final draft: unit 2 essay

Here's my final draft of the unit 2 extended essay.

Looking Back On The Semester

The most memorable thing that I have learned about in this course would most ceratianly be blogs. Before beginning this class, I had really no prior knowledge with anything blog related, reading or writing them. When I learned that I would be both reading and writing blogs as assignments, I knew that it would be a whole new experience and a good way to learn about blogs as well. At first, my idea of blogs was basically that they were online personal outlets for individuals thoughts, opinions, and interests. Ultimately, they seemed like journals or diaries before I really got into the blogging world. After keeping up with a few blogs and writing my own, I have a better understanding of what blogging really is. Though some people have blogs as diaries, those really aren’t what blogs are known for. The real blogs that are popular and well-known are the ones with interesting, informative, or thought-provoking content, not someone’s personal ramble. With blogs emerging as such a popular source for news and information, it is important to know about blogs. I’m very glad that my view of such a growing source of information has been corrected in this course.

Over the course of the past few months, I have noticed some changes in my writing. I am not as overwhelmed by large writing assignments as I was before. Writing actually seems to come easier than it has in the past. Reading, however, really has not changed much for me. In previous classes, I have been accustomed to difficult reading and lengthy reading assignments so not much has changed here, except that I approach reading with a more analytic attitude and take a stance on the topic being discussed.

Through the blog assignments, my writing has especially changed. It used to take me an unreasonable amount of time to complete any writing assignment, whether it be a half page response to a paper or a six page essay. For example, I wrote this in about 25 minutes. At the beginning of the class, a couple of the blog-response posts took me a couple of hours to put together. Since writing these posts, I have been able write with more ease and confidence.

second essay roughdraft

here's the roughdraft of the second essay.

The "Death Panel"

Does the RNC Want to Kill Granny?

After reading the article on death panels from the New York Times, I noticed the post above, "Does the RNC Want to Kill Granny?", on Daily Kos about the RNC's insurance plan, end-of-life consultations and death panels and thought it (as well as the discussion/comments posted there) was a pretty interesting addition to the topic if anyone is interested.

Taking an Approach in Writing

Harris’ idea of “taking an approach” seems more complex than the previous ways of rewriting: coming to terms, forwarding, and countering. It is also more difficult to notice in other’s writing because it isn’t as straight forward as the others. Its almost hidden within the style of writing. In his exact words, taking an approach is “working in the mode of another writer.” Three ways of positioning your own work to other writers are acknowledging influences, turning an approach on itself, and reflexivity.
To acknowledge influences in writing, the way of writing and thinking of the influential author is described, rather than describing the author himself. Also, showing how your writing style differs from theirs, though borrowing their style, is important. Turning an approach on itself is “[taking] both your subject and method of analysis from the texts you are working with.” This involves applying the author’s own views to their work. A method of taking an approach that is less about the writing characteristics of the other writer and more about the choices in taking an approach that you make is reflexivity. Reflexive moves in writing acknowledge how your writing has changed based on outside influences.
In my opinion, the New York Times doesn’t really “take an approach” in the sense of acknowledging any outside influence on the style of writing because literally noting an writing style influence in a news article would be rather odd and hard, if not impossible, to pull off. The Artblog has few posts that are written from a personal perspective that would allow for rewriting by “taking an approach.”

Countering "Intellectual Recession"

This post stood out to me while I was looking through my old post titles for one to revisit because the title “Intellectual Recession” and the basic idea behind it seemed a little extreme. I think at the time I was trying to come up with a strong position on the topic so I could have something interesting to write about without truly thinking over what my position was.

"I’ve never looked at something as common and widely used as the internet as a possible cause for the slow “intellectual recession” America is experiencing due to the simple lack of a real need for Carr’s idea of literacy in modern America. Everything is so simplified and altered now that our values, like, as said by Carr, “the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable” are becoming much less common."

I don't necessarily agree with all of this statement. Though we may seem to be more "simple" because we can now so easily access information without having to truly use much thought, I think we still have the same abilities in our thinking, we are just somewhat more lazy about it, only doing this when we really have to. Today’s technology and society have made it very easy to not have to think for ourselves and sort of go with the flow, so it may seem that we are slowly losing the ability of deep or complex thought, but in reality we might just be using it less often.

While we don’t use the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, we are doing it in a different way, one based off of the availability of the entire world of knowledge at our fingertips, whenever we want.

Harris' Countering

Harris’ discussion of countering focused more on how to continue an exchange of ideas between two opposing views rather than how to merely prove the opponent wrong. He presents an example of when he realized how to effectively counter an oppenent in academic writing at the beginning of the chapter. A professor that critiqued his work said that he had simply tried to prove his opponent wrong throughout the entire paper without successfully developing a quality counter to his opponent’s work. To do this he suggests three tactics to use for developing a position of your own: arguing the other side, uncovering values, and dissenting.

