Freewrite about Interface Culture

Steven Johnson, author of Interface Culture, states that the hypertext link is the first new form of punctuation in centuries. To me, and again this could be because of a lack of knowledge of written English, punctuation has a lot in common with grammar in that there are proper and improper uses of punctuation. However, because the hypertext link "lives" through the internet, it is difficult to understand exactly what would be correct grammar in its usage. Punctuation is also used to convey subtle tone in language as well as background information about the sentence or statement. In this sense, a hypertext link can offer background on whatever a person may be speaking about by linking to a page containing these previous ideas.

Baron Freewrite

Baron has several general stages that literacy technology goes through. First, he states that as a technology is developed, it is only used by a few people who are either the inventors of the technology or who want to hold to the knowledge either because of privilege or because it is unfamiliar to the general public or potentially because the technology is very expensive. Then, as knowledge of the technology spreads, the original or “priestly,” as Baron puts it, caste of holders of this technology become mediators between the common person and the technology itself. As further knowledge of the technology spreads, the common people start using the technology for themselves and eventually, as the knowledge base becomes broader and the technology becomes cheaper and more available, it is widely used and adopted. I think that these are very good general stages that can be widely applied to literacy technologies. For example, mechanical pencils were once a new invention, probably fairly expensive compared to regular pencils and only used by people who had access to them. I’m sure they were not sold everywhere. Gradually, as they became less expensive and more varieties came about, more people used them and now one can buy twenty mechanical pencils for a dollar. I think Ong would agree with these stages of technology. The web 2.0 technologies are a briliant example of these stages in that not only are more people willing to use the technologies because they are getting easier to use and to learn how to use, but people are also more willing to learn. This is especially true of computer programming, also.

Proust and the Squid

I must admit I read this book quickly, but I also found it very interesting. The chronological approach is really helpful in breaking down the steps of written language development whether originally or for each individual child. I had always wondered what the steps were going from an alphabet where each "letter" represents a word or part of a word to an alphabet where each letter represents a phoneme. Also, the approach of giving many examples was particularly helpful. In the child-development section of learning how to read, the example of the word "elemeno" in the alphabet song particularly struck me because I, when I was learning the alphabet, also thought that that was an individual letter or a word in the middle of the aphabet or something of that nature. I already knew how to read by the time I thought back to the alphabet song and actually realized that "elemeno" was not a word or letter, but the letters l, m, n and o. Perhaps the most interesting thing about that is that the "name" of each individual letter is composed of perhaps more phonemes than the letter itself represents in terms of sound. Also, the fact that the author Maryanne Wolf used her own child as an example really brings the facts to life. I suppose that not many authors would be able to use a personal example as legitimate data but because she is already an expert on the subject, Wolf gets away with it well. However, despite using some gee-whiz examples, Wolf doesn't seem to provide enough background science and the book takes on the feel of a layman's text instead of a serious book in the field of the subject. It was a very good read, though.

