claypit dogs

New Technologies Essay

2006-01-04T10:15:00.000-08:00

Jayne Hipgrave (67681)
FdA Applied Literary Studies
7th December 2005

Published without hyperlinks, see emailed copy for these.

Discuss the relationship between any chosen aspects of New Technology and literature.

New technology has created a labyrinth of diversity for literature along which many new strands of expression have been created and developed. This new art form no longer seems to rely on the printed word, and would in some cases be actually hindered and restricted by the linear page turning of conventional literature. It is almost as if the book has outgrown its cover and, like a teenager, wants to explore the world outside the boundaries of its parents, the novel. For some, the problem with new technology is the fact that it continually changes, like a volcano permanently erupting new ideas that expand or mutate into something else very quickly. The reader is presented with a multitude of new styles all surging forward at once in different directions, which can create a sense of not being able to stand still and take stock for fear of missing the next new concept. There is an overwhelming sense of disorientation, especially for the not so computer literate, who may find the overload of unconventional ideas too much to grapple with, and this may cause them to reject the new forms of literature. Some of the developments seem so strange and different that without an open mind they could hardly be considered as literature at all, but then, on the other hand, their very artistic, avant guard nature is what makes them so compelling to others. The thing to remember here is that in historical terms, we are crawling through the infant stages of a new era, we are right in the thick of every author’s experiments. Today’s readers are the guinea pigs wading through both the good and the not so good, we are the ones who will help to decide what goes forward and what ends up in the recycle bin.

New technology has not only provided literature with reading material, there are also tools to help us to ‘write for success’. The Writer’s Dreamkit by Dramatica is a software package designed to help the craft of story writing, it is advertised as ‘The key to writing stories that sell’. The program leads the user through the writing process, frequently asking questions and prompting them to make choices and review what they are writing. This is a useful tool for aspiring writers who need guidance, it’s as if the Dreamkit sits at your side like some sort of instant editor. It presents us with pictures of characters to choose from, and lists of personality traits so that the writer can recall at a glance what the people inside their stories look and behave like. Then throughout the writing process the author is frequently asked to refer to his original choices and review them.
The kit creates a kind of objective perspective from where the user can see things from a less personal point of view, they are made to constantly step outside the world of their story and check what they have written. This kind of analysis has to be useful from the point of view of marketing and sales, but it does seem to take the feeling and emotion away from the writing. Surely this kind of interruption for a writer in the early stages could actually hinder the creative process by disrupting the flow of concentration and imagination. Maybe an author needs to remain personally attached to his work until it is finished, being allowed to live inside the world of the story so that he will remain true to the emotions and feelings within it. So perhaps having an editor on your shoulder every step of the way could be more detrimental than helpful?

A version of the software with more simplified language would be particularly useful for primary schools, where children usually make their first attempts at story writing. Getting their stories to link together smoothly can be a problem for many young writers, and this kit will help them to pull their ideas together and think more clearly about how everything needs to connect. Dramatica tells us that,
“There are really only five central concepts that you'll need to know to understand all that follows. Thankfully, they can be explained in less than one page each. They are:
1. The Story Mind (click here)
2. The Overall Story Throughline (click here)
3. The Main Character Throughline (click here)
4. The Impact Character Throughline (click here)
5. The Main Character vs. Impact Character Throughline (click here)”

This is the kind of formula many children and adults would benefit from when learning how to write stories, it provides them with a toolkit of important areas to think about and develop so that they can work with more confidence. But how far do we take this? Does there need to be a point when the Writer’s Dreamkit is packed away so that our own minds and imagination are allowed to blossom?

From a Marxist angle, this software can actually restrict and control the writer. On the one hand the program seems to give us immense freedom and choice, but actually, there is an element of control and conformity. We are bound by a list of options, the program puports to have 32,768 storyforms, but what about the person who wants to write the 32,769th storyform? The computer is the capitalist boss in charge, thinking purely of profit, and the multitudes of writers are like the proletariats, being given a list of options instead of total freedom of choice. This means that the writing created has perhaps lost some of its individual identity, it is no longer completely true to the natural way that the author would write. He is confined by the limitations of the package, the medium he is working with has transformed him into one of the masses at the bottom of the triangle.
This idea of using a writing tool also demonstrates the Marxist view that artists increasingly have to treat their work in a cold, capitalist way,
“In the arts, for instance, commodification leads artists to hawk their works anxiously to gain profits in an impersonal, competitive market.”
(1 p15 )
Their writing has changed from being a personal work of art into a formula that sells. This software package highlights the way that society has developed to become increasingly commercial, it promotes the idea of writing for profit and commercial gain, rather than for individual aesthetic development. So many books have gone before us now that marketing specialists can analyse what works, or more coldly, what sells. They are like ‘Big Brother’, watching and analysing the trends of the audience to see what kinds of literature are going to make them the largest profits. They are able to forecast the market and publish accordingly, but this in turn can actually push the readers in a particular direction rather than giving them the option of something new. As with the software’s limitations on the writer, the choices have also been limited for us as readers.

