My Blog Redefined

It's been awhile since I last posted, since the end of my English 201 class really. The blog had been used of course for english assignments, making the name "My English Perspective" appropriate. But now it has been renamed to "My Perspective" as I will use it to share my thoughts with various things such as Harry Potter, sports, school and more!

Are We Emergent?

As we enter the last month of the academic year, this is the final assigned blog post in English 201 (I think). Regardless, I will continue to write on this blog, including thoughts on books I read over the summer. We are still reading the book Emergence, by Steven Johnson, and our latest reading covered the 2nd and 3rd chapters. Of this latest reading, I took away from it that humans cannot have such emergent systems like ants, but that parts of our everyday lives do contain emergent, or bottom-up systems.

For starters, it is interesting how ants are able to keep a colony growing and functional when only the queen ant lives more than a year. Now, I’m confused what the purpose of the 1 day lifespan of male ants is to begin with, if the queen ant lays all the eggs, so please explain this to me if you know! But how can a 15-year colony work with only 1-year contributions from each ant? I think part of it has to be evolution, that ants simply know their roles as part of being an ant, which keeps everything going. But I think that the lack of a top-down system is very intriguing in doing this, because any examples of human activity I could think of uses the top-down system. For instance, when players graduate from a team, a team still can be good but there are coaches that remain. Or a city may have completely new people in 50 years, but there was always a government. Yet with ants, these structures do not exist and they still grow without a problem. It is the perfect illustration of a bottom-up system because it is solely low-level rules or interactions that build the complex system, so it really doesn’t matter whom the participants are, as long as they follow the rules.

Another idea, which is prominent in many places in the reading, is the idea of local interactions creating large-scale structure. To some degree this is part of the definition of emergence and is stated in the book as “local information can lead to global wisdom” (79). The book continues on in talking about city emergence, and I think that local interactions play a huge role in the structure of a city. In Madison, especially on campus, there is no group or top-level people that tell incoming freshman or ongoing students where they have to stay. But through interactions on a local level, over time there has become neighborhoods or areas on campus that have completely different ideals and characteristics. The Southeast dorms are much livelier, chaotic, and loud than the Lakeshore dorms, and from the custodial perspective I have, they are much dirtier too! I’m quite sure that the supervisor of the Southeast dorms does not recruit partiers or encourage partying, but that area of campus is now livelier as a result. And this is only one example in one city; many cities have areas that emerged out of local interactions and not a government decision.

To say that Madison is an emergent city though, I think would be incorrect. There is in fact a mayor, and numerous boards and councils that make decisions, and zoning laws prohibit certain buildings. In a way, this is a good example of how humans demonstrate emergent qualities, but I do not think is a case of humans being 100% emergent. I sort of stated that in my last blog post, and I still feel this way. The book gave an appealing reason for this, in that “we consciously make decisions...” (97). Unlike the ants, we can take into account the whole system to some degree and we do not base our opinions or decisions solely on small, local interactions. In a way, the human brain is too smart and sophisticated to allow humans to use the ideas of emergence, which is unfortunate because it seems that in principle, emergent systems are some of the best type.

Bottoms-Up!

The book Emergence, by Steven Johnson, is the latest reading that we have embarked on. For starters, I’d like to say that this is my favorite and the most interesting read we have had this semester, as it makes you think about very complex and deep issues without confusing you too much. Through the introduction and first chapter we have read, the major theme is simply introducing the idea of emergence and giving examples of it. Emergence is “the movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication” (18) according to the book.

The book goes over some interesting emergent examples, which really help to show the ideas involved. The first one covered is the slime mold example, in which single-celled organisms act together at times and separately at other times. The question though is how do the cells know when to act in concert? The most logical idea would be that there are “pacemaker cells”, or some sort of hierarchy where certain cells that are in charge “tell” the other cells what to do. However, it turns out that “slime mold aggregation is now recognized as a classic case study in bottom-up behavior” (16). Basically, there aren’t any cells in charge, there are a lot of bottom-level activities that go on which somehow create a more complex activity. The ant colony is another given example, in which the colony has no leader but can still develop complex structures of organization through a bottom-up system. It is a non-intuitive way to build complex systems; by having basic rules act in a way that somehow build into the complex system.

In comparison to today’s world, it can be really difficult to understand how this could happen. Our governments, schools, churches, organizations, and even families are based upon authority figures telling lower-level people what to do, and they often tell other people what to do, and so forth down the line. This type of system is a top-down one, completely the opposite of the way slime mold aggregates. The thing that I find interesting is that the bottom-up systems work so well in some types of situations, like the slime mold or ants, but I seriously don’t think humans can do it. Maybe it’s our human nature, but when thinking of an example, I seemed to link bottom-up behavior to that of communism. It seems like a fantastic idea, but when humans try it, there is a sense of everyone not wanting to work together. Undoubtedly there is always someone that wants more than everyone else or doesn’t hold up his or her end of the bargain, resulting in the failing of the system. Apparently, this doesn’t seem to exist in ant colonies or slime mold cells, or at least it does not affect them so much. I really do not have any sort of explanation for this, and I don’t think that just learning from their systems can change human nature, but it sure would be nice if we could.

When reading, I became a little confused about other ways in which emergent theory and the mathematics involved are part of our daily lives now. It is stated that “in recent years our day-to-day life has become overrun with artificial intelligence” (21), and there are “new forms of emergent software being developed today” (22). I seem to be drawing a blank when trying to think up examples of emergent software using bottom-up systems explicitly. If anyone has an example of this that they could share, it might help me understand better how emergence is so prominent in our daily lives.

Cyberculture: It's Everywhere!

This past week, we had two readings, one being Auge’s book about Non-Places. But since I already touched on that in the last post when finding a non-place, I’d like to base this blog off the other short reading we had. In Jeff Rice’s book, Writing About Cool, we read Chapter 14, entitled Cyberculture. Rice writes about the extremely broad amount of media that form cyberculture, which includes websites, email, chat rooms, video games, cell phones, and instant messaging to name a few. Rice goes on to continue his discussion in a slightly different direction, but I think the more interesting idea that he just barely touches on in the beginning is that cyberculture is everywhere. It is so prevalent that he goes on to analyze differences between websites.

