September 16th

Heads up Doug, you might think less of me as a responsible student after this post...

In "Hyper-Readers and their Reading Engines," Sosnoski says, "I have a compulsion to read every word of a printed book I begin to read every word of a printed book I begin to read. Perhaps I enjoy the Web because I feel less guilty surfing it for particular topics and reading only "at the surface"" (167). I, too find myself in this situation every time Doug assigns a PDF reading. If I printed out every PDF that we had assigned, I would kill a small forest. Instead, I take to reading on my tablet. Subsequently, I skim and I filter... I hyper-read. However, when I read a text book, or even get adventurous and print out Doug's assigned readings, I feel bad when I skim and filter. To me, when I read a physical text, I feel as if I am doing the author a disservice by skimming. Somehow, a digital format of the same text dehumanizes the author.

However, technology makes the spread of area in which a text is obtainable enormous. I literally have access to almost any written text at my fingertips. To close-read every single text that I have access to would actually be impossible. On that note, to hyper-read every single text that I have access to would be impossible. By hyper-reading each text that I have assigned, or even that I seek out on my own, makes the girth of information that I am able to obtain much greater. In that aspect, I find hyper-reading useful. I also think that having the skill of close-reading is incredibly useful. Like life, the skills that we hold onto and the skills that we improve upon require balance.  As quoted in Hayle's "How We Read" Wolfe says, "We must teach our children to be bitextual or multitextual, able to read and analyze texts flexibly in different ways, with more deliberate instruction at every stage of development on the inferential, demanding aspects of any text" (75).

September 9th

"Linear perspective vision was a fifteenth-century artistic invention for representing three-dimensional depth on the two diminutional canvas. It was a geometrization of vision which began as an invention and became a convention, a cultural habit of mind" (Wysocki 358). We look at people who don't know how to use a computer, or aren't computer 'literate', as having a disadvantage to people who are proficient and even excel in the use of technology. But is that really the case? Wysocki talks about how the term 'literate' is messy and more complex than most of us are willing to admit. I entirely agree with her in the sense that being literate does not necessarily put one at the forefront of their generation. At the beginning of the 15th century, access to printed text were not readily available to all casts of a society. Texts were not at the fingertips of the youth waiting to be delved into and torn apart for all the knowledge they had to offer. However, art was. In this sense, at the turn of the 15th century, it was likely more useful to be literate in the arts rather than in reading and writing. As the occurrence of printed text became more widespread, being literate in reading and writing also grew in importance as it was the most efficient way to gain more knowledge. I also have to believe that religion also played a huge role in the importance of being literate in the art of printed text. Religion and faith was incredibly important in an era of scientific uncertainty, so the practice of religion and faith was much more widespread than it is today. Without being able to read, one would cut themselves off from one of the most important texts of their culture. Similarly, prior to printed text, art was used as a way to convey messages, negating the demand for written 'literacy.'

If we compare this evolution of technology to our own time, you could say that we are on a tipping point of relevant literacy. To be able to read in a time of limited printed text didn't necessarily prove useful. Similarly, many of the people we see as technologically 'illiterate' grew up in an era where computers were not only rare, they were an entirely different species of what we see today. My generation has grown up with technology at our fingertips. To ignore this resource would not only be nearly impossible, but foolish.

Society looks at textually 'illiterate' people as lesser or stupid. Instead of celebrating the skills they do hold, we zero in on something they were likely taught, and unable to grasp and pick at their inabilities. In a world full of text, with only one way to physically absorb the information it had to impart on us, this judgement was harsh and unfounded. However, in the technological advances we've seen in the past years, technological illiteracy should be relatively unapparent in developed nations where computer access is relatively easy. This rarity revolves on the ability for technology to convey information in ways other than just interpreting shapes on a page as complex information.

As technology advances, there are learning gaps, or 'illiteracy' in the groups the advancements take place on. So should we really call technologically 'illiterate' groups such a degrading word? Probably not. Instead we should look at it in a lag in information and do our best to fill this lag with alternative information sharing platforms, such as a more traditional text-based platform.

"In the age of information, ignorance is a choice." -Donny Miller

September 2nd

This week, I found "Rhetorical Situation and Their Constituents" by Grant-Davie quite interesting and somewhat reflective of what we discussed in class last Thursday. The section that was most thought provoking and relatable for me was about audiences and how they affect the rhetor. One line, "Rhetors need to consider who they are in a particular situation and be aware that their identity may vary from situation to situation," struck a chord with me. Perhaps it is the fluidity attached to the rhetor and the relationship to its discourse situation. For example, in many of my classes, I am solely a student so the arguments I try to make are less thought-provoking and more matter-of-fact. However, in one class, I am a peer advisor so I act as a T.A. In this setting, the strategies I use in my rhetorical situation request a line of thinking as well the occasional "stirring of the pot" in order to get other students to participate. In this sense, as a rhetor, I am fluid from case to case in the strategies and rhetoric I apply.

Another thought this section brought up for me was the idea that one can frequently participate in a rhetorical situation in which they have no business being in. For instance, I become enraged when I see old, white, male politicians speaking out for women's health issues. They can have their own opinions, sure, but in this case, I don't feel as if they have the right to be an influencing rhetor because they, themselves, are not affected by the influences they make.

The second reading for today challenged my way of thinking about text and ownership. "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community" by Porter claims that "intertextuality, the principal that all writing and speech-- indeed, all signs-- arise from a single network" and " Examining texts "intertextuality" means looking for "traces," the bits and pieces of Text which writers or speakers borrow and sew together to create new discourse." These make sense to me. I get that all ideas stem from other ideas and that texts discussing these ideas are all, at some level, rip-offs of one another. This is what makes humans interesting: we take from one another and learn from other's perspectives or blatantly disregard ideas that don't jive with our preexisting thoughts, and it is the distance between our own texts and the original texts that keep our thoughts from becoming plagiarism. However, this same text goes on to say that "If Jefferson submitted the Declaration for a college writing class as his own writing, he might well be charged with plagiarism."

Well. Yeah.

If we go by that logic, this blog entry is plagiarism as I am just taking "traces" and putting them together and claiming them as my own.