Messages in the Landscape

My "messages" have the unifying theme of being bathroom literature. I went around to various gentleman's rooms on campus and took these photos. I will comment on each one individually and then give an overview afterwards. Also, the order of the images is the order in which I took them and therefore also map out my path on campus. I left my dorm in the apartments and went to the main floor of SUB I where I took the photo above. It was the only "message" in the entire restroom. It's written on top of a toilet paper dispenser. It's written in marker and it's interesting because the author used a wavy script, the font is not actually his own handwriting. What it means I don't know, but I think it's a standard graffiti mark, that the author puts in various places. I proceeded to leave SUB I and go to Krug Hall but I found no messages in the bathrooms there because the stalls had be freshly painted: a foreshadowing on the rest of my trip. I left Krug Hall and went in Robinson A to the first floor. There I took the next two photos. There are two authors to the message in the first photo; I found that commentary on previous messages was extremely prominent in bathroom literature, which now seems more like a blog or a message board on the internet. The content of the message is also a case of the internet springing out of the computer and into real life. Ya Rly! The second image is illustrative of a theme common to graffiti at GMU: politics or current political issues. This message seems quickly scrawled in pencil and deals with the assassination of the President. Again, a second author has come along and offered a reply. People must feel pretty strongly to stop on their way out of the bathroom (as this message is not in the stall but by the door) and reply to a bigoted remark speedily written. There were extremely slim pickings in Robinson A because most of the stalls had been repainted here as well. I therefore left Robinson A and went in to the Johnson Center. I went into the restroom near the exit which opens up to face David King Hall and Science and Tech II. Here I hit the jackpot. For whatever reason, all of the stalls had been painted except the one farthest in the back of the restroom, whose walls were covered with messages. Most were written in markers with a few in pencil. The first picture shows a brief obituary with one mistake, which someone obviously corrected. The second picture is the word "Token" with a French-sounding suffix. I don't know what it means but it almost seems like a one word poem. The word is by itself in the top left corner of the wall. The next picture is yet another comment on an existing message which didn't show up when I tried to photograph it. 420 is in reference to marijuana.
The next picture shows an interesting word play posing as philosophy but the reply underneath it again speaks of larger socio-political issues. The next picture shows another piece of philosophy, this time in the form of a quote from George Orwell's "1984." The following picture is of a message unique in that stall as it was the only one who asked a question and was the only one in white marker. The question by itself is very all-inclusive and almost profound. Do you realize whatever it is you have the potential to or already do realize? The next picture is of what appears to be a gang sign but the commentary below it is priceless, it reads, "We're in college, that's not cool." Apparently, gangs went out of fashion once people entered college. Here I departed the JC and went into Southside. I walked into the farthest back stall in the ground floor restroom and was confronted by the same gang marker that dominated the wall in the JC stall. In this picture, the gang sign is slightly different than in the JC and I'm also told that Bongo is somewhat nifty. The last message is either an interesting scribble or potentially someone's initials.

Several themes emerge from these photos. The main one, I think, is the lack of explicit sexual propositions or sexual bigotry, which I've seen dominating bathrooms at gas stations or restaurants, for example. The messages seem to focus on politics or current issues and often from a pro-immigrant perspective. This is particularly true in the JC bathroom. The other major theme, and perhaps the more relevant one in terms of this class, is the prevalence of retorts, replies, and commentary about previous messages. This suggests that people are becoming more used to the idea that their opinion really counts and is just as valid as any written word because they have the power to create written word themselves. Whether this stems from Web 2.0 or not, it is extremely interesting how people seem to feel the need to express their view even in a seemingly inconsequential setting as a bathroom wall. Truly, it redefines the meaning of validity when deep concerns about the refugee and immigration crises are expressed next to the occasional racist slur. As lewd and stupid fake comments about sex become more scarce, bathroom walls are becoming a legitimate medium for the expression of the vox populi.

Ong Freewrite

By this statement, Ong means that human perception of oneself and paths of thinking were changed by the invention of writing. Also, that human thought about language was allowed to flourish. When language is written down, it can be taken apart and looked at, it can be dissected into its constituents’ meaning, and it can be held constant or developed. For example, being aware of the patterns of communication by being allowed to preserve them and turn them into something physical has a profound impact on their meaning, but, because writing allows communication not between two people but between a person and the writing, written language also creates a whole other world through communication with oneself and an inanimate object. The other obvious invention that has changed human consciousness is the internet. However, it can be said that the internet comes out of writing because a lot of information on the internet is in written format. However, the availability of communication in so many different forms (written, visual, now oral-aural) in real time offers humans the ability to communicate in any form with anyone or anything anywhere. Writing to send information to someone far away does not need to take place if one can turn on a webcam and put on a speaker headset and tell the person face to face. In a way, the internet is lessening the importance of writing because space and time are no longer the great boundaries that can only be overcome by written language. Perhaps at some point soon, there will actually be no need for writing at all.