From the point of view of Feminism, the kit is the protecting, nurturing mother, making sure we follow the right path, but more negatively it makes us dependent and subservient, believing that without it we cannot succeed. It takes away our free will, making us subordinate and inferior, we can get so far with our own ideas and then we come up against a wall that questions our judgements and takes away the confidence we had in our own free creative process. Fear of failure convinces us to passively and unquestioningly obey the software in order to get the results we want. This however, actually means that the writer is inevitably,
“Kept…from developing their intellectual capacities.” (2 p53)

Freudian also applies in a similar way, the kit is like the Super Ego, damping down the raw talent, or Id, influencing our decisions and compressing our ideas into something that is acceptable and integrates with the outside world of readers. It teaches the writer the most effective way to survive in the commercial world. The Ego is the cold reality of ‘no sales’, making the writer realise that unless he plays safe and sticks to the formula, no one will publish his books. His original words are like the unconscious mind, and the software is the conscious mind, pushing down upon it and distorting the ideas into something marketable.

The trend driven, materialistic society of the Western world has rocketed the cost of living, pushing us all into a corner where we are afraid or unable to take financial risks. The Writer’s Dreamkit fits neatly into this way of life, promoting conformity over free will, and a writer on the dole will perhaps feel that he has no choice other than to play safe, compromising his ideas and working to the formula that will sell copies and earn money. This also means that he will unfortunately be stuck in a rut when the trends change and the formula no longer works. The exciting, ground breaking fiction is what builds up the ‘giant’s shoulders’, the peaks from where other writers can see the way, while software packages like the Writer’s Dreamkit will perhaps be the bland food that fills his belly.

Blogs are at the opposite end of the literary spectrum, they give the writer total independence and authority over their work, blogging is the online, instant and completely individual way to self publish. They were originally on-line diaries but have since mushroomed into the new way of communicate our thoughts to the outside world, becoming a form of,
“Direct peer-to-peer journalism.” (3)
Bloggs are now like a mass media army, talking and debating about as many different topics as there are blogspots.
Some blogs remain completely personal, still written like a diary, the users posts photographs of themselves and talk about their day to day lives. Even these sites seem to have journalistic tendencies though, for instance if they are writing about a film they watched at the pictures, the blog becomes more like a review than a diary entry. In a bid to obtain privacy, there are sites written in code so that no one else except for other members of the ‘group’ will understand what is being written. People with similar interests will communicate through blogs and this creates a kind of ‘hobby blog’, a website dedicated to one particular subject. With the opportunity for free speech, it is obvious that there will be political sites where people can air their views to the nation. Of course, we can’t have free web sites without the Marxist capitalism of someone trying to cash in on the airtime. So many blogspots are trying to sell us something, posting comments to the blogs and asking the writer to visit their site, this was posted as a ‘comment’ to one of my blogs, as you can see it is full of hyperlinks, all directing me to the same loan company,
“kredietlenenhypotheken said...
Hi Blogger,
Surely a nice blog you have here! Very informative!
I have a site about lening. This means loan.
You may want to come and visit sometimes! I hope you do not mind me bookmarking your blog, so I can come back sometimes!
Hope to see you on my lening site.
Regards,
Walter
3:47 PM”
The fact that these sites are completely unedited means that there is no censorship, any sort of propaganda or undesirable information could be broadcast across the web and accessed by anyone, including children, without any previous screening. So where we have previously looked at publishing houses and editors in a controlling, negative light, in this instance, perhaps its not such a bad idea for someone to be filtering these blogspots before we have to see them. Also, the publishers don’t own our work, but then neither do we, once published it becomes global property, out there for anyone to read and use in whatever way they like.

