I wish I had given it a rewrite. The academic style is fine for Wikipedia (expected, I think), but for a project like this, which I had the option to personalize, I wish I had reconsidered my audience. After all, I'm not writing for a professor's approval but for the understanding of the lay person—the everyday internet user.

Unfortunately, I don't feel there's much "noise" in this one. Granted, there are hyperlinks, especially in regards to the references (hopefully encouraging readers to pursue those links). The site would feel more "alive" to me if I knew it would receive more traffic, comments, and discussions. Since the web-to-text project I have looked for my subject in Wikipedia and found it needs work. Hrm. ..

**4) In what ways have you changed as a writer this semester?**

I don't feel I've changed as much as a writer as I have a reader and a defender of "writing." I'm trying to read more blogs and understand how others use them and the messages they convey. I even think I have an appreciation for Twitter—don't spread that around. After the many class discussions and reading the different theories, most of which were very new and strange to me, I feel as if I can better make the argument that reading and print are not dying, and that hypertext and the internet that carries it is enhancing—not diminishing—students' ability to communicate.

Oh, I do have one particular challenge: blogs! I've read them on occasion and kept my own as a stream of conscious rant box (even the class project, to some extent). However, I would like the discipline of a blog focused on one topic and updated regularly. It seems like every successful company, big and small, is keeping one to communicate with its clients and to advertise—I should too.

**5) Which theory/theorist have you found most interesting or helpful in understanding digital media and why?**

[[image:http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm218/Clawmarks_Ys/s.png width="150" height="216" align="right" caption="The mouse dictates how I will move and watch this character— I dictate the mouse."]]Although we only briefly discussed it in class, Hayles's "Flesh and Metal: Reconfiguring the Mindbody in Virtual Environments" hits home for a science fiction and video game lover like me. I grew up with stories of cyborgs and infinitely powerful computers bowing to the whim of humanity. The idea that technology merges into our sense of "body" is not so farfetched to me, and I was reminded of other articles I've read and experiences I've had concerning the behavior of avatars in games and how players treat them as an extension of themselves and each other. For example, there is a bias within the World of Warcraft against "keyboard turners," or people who play strictly using the keyboard to move and interact. The mouse becomes a key to the functionality of the game, just as the joystick does in Hayles's description.

The mouse has become such an extension of my hand, that I have not in a very long time even considered which button I was clicking, right or left. If I wish to see the submenu, I don't think about "right clicking." My muscles know how to move. My whole body is a machine bowing to the whim of my mind: shouldn't mastery of the inorganic be the very next step?