Gina's Online Journal

2009-03-16T17:16:00.000-07:00

When Erasmus listed the many ways in which the sentence, "Your letter pleases me mightily," he was promoting the use of copious language and eloquence. This was the preference of the Renaissance rhetor. But for the cyborg rhetor, wouldn't this sentence become as abbreviated as possible? What about the images in this post? Could this be a cyborgian adaptation of the sentence? Universal? Discursive? Non-discursive?

2009-03-09T16:48:00.000-07:00

After talking with some of you on wikispaces about the nature of a cyborg rhetoric, I started to think about how Aristotle catagorized rhetoric into three kinds: forensic, political, and epideictic. I started to think about how forensic rhetoric has grown into a cyborg rhetoric, with DNA analysis, crime scene investigations, handwriting analysis, etc - all technological means of persuading a jury of a specific outcome. We've seen epideictic rhetoric grow into a cyborg rhetoric with the advent of blogs and other various technological moments of oratory. But how have we seen political rhetoric evolve into a cyborg rhetoric?

The Matrix

2009-02-16T16:51:00.000-08:00

I was trying to remember what it was I didn't like about The Matrix when I sat down to watch it again over the weekend. What I realized is that I just can't watch it after my initial viewing because there is nothing new. I thought about Ryan's discussion about suspense, and I think there is a distinction between suspending disbelief and suspending knowledge. I can suspend disbelief in the possibility of the movie taking place, but I can't suspend the knowledge I have of how the movie will play out. Because it wasn't suspense that intrigued me originally, (I was intrigued by the logical knowledge based side of the movie), when I watch it a second or third time, I still am not drawn in by the suspense, and the knowledge is already used up. Does this mean that movies that have a cult like following (like the Matrix) perhaps appeal to those who enjoy "knowing" the knowledge of a story as opposed to those who like to relive the suspense?

Immersion

2009-02-10T08:46:00.001-08:00

I just had to post this:

While on Amazon.com today, I was reading about their newest generation Kindle - their digital portable library machine. And this quote struck me as interesting in light of yesterday's classroom discussion:

"We kept everything readers love about the original Kindle – the convenience of reading what you want, when you want it, the immediacy of getting books wirelessly delivered in less than 60 seconds, and Kindle’s ability to “disappear” in your hands so you can get lost in the author’s words."

Hmmm....interesting. The mechanism used to read should not be a reminder of external reality? Is that why we seem to gravitate toward physical texts as opposed to cybertexts? Because cybertexts somehow (until now with the Kindle) have had no way of "disappearing" when we use them?

2009-02-09T16:06:00.000-08:00

Early in Ryan's second section, she describes the act of immersion as it pertains to literature. I found it infinitely interesting that on page 94 she would choose a text like Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars (which, ironically, I read in a class with Dr. Kate Hayles) to describe the traveler returning to the world of origin. For those not familiar with Pavic's text, it is a series of dictionary entries that tell a frame narrative in a very disjointed and fragmented way. For me, immersion was the farthest thing from what I experienced when I read it. Instead, I thought it fell into Ryan's definition on page 98 of "concentration," as not only was I "vulnerable to the distracting stimuli of external reality," I welcomed it - anything to relieve the ache in my head.

Interestingly, Ryan uses an Italo Calvino passage to open her section on immersion. The Italo Calvino text she refers to, if on a winter's night a traveler (which, ironically, I also read in Dr. Hayles' class)uses the second person point of view which, while I read it, seemed to always make me acutely aware of the external reality surrounding me (primarily because Calvino's second person was male). I understand that Ryan is using the words they are saying to describe an effect of literary immersion, but I find it interesting that she would pick two very alienating texts to make this point. With that said, can it be argued that immersion is in the eye of the beholder? If this is the case, then can the metaphor of literature as VR be appropriate considering immersion is a defining characteristic of VR, while it's not necessarily a "requirement" of literary texts?

Virtual Maturity

2009-02-02T07:14:00.001-08:00

When I was in sixth grade, I was an "advanced" reader, so I was put into a special class in which we read several classic tales. One of the tales we read was Poe's "Cask of Amontillado." The story scared the bejesus out me. I can remember walking around and putting my ears up to walls to see if I could hear anything behind them. Once I heard my own heartbeat and about darn near had a heart attack. To this day, I cannot read that particular Poe story without having a visceral reaction to it.

I share this anecdote because I think it relates to the "Rape in Cyberspace" piece we read. Both involve text that is meant to produce an emotional response in its reader; both involve some sort of real-life response to something that happened outside of real life; and both deal with audience and maturity level. I was not emotionally mature enough to have read the Poe piece without being traumatized, and I believe, the participants in that early LambdaMOO were not "technologically" mature enough to not be traumatized by the text they interacted with. At that young age, I wasn't prepared for the "possibilities" of this kind in literature; those LambdaMOOers were not prepared for the "possibilities" that this new type of text provided. I soon savvied up, and I believe that current day internet users have, too. So the question that I have is if an audience can eventually become accustomed to a particular activity within a text, then the likelihood of trauma and/or negative response will go down, right? We used to be "traumatized" by certain words and activities in film, but now they are commonplace. So if an audience can grow accustomed to "trauma" to the point that it just becomes a side effect of a particular medium, then we can't really call it a crime, can we? Except, usually the first composer to introduce that "trauma" is often persecuted for it, but history will often see that person as innovative or simply "before their time." Will we ever see Mr. Bungle as "before his time?"

Levy's Virtual as Potential-Theory

2009-01-26T17:11:00.000-08:00

If a running shoe as a "performance and perception enhancing device" can be considered a type of VR due to it's potential to virtualize an improvement of something real, what do we do with, say, the high heel....?

I struggle with the concept of virtual as potentialility. Can the high heel be considered a performance or perception enhancing device? It is certainly an artificial construction, but it is not a replication of something "real," right? So, how can it fit into either the idea of virtual as fake or virtual as potential when its actualization serves neither function. Doesn't this just bring us back to the idea of what is reality to begin with? If it does, isn't the term "virtual reality" an oxymoron that simply leaves us trying to define what real is?

Week One - Ryan's Immersion and Interactivity

2009-01-21T16:52:00.000-08:00

As I read Ryan's first few chapters, I couldn't help but find myself challenging the notion of interactivity. I think Ryan is making an interesting connection between literature, art, and technology when she discusses how these things immerse their audiences/users and invite interaction. When Ryan writes: "Even when narrative coherence is maintained, though, immersion remains an elusive experience in interactive texts" (19), I couldn't help but think about the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books I would read as a kid. I would argue that I was fully immersed in the narrative, and I would claim that the books themselves required me to interact with the text. So, in order for Ryan to make this claim, is it necessary for her to be conservative with her definition of hypertext? In other words, is it acceptable for Ryan to equate hypertext with solely technological texts?