"Orality and Literacy" by Walter J. Ong

Upon reading Walter J. Ong’s “Orality and Literacy,” I was struck by two things. The first is simply the Western-Eurocentric views that the book takes and uses as a meterstick to judge other cultures and classify them. The second thing that struck me was how little thought I had ever given to the implications of written word over oral-aural language. To address the first concern, it seemed to me that certain examples in the book, about the shift in mentality towards and way of reacting to writing following the development of mechanized printing instruments, were insufficient to allow Ong to make the kind of conclusions he did. For example, Ong states that even though Korean and Turkic tribes had mechanisms for printing their language, it was not until the development of the printing press in Europe that individual letters came into importance and people began to study them. One can’t say that the Turkic tribes or Koreans didn’t value letters simply because their printing implements were whole words. Also, certain alphabets may make it impossible to divide words into letters simply because a language does not need an alphabet of letters to be written. Mandarin Chinese is written in characters that have the meaning of whole words and only sometimes characters are combined to take on the meaning of one world. Further, the characters in Mandarin Chinese often represent more than one phoneme. The biggest problem here is the implications that Ong draws from the created importance of individual letters. One implication is that written language is needed to carry out analytical thought as well as categorization and chronological logic, the foundations for modern science. I think it is very possible to carry out these mental exercises in one’s head and also then to be able to tell someone everything that you’ve thought about. Another assertion that Ong makes is that this is simply a form of apprenticeship style learning and that to truly “study” one needs writing to accomplish it mentally. I think this is fundamentally false and that perhaps in learning something by reading it, one is simply apprenticed to the book. After all, Ong repeatedly states that even in reading, a person is hearing the sounds of the words in their heads or even sounding the words out as they read. It would seem, then, that a person is listening to the master they are apprenticed to in reading a book by that master or any other author offering information or knowledge. This book, however, did open some very interesting paths of mental exploration into the world of language which I have thought about before, but never in this context. I personally have never been a “good reader.” I read very slowly, but understand what I read, however, I often have to read a passage twice to grasp its full implications. Because of this, I often joke that I am “half-way literate.” I wonder whether or not this difficulty in reading has led to me using language in different ways than people who read a lot or read faster than I do and whether or not “good readers’” understanding of language and communication is different than mine. Major difficulty in communication has been avoided, however, because I am encultrated into Western society as are the majority of people I meet on a day-to-day basis and this (encultration) I think is the main factor in communication. However, that communication is done on an oral-aural basis and so I wonder whether or not what I write, in essays such as this, for example, will be understood when read by others.

Helvetica Freewrite

I noticed Helvetica everywhere I went, it was as if my eyes had been opened to something that had been staring them in the face my whole life and I didn’t know it was there. I went to work out at the Aquatic and Fitness Center, whose signs in the interior were all helvetica save for a very few. The few signs that were not in Helvetica were often temporary and meant to catch your attention by being flashy. I could tell that most of the permanent signs were in Helvetica because of the horizontal cut-offs of the letters. There was also something interesting about one of the signs on the interior that I believe was for decoration. In the movie, one of the older designers mentioned that the beauty in Helvetica is the seemingly immovable nature of the letters, as if they were stuck in the whiteness of the background page. This particular decorative sign was simply “Aquatic and Fitness Center” written out in steel letters over bare brick wall. It was amazing how much permanence seemed to be emmenating from the sign: steel with brick as a background. The contrast was fantastic because the brick used was brown and dull whereas the steel is shiny and smooth. However, the letters reminded me of veins of iron within a rock freshly mined. The final appearance was that of modernity, permanence and nature. Both the brick and the steel as well as the font contributed in some way to all three of the above mentioned characteristics. Other than that particular sign in the Aquatic and Fitness Center, I was struck by the level of complexity that certain typefaces or fonts attained to have the meaning that they do.