where the wild things are

From Sept 7:

I have always loved the book Where the Wild Things Are, and so a retelling of the book in this format has some high expectations to meet. This is not at all what I expected: it's a completely different story, but a good one, I think, if only I could figure out how to get the pages to tell the story in a way that makes sense in terms of plot. I'm annoyed to have to go around in circles.

And it was still hot.

Revision: I re-read the "re-telling" of the book, and it just doesn't do it for me. I think it's missing the whimsy, for lack of a better word. A boy who travels to an island of monsters? Sure! But the story of the "pistol-packing mama" lacks a certain spark that the original has. I'm really surprised that Maurice Sendak himself doesn't have a better website as an artist and an author.

Orbital

I'm glad there's an explanation of this piece, because otherwise I would be really, really lost. The blizzard of words on the screen is pretty, and would make an awesome screen saver, but I can't really make them out or assemble them into a coherent thought. I am now neutral toward the poem "orbital,", perhaps because after everything else, the plain text is random.

Revision:
I now agree with what we were talking about from class last week with Remediation: Understanding New Media that if the site is designed well, then content and form can converge. This viewing of Orbital is what has changed my opinion from not liking the poem to being able to appreciate the work as a whole. I guess at first glance I was expecting to see a real poem, maybe with some stanzas, but I didn't realize that the IP address dictates which words come flying across the screen. I think Amanda's comment that Orbital is "one of the most fitting uses of cyber text" is interesting because it leads back to what we had decided in class that something extra must be added to the website. Call it a piece of "flair," call it whatever you want, but it just can't be a poem put up online. Otherwise, it looks like a souped-up powerpoint presentation. Of course, it remains to be seen what my own project will be...

Multitasking: The Next Step in Human Evolution

This morning, I'm sitting here reading from pieces of paper, typing and reading on the screen, and I've got some Red Hot Chili Peppers playing in the background just to keep me awake and moving. The phone is ringing, and my VCR just started itself to tape all the TV shows I don't have time to watch. Multitasking, which perhaps used to be a special skill like a magic trick, is now something that everyone should be able to do to keep up with our fast-paced society. Emily's post states that the audience has to be disciplined in order to use the technology. As children, we learned to do tasks individually, and when we mastered them, we were able to add on more responsibilities. I think now the technology is so cutting-edge and people are so busy that they are distracted from learning the new stuff because their opportunity for education runs concurrently alongside everything else. Maybe it's because of Situated Cognition: with everything being based on associations, people are forced to lean upon what they know to get them through the unknown.

Waxing poetic

The idea of thinking of topic ideas for the "big project" is actually a really difficult task. I find myself returning to some similar ideas, so I'll throw them out tonight. Now that I've stated that the project shouldn't look like a souped up Powerpoint Presentation, I'm now worried that my project might meet that fate. This reminds me of a Wired Magazine September 2003 article "PowerPoint Is Evil" about how many people are fed up with Powerpoint. Some people have tried to embrace Powerpoint and create art with it, and others have decided never to sit for a slide show again. I am still in the "trying to use Powerpoint" category, ne'ermind creating art. I love the article's tagline: "Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely." You have to admit, a bad powerpoint show is painful. But so is anything else done badly - it's not Powerpoint's fault that it brings out the tacky in people.

Annoyed with technology, part deux

And another thing: I went for a walk the other day only to realize that I had stopped by every lab within a mile radius because each computer at each stop had something different. How strange that one computer is not enough!

Annoyed with Technology

I was filling out an online application and I realized that I kept repeating myself on the answers to the questions because I was only allowed to see one question at a time. That bugs me so much. I also really hate it that computers have inserted themselves so much into the culture that mere mortals are helpless to improve the situation: "That's the way the system was set up, I can't make changes to or override the program, blah, blah."

On "Perspective: Notes Toward the Remediation of Style"

I really liked Collin Brooke's hypertext essay even if I didn't completely understand all of the subject matter. I definitely agree, though, about his argument that social relations are based on aesthetics and that the basis of attitudes toward things lies in the vocabularies of other things, such as altitudes. His work is graceful and subtle but is limited to only moving the text around.

Welcome to my world

After several days of not being near a computer or able to logon, I am glad to be able to post my opinions of anything and everything here. Or would those be epinions?

Green Squiggly Lines

I think computers and word processors (do they really process words, anyway?) have definitely changed the ways that people compose their writing. I think that just as there are ways to speak English (street slang, standard English, dialect) there are ways to write too, and I can't tell if the movers and shakers of the English community (ie professors, authors) have successfully reconciled this, nevermind grappling with the changing technology. What are green squiggly lines? The essay gets the point across without a lot of flashiness.