Rice gives two examples of websites to talk about cyberspace as hypertext, and I think it shows how important giving examples are. Theory often makes little sense when it is not adapted to real life. So, in relating how cyberculture is all around us, I have my own real life example. I recently got a Playstation 2, solely for the purpose of playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007. I knew the game would involve playing golf, but it is unbelievable how many details you can have in regards to making your own golfer. Just look at this screenshot from the game of Tiger Woods. It is hard to tell if that is really him or not, which symbolizes how much technology is becoming reality. And on top of basically creating any type of golfer you want, you can then play a whole tour season in which you earn money and sponsorships. I think this really speaks to the reading by Sherry Turkle where MUDs became a place for people to express themselves. Video games are so much like that too. If, for example, I enjoyed golf, but was not happy being a male, I can almost live vicariously through a female golfer in the game and make “her” look how I’d want to look. Just so we’re clear, my character is a male, but one can see how people can create personas from this new technology.

I previously had a viewpoint from the Sherry Turkle article and ensuing discussion that there was absolutely nothing wrong with people being able to have an online persona. I wrote it off as everyone has different personalities for different environments. What I think I was failing to realize is that indeed there may be nothing wrong with having multiple personas, but there is harm to be done when you can so easily become consumed into one. After joining the 21^st century and playing video games a little, I realized you can get sucked up into the technology in a sense. I played golf on the game for 6 hours straight, not moving on the couch and drinking soda. This is something I am aware of and yet I didn’t stop playing, and I think to some degree technology in general has this effect. Most of us realize that we are surrounded by this cyberculture, that we get out of a class and immediately check our cell phones. Yet, no one does anything about it and I think that is a problem.

However, Rice brings up another interesting point at the end of Chapter 14, in which he talks about how some websites seem very ambiguous which is so different from typical writing that always has a clear message. Yet, he brings up how at one point, “American literature was classified as too popular or lacking in artistic merit” (153), but now it is an often required class. So, relating this idea to how consumed we are in the cyberculture of the world, maybe it is still too new and too unappreciated. 100 years from now, much of the technology that is consuming us today will not be scaring people anymore, it will just be the norm. The one thing I’m sure of though, is that the cyberculture that we currently live in is changing the world right now and there is no doubt that in the future the world will be different as a result. How it will change and whether the change is good or bad is a different story!

And as a final send off, I think it is absolutely astonishing in the reading where Rice said how William Gibson described the internet in 1984. Gibson described it as “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation...” (144). He basically nailed it right on the head, so it makes you think that every time you read someone predicting future technologies, one of them might be exactly right!

A Local Non-Place: B10 Ingraham

So, I needed to find a local non-place and I went to a place that I thought would be just that. I went to do this assignment in B10 Ingraham, a major lecture hall on campus, as I’m sure many of you know. I did not actually have a class, I just figured I would go there and do this assignment in the back while an intro Econ lecture occurred.

As I was sitting there in the back, I sat in the middle of a row without anyone sitting next to me on either side. The single words that anyone spoke to me were when a guy went to sit on the other side of me, and asked if he could get through. I said, “sure” and did the half get-up to let him through. That was the sole word I spoke between entering the class and leaving. When looking around the room before class started, I would say roughly 80% of the people were not talking to anyone. Many had iPods that they were simply listening to as they sat there, or set up their notebooks. Also, many people were reading the two campus newspapers while waiting for class to start. I even saw two people talking on cell phones a mere 1 minute prior to lecture starting. The other 20% of the people were in fact talking to each other, sometimes in small little groups. The professor arrived 5 minutes prior to the start of lecture, and spent 4 of those minutes setting up the document cam and lecture notes. She spent the last minute scanning the room and just looking at the students.

During the lecture, nearly everybody was taking notes while looking and listening to the lecture being given. Some people were still reading papers or clearly doing something other than pay attention, which I simply cannot understand why them came in the first place. Nobody talked to anyone else during lecture, except the professor occasionally asked the class something and then one person would answer. Of course you couldn’t even hear that person’s answer from the back of the room, so the professor repeated the answer. When the lecture was 2 minutes from being over, slowly everyone started to pack up. Some just closed their notebook, other zipped up their backpacks, and some basically were out of their seats already. The professor then ended a minute early, partially because everyone forced the issue, and everyone got up at once. There was definitely chatter among people, although I would still say a large majority got packed and walked out on their own without talking to anyone.

In terms of Auge’s non-places and the discussion we had in class on Tuesday, I think my observations clearly come to one conclusion. That conclusion is that a place is never solely a place or a non-place. It is determined by how you are using the space, and what perspective you have when you are in the space. From my perspective, I was definitely in a non-place, one which was a temporary space to be in and where even though I was next to hundreds of people, I was essentially in solitude. On top of it, there is no history in the room that I know of or matters as far as I am concerned, and relationships were not made at all. Yet, for those people that are in groups and chatted quite often while in the class, it may be a place for them. They have relationships in the lecture hall, and are not in solitude. It also may be a place for the professor, who very well could have been teaching classes in that lecture hall for 10 years or more, creating a history for her. So, I think lecture halls provide a good viewing space to see how non-places and places are the same spaces, for different people.

Spring Break 2007...It's Oh So Close!

So spring break is almost upon us, and I think I say this for everyone: YES!!! Everyone seems to be going some place nice and warm like Mexico or Florida, and if I were a betting man, which I actually am, I’d put my money that there will be more than one post about spring break plans. So, what about me you ask? I will be spending my time mostly in good old Madison, WI! Now if you have actually read any of my websites, which I don’t expect you to have done, but if you have you would know that my parents live in Arizona. So this brings up the natural question of why on earth I wouldn’t at least visit my parents where it is 80° outside every day. I think it is a combination of being too lazy to actually plan something, pack, unpack, etc and the not wanting to spend any money on anything.

My actual spring break plans consist of working most everyday and then trying to find things to do in my spare time. My girlfriend is going to be gone most of the break and I don’t believe any one will be left in Madison, so I’m praying for good weather so I can go golfing! Otherwise I might spend some time in the library for the multiple exams waiting after spring break or play around with the Macromedia software and try to learn some cool website tricks. I am doing something on Wednesday of spring break that should be a lot of fun! I’m going to my first eye exam in Madison, and then I probably get to pick out new glasses. Although without my mom or girlfriend there, I’ll end up picking out glasses that look terrible and have to spend the next year with them. But anyway, there’s nothing wrong with having a spring break without much to do, so in some ways it will actually be relaxing. Here's a couple of funny golf videos that will probably end up taking a lot of my spare time during the week. The first is of Charles Barkley's horrible golf swing and the second is Tiger Woods making fun of it.

