Out of class #2

Luke Buehrer
Out of Class Essay #2
1st Draft

Dumb Talk

No one argues that the world has changed drastically in the past decade with the rise of technology. When technology comes up, almost every one has an opinion. Some people like Clive Thompson feels that technology is pushing literacy in new exciting directions. Where others like Sven Birkerts feels that “We are experiencing in our times a loss of depth—a loss, that is, of the very paradigm of depth. A sense of the and natural connectedness of things is a function of vertical conscience.” What he basically says here is that we are losing depth and wisdom, because of new conveniences technology offers. I wonder if technology is doing what Birkerts suggest (loss of wisdom) to peoples social lives? Maybe social interaction and communication skills are becoming less important with the new ease of technology, making peoples social and communication skills shallower and less meaningful.
Texting and chat rooms are now a huge form of communication. With cell phones people are now able to carry on conversations from almost anywhere, at any distance and at any time. This seems like it would be a good thing. First it makes communication much more efficient, allows for more social interaction, and can promote relationships. But I wonder if it really is hurting instead of helping. Texting is now more common than phone calls, it’s quicker and allows people to hide behind text. Where people once had to practice carrying on real life conversations, texting offers relief from possible awkward situations. If something uncomfortable comes up, you just stop texting; you don’t have to try ending the conversation. This encourages immature behavior and shallow interaction.
Nicholas Carr, author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” notices a developing trend caused by the Web, “The more they (literate types) use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.” He is saying that the ease of sites like Google and Spark Notes is making reading for extended periods of time harder and harder. It seems to me that this same principle may be true for communication. Like skimming over different texts, you can skim over different conversations in chat rooms, never fully committed to one. This possibly leading to weak skills on carrying on lengthy talks, similar to reading long books or articles. Carr suggests that this inability to read leads to stupidity (hence the title). I wonder if these chat rooms could do the same? If people rarely carry on in deep conversions how could they develop vertical thinking? Yes, personal reflection and resonance is a big key to gaining wisdom, but without others to bounce ideas off wisdom is hard to grasp.
Another more apparent way technology (primarily Texting and chat rooms) is hurting us is just the content of the conversations carried on. Particularly true with teenagers, the conversations revolve around shallow self-center garbage. Since they have access to this all the time there is little effort put forth to have a meaningful talk. When this technology was not around, people had to either write a letter, or call a person up. The only way you would do this is if you truly had something of importance or meaning. You wouldn’t write a letter to a friend saying you were just “hanging ‘round doin’ nothing.” Technology has made communication something that you do when your bored, just to entertain, not gain depth.
One of the biggest things that annoys me with sites like Face Book and Myspace is that it allows you to have friends and a “social life” with out ever leaving you computer. I know lots of people with hundreds of on-line friends, but they don’t know half of them. They just like the idea that they are popular. I personally don’t partake in these sites. I think that to have a social life you must go out and do stuff with others, not just sit around blabbering to people how bored you are. With out real life interaction I find it hard to see how you can call these on-line friends true friends. Relationships are built off of past experiences together. This is hard to accomplish on-line, some people manage to meet on-line, get engaged on-line and first see each other on their wedding day. I don’t know the statistics but I am sure they don’t have the longest marriages out there. Although these sites can help spark relationships, true relationships occur off the computer.
Chat rooms and texting from every angle I look, seem to hurt people social, and communication skill. These sites promote easy escape from awkward situations, encourage skimming of conversations that ultimately leads to poor communication skills, let people blabber on about them selves, reinforcing immature habits, and also kill true social lives. These sites really just add up to a lot of dumb talk.

Standing Before a Window RR#7 Jeff Richmond

Susan Sontag in her paper “In Plato’s Cave” brings my attention to task on my interaction with still media, photography. I appreciate photographs, but I'm not sure if I have ever thought about how they influence my life, or how they express meaning. I’ll admit I had not given much thought to the influence of photos in my life as I have always seen more influence from video.
Sontag brings up the idea that the photo is a new medium of seeing the world. Almost to say that it is a new bit of software for our minds to understand our experiences. “In Plato's Cave” Sontag starts by inferring that we started to learn from the images photos gave us access to. It seemed not to be the images themselves, but the ideas framed in them that gave strength to the influences they had on our mind, and I'm sure our culture as well. Sontag's statement “This very instability of the photographing eye changes the terms of confinement in the cave, our world” is a reference to how much of the world is photographed. Not though, how much is photographed, but how much those photos have changed how we see the photos we take.
Our scope of reality changes by the ideas captured by the eye of the camera. I often think about the influence that video has but seeing still images reminded me that there are forces that seem almost more primal in experience. The still photo reminds me that video came from somewhere, photography, and that seeming simpler objects can give a coarser and seeming more real experience.
There are places on this planet that are almost covered with pictures. We have a varying understanding of these still pictures, and those pictures influence our relation to other pictures yet. Is there a feedback loop here, a prophecy playing out in a memetic landscape? One can only notice how these images influence the way we see the world and threw that influence we must take into account the fact that our way of seeing things change, dramatically, over time. Still photographs are a window into the past, but I seen now how they might also be a window into the future as well.

