Merh!: What Writing Is, Was, And Will Be

            As far back as you look in human history it can be said that there is some form of writing, whether it is drawings on cave walls or when the first alphabet was actually created. The idea of writing has never really changed, it is used to write down stories and facts and arguments. The materiality of writing on the other hand has had quite the evolution from its early stages. I’m sure that by now you have noticed that you are not reading this paper on a cave wall, so how did we get to this, and why, and where will we go from here. Well There are many historians that can sit down and tell you how writing as we know it came to be, through papyrus, codex and book to where we are now. However what we do not know is where we are going and if this evolution will continue. Right now we are at a crossroads when it comes to writing, we have the printed book, which has been present for quite some time and has dictated the textual word, but at the same time we as a society are starting to explore the new possibilities that writing on the Internet and the computer can offer. Both sides have unique benefits that the other really cannot offer. So truthfully when it comes to the question of where is writing at now, and where is it headed? The best I can do is shrug my shoulders and say “merh”. We are currently at a stand still between the two forms of writing and there’s a possibility that either side could prevail. So we are faced with the decision of whether or not to keep a method that has worked for us for centuries, or to embrace a new method that is still just emerging as a writing tool. To figure out what we should do, we have to first realize what the advantages of both are.

            First let’s start with the advantages that exist in printed text. According to Jay David Bolter “for most of us today, the printed book remains the embodiment of text” (Bolter) and he is right, if I talk about a novel most people would get the image of a book in there heads. The printed text still has a hold on our minds; it is what writing should be for most of us. The majority of people learned how to read out of a textbook or some form of printed text. Because of this, these people will most likely regard the printed book as the primary form of writing, because to those people it is first and it was in much more abundance. There is nothing wrong with the printed book, and because of this and our comfort with it, it is going to make it even harder for us to change from this form of writing. Perhaps the number one thing that the printed book has going for it is that it was first, before the electronic book and the Internet. Seeing as the printed book has always worked, there is no immediate need to fix it. So not only is the new form of writing that replaces going to have to improve on it, but it is going to have to improve on it so much that we are willing to take the chance to switch from the one form of writing to the other.

            The second thing that gives the printed book an advantage is its tangibility. Even Alex Breen in a blog post saying that he became a computer geek admits “I still feel attached to both the physicality and literary structure of a real novel” (Breen). There is something about the feel of a book that captivates people; they are drawn to the touch of the pages, and the ability to turn each individual page as they continue to read. I personally find a comfort in the smell of a new book, and that sent helps me to get lost in the words as the jump off of the pages at me. These are things that electronic books cannot have. EBooks can never imitate the smell or feel of a book, they may be programmed to look like a book and seemingly turn pages the same way a book would, but anyone who has read a book and then used an eBook reading device can tell you that it is not the same thing. Somewhere in the worn down torn up pages of an old book there is a sense of home, and a connection made with everyone else who has read that book before you. An eBook cannot offer that, you cannot see the finger marks on an eBook that you can find on every page of an old book. Printed books become more than just text, they are things that seem to hold not just the story written on it’s pages but also the stories of everyone who has read the book, and new books give you the ability to put your own story on it.

            The eBook on the other hand offers us a range of new abilities with the accompaniment of the Internet. One of these abilities is convenience. With printed books you have to go to a book store to buy the book you want, and once you are there you have to find the book somewhere on the multitude of shelves that fill the store. This problem is eliminated with most eBook readers. Most eBook readers allow you to purchase the book you want from just about anywhere with Internet service. And beyond that you do not have to look through dozens of shelves to find the book you want. Instead you can just type in the title or author into a search bar and the book that you are looking for should come up in a matter of seconds, there for your reading. The convenience of eBooks is a vast improvement over the process of buying printed books, and it also gives you other options in shopping for the book. In most eBook stores you can pull up comments on a book in seconds. This allows you to see what other people think of the book before you actually purchase it so that you can see if it is worth your money, or if it is really what you are looking for.

