self-fashion, self-create, and...self-center?

Sherry Turkle's chapter opens with troubling tension.  Should we care about what the games are doing to us? to our children? she seems to ask.  "Reflection has given way to domination, ranking, testing, proving oneself" (500) and I think you'll agree, the joy, humanity, childhood, innocence and dare-I-say socialization is gone.  In this "Me-against-the-world" false/manipulated reality, I am stunned by how much is missing, regardless of the virtual reality, how real do we want it, discussion of last week.  It acts like an addiction, and causes people to forgo food and other social outlets, and risk getting in trouble (my son, when he plays too long or downloads an inappropriately violent game), and what about the pull to return to the game/computer/device that we see even in our relationships to our phones...but I digress.

I really enjoyed Turkle's differentiation between pinball and video games.  Funny how we never even think about the improbability of the ball that doesn't obey the law of gravity or the crazy movements we see the "characters" of Wii or other games do.  I also love the "dance" she describes although I can say from experience that it is also part of the video games--even though it can not make the slightest difference if you punch that button even harder, we do it, and we jump around, and swing the whole arm when the Wii asks only for wrist. And also the fact that video games could constantly up the ante, making you move from screen to screen always to another opponent, or an obstacle that looked (virtually:) impossible.  Do you really have any choice?  The computer is manipulating you to think that going up is the goal, that surpassing your last challenge isn't enough.  As someone who has never mastered a game and made it to anything approximating a final level, is it ever enough?

Has anyone else played The Dark Crystal--I did love that one (and the movie) and think it was actually better than this clip shows.

"If there is a danger here, it is not the danger of mindless play but of infatuation with the challenge of simulated worlds.  In the right circumstances, some people come to prefer them to the real." (508)  I would say, that especially the disaffected and dissatisfied person, might prefer the pseudo-freedom of games to the work of being social and engaged in the community, with family and friends.  (teenagers are having a hard time with this anyway, so the computer/game just gives them a world that doesn't seem to need interaction and social contact is a gimme). Coercive and destructive? They'll grow out of it? Relentless and aggressive?  Promise of perfection in a game?  While David (510, 512) thinks that his game-self on a good day is cleansing/recentering/you-against-only-you, I disagree; for me it is all manipulation that somehow compels me to value something of no value.  So if I win at a game, I can handle the world, right, on the assumption that my prowess at anything is useful for everything? 

Finally, if we go back to Kay/Goldberg and the Dynabook, we are at the point that Terkle says is in her next chapter, children who "are working with computer systems that turn the machines into a medium for self-expression...The excitement here is not in process of deciphering the program (i.e. following the rules set by others), but of making it (the program) in a highly personalized (and creative way." I hope so, but I don't think that.  Just as not all students are readers, not all gamers will understand how games could be different, or how their choices are affecting them.

I am at a conference this week, sadly, and will not be present for our Wednesday foray into thoughts of new media.  I'll be reading with interest!

Poetics alienation? Am i the only one?

The Laurel reading puts me in a quandary and on a soapbox.   I can't help but be sure that she is right in her thinking and I SO don't like it.  It is backward, it seems to me, and a case of the medium being the message and manipulating us malevolently (say that 5x fast).  What don't I like?  I am deeply uncomfortable with the way that the games suture the player into the narrative/drama.  I teach  this drama portion of the poetics in almost every semester precisely so that I can emancipate my students from it, after all the 20th century, in addition to birthing the concept of gaming, also gave us/me Brecht's Epic Theater and the Alienation Effect.    So it is all well and good that video games are organic with patterns, spectacle and of human origin but that is to be pitied, not admired. I am being facetious, yes, because I have my vices in narrative too, but is it a good thing that the narrative stream is so strong that we want to watch it or join it even as it washes us away?  Emotional manipulation without reflection on how we are being "played".  I admit that I'm in a mood about this...it's a puzzlement. I would like to be convinced that we know/think about what is happening to our brains as we play.  Peace.

Life without editing is just not that interesting...

This may be my favorite reading so far; it has mapped not only onto my own life, but also onto teaching in German Studies.  Plus, who doesn't love a good porcupine story...
My life:  the 80s, the rise of video culture especially music videos as the encapsulating of bigger things/feelings/moments is where my interest and interaction in film, media, "cultural products".

My German Studies connection is the study of Alltag "the everyday" in life, a movement that came out of socialist realism and was both the savior and the bane of "culture" in the 1970s and 1980s in Germany.  Everyone started talking about what was going on in the everyday, what was in the grocery story, who wrote what letters to the newspapers, when did work begin/end, what chapters were assigned to be read by school children. Some of these were frightfully boring accounts, obviously, until you had heard/read/watched 20 hours of it when all of a sudden you realized how hooked you were; but more than that, the idea that daily life was worthy of study and revealed things that we needed and wanted to know...creative juices flowed into VERY extended projects and detail-oriented interviews and journals and, and, and...it captured the popular "imagination" in a way that turns out to be much more valuable than just knowing the dates of the last great ruler of ancient Egypt.  (This is absolutely anathema for Germans--we Americans might get it much faster). And, finally getting to my point, quoting Viola: "Discoveries are made which reveal that more and more things are related, connected (466)".  And I add--harder to pass judgment on/dismiss (and therefore easier to learn from).

