Digital Peers

I look forward to seeing what our class produces after looking over these websites. The only advantage I think Spring 06 might have had over us is that they were a hybrid class. Being able to meet up and discuss materials as well as use the web would've been pretty cool. I've never made a hypertext article before so reading some student-made ones gave me a better idea of what I'm in store for. Up to now I've been feeling in the dark about where this class is going but now a light has flickered on. I liked the essay "The Future of Video Gaming" by Carl Ritch, the layout was simple, but engaging. It made the subject more interesting than if had it been a printed essay. I scanned some others and they weren't bad either, but over all I think our class can do better. With our powers combined we could create a digital mindscape the likes of which has never been seen by any web resident. Or at least we could have a flash game on the homepage or something...

Domesday is Nigh

Imagine sitting in your little mud hut, tired after a long hard day of mud-farming. You put your feet up on a log and start to sink into relaxation. A calm begins to wash over you, lapping at your feet and up your legs like a warm tide. Not even the excitement of tomorrow's public flogging could motivate you from your seat. Just as your eyes are about to seal out the beams of sunlight that invade your cabin through the thatched roof, a loud knock almost turns your pitiful door into a pile of splinters. Outside is some guy wearing royal fabrics that are weathered and covered in muck from travelling. On the cart behind him is a giant square thing filled with parchment. Perched over the object with a massive feather quill, is the boy version of the man standing before you. His mouth opens and starts spitting out imperial decrees like apple seeds. Then he starts asking you questions like, "'Ow many bishops d'you 'ave in this 'ere shire?" or "If you are in possession ov any beasts, 'ow many and ov whut sort might they be?" If your medieval mind was like a webpage, then it would be visiting http://www.whoisthiswanker.com/ or maybe viewing images of pitchforks flying through the air after a retreating carriage of the King. --Of course I have no idea what is was like back then, but the collection of the information for the Domesday Book could not have been an enjoyable undertaking. However, it was still completed, amazingly. As far as the hypertext version goes, I can't say it would be as thrilling as the digital Bayeux Tapestry, simply because it's all statistics and information. It doesn't have any stories and not one single spear sticking out of anybody. It does provide a peak into the middle ages that a realtor or land surveyor might find fascinating - and those groups are often cast to the side when it comes to historical entertainment. One final comment on the power of books. The idea I appreciate most about this reading comes from the line "The fact that the scheme was executed and brought to complete fruition in two years is a tribute of the political power and formidable will of William the Conqueror." The book he compiled shows his strength as a leader more concretely than the wars and land he won. I think that speaks highly to the influence of the written word.

HyperTapestry:Free response

The main idea that caught my eye in the article HyperTapestry by Kim MacQueen was the question as to whether or not literate people perceive the events of their lives linearly as in literary works, or more as pictures or a web site. That can be taken in so many directions. It makes me wonder if there might have been a better or more concrete way of learning and thinking, but not good enough. The Bayeux tapestry was made in the late 1070’s. According to the article this would be a time when people were thinking like web pages, maybe really simple web pages. It was only four hundred years later that the printing press was invented. I don’t think everyone became literate all of the sudden when that happened, but I’d say around that time more people started thinking in that linear style MacQueen talks about. Now, after almost six hundred years of printing presses telling us how to think, the internet has come. The written word can deliver a massive amount of information, and the internet exploits this. The leap forward is that it exploits every other media available as well. This could be a good thing or a bad thing. It means people will be exposed to much more information, but will it effect their thinking when they are not planted in front of a computer?
These ideas and the article relate to our course topic in the sense that if our reading and writing reflects how we think, than I think the internet is changing both simultaneously.