            The Convenience of the eBook doesn’t stop there however. Using computers and the Internet we can amass a library of thousands of books in a space no larger than your hand. Humans have always tried to organize all of their knowledge and information in one place, it’s this desire that lead to the creation of libraries and encyclopedia. In the form of these computers and trough the Internet we are given another option for gathering all of our information under one roof, so to say. The Internet offers us an ability that has not been truly available, and that is the idea to store all of our books, writings, and teachings in one place for anyone to access. As Bolter says “as full texts become available online, we see the urge to create a ‘universal’ database”(Bolter 93). This quote is saying that because all of these texts and writings are appearing online anyway, we see the opportunity to organize them in one place for everyone to access. This has never been attainable because of the massive amounts of writings and texts. It would take an enormous building to house all of these books, to a point where it would be pointless to even try to get all of these texts in one place. The second reason you would not be able to do this with printed books is because they would all have to be in one location. So say this grand library was in New York, even someone from Boston would have to travel some two hundred miles to use these books, and someone in china would have to travel to the other side of the globe. Using computers and the Internet all of these books could be compressed into one building of memory and using the Internet anyone could access these books from there own computer or eBook reader from all over the world. The eBook and electronic writing gives us large advancements when it comes to the ability to obtain materials as well as the ability to store materials.

            Both of these two options provide something different than the other. In the eBook there is an ability to amass great amounts of information to be accessed my the masses, however to get that you have to give up the comfort and the home-like feeling that people get from printed books. So even examining both sides of this evolution of writing we are still faced with an extremely difficult decision. However the solution may be much easier than we realize. Earlier in this piece I referred to this dilemma of electronic writing versus print writing as being in a state of what I call merh. However perhaps this state is better than we think. In the stand still that we are currently in we get the best of both worlds. Using the Internet and computers we can still distribute writing easily and quickly to the masses. However by keeping printed books as well we create a standard that writers want to meet, to be able to have people by the book in print and receive that home-like feeling of it. I believe that we will not sacrifice the comfort that comes with printed books, because in them we find a tangible escape. At the same time I believe that we will continue to explore what the Internet and electronic writing has to offer because we are always looking to improve upon what we have. So if you ask me what the materiality of writing is now and what it will be, I believe that it is “merh” and I think that it will remain in that state for a long time to come.

Bibliography

Bolter, Jay D. Second Edition ed. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001. Print.

"Response to Bolter." Breenbrain. Web. 27 Apr. 2011. <http://breenbrain.blogspot.com/2011/03/response-to-bolter.html>.

Chapter 6 Refashioned Dialogues

Observe: In this prezi The group did not only use quotes from the chapter that their presentation is about but also some of their own ideas. The group also used a couple of videos and pictures to aid the argument that they formed in the text. From each statement to the next there is a logical order in which the audience can follow and they will not get lost among random ideas. However even though there is a connection in thought from each point to the next there is not a connection in the orientation of each statement.

Analyze: I think the groups main point was that writing does not need to have one specific structure, but it can be turned and altered to fit each individual writers ideas and form. I think that this point was very strong with things that they did such as the video in which print was reversed as well as the point that was written backwards. I thought that the presentation also showed well the new forms available to us now with computers and pictures. Overall I think the presentation was very clear and well structured… or well not structured whichever the group would prefer.

Question:

Although we do not have just one way of writing anymore do you think that having one structured way has its benefits?

Do you think that experimenting with the structure in which we write will make our writing to confusing and we will lose our points?

Is it possible that with too many forms of writing it will be unclear as to how to read?

Will we keep a similar structure as to what we have now, or will we create something entirely new?

Do we experiment with these structures because our current one is not good enough?

Do you ever think we will settle on just one form of writing?

Reflection on Chapter 5 The Electronic Book

            In our presentation I thought we did a good job of hitting our points, being the history of print leading up to the electronic age as well as how we are using computers to make the book and organization of the book electronic. We tried to show all sides of the argument that we were showing, in that we wanted to present the good eBooks can do as well as the benefits that the printed books have to offer.

