blogblogblogblog.

This blog was started as part of my English Studies Writing Class. We are exploring writing in the digital age, hypertext, hyperwords, hypermedia.. hyperhyperhyper. Not only is it fasinating the way in which writing itself is changing, it makes me want to close my laptop, shun technology and be a luddite.

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I've decided I am going to write my paper,on this very blog. Ha, how POMO of me. As I wrote in a recent email. I'm a Pomo Ho. Postmodernism can have me anytime anywhere. Under the sheets, ontop of the sheets, outside in the grass, in the library, you know, as long as it is in the right context and I can multi-task at the same time. It's a POMO world...

So part of the process is going to be posting my rough drafts. By rough, I mean, terrible. The wording, generalizations and weird, possibly incoherent thoughts. Not only is this scary for me, (I'm a bit insecure about my writing in general) it will be strange to see how the essay it progresses. The shitty rough draft is due tomorrow at 2. I still have to crank out four pages, and I have to be up at 7 am, and I have radio and work until class. fuck me. So I have to get it done now. bah Procrastination. Stress.


edit: It's 215 and I just "finished" my rough rough draft.... so I will post the new version here. I'm tired, with 4 hours of sleep and no dolla billz to buy tea, its rough. baaaaaaaaaaaaah



Katherine Bouck
English 301

POMO HO.

Title: Crux of the New Technological Advancement at Conflict with Ideology of Modernists
ramble ramble ramble.ramble ramble ramble.ramble ramble ramble.
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Note: Rough rough draft. I have ideas in mind about how to make this a Postmodern paper, via blog, but I had to start with the modernist notion of writing a paper, per say, getting my shitty rough draft/discovery draft out of the way... plus I have to work out the kinks of getting it online via blog and hyperlink.

The computer screen blankly stares. The white nothingness taunts and laughs, prods and pierces my eyes. My hands sit, idle. There is no soft rhythmic tapping of keys and no thoughts expressed through Times New Roman (aptly sized at twelve point). Instead, my pen scribbles flowing, barely legible cursive on cream pages. As my progression of thoughts near completion, I set my journal, open, its binding running parallel to rectangular keys. Here, I decipher the cursive-ridden words and give them ‘proper’ and acceptable typed form.
(Transition needed, symbolism of the cultural clash shown through my personal experience)

[temp thesis:] Society is a state of transitional flux. While technology has undoubtably made its heavy presence known- ie, society is still feeling the effects of cultural clashes. The old ways of modernists are giving way to the new advancement of Postmodernism. While transitional phases are difficult, technology and more specifically, digital aesthetic (ie- digital use of image, word, video) will implement change, in human cognition. Technology is going to change the very way we think. Since life is a reflection of the human experience, (or vice versa?, transition needed here) Blogging encompasses all the aspects that will effect and change literary theory. (how to tie into cognition?) Not only is there a different text/reader/author relationship, it incorporates the multi-faceted realm of the digital aesthetic. What remains most interesting about blogging is the way it changes the idea of writing and thus the outcome of writing itself. (Where will this take us?)

Recently I began my own blog. (Bah) Writing and I have a close, personal relationship. It is with words, my world is given form and meaning around me. (Trans) I went into blogging with my own bias and hesitations. Real writing should not be in blogs. It should be in published books, read by editors. You should be able to run your fingers over the text. There should be a tangible nature in the act of writing and reading. It is this tangible, real relationship of the text that allows it to be such an effective means of communication for our cognition. (Research theory needed here, how we have information stored?) Or so I perceived. I had spent my whole life valuing what those in books said. What they wrote, their ideas. Little did I realize that I was a Paradoxically Ironic Postmodern taught in a Modernist Educational System (off topic?) Writing, while it is arguably, less Real in the digital realm, has many benefits, perhaps the long term effects of societal movements, like blogging will be beneficial to society overall. Or maybe just adding to Schriller’s theory of alienation in Modern day society. Transition.... youtube video??

Writing on paper is two dimensional. You erase and insert text, the mistakes and marks smear, it leaving a form of permanence. Digital aesthetic does not. As a computer user, we can erase our blogs from existence, we can erased and edit our posts. As if they never existed at all. The fact that you can manipulate text, spelling, grammatics within a document says volumes as well. The nature at which you read texts online also differs greatly. Link to the cyberarts.

Upon reading a text online, you are interacting with it. It is no longer static, in a way it becomes an extension of yourself. Touching the keyboard and interacting with the text. ??


(My blogging experience)
I thought blogging felt less fulfilling. I am a Romantic. I hold true to ideas about writing and what it means to write. I want the pen to touch the paper. I want to see my thoughts as words upon a paper. In my first blog, I even wrote about my ideas about writing. I write for me. Not for you. Not for anyone. Those words are mine, and mine alone. However, there was some type of love, or attachment I began to develop to my blog. I take a lot of photography with my 35mm camera. While words are mine, and mine alone, my images are not. I found it satisfying to put my images somewhere. It holds the illusion that people will actually look at them. I also found it neat to post random things, such as music videos or blurbs of thought.
However, as I think about what I gained as writer I am unsure. While I love writing, more than words can express, ineffably so... (bah reword) I don’t know how I feel about blogging. I like reading other people’s blogs, but there is something unassuming about putting, in a sense, a piece of yourself into the abyss of cyberspace. How can someone be comfortable doing so? The lines are blurred, between once binary categorical organization of personal vs. private. (bring in sourse Blogosphere, link)

(Effects on society)
So what does this hyper-environment do? While making rash assumptions is easy, it is difficult to judge. I believe we are still in a state of change. The internet, blogging, youtube and wiki’s are just now becoming prominent. We are living in a Postmodern age that still adheres to clashing Modernist values. Students still engage in a classroom where they, often times know more about technology than teachers. We still value printed text more so than hypertext. We still get our newspapers to our door. Some people do not have email. [more examples needed] I am not going to make brash statements, only predictions. For it is still in a state of change and one cannot make bold assumptions.

I predict that society will become more alienated, more so than Schiller and Nietzsche predicted. Machines have, and always will be a barrier for human, social interaction. They were in the past, and they are now. As society is progressing (or regressing? What is that theory of societal progression that Jungsik talked about, a 3-d graph… find out) Perhaps there will be a time where people interact less and less. Instead of calling you will text, the realm of the material world will steadily give way to the technological realm. I think the value of printed text will steadily become faint, lessening with time. It pains me to say so. As a lover of books, whose life is dedicated to the ideology behind words. (Too mushy?) I hope that people realize that words, upon a page, Real words and not mere binary code.. (the difference between the two, as shown in the link from cyberarts or perhaps a photo here? Of binary code?)

One thing is certain. Things are changing, far beyond the Aristotelian ideology once thought. Essense is change and change is essence. However, what cannot be determined is the state of this altercation.

I will always sit and scribble cursive on paper. My first drafts will always have the rough transposited (transpose) nature of choppy paranthesis and I will always value writing more on paper than on computer. While postmodern nature of digital aesthetic is interesting study, I find the modern world a bit disjointed and disheartening. I strive to find a whole out of pieces, a bridge between the Modern ideology and the Postmodern world, whether those pieces exist, I have yet to find out.