Ambient Findability

First off, what is findability? To me, findability is the ability to locate someone efficiently and effectively. Throughout technology today, there are many genres in which findability takes place. For example, you use findability when you “check-in” somewhere on your smart phone.

Twitter and facebook both have tools that you can adjust on your smartphones that let people state the location that they are posting from.

So what’s the use? Simple. Morville discusses this in his book. By making themselves accessible, people are able to locate them more effectively. For example, if you used the smart phone “check-in” tool at the mall and one of their friends was at the mall too. Their friend would then possibly locate them or be able to connect with them. However, if neither of them knew they were there, they might not ever connect. 

The Future is Now

Every time a new gadget or technology tool comes out, my dad makes a reference to Star Trek. When skype came out, my dad was like, "People use to dream of this stuff! I remember when I was a kid and Star Trek was on.." So when reading Ambient Findability, I couldn't help but think, I'm living the future of generations before me. Some things that seemed so far away, I am experiencing now.

It's hard for me to think about the future because we currently have SO many advances in technology. But I do think there will be more tools to use. For example, watching CSI, you see a lot of potential technological advances. Holographic touch screen computers being one of them.

Comparing technology from 5 years ago to now seems crazy! The cell phones, computers, tvs, and everything have completely changed. It's going to be exciting to live in this technological age and see what else manifests in the next five years.

Lupton

When reading text, we have found ways to interpret it in our ways. For example, in Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton, she states “A word set in ALL CAPS within running text can look big and bulky, and A LONG PASSAGE SET ENTIRELY IN CAPITALS CAN LOOK UTTERLY INSANE.” Because, as readers, we interpret text that is in all capitals is considered yelling or shouting.

So who decided this was how we conveyed shouting at each other via text? By using different texts like capitals, italics, etc., we have the opportunity to convey texts in a completely different way. It’s intriguing to think that text can be altered in such a way that changes our perception of its meaning. 

Midterm Review

List of Online Readings/Articles:
How Students Use Technology
Is Social Media Ruining Students?
Did Pencils Make Us Dumber?
On the New Literacy
Tech Support Cheat Sheet
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Does the Internet Make You Smarter?
What do We Need to Teach About Knowledge Work?
How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think?
Social Media is Here to Stay...Now What?

List of Books:
The Medium is the Massage- McLuhan
Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century- Selfe
Here Comes Everybody- Shirky
Sams Teach Yourslef HTM and CSS in 24 Hours- Meloni

List of Class Articles:The Coming of the New Organization- Drucker
Three Meanings of Epistemic Rhetoric- Brummett
The Aggressive Egg- Freedman
Inquiry Paradigms and Writing- Emig

Polemic: Right or Wrong?

When reading Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century, Cynthia Selfe introduces her thoughts on polemic. By definition, polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person, or a strong verbal or written attack on someone or something. So in her book, Selfe poses two arguments about the link between technology and literacy.

Selfe describes the two arguments as boon, the way in which humans use technology to further progress interaction and communication amongst each other. The other argument or representation is bane, which describes how technology has caused a negative impact on communication, reading and writing skills, etc.

So what's the problem with polemic? Selfe creates this argument that it's so black and white. It's either one way or the other. However, I feel as though technology can impact a person in the way they allow it to. There is definitely some gray area in between these arguments that Selfe doesn't address.

Language and the Way We Think

While reading an article by Lera Boroditsky called, "How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think?" I was interested, but not surprised. Boroditsky brings up interesting arguments and examples of how people who speak different languages think, well, differently.

Boroditsky states that language effects the way we think about space, time, colors, and objects. She also says that other studies have found that languages effect how people "construe events, reason about causality, keep track of number, understand material substance, perceive and experience emotion, reason about other people's minds, choose to take risks, and even in the way they choose professions and spouses." To me, that seems like a lot of stuff language can effect.

That's incredible!

According to Boroditsky, "it's possible that everyone thinks the same way, notices the same things, but just talks differently." But to me, it is obvious that the thinking process in which one uses to speak different languages is vastly different than others. When you have to go through a slew of processes just to read one sentence in one language, but a completely different thought process to read the same sentence in a different language, there is a difference there.