            I think that we presented the points and ideas well. I was happy about the order that each quote or idea progressed in. I thought that each statement transition both from the statement before it as well as transitioned into the next quote or statement. We also tried to break up the presentation into three main parts however I was happy that even between these parts we were able to maintain this flow so that although the sections created an order they were not necessary.

            Something that I would’ve like to change in our presentation is I would have liked more audience participation. I feel like we were just presenting facts but were not challenged on them so we did not have to really provide any explanation or back-up to what we were saying. I also would’ve liked a little more free-range discussion. Instead of just staying on one course I would’ve liked to break down and present more of the arguments that exist on the subject that we were presenting instead of just stating some of the facts and our own opinions. However even without these things I was very happy with how the prezi went.

Ch. 4 The Breakout Of The Visual

Observe: This prezi uses purely quotes to for their visual argument, meaning that they did not include any personal thoughts in their presentation. The presentation does include some examples of visuals, such as a graph and an illustration in an early book. The size and orientation of the textual aspects of the prezi vary and have no real order besides a logical sense of what they are saying.

Analyze: The argument that this prezi is making is the importance and significance that visuals have. The presentation argues that in some cases visuals are more powerful than the text itself and hold meaning that words and books cannot. The presentation also talks about how it is becoming more and more common to see a visual to be a representation of the text that it is accompanying. The presentation points out that today even though we have certain textual arguments or stories, we also attempt to make them visual or to add visuals to them to further the point and how the internet is allowing us to do this more and more.

Question:

Do you believe that the visual is in fact more powerful than the text?

When talking about movies, do you think that more people would rather watch the movie or read the book?

For those who would rather watch the movie than read the book, is it because the visual is more powerful or just easy?

Why do you think that in early manuscripts so much effort was put into visuals?

Were visuals left our of printed texts because they were not seen to add much to the text?

Do you think a writing style with purely the visual could ever exist in this age?

Ch. 3 Hypertext and The Remediation of Print

http://prezi.com/ltd96tjbiajm/hypertext/

Observe: In this prezi, the ideas flow into each other one after the other, and are presented to the reader in a logical order that he or she can follow. However even though the ideas are presented in a logical sequence the physical action of moving from one idea to the next in the prezi is somewhat random, as is the size and orientation of the words. The prezi not only use quotes but also statements from the creators. This prezi also uses pictures and a video along with the written aspect.

Analyze: This prezi does not have a real argument to it, its main point is to explain the concept of hypertext to its viewer. The points addressed in the prezi explain what hypertext is as well as what it offers and how it is used. The presenters tried to argue that hypertext is a large improvement, being able to directly link one material to another.

Questions:

Where did this idea come from, as in what brought about the idea of connecting texts and ideas?

Can Hypertext worsen an argument by linking to an irrelevant piece of writing?

Along with Hypertext is there the risk that the reader continues to go from page to page and never returns to finish the original?

Is Hypertext a new thing, or just an easier way of doing something we had in the form of an index?

Does Hypertext change the way we write or does it just offer a new way to read?

Can it be said that this prezi is a form of hypertext, bringing you from media to media and idea to idea?

Blind Write

The following was typed without the use of a monitor:

            Every family has a storyteller, mine is no different. Although my mother would love to take the title, she is not, it is my brother Bill, the journalist, who takes this title for my family.Perhaps my brothers favorite story to tell is of a time when me an my brothers were younger. When we were kids the middle child of me and my two brothers, Patrick,  and my brother bill would fight, however pats tactics were a little different. As my brother will tell the story pat was thinking ahead, for on our deck, which was only a tep up, we had folding chairs which pat would throw at my brother billy’s knees. Bill will always blaim these instances for his bad knees and admit defeat to my pat. The way Bill tells story like these is with much emotion and humor and is something that has always affected how I myself write or tell stories. My brothers storytelling techniques have taught me  me how to use humor to drive a point or keep my listeners and readers interested in what is occasionally a boring subject.