From a Marxist and indeed a Feminist perspective we can see here that these are the proletariats or underdogs fighting back. There are so many voices in the world today that it is increasingly more difficult to make ourselves heard, especially when society is very much controlled by the affluent and powerful. Bloggers are the masses of individuals revolting amidst the social conflict, fighting back against capitalist control to maintain their own identity, they are free to write whatever they want with no constraints. Yet, within this world of freedom, it’s as if communities are springing into life, creating their own set of social structures,
Elite
Politics
Sales sites
Secret code sites
Special interest/hobby
Writers trying to self publish
Diary Keepers blogging for fun

and another Marxist triangle is born, from the ordinary everyday diary keepers at the bottom to the wealthy elitists showing off their yachts. So while trying to maintain our individuality and freedom, we have infact jumped from one overcrowded world into another, diving headfirst into a vast sea of voices all shouting to be heard at once. As with any social structure, it is the strongest who survive, and we can see this straight away just by viewing a few blogs at random, they all seem to have reams of eager postings, hungrily awaiting a response, and almost all of them sadly have empty comments boxes. This means that blogging has created its own false consciousnes, we imagine that publishing our thoughts has empowered us, and that we mean something to the blogging world. In truth we most probably remain as silenced as ever because there are too many of us for anyone to take any notice of what we’ve written.
Blogging is a product of the Post-Modern world, everything is intertwined as a complete merging of diverse ideas takes place. There are many different fragments, branching off in opposite directions, while at the same time they are intrinsically linked to all of the other blogs out there.

Cyber poems are the new way of creating poetry on the net. Rather than simply the written word, they are a creative combination of all the arts. A great deal of poetry seems to start from one singular event, usually a defining moment in the life of the poet that moves them to a point of expression, and compelling them to put their feelings into words. Cyber poetry uses a creative combination of all the arts to embody this concept even more vividly. Epimone, is a site which promotes the use of a single,
“rethoric figure that implies the repetition of the same word in order to stress something.” (4)
This figure then, will be presented with coloured moving images and even sound to enhance the meaning and feeling evoked by the word. For example, Poema bomba by Augusto de Campos uses the letters from the title of the poem, putting them randomly in a cluster at the centre of the screen, then they gradually spread out and grow outwards, giving the impression of an explosion. At the same time we hear the words ‘poema’ and ‘bomba’ repeated and overlapped to created an audible explosion, ending with one voice saying, ‘bomba’ which sounds like ‘boom’ to English ears. The background is red and the letters are yellow, the colour of fire, flames and fuses. Everything about the poem relates to explosion and so even if we don’t speak Italian, we can get the full, true meaning of the poem.
In the same way, Mutason, by Julien d’Abrigeon, takes us through the stages of life, ‘Bebe, infant, adolecent, adult, vieillard’, and ‘neant’, these words appear separately on the screen, one mutating into the next, demonstrating how each stage of our life is a metamorphosis of the last. The audio part of the poem is a low, muffled voice repeating a pattern of words rhythmically, like a heart beat, followed by a break, obviously representing the cessation of life. The fact that the voice is muffled gives the poem a kind of foetal quality, which gradually gets lost as the poem progresses away from the infant stage.
The visual and audio effects of both of these poems make them accessible to everyone, we don’t have to speak the language to understand the messages they convey. This brings us to the conclusion that many poems are about the evocation of feelings rather than the words themselves. Another example of this is L’escala de Richter, by Lluis Calvo which, although we may not be able to understand the words of the poem, gives us a definite impression of what an earthquake may be like in the way that it makes the whole screen vibrate fiercely. These poems are like impressionist paintings, capturing an emotion or mood rather than a crystal clear image, and attempting to recreate the same feelings inside the reader’s mind. It’s as if the poems are trying to reach us on another level, rather than one that is purely literary. At first the visual artistry and audio enhancement of the work can seem confusing and obscure, yet it does seem to reach us on an internal level, one that fits in quite well with Freudian psychoanalysis,
“Nonsense is meaningful and that disistortion is inescapable and creative.” (1 p16)

These poems are a true example of Post Modernism. They are fragmented, displaying only a few words at a time on the screen so that we have to concentrate and fit the poem together like a jigsaw, an element of ‘play’ is clearly evident to the reader. The use of audio, visual art pulls in ideas from outside of the literary world to create the ‘feeling’ or message of the poem spontaneously, having a more instant effect on the senses of the reader. They are taken straight to their subconscious rather than having to get there through deep analysis of the words and rhyme schemes. These poems are very experimental, pushing boundaries, using any medium they can to help to get their message across in an interactive way. From a Feminist perspective, the reader is like a child, being let through play towards understanding. There is also an element of control here, as we have to wait patiently for each element of the poem to evolve, we cannot speed up the process, we have to be obedient, or otherwise the program will end and go back to the beginning.