Next year my girlfriend and I are definitely planning on going somewhere for a change. I’ve heard that STA Travel has really good student discounts but frankly I have no idea how to plan a trip. Is anyone else out there going anywhere fun or exciting over spring break? Hopefully so and you can give me some good ideas for the future. Well just a couple more days and we are all free for a most wonderful 9 days!

Are We Really Cyborgs Like RoboCop?!

Last week the only reading we had was the introduction from Andy Clark’s book “Natural Born Cyborgs”. It was a very interesting read and definitely opened my eyes up to the technology around us, even if I slightly disagree with his use of the term cyborg. Essentially, the point of Clark’s introduction is to lay the foundation for proving that we are “natural-born cyborgs” (3), and he does so very convincingly.

Clark explains that the human brain can go “where no animal brains have gone before” (5) because of the great power our brains have. He also uses the line “smart thinkers whose boundaries are simply not those of skin and skull” (5) to describe what humans might be. So as he establishes, as I think most people can agree, that humans have brains that are highly developed, the key to being a natural born cyborg is that we are basically using our brains to manipulate things, or tools. His best example is that our brain is “acting in concert with pen and paper” (6), so that our brain cannot do most math by itself, but employs tools to get the answer. I do agree with this because after you get past very basic multiplications, for example 34*892, it would near impossible do to in your head, but fairly trivial with a pen and paper. So the brain in some way is retaining an ability to manipulate tools to find it’s answers without having them stored. I think this is a lot like how to study for some exams, where it would be foolish to memorize everything, but if you know the main concepts you can derive the specifics during the exam.

So I think Clark is using the reasoning that humans are natural born cyborgs because we are always using tools or machines to live our daily lives. Just like movie cyborgs, such as Terminator and RoboCop, are dependant on machines to live, in many ways Clark argues we are too. Clearly not to the extreme as the movie cyborgs, but almost everything we do now is using tools and machines such as cell phones and computers, or even glasses and prosthetic limbs. By using Clark’s definition to define how humans are natural born cyborgs, I think it is hard to argue against. There is no doubt we are becoming more and more dependent on technology.

However I think there is a negative connotation often associated with the term cyborg, and we discussed after watching the Matrix in class on Tuesday how there is definitely a fear of technology taking over, or a fear of losing control over what we are. I see why these fears are there, but I simply think we need not worry. Much for the same reasons we are natural born cyborgs according to Clark, is why we do not have to fear technology overtaking us. All the tools we use are created by the human mind. Humans use tool after tool to create better tools, ultimately for the purpose of using them. As long as we have the human mind, with its reasoning and tool-using capacities, I do not think there is any problems. I disagree with Clark’s use of the term cyborg because of this. We are not dependant upon most of our tools for survival like one thinks when hearing the term cyborg, and even the stuff which we are dependant on like a pacemaker is a creation from the human mind. Unlike the idea of RoboCop where his body was put together to save his life, humans are born with only the human brain, and then use tools throughout their lives as the brain tells us to. It is interesting to think about how the brain works, but I just think that humans are tool-users, which should not be considered the same thing as a cyborg that is dependent on technology. We are not dependant on it as much as we are and always have been users who exploit it.

Lastly, here is a link to a YouTube video that is quite strange but does cover a few of the same things Clark tries to say in a vastly different medium. I could not embed it because it was disabled on this movie butcheck it out if you have 3 or 4 minutes.

What's Stealing and What Is Creative Sampling?

Last week we read part of Steven Shaviro’s “Connected” as well as chapters 7 and 12 from Jeff Rice’s book “Writing About Cool”. The most interesting part of these reads were the questions brought up about the ideas of authorship and the rights to intellectual property in regards to sampling. Rice defines sampling as “joining pieces of different songs together to create a new song” (58). However, I do not feel that it needs to be limited to music, but the idea of taking small bits or samples from different places and putting them together is sampling in a general sense. Whether it is a research paper, a news article, a song, or a speech, sampling is commonplace. The question we started to touch on and I think bears deeper investigation is where is the line between sampling that is acceptable and sampling that constitutes stealing.

I think there are a few key components to delineate between stealing and acceptable sampling. The most important one is the spirit of the sampling. If someone is using the sample as a building block to something completely different, then there is no harm done and it is acceptable. Scratching is a perfect example of this, where the originally used songs did not really contribute to the newly formed message. If the original work or idea is used but the meaning is completely changed, then it is probably not stealing. However, I think it is also important that when a sample is used that the original author be given credit. If this doesn’t occur, the sampler would have to be assumed to be trying to take the credit for him or her self, which is in the spirit of stealing. The only clear thing about trying to figure out the differences between types of sampling is that it cannot be done with a single boundary line. Case by case analysis probably needs to be applied to some degree, as the length of the sample, how recognizable it is, and usage of it all play a role in whether or not it is stealing.

To further complicate things, in some ways almost nothing is ever made from scratch without any sampling of ideas. Could Watson and Crick have solved the structure of DNA without the X-ray diffraction information of Rosalind Franklin? And could Franklin have obtained her information without someone developing the X-ray diffraction technique before her? The answer is probably no to both these questions, and I think it is important to realize that sampling did play a role. It plays a role in almost all discoveries and new creations, so whatever we do, we should make sure we do not eliminate it.

Another issue we touched on in class and is mentioned in the Shaviro reading is making people pay for samples of information. I tend to think it is not a good road to go down as it certainly could limit our ability to create new ideas. How does it make sense to own an idea or sound to the point that others need to pay for it? What if Watson and Crick published their paper on the structure of DNA, and then every researcher thereafter had to pay them for using that structure? Needless to say, I don’t think science would be where it is now. People should not be allowed to take someone else’s work directly without giving credit to the original author, but I just do not see how money should be given to use an idea. It is another point of contention though as many music artists do not want their song used at all if they do not receive money, so it is just another gray area.

Rebelled Against

The Men's basketball team had a great year but it's over! We lost to UNLV in the second round of the tournament 74-68. For most of the last two games our shots simply weren't falling, committing way too many silly fouls and turnovers, and at times our seniors didn't seem to realize it could be their last game. But even though our season ended going 4-4 in the last eight games, it was successful. We set school records in wins with 30 and Big Ten wins with 13. We spent all but one week in the top 10, and reached the #1 ranking for the first time in school history. Alando Tucker became our first First-Team All American since the 50's, and the Big 10 Player of the Year to name just a few of his accolades. We were already on the college basketball map, but this season helped put us right in the middle of it. It's disappointing to see such a great team end so poorly, but it won't be the last time Bo Ryan fields a fantastic badger team. So as sad as it is to have the season end, it really was a special season!

