Self Reflection

Self Reflection

After completing this project, and putting a lot of work into it, I think that it is best described as an attempt at revision in the sense of the word that is put forth by people like Joseph Harris.  Not only was I attempting to “fix” things like my logic and rhetoric, but I was also trying to take the writing further.  The piece that I derived this final project from, the third writing project, turned out to be a piece that ended up needing some revision as it ended up being submitted with some work left to do.  Therefore, what better opportunity was there to attempt to take this writing further and expand on some of the ideas that I started to construct during the first attempt?  I believe that I have achieved some level of revision in this piece.  It did, however, get kind of hard toward the end because I started running out of things to talk about or contest.  In the end though I think I can say with a good level of conviction that I achieved some level of revision.  I have expanded as much as I can see possible on the ideas that I tried to communicate in the previous attempt, and even went to places in the writing that I didn’t go before.  For example, in some places I used the tactic of counter argument to try and move the piece along without too much repetition or stagnation.  Ultimately, I think that I was able to achieve a level of proficiency with regard to revision, at least the kind of revision that we learned about in this class, and was able to practice it well in trying to revisit this third writing project.
Secondly, as a writer at Washington College, I think that I have progressed quite a bit since high school and have achieved a lot as a writer too.  Coming into this year, I was pretty well set with elocution and all but where I really needed practice and development was in mainly the area of argument.  Throughout GRW and this course though I feel that I have become more adept at argument, as well as academic writing in general.  In high school, over all, I wrote more expository or analytical types of essays than I did the kinds of academic ones that I have been writing here.

At the end of the day, progression as a writer is an ongoing thing.  Luckily I am at a school like Washington College that values writing and the humanities so highly.  Likely by the time that I am a senior I will have made even much more progress than I have this year, and who knows what my writing will be like then.  In the meantime, I plan to keep focusing on many of the things that we talked about this term in English class: pathos, ethos, and logos.   It seems that academic writing, which is really the only kind of writing that I have experienced here at Washington, involves a significant proficiency at these things, and therefore a steady focus on these should help me improve even more.  In any event I am surprised at the improvements that I have made, and am intrigued at to what the future will bring in terms of my ability as a writer.

Writing Project 3 (earlier version that was revised)

Mediated Literature: Success or Failure?

            Literature is a long used tool of the human race, and has developed quite a lot over a long span of time.  From pictures on cave walls that communicated stories and events, to oral expressions of these stories, and then to written text and most recently novels and books, literature sure has come a long way.  What we are dealing with now is a new development in the evolution of literature.  This new trend is what is known as mediated literature.  Although it is somewhat hard to define “mediated literature”, what can be said about it is that in our current culture there are many forms of expression, of which literature is one, that are known as media.  Books and novels are the most longstanding form, but now we also have television, the Internet, movies, and based on these, hybrid print and electronic texts.

Just as with any new development in our culture this mediated literature has been put under some acute scrutiny that is concerned with its value to society.  When the novel came around as the new mediation of written language, and ultimately of literature, it was not taken with very much acceptance.  However, over time it has become one of the most used and accepted aspects of academic culture especially.  Part of this strife that turned into success, as Marshall McLuhan states in his book The Medium is the Massage, is that written language and eventually the book or novel created the Public.  “Until writing was invented, men lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror” (McLuhan, 48).  Naturally when literature was mediated in the oral form, if you weren’t around to hear a new idea be communicated, then you wouldn’t know about it or be able to enjoy it.  Written language, and eventually books then eradicated this limitation by making new ideas and stories available to everyone.

While this is all well and good, the question now is, is mediation and remediation of literature good or bad in the grand scheme of things?  Throughout this course, we have looked at many critical perspectives, of which McLuhan is one, that have looked at this question with varying points of view and feelings.  Some critics, especially Sven Birkerts or Nicholas Carr, would come from the more extreme side of the spectrum, and tell you essentially that remediated literature, specifically of the book, is the signal of the demise of the human literary tradition, while others like Marshall McLuhan or Janet Murray, will come from the position that they are aware of what is happening, but aren’t going to try to convince you that it is the demise of humankind as we know it.  With regard to Murray, she feels that since she has been exposed to both sides of the issue, in working for IBM and also having a natural liking to books, the trend we are seeing is detrimental to literature in a way, but there is a lot of good that can come out of it if you only just considerate and give it a chance.  McLuhan is one of the most laid back, for lack of a better term, of the perspectives that we have looked at, and indicates that he knows what is going on but isn’t going to stick by a particular side like Birkerts does.