These interactive poems lead us on to interactive fiction, the world of plotless stories where endings never happen. Deena Larsen’s Marble Springs, takes us on what at first seems like a disjointed journey through the story setting. Rather than the conventional opening page, or introduction to a novel, we are presented with a site map and have to choose where we want to go. There is no linear pattern to follow, we are given total freedom to go in whichever direction we choose. The story lacks any sense of plot or form, there is no beginning, middle or end. On first impressions a reader may find it hard to imagine this as a literary work of fiction at all.
The only thing which makes this link into conventional story writing is how it produces a sense of inquisitiveness in the reader, where a book usually sets the opening scene, Deena Larsen’s site map presents us with various hyperlinked settings to choose from. Each one takes us to the various places in Marble Springs and as we navigate our way around, we begin to realise that instead of reading a story, we are presented with a ‘fly on the wall’ perspective of it. Rather than seeing a plot unfold, we are learning the individual stories of every person we come across and finding out how they connect with the other characters. So, we are not sitting on the sofa reading a book, we are actually inside the world of the story, picking up the local gossip and piecing things together ourselves. This kind of story seems to fit today’s modern culture of ‘reality tv’ where we are watching things unfold in front of our eyes and making connections independently, without being given a plot to follow. This makes Marble Springs feel like real life and therefore it can be quite believable for the reader, we are closer to the action.
Where previously we have learned about the characters gradually through the plot line and the action of a story, now we seem to be reading from the opposite end, we learn the story from the perspective of the characters. It’s almost as if modern hypertext fiction realises that we have always read stories to find out about the people within them, and how they interact with each other, it takes us straight there, past the plot and straight to the characters. This fits with the fast living of society today, people seem to want to get everywhere more quickly. It’s as if we don’t want to wade through the superfluous ‘small talk’ of the plot, we want to go straight to the broken hearts and lives of the characters and see how they are coping. Like the Epimone poems, they seem to connect with us on a different level to what has gone before.
We as a culture are so accustomed to plot that the loosely connecting fragments of the story push the boundaries of traditional conventionality in a very Post Modern way. The reader is left with a sense of bewilderment and confusion which encourages the ‘child’ in us to experiment and play with the interactive aspect of the story so that we can learn more. When we look from a Feminist perspective, the ‘fly on the wall’ feeling mentioned earlier does seem to give the reader a restricted view of everything that is going on, and this is where the ‘aerial’, overall view of the conventional novel would make us feel more in control. The restricted view of Marble Springs only gives us a fleeting glance at the whole picture, it’s as if being inside the story gives us a subjective stance rather than an objective one. By keeping us ignorant, we have less power. Although the reader has a map and the freedom to navigate their way around from the inside of the story, the information they glean at each ‘port’ is limited and restricted. This creates a need to return to the map and continue the search, we are as dependent upon it and would be lost without it. The map is the only thing we can confidently rely on.
In some ways the new style of writing excludes certain people, it’s rather like looking at a piece modern art, the readers have to meet the text in a new way, they have to break away from their conventional teachings and be open minded. This could mean that, at the present moment in time, hypertext novels could be considered as intellectual and elitist, creating what feminists would call ‘unequality’ as they are only accessible to the select few who are prepared to move forward with them. No doubt this will change as the rest of society catches up, but it will leave those who are not computer literate behind in the same way that the first novels initially excluded non readers.