Is Cool Really Cool?

When reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Coolhunt”, I found a couple of very good points made. In the reading, it becomes clear that cool people are necessary to spot cool in general, and that trying to look for cool things is not realistic. This is stated in Gladwell’s first rule of cool, which states, “the act of discovering cool causes cool to take flight...” (Gladwell 12). If something is cool at one particular moment, then once people spot it as being cool, something else becomes cool instead, so it really is a fluid situation. This makes sense because part of cool is being rebellious and if something is noticed as cool, it may no longer really be rebellious. I also liked the idea that only cool people can really coolhunt, which makes sense because if you were not cool, why would you be able to see it? DeeDee and Piney in the article realized this when they had a non-cool coolhunter working for them and he “just didn’t have that certain instinct” (Gladwell 11). When you see a truly cool person, there is something about them that is different than other people, that screams at you like they know what they are doing and I think that is part of that instinct that DeeDee was talking about.

There is one part of Gladwell's article that I have a little trouble with though. I agree that it makes sense that only cool people can see cool. Yet, can you really see cool? The second you see cool, it is not really cool anymore. So then even cool people don't really see cool. And why would any cool person wear something that's not cool? Well of course they wouldn't, but if they define it as cool, then it would not be cool anymore so they couldn't wear it. By that logic they would be naked, but that might be thought of as cool too and here we go again! So maybe the point I'm trying to make here is that cool doesn't change once a cool person sees it. Only when an un-cool person like myself recognizes cool does it change. I didn't see that distinction in the article, but I feel it should be made.

I also thought there is a lot of overlap between many of the recent readings we’ve had such as Gladwell, Barabasi, and Watts. The idea that ideas or viruses or a number of other things spread through patterns that are all similar to one another is a common theme. I think the example in Gladwell’s article as well as Barabasi’s of the Iowa farmers and the hybrid corn is a prime example of how many things probably spread. You have those early innovators that set the stage for early adopters. Then if the idea is actually good enough to make all of them happy, you are undoubtedly going to get the majority. Of course, as with anything there will always be the stubborn stragglers at the end to resist change.

It becomes very interesting when thinking about these ideas with the spread of almost anything. As it’s March Madness, it makes me wonder just how the NCAA Tournament has become such a huge success. I speculate that it started out relatively small, but as those early adopters began to become excited about it, it lead to the majority slowly making it huge. Also, I think the ideas of hubs from Barabasi probably played a role as a fairly early adopter. Somewhere along the line someone figured out that the tournament could be a huge TV hit, and had the connections to make it reach so many more people, causing the huge spread. At the very least, the spread of ideas is an interesting thing to think about.

Midwest Region 2 seed

I was about to start writing my reading notes post, but I thought I would make a little rant on our tourney prospects from my opinion. For starters, we looked HORRENDOUS today against Ohio State, but the odds of Tucker playing that bad again and for us to make so many turnovers are unlikely to hurt us again in the tourney. As far as being a 2 seed in the Midwest, it is probably a blessing in disguise compared to being a 1 seed anywhere. This is the only way we could have played so close all the way to the final four. We get the 1st two rounds in Chicago, and the next 2 in St. Louis.

So how are our match-ups? Well let's be honest, the day we lose to 15 seed Texas A&M CC is the day I drop out of college (aka, it won't happen). But the 7-10 game winner between UNLV and Georgia Tech is not that scary for us either, as we have much more depth and star power than either of those teams. Our Sweet 16 match-up would probably be Oregon, though don't doubt Notre Dame or Winthrop to be there. Oregon is definitely a good team, but their lack of post presence could be a huge advantage we could exploit. And theoretically, if we make it to the Elite Eight, there is almost no way we will be playing someone other than Florida, Maryland, or Arizona in my mind. Florida is a very formidable opponent, but those three teams all have one thing in common: They are from no where close to St. Louis. We already travel good, but if we make it to St. Louis, we'll have such a huge home court advantage that I don't see us losing easily. So I think we have our work cut out for us, but I can't imagine a better seeding in the end. So GO BADGERS!!!

Wisconsin v. OSU: Round 3

Tomorrow at about 2:30 PM, Wisconsin will be involved in the 3rd round of OSU v. Wisconsin. A win puts us as a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament and with serious momentum. It's just SO EXCITING!

Coolhunter's Paradise: Memorial Union!

After reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Coolhunt”, I went on my own coolhunt today. I picked a public space where I figured all the cool people would hang out, and which was sort of close to home since it is frigid out! So where else to pick other than the Memorial Union, and in particular, hanging out at the Rathskeller. After all, “The key to coolhunting...is to look for cool people first and cool things later” (Gladwell 10). Going at 11am on a Wednesday probably didn’t make for the ideal coolhunting conditions, but I made some observations nonetheless.

As seen in the picture, I spent some time just casually observing the DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) game near the Rathskeller because I figured anyone that can play the game well would be cool. Unfortunately only one person, in a group of 3 others played the game, but I do think they were cool. They came into the room and acted as if they owned it, not caring what others thought. The DDR player played the game in a fashion where he seemed to be in complete control and moved his feet faster than I can think. He wore a hat sideways, which screamed rebellious and individual to me, and though I do not know cool well, I’m pretty sure his clothes were cool too.

One of the common things that I saw that may be a description of cool is Ugg Boots. Though I hear often of people making fun of these boots, doing so might even enhance the cool factor since it shows rebellion by wearers from what others think. I am not sure exactly the story behind these boots, but from my knowledge they became popular on the east coast first. I can speculate that some cool people who were the innovators, which slowly brought about the early adopters before the majority joined in, must have worn the boots. However, even after sweeping one coast, it slowly crept west where I do not feel they are as popular. My speculation leads me to think that what is cool east may not be cool in the Midwest, so the innovative Midwest people may not be wearing them here. Thus it may linger on but until the innovators start to wear them, they may never explode in this region. Yet, I still think that they are rebellious here now, making them cool. In many ways, they are no longer rebellious on the east coast, so maybe they are not actually cool there anymore, but cool here now. So maybe instead the innovators are wearing them now and before long everyone will be.