In consideration of all of this, now comes my interpretation of this.  The way I see it, these newer forms of mediated literature, i.e. hybrid texts, electronic texts, books with extensive illustrations like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, attest to the fact that things change over time.  If nothing ever changed or advanced itself, even if that advancement wasn’t particularly successful, then we wouldn’t have the kind of extensive society that we live in today.  While they do have their limitations, and their possible aspects that are more detrimental than good, I think that they aren’t necessarily as horrid as some have said.  For example, hybrid texts like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, have  the traditional narrative aspect partnered with the contemporary use of a large amount of extensive illustrations that show you what is going on almost like a flipbook or movie.  This is good in that it allows for reduced conflagration in visual depiction of what is going on, but at the same time does a lot of the intellectual work for you.  This intellectual work would be in the form of forming your own interpretation about what is going on and therefore your opinions about it, and some would say that this is not a good thing of course.  Similarly, with the electronic text, the museum; it has a story and a plot but is so scattered and non linear that it is hard to follow which makes for a confusing literary experience.

Another aspect of my interpretation about this is that I notice that I don’t feel very strongly about this.  At least not as strong as someone like Birkerts.  In his introduction he puts forth an assertion that is pretty much the essence of his general feeling and argument throughout the book.

“The essays, I find, still make a great deal of sense to me, as a record of this cultural watershed but also for the points they put forward and the anxieties they express. These last have not been vanquished and in some ways the changes are dispiriting.  The onetime reigning assumptions of the humanities have been deeply shaken, if not yet dethroned-this is clear- even if we still agree to pay them a certain homage.  Literature and old-style contemplative reading seem enfeebled-almost as if they need to be argued for, helped along by the elbow…But the belief in the gathered weight of literary expression, what we used to consider our cultural ballast, is fading and is likely to fade further. (Birkerts, xii, Introduction)”

I just personally don’t feel that things are this bleak with regard to literature.  I mean, literature still exists, and people still engage in it; maybe just not as much as in times before the digital revolution of course.  Also, I just feel that what we have been looking at, through Birkerts and McLuhan, is evidence of the changing of the times.  People still read books, but now there just are more ways to experience literature than books, which allows people to experience literature in a way that they prefer, and in a way that compels them.  This is what literature has become.

 

Final Revised Essay

Mediated Literature: A Success or Failure? Revisited

            Revision, as we have learned, is not simply the changing of grammar and syntax in very obvious and limited ways in order to make a paper better.  Revision, involves taking your writing further; taking it to places that you didn’t before, discovering things you never thought of before.  I think that my attempt at the third writing project this semester would make a great test subject for honing my skills in revision.  In my third writing project I noticed a bit of ambiguity in my writing, and quite a bit of haste in the way that it was written.  I dabbled in a lot of ideas and started to craft something, but as things turned out it was completed pretty prematurely.  Maybe this is just a part of writing; the part where one writes a piece that does not turn out in a particularly favorable way.  In fact this seems to happen quite a lot.  In any event, I will now try to revise this piece in both senses of the word.

In my previous attempt at this, as aforementioned, I dabbled in many ideas.  I started out talking about how literature is a timeless, and in many ways vital tool used by the human race.  Also, inherent in this is that literature, is an aspect of our culture as humans that changes fundamentally very often, and in very linear and considerable ways, which provides context for arguments like Birkerts and Carr and other critics that we have used for the purposes of this course.  For example, literary expression within modern human culture started with the oral tradition, moved on to written language, then books, and now to what is called “hyper mediated” literature.  These involve hybrid texts, electronic texts, and other forms of literature that have branched off from these previously described forebears.  Just as with any change in society, there is an inevitable piece of human nature that does not allow us to take too quickly to whatever it is that is being changed.  This is exactly what has happened over the years, and is being thought about in our critical texts like McLuhan and Birkerts.  For example, Marshall McLuhan in his book The Medium is the Massage Talked about how the book “created the public.” Also, Sven Birkerts in his critique of this trend talked about how literature as we know it is being “deeply shaken” and “enfeebled” by these changes.