Just do it!

I really enjoyed Kathleen's post and the NYT article she points us to, but especially the discourse on fluency in "poetry language" having been pushed to the brink by the emergence of the novel (the apocalyptical language is mine:).  I couldn't help but think of my mother being loathe to read anything on the internet--I think she is as uncomfortable with what she finds there as any of my students are when I put poetry (modern or not) in front of them.  And I tell her, without meaning to be patronizing, just do it!  Just as I tell my students that they will learn to read poetry (and maybe to like it, although that isn't as essential to me as they think it is) by giving themselves permission to read poetry.

Ellen Filgo was featured for her per-twitter-formance with Gardner's class last semester--in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  A great experience for the students to have a research librarian at their fingertips, even reading their virtual minds via their conversations in the class. Magic, they say!

Imitation counterpoint

"Considering children as the users radiates a compelling excitement...children really can write programs that do serious things...the kids love it!  The interactive nature of the dialogue, the fact that they are in control, the feeling that they are doing real things rather than playing with toys or working out "assigned" problems, the pictorial and auditory nature of their results, all contribute to a tremendous sense of accomplishment to their experience." (394)

When do we do our best work?  Maybe when we are "in control" and "doing real things"?  Obviously.  For me this returns us to Nelson problem with what is missing from education (and our CAI motivation).  Standardized testing is the epitome of not being in control and doing unreal (even surreal) things, so--no sense of accomplishment--and this goes beyond the student to the teacher and the principal and the district too. For a teacher's personal lament, a blog post I read called I don't want to be a teacher anymore but I digress.

Back to Dynamic Media the filing system reminds me of Zotero which Ellen Filgo introduced to me and my students yesterday, choosing the format and personal ways to crossfile everything from the obvious article or book to youtube videos, webpages, and anything (I gather) that can be indicated by your computer pointer.   But for me the really interesting part of this article was the music aspect which seems so much more intuitive than when I was learning to write counterpoint (poorly) in my music theory and composing classes.  That was back in the 90s, so I am guessing that there are programs that are like the one described here although I can't point to them. My favorite aspect is that "capturing" of the score which is surely magical to behold, and the idea that you can stretch, shift, repeat, and alter it without a "do-over".

Taken to heart

The wild week is flying to its end, I can't wait for the space that the weekend provides--for thought, as well as recreation, that I didn't fit in this week.  And I can't help but take heart Nelson's "You can learn anything (even computers!)" and Emily's points about how "vague impressions" are a fine place to start, and we don't have to be ashamed of it as we try to gather insights and learn what we want to know.  It is not a weakness to show that you don't know something.  It is not a weakness to what to know more.  If we have the nerve (Nelson, not me) we can learn/do/create/know anything.  I want this for my children, and I want it for me!

Tools v learning: what is essential?

Hello all!  I miss you what with these snow/ice/60 degree days that we've been having.  I'm trying to put my finger on things for New Media when all I can think of is "re-newing" learning.  If this goes too far down the education path, feel free to join or chide me. 

Problem: when did "let's google it" become the answer, instead of the tool?
It seems to me that all the assembly, augmentation and linking of material, facts, items, information, stuff, is only as good as the one who actually "googles" and finds out something s/he needs to know.  If you google anything and are satisfied that the first entry (read: wikipedia) and in fact, just skim that for whatever "fact" you needed in order to answer the question...is this less or more dangerous than not knowing the answer in the first place?  It is a false sense of knowledge, it is limited in perspective (and I am actually a fan of wikipedia, not a critic), and it certainly doesn't make you think--because you have the answer, right?  So suppose you don't have any natural curiosity left? You don't look at other links, you don't even use the links that wikipedia authors have provided--you certainly don't notice the alert that occurs on almost every wikipedia page (for example) reminding us of what is missing (absence...hmmm....that is another post entirely).

When did you become curious?  intellectually curious?  we associate this with childhood, and we even said in class (weeks ago) that K-12 as currently designed doesn't seem to subscribe to the importance of intellectual curiosity.  Is it a function of our disciplines?  If so, why am I curious about math and science (and not just their history which I would call part of my discipline)?  And how do we "breed" that sort of curiosity in our students?

Did I say that the Christian Ethics journal wasn't available online, my mistake, the latest issue appeared sometime over this lovely weekend.  Link away!

less or more troubling

First, I just picked up my mail and Baylor's Center for Christian Ethics' Christian Reflection journal was there--topic for this issue--Virtual Lives. I haven't read it yet, but will bring it to pass around next week, it's not online (I checked).