In the end, I feel that what I figured as cool, may or may not be cool at all. Ultimately, I do not feel as though I am cool and that if DeeDee or Baysie saw me, they would just keep on looking. According to Gladwell’s third rule of cool, it says “that it can only be observed by those who are themselves cool” (Gladwell 11). Gladwell is talking about cool here, and since I do not think I would be considered cool, it would be impossible for me to accurately observe it. Yet, to make it more complicated, the first rule of cool is “that it cannot accurately be observed at all” (Gladwell 12). This is because once you observe cool, it has already changed into something else so that cool is never really observable. Therefore it takes a cool person to properly coolhunt to find the cool people and see what they are wearing. I tried my best and I think I spotted some cool people, but how can I know they really were cool if I cannot observe it myself?!

It's A Small World After All!!!

Though the reading from Mark Taylor’s “The Moment of Complexity” was a reading from further back, we did discuss it a little Tuesday. As I mentioned in the last reading notes blog, I felt as though writing could be both grid and network but that academic writing was clearly grid-like. After our discussion, I would like to recant that statement. I do still feel that academic writing is more grid than network, but a good example in class was the reference section of a research article. A reference section is very much a network as it connects many people, and even though it is not linking many texts quickly such as the internet, it is still linking them. So I think that trying to categorize things into grid and network is much less clear-cut than I originally thought, and almost all forms of writing and expression have both grid and network components.

Last week we read two chapters of Duncan Watts’ book “Six Degrees”, and it is undoubtedly the most interesting and smooth read that we’ve had this semester. Watts gives many great real examples of his points, and by using interesting stories, makes the reading easier to understand. Though we had very little time to actually discuss the reading, I would say that the argument made by Watts is the importance of emergence, and the interconnectedness that exists.

“How does individual behavior aggregate to collective behavior?” (Watts 24). This is a question Watts poses and it is an excellent way to think about the idea of emergence. We can seldom predict how something will work solely by knowing how the individual parts work. One example is how the brain is made up of trillions of neurons, which we know their functions well, but the brain’s overall “nature cannot be explained simply in terms of aggregations of neurons” (Watts 25). Another example of this is mobs and the idea that the mob as a whole acts differently than one would expect by looking at solely the individuals. Halloween on State Street was an example brought up in class and illustrates the way a mob can act much more differently than the individuals would on their own. It is these ideas on emergence that set the groundwork for a science on networks, where relationships among various components of a system shape the way the system work.

Networks can be extremely complex or simple, and this is highlighted by the small-world problem. The small-world problem is how people can be connected to almost anyone on the globe within a short number of degrees of separation, commonly said to be 6. I do think that to make a strong statement that everyone is definitely linked within a certain number of steps is probably unrealistic, as there has to be someone out there that has almost no part in the “worldwide network”. But I think that the small-world problem highlights an interesting point about networks in general, and that is that they can become very complex, very quick. Watts uses the pure branching network to show that a person could reach 125 people within 3 degrees of separation if each person knows 5 new people. The problem is that in the real world, pure branching is not going to happen, and that most likely many of the people you know, know those same people. This is what Watts calls “clustering”. In sort of a connection to these ideas, Watts later goes into the outbreak of diseases and viruses in the world. It can be rather terrifying to think of how simple it might be for a virus to get in one person and quickly get around the world in a matter of days through our networking. Yet, again it is seen how complicated networks can be as no virus has yet to take over the entire globe in such a manner. This can be for a variety of reasons such as infection time, contagiousness, and deadliness among others. So when taking all of the factors of some disease or virus into account, one quickly realizes that a simple model may be sufficient to get a general idea about the spread of disease, but a vastly complicated one is required to perfectly describe it. In the end, I think another major point Watts is trying to get at is the complexity of the networks that do exist, and we need to invest a lot more time and energy into studying them to truly understand aspects of life that we do not now.

Badger Basketball: Good into the Future!

So I thought I’d take the opportunity with this open blog post to discuss the Badger Basketball team! Now this year is going very well despite recent troubles, and we are a legitimate Final Four contender. Alando Tucker is the obvious pick for Big 10 Player of the Year, and probably the #2 guy in the National Player of the Year discussion. In my opinion, Wisconsin should beat Michigan State on Saturday, and then if they win their first 2 games of the Big 10 Tournament, they are a solid #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. It will probably take an Ohio State loss at Michigan Saturday, or an early exit from the conference tournament to get Wisconsin the St. Louis regional #1 seed, which would give us better location in the tournament.

Anyhow, what I really wanted to talk about was next year because I have heard from a few people about how we won’t be the same next year. I will agree that we won’t be an elite top 5 team to start next year. But I feel we will be an NCAA lock team that stays in the top 20 all year with the possibility of turning into a top 5 team again! Now I don’t expect anyone to just take my word on this, you probably want some sort of evidence for this. Well here it comes!

As far as big men go, Wisconsin will be absolutely solid next year with Butch and Stiemsma the probable starters. Both will be senior leaders and with Butch’s growing scoring and rebounding ability added with Stiemsma’s defensive prowess, plus his nice 15 ft. jumper, they will be a force to be reckoned with in the paint. Losing Chappell is still a loss but he is not as good as the other two anyhow, and we will have redshirt-freshman J.P. Gavinski that could add some valuable playing time as well.

As far as the guard position goes, we will be arguably better than this year even though we lose Taylor. Taylor is a good player but is not the greatest ball handler and as seen at Ohio State Sunday, is not the senior leader he should be. We keep Flowers as a fantastic defensive guard and his scoring will only keep improving. On top of Flowers we will have the sophomores in Hughes and Bohannon that between them will be able to more than make up for Taylor’s contributions. Hughes is an amazing ball handler and can run the point very effectively. Bohannon has the sweetest outside shot on the team, and I could definitely see him as a Drew Neitzel-like guy for this team as he progresses. As both of them get better defensively and get more comfortable with their increased roles, I don’t see scoring from the guard position as a problem. The more Bohannon drains the three, the less zone defense will give us problems which is an achilles heel this year to some degree.

Now, the big question is how do you replace Alando Tucker in the forward slot when he is clearly the best player in the entire conference? My answer is simple, you don’t. But just like when Devin Harris left, Tucker was waiting in the wings and we have Landry doing that now. His athleticism is comparable to Tucker’s; he has an inch or two on him in height, and has better shot-blocking skills. Landry won’t be Tucker next year, but he can definitely be a top 5 Big 10 player averaging 15-20 points per game and by his senior year could be as good as Tucker is this year. Krabbenhoft and Gullikson are very solid contributors as well that will help burden the load in Tucker’s absence. Krabbenhoft in particular is the best hustle player on the team, and should see a few starts depending on the other team’s starting lineup.

