Digital_Nation 2: Relationships

The more I watch this documentary, and navigate the website, the more astounded I am at the multiple ways people have accessed, and taken control of, our new digital world. One of my favorite segments in the portion of the film dealing with relationships and identity comes in the form of an 83-year-old Jewish woman, who along with her grandson Avrom became famous through a television show she has online, Feed Me Bubbe.



One thing Bubbe notes is the void that she feels her show may be filling in some people's lives. Do you think that people are reaching out because they're lonely and isolated, or do you think that it's not that computers are isolating us... but are bringing isolated people together?

Digital_Nation

Are we living faster and faster lives, or is the world we're living in moving faster and faster, while we scramble to merely keep up? These are problems addressed in the first portion of PBS Frontline's Digital_Nation, directed and produced by Rachel Dretzin, accompanied by Douglas Rushkoff. One of the first quotes in the film, from Melissa Chapman, relates the need for connection through technology that we're faced with: "I can't imagine, I can't even imagine, being without [my blackberry]."

This isn't a strange phenomenon, of course. We're all, in some respects, wired up to the eyeballs. I asked the students in one of my classes today how long they spent online in a typical day. One student responded about 5 or 6 hours. We don't like to think it's true, and many others seemed pretty surprised to hear that number. But think about it. I use facebook, I surf blogs, I read news online, I check and write e-mails constantly, and text, all available on my handy iPhone. How often do I use technology every day? Rushkoff observed that World of Warcraft players devote an average of 10 hours a week to the game, and some people snicker when they hear that. But, really, some of us spend 10 hours a day on our digital devices without even thinking about it!



What does it mean to be wired? Are we too wired? What would that look like?

Once More, Into the Breach!

I've aptly titled this blog entry after a line from Henry V, by William Shakespeare, because I'm once more grappling with (or rather, I'm once more instructing students to grapple with) concepts revolving around the rhetoric of technology... Okay, so Henry V has nothing whatsoever to do with the rhetoric of technology, but I am, once more, leaping into the "breach" of arguments revolving around this incredibly salient and prescient topic. I've approached this topic with classes before, but in keeping with the responsibility to the kairotic moment - that is, in keeping with the times - I'm incredibly anxious to see what new layers of meaning and different levels of argument and various viewpoints this new batch of blog-writers uncovers.

What will they find important? What new vocabularies, new technologies, and new ways of seeing our interaction with technology will they uncover?

I've already started noting the depressing fact that, while I age every year, the students I teach always remain about the same age. There was a time when I could ask a classroom if anyone was born in the 80's, and a few hands would have gone up. Those days are, regrettably, past. But with new, fresh minds, comes fresh perspective. I hope that taking a step back and, once again, taking a long, hard look at the technology and power we hold in our hands on a day-to-day basis will help each writer learn, and thus, teach others, about the rhetorical meanings behind all the things and objects and ways of communicating we take for granted.

See for yourself! This semester's list of writers is below the cut!

Spring 2011 Blogs: Our Interactions with Technology

It's not far-fetched to suppose that anyone reading this blog isn't unfamiliar with what a blog "is." It is more far-fetched, however, to be focusing on writing blogs in a conventional composition course... at least, I hope I can make a claim like that. Blogging is a new way of engaging the world around us (well, a relatively new way - you can read here about the history of blogging), and understanding it, being aware of how to use it, and knowing how to write in this new genre, is increasingly important.

I hope you will check out the following student blogs and read about their discussions about technology and how they deal with it on a day-to-day basis. And keep checking back for updates!

New Semester, New Blogs, New Textbook

Welcome to the Spring 2011 semester, and a new set of student blogs, ideas, and topics related to technology, media, and argument. This semester my students and I are using a brand new textbook, Argument!, by Erica Messenger, John Gooch, and Dorothy U. Seyler, which claims to be published in 2011 (that's what the copyright date says, though I'll swear to you I had in in my hands in December of 2010). Regardless, it's one of the most up-to-date texts regarding the nature of argument and persuasion, focusing on the "Age of Obama," or the up-and-coming digital youth that by now have not only mastered education by getting themselves here, to the University of Oklahoma and college-level academics, but have certainly mastered digital technology, social media (Web 2.0) and a host of other wonderfully gadget-y "stuff."
Thankfully I wasn't feeling too old when everyone laughed with me when I asked if they still had a Xanga (at least we all still know what a xanga is - and check that site out, it looks so different from what I remember!). I will admit it's strange to "show my age" by merely talking about how many AIM windows I used to have up to talk to my friends all at once, while I was "their age." Whew!

Fall 2010

The following is the introduction to the blogs from my Honors Composition Course, "How to Do Things With Bodies," which I taught in the Fall of 2010:

Well, readers, the time has come to stack on top of what I've already focused on in the past - urging readers and writers to become bloggers, and participate in the widely burgeoning blogosphere! In the entries below, I covered a few things discussed in the class I taught during the spring semester of 2010, in a composition class (Comp II at University of Oklahoma) that focused on understanding and comprehending new media and literacy. This semester brings me to a new and interesting topic (one that might almost seem unimportant in an online forum) - the human body!!

Below the cut, you'll find a list of student blogs from my composition class, "How to do things with Bodies." Please visit each link (I'll be adding more as more students join the project), and keep coming back as students update their blogs with personal reflections on bodies, body image, and their potential meanings for culture (both for dominant culture and for counter or sub cultures!).

But in the vein of the blog, wherein I love to get comments and start conversation and discussion after my entries, I leave you with a question.

How might the concept of the human body be incredibly pertinent to new media and technology, or the internet? Where do we see permutations of the body, or alterations of the body, online? Hmmm... Curioser, and curioser.

"Technology and Literacy"

Why Composition Specialists Need to Pay Attention
to Technology Issues
(from "Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention")

"[...]
Allowing ourselves the luxury of ignoring technology ... is not only misguided at the end of the 20th century, it is dangerously short-sighted. And I do not mean, simply, that we a re all - each of us - now teaching students who must know how to communicate as informed thinkers and citizens in an increasingly technological world - although this is surely so. This recognition had led composition faculty only to the point of using computers - or having students do so - but not to the point of thinking about what we are doing and understanding at least some of the important implications of our actions.