Second: what do you think of this quote that I read today? "The distance to my fellow man is [for me] a very long one." Besides the ache in my heart when I read it, I wonder if it might be true for most/all/some of us. Speculation and I think some research supports the idea that our socially-networked, frenetic society might be compensating for our difficulty "meeting" each other face-to-face, while making it harder to (learn to) do so. Then in class, Jonathan mentioned the loss of the community and how the internet could be seen (in his example, in China) as  morally disruptive to community and development of human feelings/intellect--and the question of what and where should/shouldn't be part available as Sha wrote about cybersecurity today. Whether we are talking about the connections of knowledge or the aggregation of it, is seems that we must always return to the question of human relationships. What Kafka wrote in his fourth Octavo notebook at the beginning of the 20th Century (my quote above, of course) is estrangement, plain and simple, estrangement even from his fellow sufferers.  Will that be less or more pronounced in our age and the next?

Multitask or single task

The problem: email, blackboard, updating, checking in, and how it morphs into too much time without much productivity/output. Strictly limit time spent on email/online?  Or respond a different way to tasks that appear through those media? If it isn't in my list, I don't do it?  but I'm already here?  Why not just get it done?  But is it really necessary?  Here is a quote that haunts me a bit, and my quicky translation: One often suffers from the fact that one has a great deal of work, but no identified mission (to which the work belongs)

"Häufig leidet man daran, dass man zwar viel Arbeit, aber keine Aufgabe hat."

Dr. phil. Hellmut Walters

Orlando moves forward

One of the main goals of this weekend for our family was the planning of the semi-annual family vacation.  Last week we had a Skype conversation where each family group (of 4) gave her/his ideas for vacationing this summer.  We established the approximate dates, we established when who had which conflicts and although it was informal, the list of options looked like this:  Branson, San Diego, Disney, Breckenridge.  Then about Tuesday San Diego seemed to be gaining momentum, there was Disney hesitation both cost and availability. My brother, who missed the last family vacation was driving the discussion, but didn't want  to commit until mid-March when I talked to him Saturday. San Diego and Branson were running neck and neck as long as we didn't have to commit yet. Then in an turn on a dime, a text...skype in 10 minutes.  We logged on and the (refundable) deposit had already been made on the Disney vacation, was that ok?  I could hear that my sister was a little shocked?  I was surprised but glad--less drama than sometimes.  My sister-in-law was sending links like crazy (this is where we will be staying, the layout of the apartment, the location to the parks, the general idea on food/eating in and out...) and my brother was managing the pr campaign to make sure we were all on board.  Countdown on my computer now--167 days until Disney...Orlando takes the lead early and my guess is that no one else has a chance.

Skype conference call, cell phones, texts, links, chat online with Mike--our Disney concierge, online airfare, download of an official countdown to our home computer.  This is what technology offers, access to what is there, the ability to do it "now", a chance to all weigh in on the same line. 

Doing my homework

I like lists, organization, a stack of things that I can rip through--signing, sorting, filing, one more email to put this or that to bed, checking accounts, making next week's list... this homework feels wildly different, like I can't put it on the list, like rows of velcro hooklets are latching to my small and big tasks, daring me to think about them differently, will they hold?

J. Murray's introduction: three things:

• As a German literature person, new media is a continuation of the story of "die Moderne" or Modernism. Especially in the 20th Century, authors and artists write/create against the grain, making news with their experimental language, the multi-level meaning and their insistence that they have overturned if not overthrown and undone all that came before. For everything that is new, there is both resistance and the compulsion to declare it better/innovative.
• The encyclopedic capacity (6) is exponentially experiencing my love of the library. Each book opens up to reveal something that I want to read and know, each journal reveals three or more authors that I want to follow to see where their work is leading us. But I have never been in danger of spending my life in the library, the computer, "as a place, one which we enter and do not wish to leave" (6) doesn't attract me at all. Is it possible to lose too much there? My perceived difference of talking with someone about what I have read/learned is markedly different (and infinitely richer) then when I send a friend a link, and we may not ever talk about it, or if we do the conversation is just "thanks for sending it" but no more.
• Rhizome-not impressed somehow with this term/concept. It seems to me that it is the brain's way of connecting things; that linearity and hierarchy are initially there, but the more we think about things the more the connect in non-linear and non-hierarchical ways. How do we train our brains to create more pathways? By opening perspectives and not allowing ourselves to be persuaded with soundbites and simplicity. These thoughts continue as I read "As we may think", see below.
  

"As we may think"--this was fascinating to read, and as a non-scientist a new way to think about what relationships exist between science, science fiction, scientific prediction and reality. The trails of interest, and the ability to recall them (return to them) with detail is such a gift when I consider research. How many times have you found a fruitful avenue to explore when you couldn't take it because you were focused on a different end for that study? Worse, when has a comment you or someone else made in a presentation sparked a moment of understanding, that you can't quite reconstruct later.

"Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review is shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems" (47) Case in point, the Financial Crisis Report as understood by NPR's Morning Edition today. How do we focus attention, however, on how to solve the present problems. It is so much easier to just look back, criticize and shake our collective heads. Bush ends with hope (I think) in "As We May Think" and mostly so do I.

New You 2011

We should always be ourselves, but we are called also to define and shape ourselves--who would dare to say that we can't be better versions of ourselves? Think and then see if the changes are ones you are willing to make. What sacrifices are worth it? Personal Professional Relational