Visual Argument On The Word Part

http://www.box.net/shared/hfuok2n9x5

            The existence of a visual argument is difficult to prove, however this was my goal when I created a project on a visual argument for the word part. In the project I attempted to argue the idea that everything is a part of something bigger. How I went about doing this was by first showing images that were purely isolated parts such as a slice of pizza, a car wheel, or one skyscraper in a skyline. These were my parts however I needed to show that they were all part of something bigger. To accomplish this I then took the pictures of the isolated parts and had the whole of the picture fade in around the, such as the pizza slice turning into a pizza, the wheel turning into the whole car, and the one skyscraper joined by others to make a city skyline.

            For an argument to exist it must be able to be rejected or accepted. In this project, the argument is that everything is a part of something bigger. In J. Anthony Blair’s article he expresses that “claims and reasons have to be propositional” meaning that you cannot simply present facts as an argument. In my project I believe that you can argue that the first set of pictures, what I call the parts, are not parts but whole things themselves although the presentation is trying to show that they are still a part of something bigger. For instance, it can be said that the example in the presentation of a lone skyscraper in a city skyline is simply that, a lone skyscraper. The presentation later shows that, the same skyscraper, is only one building out of many in the same picture. This is showing that although the argument exists that the first skyscraper is just a skyscraper it is also part of a bigger collection of buildings. So in the presentation there are two views that can be taken on each example, however the presentation is trying to make one of those views apparent as well as argue that view. I think that in this way my presentation meets Blair’s standards for an argument.

            One requirement for a visual argument is the argument itself and that it can be expressed. The argument in my project is that everything is a part of something bigger. The way that the project goes about showing this is that it takes the parts introduced in the first set of pictures, and in the second set of pictures transforms the one part into a whole of something else. The project clearly expresses this in the transformation of one part into the bigger picture. When the part transforms into the bigger picture it is showing how it contributes to the whole, and that that one part in needed. This is how the argument of everything being a part of a bigger picture is presented in the project.

            The project was not set up to be predictable, but rather to lead you to its point step by step, picture by picture. However once the viewer understands the pattern of how each part transformed into the whole picture it was taken out of then it becomes predictable. At this point you stop seeing each picture as just one part, but what it is part of. Once the viewer starts predicting the part as what it is part of then they are agreeing with the argument that everything is a part of something else, and they are now looking for what the images are a part of. The final transition of images is from a picture of a woman to a picture of earth, implying that each person is part of the earth. This final transition is attempting to bring the viewer to recognize a common idea that we are all part of a global community, so that the viewer see’s themselves as a part, as well as see what they are a part of. In doing this, the presentation feeds on the common idea that most are familiar with to personalize its point.

            In setting up my project, the organization of the pictures was crucial to my method of argument. As Gunther Kress said “Meaning… is attached ‘being first’ and to ‘being last’” which is something that held very true in the presentation of my argument. My project was structured to show isolated parts at first, and then show each of these parts fading into a whole of something bigger. However if I were to reverse the order in which I showed these two things, the whole picture fading into one part, the message that would become more prevalent is that every whole can be broken up into parts, as opposed to everything is a part of a bigger whole. This shows how important the arrangement of images is in a visual argument, the same pictures could be present but in a different order and that would change the message a viewer would get.

            The visual arguments that were presented in class all presented each respective point well. The combination of the pictures in each presentation as well as how they were set up helped to lead the audience to the point as well as provide evidence to it. However without the multiple pictures and structure of the presentations I do not believe that the arguments could have been present without a verbal explanation. So although a visual argument is not as powerful as a verbal argument, in which you can outline your exact points, the visual argument can still present evidence to lead the viewer to a conclusion in an argument. However even though a visual argument may not be able to pinpoint an exact argument, it can transfer a way of thinking, emotion, or felling that may not be present in black and white words on a page. A visual argument is a unique way of presenting a point however the clearest method of argument is still verbally, but if you put the two methods together than the argument can truly be powerful.

  

Bibliography

Blair, J. Anthony. “Argumentation and Advocacy”. River Falls: 1996

Kress, Gunther. “Literacy In The New Media Age”. New York: Routledge, 2003