Reading Response 6

In reading, “Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution” by Cynthia Selfe, I noticed that she mentions “the computer network that spans the globe will serve to erase meaningless geopolitical borders, eliminate racial and ethnic differences, re-establish a historical familial relationship which binds together the peoples of the world regardless of race, ethnicity, or location” (Selfe 194). This essentially means that people expect the expansion of the internet to unite the world. Because of the internet’s ability to connect people anywhere in the world instantaneously, it is natural to try to divine the effects of the internet in the future. It seems that there is a common humanitarian believe in a future utopia, a world were all the differences in the world are erased.

In order to unpack this idea, one must ask, “What separates people from one another?” In truth, Selfe gives the answer. Geopolitical borders create two disparate countries and racial and ethnic differences have been the sources of countless atrocities throughout history. Through a screen, all these differences are erased. Whatever the result would be however, would be so wildly alien to the way our brains are traditionally programmed that we would never actually create such a future. This “global village” completely undermines the hidden values in American society. Americans place great importance on the idea that with hard work comes great reward. Having worked hard and earned great rewards and privileged status in the world, it seems highly unlikely that Americans would willingly surrender the advantages we have worked hard and fought for. All personal interest aside, all patriotism would be extinguished as well. This internet utopia future of the global village, really reminds me strongly of “Imagine” by John Lennon. This song, while full of hope and idealizing a utopia is really advocating communism, another word that strikes a hard note in American hearts. Communism in theory is a very sound system, however it generates dictators like Stalin and Castro, so one may ask, if the internet community comes to life, who is the new leader of the world? Unpacking the hidden connotations is a very useful tactic for predicting how the public will receive the idea. Many people may think that the internet utopia is a good idea. Looking at the surface of it, it generates images of happiness and togetherness of the world. However, the cold hard reality is that we are divided. Sometimes because of these differences we can live life separately and in peace, rather than forcing our ideologies down one another’s throats.

Reading Response 7

In reading Susan Sontag’s “In Plato’s Cave”, Sontag states “Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it” (Sontag 5). This seems very ignorant of Sontag to make this claim. In light of new technological developments in computer-generated imaging, it seems very illogical to apply the “see it to believe it” philosophy anymore. Humans are very visually oriented and therefore, when shown an image, our brain tells us that this must be true. However, everything we see in an image must be re-examined to determine legitimacy. Often, this process happens instantaneously, the brain tells us “no, this could never happen” or “I can believe that”. If the first response is generated, we must seek more proof in order to legitimize the event that the image is capturing. It is essentially the same thing that Robert Scholes advocates for in analyzing video texts. Analyzing visual text is the same thing, we must look for discrepancies in the image that would alert us to the possibility that the image is forged. Sometimes in scandals or other high media attention events, the proof is not legitimized before it is taken public. Such actions can be dangerous. The public viewing the image will respond as though the evidence is concrete proof because that is what they believe it is. Such things can cause great damage because a lack of digression.

However, if we can accept that without further proof, visual evidence is inconclusive what is there left? If we cannot trust our eyes to deliver accurate information without further skepticism, what can we use? Sounds, tastes, textures, and smells can be manufactured as well, therefore what do we have left to use? It almost seems that the only thing left is human instinct. But people need hard evidence to believe these days. As the years go by, people are less and less prepared to take things on faith. Therefore, in order to produce solid proof, we must once again turn to technology. Science and technology; just as they can be used to create illusion, can also be used to gain enlightenment. Only through scientific process can we legitimize information.

By disagreeing with Sontag, I have used logical process to find an alternative to photography that constitutes solid proof. I find it necessary to examine what constitutes belief to the human mind. By understanding what causes people to believe something, it makes persuasion as well as analysis of information, much easier.