In a very convoluted and ambiguous way, I then tried to conceive some sort of stance on how I felt about this whole issue.  I started out with the thought that these new forms of literature, these mediated forms, are just a testament to how things change over time; how if nothing ever changed in the world, who is to say where we would be as a society. I then went on to describe how I feel that while they have their detrimental aspects, these new forms of literature can provide some positive contributions to society that only need to be given a chance to be seen.  It seems that I was channeling a critic like Janet Murray, with a more open-ended approach to the whole thing.  But at the same time, I also noticed that I didn’t feel strongly about this topic, as someone like Sven Birkerts does and therefore had a hard time figuring out where to go from here. Ultimately, I ended up making a very abrupt ending by circling back to my thought that things aren’t as bad as some make them out to be.  Change in literature, is something that is not only inevitable but also essential to its essence.

This is stylistically the best way for me to describe the nature of this revision without completely restating what I wrote.  It also, I think, provides a good framework for where I want to go with this project.  Taking my interpretation with regard to this issue of “mediated literature”, and going further with it.    Therefore, I would like to look at some of the critical perspectives that have helped substantiate the discussion of this issue, and try to gain a better understanding of my argument with regard to this literary problem.  I first used the words of Marshall McLuhan about how writing, and eventually the book, “created the public”. “Until writing was invented men lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror” (McLuhan 48).   When one first looks at these words they seem rather strange.  Surely the oral tradition, which would have preceded written language, wasn’t like that.   Speech is just as public as writing is, unless of course one is not present at the time when something is spoken, and then that just means that they are ignorant of whatever idea or development has taken place until someone informs them of the occurrence.  Nonetheless, the oral tradition was very public on its own, and written language may be even more private than McLuhan is claiming the oral tradition to be, given that the person writing something writes it, it is read by a number of different people, and those people make their own opinions of that which they read and then share those opinions with other people.  While all this happens, the writer doesn’t know anything about what people think of his writing besides what esteemed critics and demographic statistics show.

Also, writing is, more often than not, done in a relative degree of seclusion, which adds to its private nature.  Therefore, the thoughts, work, and progressive development are conducted “in the dark of the mind”, and in “the world of emotion”.  I May be misinterpreting the true meaning of these words, or what McLuhan intended them to mean, but I think it is pretty clear that literary expression, whether it is oral or written, has never been something that is private.  It has always been public to whatever extent it has been possible for it to be so.

Another example of my assertion that these changes are blown a little out of proportion in the matter we have been studying derives from the work of Sven Birkerts.  He has some very strong opinions about the status of literature in modern society and obviously it means a lot to him.  However, it becomes plain to see that he is maybe a little too extreme, if one only so much as looks at the things that he says.  For example, in his introduction, he states that “The essays, I find, still make a great deal of sense to me, as a record of this cultural watershed but also for the points they put forward and the anxieties they express.  These last have not been vanquished and in some ways the changes are dispiriting.  The onetime reigning assumptions of the humanities have been deeply shaken, if not yet dethroned- this is clear- even if we still agree to pay them a certain homage.  Literature and old-style contemplative reading seem enfeebled- almost as if they need to be argued for, helped along by the elbow… But the belief in the gathered weight of literary expression, what we used to consider our cultural ballast, is fading and is likely to fade further” (Birkerts, xii, Introduction).

It seems as if these critics are taking our natural aversion to the new to a new level.  In my opinion, it is just not feasible to say, “The onetime reigning assumptions of the humanities have been deeply shaken, if not yet dethroned.” If one thinks of the “the onetime reigning assumptions of the humanities”, as things like reading, and writing, then it follows that these things are still done on a notable level.  Maybe they are a little bit decreased in terms of their influence but people still read, write, and do any of the traditional literary practices.  I think it is possible to highlight the changing significance and influence of literary expression as he does here, but I just don’t think that things are quite so extreme.

