Sunday, November 20, 2011
MINI PROJECT #3
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Damn It.
After watching these two videos, I had some great thoughts. But I realized that my underdeveloped brain couldn't handle these thoughts, and I'm simply too narrow-minded and my intellect is too supremely average to make any real impact on the interpretation of these great sources on networking. Damn it.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
interTHEFTuality
All I really gathered from these two articles on intertextuality was the notion that no work is original anymore. So, in honor of the time-honored tradition, I will shape this post by "borrowing" one of my classmate's ideas. I feel this is the best way to demonstrate this principle. Oh, and I'm feeling really lazy. On this subject, RhetoRickMightSay might say "It's more than halfway through the semester and I finally think something is getting through my thick skull: the question is not What counts as writing? but What doesn't count as writing? Johnson-Eilola talks at length about Web Logs (blogs), and particularly on pages 216 and 217 about one called "Plastic", and as I was reading that section, I just got overwhelmed with the enormity of the different kinds of writing all going on all over this website, and how--as he says--none of it fits within the traditional rules of citation and authorship.
It seems like, when talking about writing or teaching writing, so many people focus most on issues of plagiarism, proper citation, and all that jazz. (Like the most important thing about writing is scaring people into being afraid to have any ideas based on other writers' ideas because that might be plagiarism...grrrrr--but I digress.) So, I'm wondering, if much of the writing going on in our world today doesn't even have the ability to fit into the very broad category of author and citation--if there are not even clear traditional roles in the field of writing (like editors and publishers), as we experience it today, how important are the ideas that are being harped upon that all have to do with those roles?
And yet I have to go back to what Johnson-Eilola says in the beginning, "exploring contradictions as necessary conditions of existence" (200). I can't say I grasp all of what he says throughout his article, so maybe he says this and I just can't grasp it yet, but I'm stuck on the question of how to make money as an author in a world where one doesn't just write old-fashioned, paper-and-bound books? I know he's talking about people being charged a lot of money to use tiny parts of texts, but we're talking about websites here--and I don't mean like Google. To bring it closer to home, I'm a blogger. I've written at least as much as a good-sized book in my posts. Do I make money off it? No. But without being a shameless advertisement whore, I don't know how (I can't bear the idea of whatever the Adsense Google app is that is supposed to earn me income off my blog--it just seems like so much salesmanship on writing that wasn't meant to be that; like putting coupons in a research book...). But Web Logs are such a media of the now--what I write wouldn't even go in a book--how do I further my writing career, not just my writing hobby? Looking forward to this conversation in class so I can understand more what J-E was talking about in terms of the money aspect of this.
Returning to my original question, What doesn't count as writing? I am toying with a kinda radical thought (to me): writing is every kind of human interaction we use, aside from face-to-face interaction. Ya think? And if that is true (I'm not sure that it is, but it's seeming plausible), then we don't use rhetoric in our writing at all: writing is rhetoric. If rhetoric is basic human interaction at its core (that is, we can't interact without using it), and writing is every kind of interaction we do other than in person, writing has to be rhetoric.
My head is spinning a little at those thoughts. I'd love to hear your thoughts for or against this craziness."
HOORAY FOR INTERTEXUALITY!
It seems like, when talking about writing or teaching writing, so many people focus most on issues of plagiarism, proper citation, and all that jazz. (Like the most important thing about writing is scaring people into being afraid to have any ideas based on other writers' ideas because that might be plagiarism...grrrrr--but I digress.) So, I'm wondering, if much of the writing going on in our world today doesn't even have the ability to fit into the very broad category of author and citation--if there are not even clear traditional roles in the field of writing (like editors and publishers), as we experience it today, how important are the ideas that are being harped upon that all have to do with those roles?
And yet I have to go back to what Johnson-Eilola says in the beginning, "exploring contradictions as necessary conditions of existence" (200). I can't say I grasp all of what he says throughout his article, so maybe he says this and I just can't grasp it yet, but I'm stuck on the question of how to make money as an author in a world where one doesn't just write old-fashioned, paper-and-bound books? I know he's talking about people being charged a lot of money to use tiny parts of texts, but we're talking about websites here--and I don't mean like Google. To bring it closer to home, I'm a blogger. I've written at least as much as a good-sized book in my posts. Do I make money off it? No. But without being a shameless advertisement whore, I don't know how (I can't bear the idea of whatever the Adsense Google app is that is supposed to earn me income off my blog--it just seems like so much salesmanship on writing that wasn't meant to be that; like putting coupons in a research book...). But Web Logs are such a media of the now--what I write wouldn't even go in a book--how do I further my writing career, not just my writing hobby? Looking forward to this conversation in class so I can understand more what J-E was talking about in terms of the money aspect of this.
Returning to my original question, What doesn't count as writing? I am toying with a kinda radical thought (to me): writing is every kind of human interaction we use, aside from face-to-face interaction. Ya think? And if that is true (I'm not sure that it is, but it's seeming plausible), then we don't use rhetoric in our writing at all: writing is rhetoric. If rhetoric is basic human interaction at its core (that is, we can't interact without using it), and writing is every kind of interaction we do other than in person, writing has to be rhetoric.
My head is spinning a little at those thoughts. I'd love to hear your thoughts for or against this craziness."
HOORAY FOR INTERTEXUALITY!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)