These genres demonstrate four of the many different ways in which new Technology has caused literature to erupt out across the world, and yet, the new Technological age cannot escape it’s links with the past. We have always had writing guides, now they are computerised, bloggs are easily a relation of Victorian journals, and the poems and stories are merely treading, or rather racing now, along the same continuous path of development they have always followed. Each new literary period has used the strands of the past as springboards for the future, one era runs into, and interweaves with the next. With theorists continuing to identify and dislocate these strands with individual labels, for example, Medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, Victorian etc. it’s no wonder that we have now arrived at the fragmented mixing pot of Post Modernism. New Technology is surely an accolade to Post Modernism, rather than pushing one particular idea forward, it seems to have picked up aspects of everything that has ever gone before it, and sits spinning them like a giant spider at the centre of the massive world wide web. Every silken line of that web represents another new, transient path for literature to run along, many will be quickly and easily broken, but some will stick and remain forever.
Even though these four genres may seem quite apart and independent from each other, there is one undeniable, inescapable link threading them all together, control. The fact is that once anything becomes interactive, the user becomes the Marxist/Feminist underdog, or the Freudian child, being prompted and led by the computer. As soon as it is switched on, we cease to be independent, free thinking individuals. The most ironic thing about this is that in a Post Modern way, New Technology sets us free, giving us what seems like limitless options, and yet as a society we seem to have been so conditioned to follow the leader that we are still more comfortable with subconscious subservience. We seem to need instructions and feel safe when there are rules and guide lines to follow, blogs demonstrate this most clearly in the way that the bloggers have leapt forward into the Post Modern world only to indirectly set up their own Marxist society structure within the system.
We are living in the infant stages of what is sure to become a great landmark in the history of literature and the internet has meant that more people than ever before can be part of this global development. The analogy of ‘surfing’ the net is a good one because New technology has hit us with a great tidal wave of ‘information overload’. This leaves us with two choices, we can dive onto our surf-boards and ride along on the crest of the new age, or we can be dragged along, drowning in the undercurrents of misunderstanding, being constantly battered by the fragmented debris of Post Modern . In less flowery terms, the inevitable changes are surging forward through time and we can either sink or swim.

REFERENCES:

1) (2001) The Norton Anthology Theory and Criticism
W.W. Norton & Company Inc.
2) (2004) Cambridge contexts in literature Romanticism
Cambridge University Press
3) http://www.andrewsullivan.com/main_article.php?artnum=20020224
4) http://www.Epimone.net/infoEN/index.html

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Eagleton. Terry (2004) Literary Theory Blackwell Publishing
Wu. Duncan (2005) Romanticism an anthology Third Edition
Blackwell Publishing

response to ajl

2005-12-02T12:13:00.000-08:00

This was my response to the site www.reconstruction.ws, and the essay 'Cyborg Bodies and digitized Desires'
Just read the essay from the web address you posted to me. That's EXACTLY what I mean, I have to read the book (even though it will take me 'til next Autumn!). This is just the kind of thing I can see us STUPID humans doing - as if ther aren't enough people in the world already, we go and make some pretend ones who end up better than us - Frankenstein and his monster all over again, and you know how angry I got with that bloke!
The 'empathy box' takes away our abiility to truly empathise with other humans, instead we 'embrace' the technology instead of the person,
"Iran holds fast to the handles of the mechanical box in order to pour her joy out into a simulated spiritual experience...Rick stood holding the phone receiver, conscious of her mental departure. Conscious of his own aloneness."
It kind of brings a whole new slant on transcendence doesn't it? We humans have reached a point of 'over-transcending', so that we miss the 'point' altogether.
And the mood box, so that we can control our own innate emotions says it all! That's exactly what I mean, we are doing ourselves and our souls out of a job!
"...dick brings into light one of his major concerns: that human beings have become so manipulated by outside forces that they have no sense of inspiration or organic desire. What one wants or desires is no longer taken into consideration. The concern here is that one can appropriately assimilate into the environment without too much thinking."
Time we started thinking I think!

Technophobic or Technothankyou?

2005-12-02T10:15:00.000-08:00

After reading Mike's blogg, I looked at a few of the sites he mentioned and found that some of them were trying to sell books etc on how to cope with technostress, here is a quote from one of them:
"If you've ever tried to juggle a steering wheel and a cell phone, or accidentally recorded an infomercial rather than the nightly news on your VCR -- then you already know what TechnoStress feels like."
(Weil, M.M. & Rosen, L.D. (1998). TechnoStress: Coping With Technology @WORK @HOME @PLAY John Wiley & Sons.) http://www.kdinc.com/stress.htm
I just think that this is part of everyday life for all of us now, it can hardly be called technostress. There must be some really sad individuals out there if they need a book to help them to cope with stresses like these, let's hope they never chip their nail varnish - a crisis like that and they'd need therapy!

Also, lots of the articles were about how to overcome technophobia, which was a bit ironic when the people with technophobia wouldn't be sitting in front of a computer reading them anyway. It seemed a bit like they were missing the point, I think that if people are genuilnely against modern technology, they will just stay away from it for as long as humanly possible - of course in the world where computers are invading everyday lives more and more with things like 'chip and pin' etc, they won't be able to hide for very long. It's quite weird to think that we've spent years fighting for freedom, trying to break away from governments, bosses and individuals who try to control us, but when it comes to computers we obediently follow the instructions on the screen without even flinching!