What remains to be said of this, I feel, is that I am not a person of extreme, or calculated opinions not because of apathy but more because of personality.  Could I be wrong that literature is not being compromised to the extent that a lot of these critics have been saying that it is? The answer to that is that I definitely could.  I am not a huge literary buff or anything but I can say that if you look at things in a certain light it can be seen that literature isn’t quite so bad off.

There are still millions of books all around us.  There are hordes of libraries available for public literary exploration and endeavor.  Reading may now be divided into different forms, such as electronic, and hybridized with other forms of expression, but that simply doesn’t mean that the sky is falling, or that reading and all of literature are being dethroned, and as implied in the words of birkerts- the world as we know it is going to end. There are limitations, and detriments, to changes in literature.  This is true for most things in life considering that nothing is perfect.   With that said, maybe we, should consider that change is not always positive, and isn’t always completely positive.  However, sometimes certain things are lost to make room for new things that may bring positive value of their own.  For example, with the digital age came the degradation of literary things like reading and books, along with many other simple and valued things.  However, over time it has brought many new capabilities and possibilities to society.  These of course would be things like faster communications, easier access to a wide range of information, and other such things.  Thus, I rest my case that things just aren’t as bad as people like birkerts have told us.  They are definitely different than it was in the good old days but that is just due to the inevitable evolution that literary culture demands.

 

 

Mediated Literature: Success or Failure?

Jack Christ
English 101

Professor Meehan

 

Mediated Literature: Success or Failure?

 

            Literature is a long used tool of the human race, and has developed quite a lot over a long span of time.  From pictures on cave walls that communicated stories and events, to oral expressions of these stories, and then to written text and most recently novels and books, literature sure has come a long way.  What we are dealing with now is a new development in the evolution of literature.  This new trend is what is known as mediated literature.  Although it is somewhat hard to define “mediated literature”, what can be said about it is that in our current culture there are many forms of expression, of which literature is one, that are known as media.  Books and novels are the most longstanding form, but now we also have television, the Internet, movies, and based on these, hybrid print and electronic texts. 

Just as with any new development in our culture this mediated literature has been put under some acute scrutiny that is concerned with its value to society.  When the novel came around as the new mediation of written language, and ultimately of literature, it was not taken with very much acceptance.  However, over time it has become one of the most used and accepted aspects of academic culture especially.  Part of this strife that turned into success, as Marshall McLuhan states in his book The Medium is the Massage, is that written language and eventually the book or novel created the Public.  “Until writing was invented, men lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror” (McLuhan, 48).  Naturally when literature was mediated in the oral form, if you weren’t around to hear a new idea be communicated, then you wouldn’t know about it or be able to enjoy it.  Written language, and eventually books then eradicated this limitation by making new ideas and stories available to everyone.

While this is all well and good, the question now is, is mediation and remediation of literature good or bad in the grand scheme of things?  Throughout this course, we have looked at many critical perspectives, of which McLuhan is one, that have looked at this question with varying points of view and feelings.  Some critics, especially Sven Birkerts or Nicholas Carr, would come from the more extreme side of the spectrum, and tell you essentially that remediated literature, specifically of the book, is the signal of the demise of the human literary tradition, while others like Marshall McLuhan or Janet Murray, will come from the position that they are aware of what is happening, but aren’t going to try to convince you that it is the demise of humankind as we know it.  With regard to Murray, she feels that since she has been exposed to both sides of the issue, in working for IBM and also having a natural liking to books, the trend we are seeing is detrimental to literature in a way, but there is a lot of good that can come out of it if you only just considerate and give it a chance.  McLuhan is one of the most laid back, for lack of a better term, of the perspectives that we have looked at, and indicates that he knows what is going on but isn’t going to stick by a particular side like Birkerts does.