Language also plays a role in how we learn other languages. "everyone does not pay attention to the same things: if everyone did, one might think it would be easy to learn to speak other languages. Unfortunately, learning a new language (especially one not closely related to those you know) is never easy; it seems to require paying attention to a new set of distinctions. . . it requires paying attention to the right things in the world so that you have the correct information to include in what you say." When learning a new language, you have to acquire a completely new thinking process that may be completely novel to you. That's why learning languages can be so challenging for so many people. It's not just the words you have to remember, but it's the thinking process that you need to get you there.

This article completely fascinates me. As an English teacher, I need to be aware of these kind of things to better understand my subject, but especially my future students. There will be times that I have students and there might be a language barrier. Understanding their thinking process will make it much easier for me to explain things to them, understand their homework, and most important, to understand them.





"But what would your life be like if you had never learned a language? Could you still have friends, get an education, hold a job, start a family? Language is so fundamental to our experience, so deeply a part of being human, that it's hard to imagine life without it." -Lera Boroditsky

Rhetoric Reflection

Rhetoric is used in writing, speeches, and many other forms of communication. Given the definition of rhetoric, situated, strategic discourse, I want to sift through this and come to a few valid conclusions.

To me, this definition has a few meanings. If it is situated, it is organized or thought out in an organized manner. Being strategic can mean a lot of things. To me, in regards to rhetoric, one is strategic in order to carefully plan their thoughts and feelings in order to get a specific outcome. The outcome can be many different things. It could be persuasion, informative, etc. Lastly, we have discourse. Discourse in this situation means language in use.

Let’s put this all together. Situated, strategic discourse. Planned language in order to gain a specific outcome. Is this the meaning of rhetoric? It seems incredibly accurate. When writing and speaking, one must keep these aspects in mind in order to impress or persuade their audience.

How Does Technology Affect Children Today?

 

When reading The Medium is the Massage, there was one idea that stuck out to me. Because I am an English Educaion Major, the discussion of technology's affect on children and their education seemed to be the most important to me. McLuhan states, "The child was an invention of the seventeenth century; he did not exist in, say, Shakespeare's day. He had, up until that time, been merged in the adult world and there was nothing that could be called childhood in our sense." McLuhan is exactly right. Up until the 18th century, children were perceived in a very different light than they are today. They were expected to act the same and even dress the same as adults.

 

Technological advances are partially if not one of the greatest influences on the way society views children today. A man, Rousseau, was the first to suggest that children were not little adults. He had the idea that children didn't think, act, or behave as adults did. His idea didn't catch on quickly, but when it did, it stuck. As time progressed, less and less was expected of children. By the 20th century, it was acceptable for children to behave and dress in the nature we see today. 

Technology has shaped the way we perceive what is socially acceptable. McLuhan ends his education piece with this, "Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither of them inclines to grow up. Growing up--that is our new work, and it is total. Mere instruction will not suffice." I think this is the point where I disagree with McLuhan. I think technology has definitely had an impact on children today. However, to me, it seems as though McLuhan thinks that instruction and technology are two different worlds to children. Today classrooms are advancing and implementing technology just as quickly as everyone else is. There are many ways to use technology in the classroom, making these 'two worlds' relatively cohesive.

Is the Internet Making Us Dumb?

I recently read two articles that contained opposing viewpoints. Shirky believes that the internet is increasing human intelligence because we have digital media at our fingertips. On the other hand, Carr suggests that the internet and/or Google is causing people to be disengaged and poor readers. So the question is this: Where do I stand? As an avid user of internet, google, and many different forms of technology, I agree with Shirky.

With technology, people have the opportunity to further their knowledge at any point. We have a wealth of information at our fingertips. Shirky points out, “We are living through a similar explosion of publishing capability today, where digital media link over a billion people into the same network. This linking together in turn lets us tap our cognitive surplus, the trillion hours a year of free time the educated population of the planet has to spend doing things they care about. In the 20th century, the bulk of that time was spent watching television, but our cognitive surplus is so enormous that diverting even a tiny fraction of time from consumption to participation can create enormous positive effects.” We may not obtain all information from the internet. Like Shirky says, people spend much of their time watching television. However, they are still learning more than ever before. 

In a world where technology is constantly changing and advancing, people are required to stay on their toes. The advancement of technology is encouraging people to think in different ways and further their education, not only technologically, but in other areas as well. Shirky states, “The past was not as golden, nor is the present as tawdry, as the pessimists suggest, but the only thing really worth arguing about is the future. It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity.” Shirky is right. We have the opportunity to look to the future as we better ourselves and further our education.