God I really do sound like a technophobe, I'm not really, honest. I can see the many advantages owning a computer can bring. I do think it's wonderful to be able to communicate with the whole world at once, and find out about anything we want to know in an instant. It's brill to be able to type an essay and re-write it without having to actually start at the beginning all over again. It's an incredible way to experiment with ideas, art and words, we can do things we have never been able to do before. On the one hand we have total freedom of expression, but this seems to seduce us into a sense of false independence, we get the chance to speak out, but who is going to listen anyway? We are actually being controlled more than we perhaps realise by becoming more and more dependant on our machines to a point when we can't live without them. To put it in really simple terms does anyone know how to toast a piece of bread anymore? What happens when their toaster breaks down? Or what happens it you're careering towards the river in your car that has electric windows? You're basically buggered without the handle that would let you wind the window down yourself. So what I'm trying to say is that I like computers, and any new technology, but I still want the option of having a 'handle'!

It's the way I feel that we're being pulled along with the tide which makes me dig my heels in and want to swim against the flow. The changes seem to be happening without anyone having much choice. A couple of years from now, I don't want to HAVE to pay on line because the banks have closed their doors to human faces and plugged into computers, or to HAVE to pick up my emails every day because that's the only way we communicate anymore. The surge of the masses wash away the options of individuals.

I wander'd lonely as a microchip!

2005-11-16T23:46:00.000-08:00

After looking at the animated poems we had to analyse some other poetry on the net. Great! Getting inside the poet's mind and working out what they are trying to say. Well you can imagine the HORROR of then being told that the poems were actually created by computer, 'cyber poems'. I couldn't believe it, we'd just been working out what a cold, soulless machine was trying to say! Suddenly the whole idea of expression was meaningless, computers can generate that too now.
This means that now, writing is all about what the reader wants it to be about - so how demeaning is this for the poor soul trying to spew up his inner most feelings for all the world to see? What's the point in expressing ourselves if computers can do that now aswell? The romantics would never have coped with this, it brings a whole new meaning to 'from the sublime to the ridiculous'.
Do humans ever need to worry about contemplation again? We can click a button, we're not responsible for what comes up on the screen, so therefore there's no need to think about what it says either. Will there come a day when we don't need to care about anything anymore?
The whole point of poetry for me is that it HAS a point. Someone is trying to tell us something, and the enjoyment of working out what that is, makes it worthwhile. It's about respecting the author.
I realise that this is not the case for everyone and do see that we are drawing from our own experiences when we interpret anything, but isn't that just it? When you have had experiences that help you identify with what someone else is trying to say, doesn't it create a sort of unifying empathy? Isn't it a healing process, or a growing process? It kind of leaves you cold to know that you empathise with a piece of plastic. I don't want to be part of the plastic age.
HUMANS RULE OK!

My response to ajl's last post

2005-11-16T13:51:00.000-08:00

That was so weird, I was just thinking how much I really liked the arty picture poems, when in the next line of your post you SAID that I would like the idea of them!! It's true, I thought they were great, very creative, it seems like an interesting route for poetry to follow - NOT that all other poetry should go away, NEVER that! Again we don't have the books in our hands, but for me, reading one poem on the net is not like reading a whole ezine. Poems are something we can dip into and so our eyes would cope with reading the occasional one on the net (although I do usually print them out and read them away from the computer), perhaps I don't read enough magazines to realise that I can dip in and out of them too - I hardly ever buy one, and so when I do, I have to read them from cover to cover to make up for some stupid sense of getting my money's worth! Also, the art in those poems wouldn't be possible on a 2D piece of paper, and that is what was so fascinating, it was lovely to see so many creative fields combined to make one blast of meaning that can hit the reader between the eyes with its message and yet confuse them at the same time, and isn't that what most of the poets through time have tried to do? We're always finding that they baffle us with metaphors and symbols to get our cogs working, kind of dazzling us with their words so that we will see them as some sort of 'educating' higher beings - the metaphysicals for instance, and the romantics, with their compass arms and immortal nightingales, and even up to our old favourite Pol Hodge with his hard edged agitprop, they are all trying to teach us something (Well, maybe the Victorians dipped out of this one a bit - too busy eyeing up table legs). Whether they were, and are writing sanctimonious crap or wonderful heartfelt truths, that is for the reader to decide, but they were definately trying to deliver a message to us, their own personal message. These arty picture poems seem to be a good way to do that, ok they won't give us loads of lovely words to think about, but they'll give us the epigram, the little nugget of thought to go off and chew on, and let's face it, a poet will usually amble their way through a whole poem to make the same point. Poets can use this medium to animate their emotions.