In consideration of all of this, now comes my interpretation of this.  The way I see it, these newer forms of mediated literature, i.e. hybrid texts, electronic texts, books with extensive illustrations like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, attest to the fact that things change over time.  If nothing ever changed or advanced itself, even if that advancement wasn’t particularly successful, then we wouldn’t have the kind of extensive society that we live in today.  While they do have their limitations, and their possible aspects that are more detrimental than good, I think that they aren’t necessarily as horrid as some have said.  For example, hybrid texts like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, have  the traditional narrative aspect partnered with the contemporary use of a large amount of extensive illustrations that show you what is going on almost like a flipbook or movie.  This is good in that it allows for reduced conflagration in visual depiction of what is going on, but at the same time does a lot of the intellectual work for you.  This intellectual work would be in the form of forming your own interpretation about what is going on and therefore your opinions about it, and some would say that this is not a good thing of course.  Similarly, with the electronic text, the museum; it has a story and a plot but is so scattered and non linear that it is hard to follow which makes for a confusing literary experience.

Another aspect of my interpretation about this is that I notice that I don’t feel very strongly about this.  At least not as strong as someone like Birkerts.  In his introduction he puts forth an assertion that is pretty much the essence of his general feeling and argument throughout the book.

“The essays, I find, still make a great deal of sense to me, as a record of this cultural watershed but also for the points they put forward and the anxieties they express. These last have not been vanquished and in some ways the changes are dispiriting.  The onetime reigning assumptions of the humanities have been deeply shaken, if not yet dethroned-this is clear- even if we still agree to pay them a certain homage.  Literature and old-style contemplative reading seem enfeebled-almost as if they need to be argued for, helped along by the elbow…But the belief in the gathered weight of literary expression, what we used to consider our cultural ballast, is fading and is likely to fade further. (Birkerts, xii, Introduction)”

I just personally don’t feel that things are this bleak with regard to literature.  I mean, literature still exists, and people still engage in it; maybe just not as much as in times before the digital revolution of course.  Also, I just feel that what we have been looking at, through Birkerts and McLuhan, is evidence of the changing of the times.  People still read books, but now there just are more ways to experience literature than books, which allows people to experience literature in a way that they prefer, and in a way that compels them.  This is what literature has become.

Writing Project 3 Draft

Mediated Literature: Success or Failure?

 

            Literature is a long used tool of the human race, and has developed quite a lot over a long span of time.  From pictures on cave walls that communicated stories and events, to oral expressions of these stories, and then to written text and most recently novels and books, literature sure has come a long way.  What we are dealing with now is a new development in the evolution of literature.  This new trend is what is known as mediated literature.  Although it is somewhat hard to define “mediated literature”, what can be said about it is that in our current culture there are many forms of expression, of which literature is one, that are known as media.  Books and novels are the most longstanding form, but now we also have television, the Internet, movies, and based on these, hybrid print and electronic texts. 

Just as with any new development in our culture this mediated literature has been put under some acute scrutiny that is concerned with its value to society.  When the novel came around as the new mediation of written language, and ultimately of literature, it was not taken with very much acceptance.  However, over time it has become one of the most used and accepted aspects of academic culture especially.  Part of this strife that turned into success, as Marshall McLuhan states in his book The Medium is the Massage, is that written language and eventually the book or novel “created the Public.  “Until writing was invented, men lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror” (McLuhan, 48).  Naturally when literature was mediated in the oral form, if you weren’t around to hear a new idea be communicated, then you wouldn’t know about it or be able to enjoy it.  Written language, and eventually books then eradicated this limitation by making new ideas and stories available to everyone.

While this is all well and good, the question now is, is mediation and remediation of literature good or bad in the grand scheme of things?  Throughout this course, we have looked at many critical perspectives, of which McLuhan is one, that have looked at this question with varying points of view and feelings.  Some critics, especially Sven Birkerts or Nicholas Carr, would come from the more extreme side of the spectrum, and tell you essentially that remediated literature, specifically of the book, is the signal of the demise of the human literary tradition, while others like Marshall McLuhan or Janet Murray, will come from the position that they are aware of what is happening, but aren’t going to try to convince you that it is the demise of humankind as we know it.  With regard to Murray, she feels that since she has been exposed to both sides of the issue, in working for IBM and also having a natural liking to books, the trend we are seeing is detrimental to literature in a way, but there is a lot of good that can come out of it if you only just considerate and give it a chance.  McLuhan is one of the most laid back, for lack of a better term, of the perspectives that we have looked at, and indicates that he knows what is going on but isn’t going to stick by a particular side like Birkerts does.