Overall, the starting 5 will be hard to determine exactly and may switch more often than this year, but my best guess is as follows:

Brian Butch

Greg Stiemsma

Marcus Landry

Michael Flowers

Jason Bohannon

Our bench should consist of at least 4 regular contributors, which mean we will be a very deep team again, making it hard to outplay us for 40 minutes. These will be our main bench contributors:

Joe Krabbenhoft

Kevin Gullikson

Trevon Hughes

J.P. Gavinski

Also, looking at this Rivals.com page about our next year Freshman class, we will be adding 4 more players, two 4 star prospects and two 3 star prospects, so there is a great chance that a few of those players will see some playing time and contribute to make us even deeper! With 3 seniors starting, we will again be a veteran team that has a deep bench, good young players as a supporting cast, and as always, an underrated coach in Bo Ryan! I just cannot see a big drop-off from this year, and if the pieces fall right there is no reason we don’t end up as a top 5 team threatening for a #1 seed again! Let me know what you think about next year’s team.

Networks Are Taking Over!

For last Tuesday we read a very confusing few chapters by Katherine Hayles called “Writing Machines”. Though it was a confusing text, after discussing it I feel that I agree more with her than with McLuhan’s idea. In my mind, it does not seem like she is willing to bracket content or a message completely separate of the medium, like McLuhan does. Yet she does state “the physical form of the literary artifact always affects what the words (and other semiotic components) mean” (Hayles 25). Though it is definitely insinuating that the medium, probably a book in this case, affects the message, it is not going as far as to say that the medium is the only thing of significance. I agree that the way material is presented absolutely shapes the message it gives; such as if a book has a certain font, it can contribute to making some rhetorical argument. Therefore, it is shaping the message, but it does not necessarily mean the text is unimportant either.

Hayles text also analyzes Talan Memmott’s Lexia to Perplexia, which is a controlled chaos of an online adventure. I think the most important point from it is that it is made to intentionally be confusing and not make sense to a viewer. I believe that if each person in our class tried to define some of the things in it, we’d get 18 different answers, which speaks to the fact that there are multiple interpretations. The variety of meanings that can be made out of it helps to argue a point that there may not be one single meaning to most texts. All too often in high school English classes, we were essentially coached into one interpretation of a book passage or a poem. Memmott uses new technology to showcase a view that it is not always the case, and furthermore show how new media like the internet allows for even more interpretations. This really sets up arguments for those like Jeff Rice and how not only new media needs to become important in college English, but that there may be a whole new level of analysis that needs to be applied to much of it.

The other reading we read was from Mark Taylor’s book “The Moment of Complexity”, and highlighted an introduction to chaos and complexity. I think Taylor made an argument that technology brings about more information to networks and that we are now living in a web environment. An example from the text is the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which marked a “decisive juncture in the formation of network culture...” (Taylor 20). Prior to that event, the world was stuck largely in the Cold War attitudes that were rigidly fixed, and in many ways represented a grid. After the event, globalization took off to a new level and has allowed for the networks and webs that now dominate the global culture.

In Thursday’s class, we didn’t quite get to talking about the 6^th discussion question, about what writing is, but I think it’s a fantastic discussion topic. In relation to Taylor’s text, I feel that most writing is representative of a grid and not a network. Without a doubt, the typical print type of writing follows an assembly line format of writing, editing, revising, and so forth. It is very structured and does not typically allow for much collaboration, which is one of the main characteristics of a network. Other types of writing such as a blog or Wikipedia give more gray area to writing. In some ways blogs create a very structured way to put down content, and in the same way so does Wikipedia. If you look at a Wikipedia entry about Boston, and you look at one about Madison, you’ll notice they are structured nearly the exact same. Yet, on the other hand there are a huge variety of types of things one could put into a blog such as video, photos, text, or music. Also, you can link to millions of other people through these types of media, which is practically the definition of a network. So I think that one could say a lot of writing is grid-like, but there are certainly network aspects to writing, mostly of the new media type.

A key point though across all of these texts is the clear presence of the new media in our society, and the growing network culture, which we currently inhabit. In many ways, this is all very new and we have to learn a lot about how networks work to better understand them and much of the new types of writing.

Chaos Theory and March Madness?!

I was reading up articles on ESPN this afternoon and came across a Men's Basketball podcast that mentions chaos theory in a bit of detail actually. Go here and if you scroll down along the left side, there is an article about the game between Wisconsin and Ohio State titled "One on One". Though I encourage reading that, if you look underneath it, there is a link to a podcast about the chaos theory. You only need to listen for the first few minutes to hear them relate it to March Madness, and then for you listening pleasure, they talk about the Badger game tomorrow for 5 minutes or so. Just thought I'd share!

Dreamweaver Class!!!

On Thursday evening at 6:30pm, in B207 Computer Sciences I took the Dreamweaver 1 class by STS. I must say that it was a fantastic experience. The thing that really took me by surprise were the variety of people taking it. Kurt was actually in the class, but so were at least 3 or 4 PhD students, a special student who was at least 45, and some undergrads in a plethora of majors. I guess it just goes to show how everyone has an interest in the internet and making websites these days. Anyhow, the class was great even though some of the super basics, such as defining a site, were already covered in our class. It made for good review, but we also learned a few new things. As for linking, we learned not only how to do a "Back to Top" link, we also learned how to make links open in different windows. On top of that, we learned about CSS as a way to style your website after the content is already there, and during that I figured out how to put background images on my page. Also we learned how to put mp3 and various other documents on the page and place them in nice table formats. I think I may have been able to figure that out anyhow but it was nice to know exactly how it is done. Overall I'd say the class was 80% good review, and 20% new things.

As for using what I've learned for the projects in the class, I feel that I now have a few more basic tools to shape my websites. This will in turn allow for better representation of the rhetorical ideas I'm trying to make on a given website. For instance, being able to add background images or insert different types of media like .mp3 or word documents will enhance the messages I'm trying to get across. Dreamweaver 1 was such a good class, I can only hope I can find time in my schedule to take more classes. I'd love to finish the Dreamweaver series and also take the CSS series so at that point I'd be able to make some pretty sophisticated websites that would be able to make any argument I wish.

If you haven't taken a class yet, I can't recommend them enough!

A Medium Is Useless Without a Message!