Writing groups

2005-11-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

The first link is one that Andy gave to us last weed, and the others some of the things we could subscribe to, to help with our writing.
http://writesuccess.com/ezines_and_discussion_groups.htm
Get-It-In-Writing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
childrens-writers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
freelancewriters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com < freelancewriters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>
poetry_and_writing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
My email connection isn't working properly here at home, so I am saving the addresses here for when it's fixed.

Ezines or Eyeruin'e's

2005-11-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

Once again, as with anything technical, I find myself battling against a kind of inbuilt reluctance to even meet the world of ezines halfway. I do accept that this is probably due to my own personal tastes rather than the whole of the techno-world being a BAD place!! The problem for me is much bigger than ezines though, they are only a miniscule part of the whole computer culture, and THAT is what I'm struggling with. Yes, I have a problem with the WHOLE of the techno age in general, and so I feel duty bound to talk about the ethos of that and get it off my chest before actually doing something useful with ezines.
At a glance, it seems to me that they are just another aspect of the computer age, born to add emphasis to the ever growing disposable aspect of the world in which we live, one click and they are gone. On the positive side though, the amount of electriciy required to read an ezine is probably not as damaging to the environment as the amount of trees killed to print paper magazines. They are fairly quick to access, we don't have to run down to the corner shop in the rain to fetch them, they will never be out of stock and there will also never be a superfluity either. Great. So why am I not impressed?
I think it is because I am oldfashioned, I'll be the first to admit that. If you have grown up with this technology then I can see that it probably seems wonderful to have so much information there at your fingertips whenever you want it. I, on the other hand didn't, my computer studies lessons were spent learning about binary codes and Charles Babbage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage), we all eagerly stood around a tinsey wincey computer screen while the teacher shouted to be heard above the whirring and clanking of the huge wall known as the Central Processing Unit. Of course, it all changed with Clive Sinclair's (http://www.mensa.org.uk/mensa/clivesinclair.html) wonderful ZX81! Whoopee! Now we could all build our own personal computers and get programming (as long as we had fingers the size of hamster paws!). I'll never forget that first rush of adrenolin when we learned how to make a white line move horizontally across a screen. WOW! Perhaps now you can see how my unstinting aversion began.
I can't get my mind set to change, my idea of reading a magazine goes hand in hand with a comfy sofa and a glass of something with a percentage. Sitting on my dining room chair in front of a glaring screen is not relaxing, no matter how big the glass of wine. For me, if I'm at the computer I'm working, and I can't get myself out of that way of thinking. Someone has to invent a more 'homely' way of home computing before I will EVER warm to the idea of it being fun. What is it doing to our posture and our eyes, not to mention our brains?
From my little space way back in the corner (and way, WAY back in time!), I suppose I can see the advantages of ezines aswell. We all approach literature differently, some like to cut to the important bits while some enjoy wading through the pages inbetween, even if they do seem like treacle around our knees. You've guessed it, I'm a treacle girl myself, and yet I would easily be able to click to the points of interest in an ezine without feeling guilty about skipping pages. So that is a good thing, it would save me so much time (well it would if I ever had time to read one). Because an ezine is there in front of us on a one dimensional screen, our brain doesn't get the physical impression of a magazine, we can't feel it's weight between our fingers, we don't have to see how many pages we are skimming over and missing out in order to get to the information we are looking for, it is quick and direct, or as quick and direct as we choose to make it. The only things to hook us in are the catchy titles on that first page which are designed to grab our interest at a glance. I have to admit that if I wanted to find out about something, unless the books or magazines were on my bookcase, the net would be the first place I'd look, so I would read an ezine for the information I could obtain from it and not for the pleasure of reading it. So it obviously depends on why we read magazines, for fun or for information? Or both? Again it's down to the kind of individuals we are. I would say that magazines are far more portable than a computer, even though they only hold a microcosm of the information. But then, why would we need all of that other info? Surely we are capable of choosing the right magazine for ourselves, containing the stuff we want to read about, or can't we do that anymore either? Are computers making us more indecisive? AAARRRGGGHHHH my brain is going to explode! We can stick magazines into our pocket and read them anywhere there is light enough to see, dipping into them instantly without having to switch on and log in.
I suppose until everyone has a lap top that they can take on the bus, people access the world and its information with their mobile phones, ah yes, those tiny brain frying devices that think 'text language' is cool (don't get me started on that!). Their very size seems to be indicative of what the whole computer culture is doing, it hones us in, pulls us into smaller and smaller units, while on the one hand we are interacting with a wide and vast population, on the other hand we are becoming increasingly more introverted. Our phone is now our new 'best friend' we can't possibly leave the house without it, on a bus or train, it is the first thing people reach for, it saves them from having to make eye contact with people around them and communicate. At least when people used to hide behind magazines or newspapers, other people around them would be able to read whatwas on the front cover! It just seemed more sociable somehow.