In consideration of all of this, now comes my interpretation of this.  The way I see it, these newer forms of mediated literature, i.e. hybrid texts, electronic texts, books with extensive illustrations like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, attest to the fact that things change over time.  If nothing ever changed or advanced itself, even if that advancement wasn’t particularly successful, then we wouldn’t have the kind of extensive society that we live in today.  While they do have their limitations, and their possible aspects that are more detrimental than good, I think that they aren’t necessarily as horrid as some have said.

 

Electronic Literature Archive Glog

To be quite honest, when I began this assignment, I didn’t quite understand what was going on, what it was all about, etc.  The whole archive seemed rather ethereal to me and considerably vague in communicating these things to you.  However, as I went along, I found that unknowingly and luckily I took myself in a direction within the exploration of this that I could say I was compelled by. This was the genre, of the many on the site, called “approiated texts”.  These are works of hyper-mediated literature that deal with the nature and constitution of language.

The first text that I stumbled upon was called The Dreamlife of Letters.  This work was called a poem, in its description on the site.  However, it was far from a traditional poem, in that it was something closer to a video or a movie, and contained separate words that formed no particular coherent pattern floating through space.  I guess this was an embodiment of a message that is meant to be evoked by seeing this; specifically that language isn’t completely how we think that it is.  We make it coherent and logical via words and sentences, but in its natural form it is ultimately just words and letters floating in an unrelated fashion through space.  The second text that I came across in this exploration of this new subject was kind of similar in its nature and was titled Windsound.  This was a poem that was formed out of a jumble of letters and scrambled words into a coherent poem read by a clearly artificial computer voice.  This gave it an interesting vibe and relation to hyper-mediation.   The next text that I viewed was a work called soliloquy, which was kind of like a play involving two men having a conversation over a meal at a diner.  The untraditional aspect about this though was that instead of just reading it from a page, you had to reveal what was being said with your mouse, which I found interesting.  Finally, I looked at a work that was an experiment of reading Star Wars from the perspective of George Lucas writing it at his typewriter.  To do this, it presents it to you one letter at a time, with all the sounds and stylistic mannerisms of the typewriter machine.  It was a very interesting and multifaceted hyper-mediated work.  In the end, I found these things interesting, despite the initial ambiguity that I had about what this all meant.  I look forward to discussing this more in class, and getting a better idea of this new medium.  

Hamlet on the Holodeck

Janet Murray’s introduction to her book Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace brings an interesting perspective into our array of critical perspectives in this course.  I found it interesting that she has actually, had exposure to both sides of this spectrum we are looking at, in that she has worked in both the technological and literary fields, and eventually combined her love for both into a profession of educational computing.  This gives her the potential to effectively further our understanding of the changing mediation of literature because of her flexibility on the matter.  I think she also has some ideas that are similar to what other critics we have looked at are implying, but she just puts them forth in a more bipartisan way, which also makes her argument compelling for me.  For example she says, “The new technologies are extending our powers faster than we can assimilate the change” (Murray, 8). This I would think is reminiscent of someone like Carr, with his argument that Google is changing our society for the worse.  I think that since he is taking such a strong position on that issue that he maybe didn’t consider that it is because we are not responding of our own accord to this change that it is having such a great hold on us.  Thus, I think that Murray would definitely be someone that I consider for a possible valid viewpoint for our third project, as we enter the composting period.  I feel that some of the arguments we have seen are a bit- for lack of a better term- extreme.  An example of this would be Birkerts saying with regard to changing media in literature “we are experiencing the gradual but steady erosion of the species itself.”  Murray’s pragmatic way of looking at this issue, along with her assessment of the changing media of literature with different perspectives in mind makes me feel that she would be a good critical view that could make a full and effective project.