When reading Marshall McLuhan’s “Understanding Media”, it is safe to say that I had no idea what he was really getting at originally. Then after our class discussion about it on Tuesday, I had a better idea of what he was trying to say, although I must say I tend to disagree with him. Much of what I will say is similar to what I just read in Kate’s blog, but I too think that without a message there would be no use for a medium.

In the first chapter we read of McLuhan, he stated the “medium is the message”, and I took this as meaning that the medium is the way which content is delivered, so it is what is important. The medium is the act of getting a message across, so using a movie as an example; the medium would be the entire filmmaking process. The actual content of the movie would be the message. I do not have any problems with the distinction between the two, and I actually think he makes good sense in how he characterizes them. Yet, he tends to separate them, insinuating that message is of little importance, and it is only the medium that matters. I think in one way he is right, which is that one person’s blog may be a message that has absolutely no significance when compared to the idea of the internet as a medium. Yet, there are two reasons why I feel he is incorrect. First, most messages probably are not significant in and of themselves, but the fact there are messages out there to begin with makes the medium have usefulness. Secondly, sometimes the message is very significant. I have two examples, the first being McLuhan’s example of the railroads and how the “content of the railway medium” (24) was insignificant. One of the main things railways carried was coal, and while that may not have been significant at the time, it is now a major issue with fossil fuels and global warming. So the content being coal was very important in that situation in what it has done to the environment and economy. A second example would be Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech “I Have a Dream”. By my understanding, McLuhan would say that the speech’s content is unimportant, but the act of speaking and giving speeches is the important part. I agree that the speechmaking process is important and is necessary for quality speeches to occur, but without the quality speeches themselves, then the process would have little importance.

The second part of McLuhan’s reading was about the hot and cold media and the differences between the two. From the reading and class discussion, a hot medium is one that has low participation, high definition and more information whereas a cool medium has high participation, low definition, and less information. McLuhan categorized many media into one or the other, and the main problem I had with this is that you can only compare two media at a time. When comparing radio versus a telephone, it makes perfect sense that a telephone would be the cold medium and radio the hot since a telephone gives you less information and definition while requiring a much higher level of participation. Yet that should not make radio a hot medium in my eyes because you could compare it to a movie, which I would argue requires even less participation and gives you much more information. So when comparing those two, radio would be a cold medium. I think there should be a gradient used where one end is the hottest medium and the other is the coldest medium, because the lines are not very clear-cut. This was obvious when the class discussion covered the idea of TV as being a cold medium, which I feel may have been a product of McLuhan’s time but also that it may be cold in comparison to some other forms of media, but hotter than other ones.

I do think McLuhan makes some very interesting arguments but the “medium is the message” idea is a little too out there for me. He does show how important the medium is though, and that should not be ignored. Without media, we would have no messages but in the same sense, without messages, we’d have no use for the media. I definitely feel the two are intertwined and cannot be separated out completely.

Connections Across Disciplines

In response to exercise #4 on page 22 in Writing About Cool, by Jeff Rice, it should be noted that I am taking 5 classes. I am taking a Biochemistry, Physics, Bacteriology, Environmental Studies, and English class this semester. As the exercise requires ideas, words, or concepts between the classes that have come up in them, I found it very difficult to find good examples that cross the Science-English barrier, while many concepts are shared between one or all of the science courses I’m taking.

The best example I could think of are the words culture and media. In our class, we discuss culture as a way of life and media in terms of ways to express information. Primarily used in my bacteriology course, culture refers to growing bacterial cultures in a laboratory setting, although media can refer to a collection of information which is found in these cultures, so a similar definition.

Another example I thought of is the word hormones, which is used most often in my biochemistry class as far as potent biological signaling molecules. It is also used in this nature in my bacteriology course, and was discussed as a potential water pollutant in my Environment course. A system similar to hormones is neurotransmitters, which was discussed in physics in terms of the magnetic fields it creates in our brains. I do not think the word has ever come up in our class, but it can certainly be related to the text Writing About Cool. Many times the expression “raging hormones” refers to teenagers when they are growing up. Teenagers have a different set of values, which makes them react to a different language such as words like “cool” and “suck”. So even though it is not a direct usage, the idea of hormones controlling our bodies is present even in English.

Lastly, there is a pervading theme I have noticed this year throughout all of my courses, which is the idea of change. We’ve encountered it in almost every class period and reading in this course with regards to blogging and the new forms of media that are emerging. It has also been made obvious to me in courses like biochemistry, where just yesterday our professor admitted that the slide he showed was outdated because the actual structure of the enzyme had been solved within the last few months. In similar ways, all my classes have been emphasizing that what we learn this semester will not all be true next semester, or many semesters from now for that matter.

A New Genre: Blogging!

In response to last Thursday’s reading, “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog” by Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd, I think there are some very interesting aspects to the idea of blogging as a whole. Though it was confusing at first, the idea of blogging as a kairos made interesting insight into the genre that is blogging. As defined in the reading, kairos is “socially perceived space-time” (Shepherd 2), but the example Scot gave in class about how you know what to expect during a eulogy was more helpful. From that discussion, I think blogging came about as a genre because it was the right time in history for it to happen, and it filled some void that came about through the advancing technology.

One of the group discussion questions was #5, which said how the reading concludes that blogging’s exigence lies in the blogger’s need to cultivate and validate a sense of self online. Although I do agree with this I certainly do not feel it is the only reason people blog in the first place. Through our group’s discussion, I feel as though there are four main reasons someone begins to blog, and the most common is indeed the notion of self-expression. People want to “be heard” and there is no better place to do that than online, where anyone with internet access in the world can “hear” you. However, some people may blog but not let anyone see their blog, so there’s no way the first reason can be applied to that case. I would say that people that write a blog for only their own eyes are expressing their feelings, thoughts, opinions, or whatever they want to themselves. It is really no different than a diary then, except instead of writing by hand, they are using a computer. A third reason I believe people blog is to feel like a part of a community, and that this plays a large role in making people blog as well. Blogging allows people from different generations to come together as one, so older people can feel like part of the “in” crowd again. Lastly, I believe people blog because they are bored. As mentioned in the article, there was a blog that was a complete hoax about a girl with cancer, and I cannot imagine any other reason someone would do that except that they did not really have anything better to do with their time. For all of these reasons, blogging exists in today’s culture and allows these “voids” people have to be filled.