On the subject of sociability, I also think of our children. It's wonderful to be able to talk directly to someone in Florida, but not when it stops you from interacting on a 'real' face to face level with the people who live in the same house. My daughters have friends who would rather e-chat than go out in a group for the evening, so are we developing social skills here or putting an end to them altogether? I would feel more comfortable knowing that my kids were sitting in the garden with their mates, reading a magazine out in the sun rather than burning their eyes out with computer rays. Then there is the issue of ezines not being edited or cencored, freedom of speech is important, but what if little eight year old Frankie is reading his favourite ezine and somehow manages to click on an undesirable link? Publishing and censoreship are currently the shifting sands of the computer world, are our internet providers doing enough to keep on top of it, or are we just going to let everything be out there the whole of the time for everyone to see from now on?
I feel that in many ways the computer age has changed too quickly without giving people the chance to observe how it is affecting society, there isn't time to stand back and take stock, no one seems to be sorting the teething problems out before the next change happens. We are in the age of computer culture, an ever expanding, constantly changing world which has had a vast effect on society. We can swap and change our coices, our decisions, with one quick click, does that mean then, that we adopt this into other important areas of our lifestyles too, areas that need sensitivity and thoughtfulness? We don't need to stop and think anymore, we can change our mind anyway, just click the mouse, so why bother to stop and think at all. I WANT TO STOP AND THINK!

Right now I've done that I might be able to contradict myself completely and be really positive in the next post.

Creative writing software.

2005-11-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

Sent this to 'ajl' but thought I should post it onto my own site aswell.
Wehay!!! I went in to school this morning to find it deserted! They are having two weeks off for half term and no one told me. What a LOVELY surprise, so as you can see, I came straight home, cuddled my delighted dingo dogs, and made a coffee while my computer chuntered and groaned itself into the land of the living.
I'm not sure I agree about the writing package. Yes it can help us to be creative, but I suspect it could also have a restricting effect on our own imagination. Yes, it would help to keep us on the 'right' path, but sometimes isn't it good to let our imagination amble off in a different direction? In deviating from our original idea, we might find a new, totally exciting angle that we would have otherwise missed within the confines of 'creative writing' software.
I think it is a good idea for people to learn the craft in a methodical way and can't understand why primary schools, where literacy skills seem to be plummeting to an all time low (although the government probably wouldn't say that!) haven't started using packages like the one we looked at. But as I said in our lecture, laying down a set of rules against something which primarily comes from our own unique, individual imaginations is a bit like the Suzuki violin method, it creates very accurate, perfect musicians which leads to crystal clear, soulless playing! What I suppose I'm saying is that it's a good grounding, as long as people move on and develop their own style after using it.
Right, that's my very overdue comment on our lecture from weeks ago, now I'll endeavour to get up to date on the rest of the techno-lectures, and try not to look around me at all the kitchen debris and dust on top of which I am currently balancing.
look forward to seeing you on Wed. X

2:35 AM

New Technology

2005-10-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

The first interesting point we all realised was that nowadays, children spend equally as much time on the computer as they do watching t.v.
It seems funny to be thinking in these terms when really only a few years ago children didn't have televisions to watch! If today's children are clinically obese, then what will tomorrows children be?
We looked at a blogg http://www.lazytown.com/ where writers could add to the storyline of a tv programme, this programme was Our last lesson looked at how writers can use new technology to help them.

Looking at all the millions and zillions of bloggs out there!

2005-10-10T12:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.leatheregg.com/bloggercode/ This looked like an interesting site to help us to connect with bloggs we are interested in.

29th September 2005

2005-09-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

Hello world! This is scary to think that ANYONE in the world can read what I'm writing, so I think I'll stop now and have a think instead!