Travis Upper

In the article “in Plato’s Cave” by Susan Sontag she goes throughout the article and letting her viewers see the bunch of metaphors that she uses in her article. One of them is “the old fashioned camera was clumsier and harder to reload than a brown Bess musket. The modern camera is trying to be a ray gun.” What that means is that Susan is trying to show a similarity between the two completely different objects. I feel that the comparison is a good one because I have seen documentaries on the revolutionary war and how the brown Bess was the main weapon of choice for the average infantry man. It also when into great detail that they would have lines after another to shoot because it took so long to reload the musket. Susan does also bring out a good point that the modern cameras are trying to be like ray guns. Now days with a digital camera you can take pictures quickly and reload even quicker because you have a memory card. I feel she has a great idea beginning to bloom here. If she can get people to see the difference in the 18th century than the 21st century than she may get support about the photography.

In this article by Susan Sontag she says “the old fashioned camera was clumsier and harder to reload than a brown Bess musket. The modern camera is trying to be a ray gun,” it makes me feel that she is not putting in any evidence to convince me that the camera is like a gun. I feel she is not taking into consideration that most people probably don’t know how fast a brown Bess reloads or a camera in that era of time. The gun is very different than the gun now days and I feel she does not even mention the fact that the camera is very slow at reloading and is very clumsy.

The countering strategy I used was that she did not use enough evidence to support her claim. To make her article better and more intriguing she should add the evidence of how long it actually takes for an old fashioned camera to work and how long it takes to reload a brown Bess. If she did that I would be impressed and would agree with her that the camera takes a very long time to reload.

Reading Response # 6

            For the majority of citizens of America, there is a great deal of pride surrounding the freedom of each individual regardless of religion, race, gender or social class. While the aura of American values is held strongly in a citizen’s mind, Cynthia L. Selfe believes that the mass media is instilling other ideals into our way of viewing America. In what she deems “the Land of Equal Opportunity narrative,” Selfe presents the idea that society is held to specific expectations through ads. The suburban home with a white picket fence, a white family, two children and a dog is just an example of how the ads resonate with America’s citizens. Her evidence is provided in a series ads and revises the narrative to what she calls the “Land of Difference narrative” promoting that the story “is present not in what they show, but what they fail to show…There is a remarkable absence in all the images of people of color, and poor people, and people who are out of work, and single-parent families and gay couples and foreigners.” Selfe is conflicting with how ads in the media actually represent how diverse our country is.

            While Selfe makes a strong case for her claim I have to respectfully disagree. Today, diversity is valued more in America than during the time of publication of her book.  There are a vast number of ads and visual images depicting the diversity of America. I almost find it a little cheesy when you an ad has a female Asian child, a white male child, an African American male in a wheel chair, and a middle eastern female child all playing together nicely or sharing an experience. I don’t find this image cheesy because it is not possible. I find it cheesy because the large amount of these images portrayed in texts books and schools. I can remember seeing these at a young age and over the years thinking that they were probably done on purpose to reinforce how diverse our country is. It may have been different for Selfe growing up but for my generation, it is extremely hard not to notice the portrayal of diversity in the mass media. During this current recession, there are plenty of ads depicting people out of work, as well as single mothers.  What ads may have failed to show at one time of America’s technological life, ads are showing them now and in great abundance.

Reading Response 7

In Susan Sontag’s essay “In Plato’s Cave”, she writes a passage comparing the camera to a car and to a gun, explaining how the camera “Is as simple as turning the ignition key or pulling the trigger.” Further on Sontag describes how cameras are addictive and that “To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder – a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.” After reading this passage, Sontag’s views on pictures seems to be that they are so simple to take of anyone, at anytime, and anywhere. But her views on pictures being taken of someone other than your self is a complete violation of that person’s life, and it makes them feel utterly uncomfortable with themselves and with their thoughts of themselves. I disagree with what Sontag has said, and I believe that taking pictures is not murder – it is a way of expressing to people your personality and your likings, things like that. Pictures are proof of memories and they allow you to go back and remember stories that you ordinarily wouldn’t remember from thoughts. If you were to not allow anyone to take photos of you, those memories would be lost. I understand how if a random stranger wanted to take a picture of you, it would make you feel slightly uncomfortable. But that is how you come out of your comfort zone – by letting others see you for who you really are. It can be said that people “put on a show” around others that they do not know. But photos allow you to let go of yourself and be how you truly want to be. Sontag might have exaggerated how taking photos is like murder. That seems far-fetched. Maybe if she hadn’t said that, I would have agreed with her theory. I chose this passage to argue against because I had opposite views than Sontag had. She had some strong claims throughout her essay, and it was a bit difficult to find one to argue against.