McCloud and Arnheim

These articles both address pictures, symbols, and signs but in different manners. McCloud presents his argument in a completely visual way laying out his points through a comic strip narrated by an iconic cartoon. Arnheim follows a more traditional route in laying out his argument via discourse with a couple of illustrated figures. I found myself floundering about in confusion hoping for a visual example to aid my understanding while reading arnheim's article. McCloud's article, on the other hand, was just as in-depth but much easier to understand as there were plenty of visual examples to aid a reader. Is that a signal that we truly have shifted into a visual argument era where images hold higher value as they contain the argument of hundreds of words in a single image? The cliche statement "A picture is worth a thousand words" is so true with the proper interpretive context. Perhaps that is the new role of words, to provide context. Does that in turn lend room for a very slippery slope? I'm reminded of the scene in the movie Idiocracy when the main character goes to the hospital and the receptionist has a completely visual keyboard with pictures of the patient's injury. While visual images are helpful, they have a place and need boundaries...who knows? Our society could one day look like that within the movie completely dependent on visual stimulation to function. Scary thought!

Lanham's "The Implications of Electronic Information for the Sociology of Knowledge"

Lanham poses some interesting concerns and questions regarding the effect of digital communication on humanistic knowledge. Today, we are already seeing many of the things he discussed in his 1994 article being implemented and actualized. Take the electronic classroom for example. Online education has erupted over the past decade. Discussion boards, e-books, and video conferencing have enabled almost all of the elements of the traditional classroom to be translated into an electronic classroom. Now, students from all over the world can take the same class and contribute their varying worldviews and perspectives to broaden the scope of class discussion. Another example would be libraries. I no longer have to physically drive to a library to ask if they have a certain book. I can check their online catalog and check out an e-book at 2:00 am from my couch. Research has become easier to manage and I can access more research to broaden my research scope.

While our culture and society have seemingly adapted quite well to the rapidly evolving digital age, some terms have rightfully come into question. Terms such as author and intellectual property must be redefined to fit within the context of our digital era. Lanham remarks that "After books have been printed and bound, they are unchangeable. Thus the idea of a single author can be protected. Because books can be physical property, they can be intellectual property, protected by some version of copyright law. Thus the career of authorship becomes possible" (455). I do think the career of authorship is still possible once we establish a newly adapted definition of the terms in question. Change is part of everything and usually brings with it better things for society. The highly debated SOPA and PIPA bills, in my opinion, at least recognized the need to look at the definitions of copyright and author and made an attempt to protect intellectual property. While these bills may have been prematurely brought up, it is clear that the need to address these things is evident.

Consider the following article in which a young author hit the best-seller's list with her first novel, later discovered to be largely plagiarized. She claims that it is not plagiarism but "mixing." Obviously, we need to redefine some terms to protect the works of our authors, but this does not necessarily mean that the overall digital communication change is not beneficial to our society. Like Lanham states, "as we have now discovered, the protective carapace of copyright law simply cannot apply": we need to redefine the law to adapt to our digital society (456).

interesting article...

Is the World an Idea?

This seems to be a cyclic ontological argument...does the world exist as we think we know it or is it merely a construct of our minds?

National Grammar Day

Happy National Grammar Day! This "music video" is a little painful but good for a laugh...are all of us English folks this nerdy???

Examples of Bernhardt's on-screen text trends

While reading Bernhardt's article on on-screen text and the characteristics of on-screen text, I kept thinking that our blogs represent many of the 9 characteristics. For example, they are to some degree interactive. A viewer can click on my screen name on the left to view my complete profile or they can click on my "Fun Links" to connect to another site. They can click on "comments" to respond to any post or they can click on my multimodal video that's posted. Our blogs are also modular. The main posts are chunked in the middle with our profile info. on the left and other information on the right. They are graphically rich with a picture as the background, our logos, and the many imported pictures and screen shots that add representations to our postings.They are also customizable, publishable texts in that we decided how our blogs would look as we made a series of decisions about layout, colors, themes, and visual images. These decisions can be changed with the simple click of a mouse at any time. We can also edit our posts and remove posts at any time. Our blogs are also spacious texts. We can add to our blogs an infinite amount of information, links, postings, etc. The links are really what make the space infinite. With one line, we can connect our blogs' viewers to entire sites with an expanse of information without having to copy it all onto our blogs.

This screen shot is a Word Document with a professor's comments in the margins.

This represents several of the characteristics. Firstly, it is customizable, publishable text in that any aspect of the document can be altered quite simply. A professor can add comments directly on the document and the student can then go in and edit without having to retype the page. Font sizes, themes, and colors can be changed with one click and images can be placed directly into the document with text in front of it or around it. Word is also graphically rich. Look at all the icons along the top of the screen that will enable a writer to manipulate the appearance of the document.

My last example is our very own school's home page.

 Many of Bernhardt's characteristics can be found on UTC's home page as well. First of all, it is a spacious text. Nearly every word is hyperlinked to take a viewer to another page filled with more information. It is situationally embedded. No one (I hope) sits and clicks on each link in order and reads all the information contained within the newly directed page. We consult the page and the links based on the need of the situation. The page is completely interactive in that a viewer can clink on dozens of links and icons at any time. The page is functionally mapped with visual clues for viewers such as the facebook and twitter icons along the bottom and the arrows along the right side. While it is not in this screen shot, there is also a search box at the top of the page to allow viewers to find exactly what they need. This page is modular with essentially three columns of information, each chunked accordingly. It is also navigable with icons, hyperlinks, arrows, a search box, etc. It is hierarchially embedded with layers of text, each layer containing yet another layer. Finally, it is graphically rich with pictures (along the top although I did not capture it completely), icons, hyperlinks, etc.

storyboard for multimodal essay