The other very interesting discussion question was #6, with regards to Jeff Rice’s arguments from the reading, “What Should College English Be”. He mentions “the space on the page keeps bodies of information (and, thus, bodies) separate” (Rice 130). In space on the page, he is referring to the normal print writing, encompassing mostly academic writing and paragraph essays. I think this makes an interesting liaison to blogs in that blogs are certainly not “space on the page”, but a newer media and genre. They certainly do not keep bodies of information separate in the least, but actually bring vast amounts of information together in one place. Yet, I think many social network writing actually keep bodies separate, much like the “space on the page” writing does. It’s much less likely that you’ll make a point to see your high school friends when you’re in town if you’ve been writing to them on Facebook or AIM compared to if it had been a really long time since you’ve talked. I also feel that though the academic writing does keep people separate from distant places, it can bring people together that are nearby in collaboration on some writing, whereas you may never bother collaborating or talking with anyone when writing things on your blog. Of course, you may be collaborating online through comments, but again this is bringing the information together, and keeping the bodies separate.

I feel that this can be a dangerous idea because no matter how useful new media can be, there is no substitute for being able to talk to people directly in person. Most jobs are interacting with people, and if it becomes too common for people to share all their ideas online through all the various networks, they may lose their ability to properly interact in person.

New Media Should Be The New Way!

When thinking of academic writing, I think it is safe to say that it is referring to writing done in school or in general academia. The audience for academic writing is typically teachers, professors, researchers, and other students. The most common type of academic writing would probably be the 5-paragraph writing that was first introduced to me in the 9th grade. However, academic writing is more about thesis statements, topic sentences, solid conclusions, and good grammar throughout. And while it can take form as the 5-paragraph essay or a 20-page scientific research paper, it typically does not allow for a ton of creativity or excitement.

In contrast, new media is abundant in creativity and excitement. New media includes the internet, text messaging, making movies, cell phones, and blogging. All of these types of media are very different from academic writing. They typically can be used without any strict formatting, and can convey almost anything imaginable in any way you could possibly want to convey something. That is the way that new media challenges the concepts of academic writing. Why should someone write an essay with pen and paper following academic rules to convey a message that would be conveyed even better using iMovie? I think the way that new media challenges the academic writing outline the most is that new media changes so fast. Only 5 years ago or so, PowerPoint was possibly the main new media that needed to find it’s way into curriculum, but today it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Some benefits of including new media into an English curriculum would be to better prepare students for the types of media they will encounter in the “real world”. It’s very rare for people to write a single 5-paragraph essay once they have jobs, but it is very common to have people use PowerPoint to convey ideas. People are encountering blogs in almost every area, and use of the internet is nearly a prerequisite in today’s age. By including forms of new media into English curriculum, students would have a leg up on these important forms of media. From my experience in the sciences, I have noticed that poster sessions are frequently used to convey research you are doing, instead of having everyone read your paper. This is just another example of how using computers to construct posters to convey ideas would be beneficial to know how to do.

However, there are definitely a few drawbacks to incorporation of new media into the curriculum. For one, there is no doubt some importance to the academic writing of old, and many would be concerned that it would fall to the wayside. Also, new media changes so often that it would be difficult to stay on top of the changes, if not impossible. Possibly the worst consequence was discussed in class last Thursday, which would be that some people would gain a further advantage over others. This would happen because not everyone actually does have access to a computer, so some schools would not be able to provide students a curriculum of new media whereas other schools would be able to do a great job. A large divide could occur which would certainly unfairly advantage some groups of people over others.

Academic writing is not unimportant, but it is not necessarily always as useful as certain new media. I think we need to include more and more types of new media into classrooms to prepare students for what they will encounter in the “real world”.

What is Writing?

Wikipedia: Good or Bad?

For Thursday’s class we had to read two articles, one titled “Rhetorics Fast and Slow” by Lester Faigley, and a second titled “Made Not Only in Words” by Kathleen Blake Yancey. In addition to these, a third article read during Thursday’s class titled, “A Stand Against Wikipedia” by Scott Jaschik, discusses how Middlebury College has collectively stood against Wikipedia by not allowing students to use it as a citation. A quote from the article made by the chair of the history department at Middlebury, Don Wyatt, is “Even though Wikipedia may have some value, particularly from the value of leading students to citable sources, it is not itself an appropriate source for citation”. Thursday’s discussion over this article seemed to more or less agree with this quote, but to varying degrees. Most students unified around the response that Wikipedia is indeed not a citable source but a good starting point, so the “ban” on Wikipedia should be clearer as far as how it can be used.

I personally do not feel Wikipedia should ever be cited in a research paper of any kind, but this would have nothing to do with the fact that it is an internet source. As discussed by some students in class, encyclopedias of any nature are never suitable as citable sources in a research paper. Papers of this nature should always use original sources, which essentially excludes all encyclopedias or any reference type material. However, there is nothing wrong with using it as a starting point, to get background information on a topic or to find some other original sources using the bibliography on the page. If you use it only as a starting point and not as a citation, there would be no way a faculty member could ever know you went on to it anyhow, so the point is moot.

A more interesting point of discussion though was why the ban at Middlebury focused solely on Wikipedia, a newer type of media, and not any reference book such as an encyclopedia from the library. I think it definitely has to do with the fact Wikipedia is a newer technology, and everyone can be resistant to change. As Faigley would call it, Wikipedia is a fast rhetoric whereas a book may be more of a slow rhetoric. “Speed brings risks” (Faigley 7) and I think that is why faculty are wary of something like Wikipedia more so than any old encyclopedia. They probably feel like it’s more likely you will make a silly mistake in quality or factual information by using a quicker mode like the internet than if you go through the library and look through books. I would tend to agree with this, but there is a main problem. That problem is that the world is moving forward, “Fast rhetorics dominate our world” (Faigley 4), and not recognizing that print is an old medium that will slowly be used less and less in new curriculum (Yancey 28).

If a student of Yancey’s cited Wikipedia, I believe that she would view it as a learning opportunity. She would probably show the student how to use Wikipedia as an excellent beginning source of knowledge, but not as the final source. In doing this, she would be using a viewpoint that the new media of the internet is to be embraced, though we must teach students how to use it correctly. If that same student was instead a student of Faigley’s, I believe he would look down about the use more so than Yancey. He believes fast rhetorics, such as cell phones, the internet, and email, are causing a noticeable decline in quality (Faigley 4). I think he is absolutely correct, but it is because the fast rhetorics are currently going untouched by people that could teach how to properly use some of it, such as English teachers. New technology which is shaping the lives of young people should be taught in schools, teaching students how to properly use it so problems that are being encountered at schools like Middlebury College will not be happening in the future.