He presents a question that he created to assist him with preparing a quality counter after describing his thoughts on his professor’s reaction to his paper in graduate school: “The question I’ve learned to ask myself at such times is: What do I hope will result from pursuing this disagreement? If the answer is simply that I think I can prove that the text I am reading has certain shortcomings or limits, then I try to set aside the temptation to argue.”

On one of the blogs I have been following, Daily Kos, I read a post titled ‘What Is That Orange Guy Talking About?’ that uses countering. The Minority Leader of the House, John Boehner has been persuading the Democrats to make some promises involving the health insurance reform bill. First, the post questions if Boehner may have a point, but continues on to say that, in their opinion, he shouldn’t be pursuing the issue:

"But does Boehner have a point in insisting that the floor managers, who are the chairs of the three committees with jurisdiction over the bill, and therefore will likely be the main conferees in the part of the House, can speak with some authority on what's likely to happen in conference, and could even commit if they wanted to to voting in support of the House's official position on the amendment? Sure.
Does that entitle him to such a commitment? Absolutely not."

These questions use the 'arguing the other side' tactic for countering by presenting both sides, though only one side is strengthened throughout the rest of the post.

The Beat Always Goes On

So I realize that it may be a little late to finally be giving my blog a proper name, but better late than never, I guess. Plus, "english 105" was just too boring...and things like renaming your blog are great ways to spend time when you're bored at work and putting off much more doing productive things like, oh let's say...reading Harris' 'Countering'.
I was looking for a new name by looking through some old posts and trying to find a good theme when I read the post on Sullivan's 'Why I Blog' and remembered my favorite analogy that Sullivan made in this article between bloggers and disk jockeys:

There are times, in fact, when a blogger feels less like a writer than an online disc jockey, mixing samples of tunes and generating new melodies through mashups while also making his own music. He is both artist and producer—and the beat always goes on.

Forwarding in Blogs

Harris presents his idea of forwarding as “taking words, images, or ideas from [a text] and putting them to use in new contexts.” He gave a great metaphor by Kenneth Burke of forwarding and a conversation: you arrive in the middle of an intense conversation, catch on to the topic and arguments, add your own thoughts, debate for a while, then leave while the conversation continues.


The Artblog uses forwarding in nearly every post they make and have made because the posts involves images other artists’ work and Harris defines forwarding as including using images. Most of the posts on this blog are about new works, exhibits and art fairs, so they have images of the artwork to give the reader a better idea of the nature of the artwork. Sometimes the “forwarding” of images of the art can alter it because the photographs of the actual art can affect the way the artwork looks. The overall idea of the art remains the same though.


Daily Kos uses forwarding by spreading political news, as in posting quotes from political figures. Also, authors on this blog use links and ideas from other posts and readings in their own posts, therefore forwarding ideas from others and using them in new contexts. When quoting political figures in posts, sometimes the meaning is skewed a little (from the intended meaning) to fit the author’s purpose.

Relation between the Times, Daily Kos, and the Artblog

The New York Times and the blogs that I have been reading – Daily Kos and the Artblog – have some basic similarities but many differences as well. A basic similarity between them is that the both provide readers with some facts and updates on a given topic. They all report, though in different ways and styles.

The Times, being a newspaper and very common source of news for society, is more up-to-date. It keeps readers posted on all the events going on in government, sports, entertainment, and almost anything you might want to read news about on its website. The Daily Kos and the Artblog are somewhat up-to-date, but I would say that it isn’t on the same level of immediate news coverage as the New York Times.

This delay between the two sources’ update of news is more than likely related to the fact that the Times is simply like a factual report of the news, as oppose to the blogs I have been following that are more like opinionated stories or reports.

Another difference between them is what kind of material that they report on. The New York Times online newspaper covers almost anything you could want to know about, or has links to websites that do. Daily Kos and the Artblog have much stronger focuses than such a wide range collection of information and reports. Daily Kos covers recent and relevant stories about issues, events, and controversies involving the government today. The Artblog, obviously, has a focus on art, though it does cover the many variations of art and the vast art world in general.

The blogs that I have been following play a role in the press sphere by providing people with another filter for obtaining their news. Since they are about specific topics, readers come to these sources specifically to read about politics or art. The New York Times is a major part of today’s press sphere in that it is one of the most prevalent news sources available. Daily Kos and the Artblog also reach a much smaller audience than the Times because they are “themed” in a way, whereas the Times is relevant to anyone.

Blogging & the New Press-Sphere

With the first reading of these articles, comparing Andrew Sullivan’s ‘Why I Blog’ and Jeff Jarvis’ ‘The Press Becomes the Press-Sphere’ seemed that it would be a rather difficult task since one focuses on various aspects of blogging and the other on how the press and news is changing. However, some fundamental ideas and viewpoints are similar between the two.

A similarity that I noticed between Sullivan's idea of blogging and Jarvis' model of the press sphere is their attribution of continual updates and immediacy to the news, even if it is through different mediums — blogs and newspapers. Sullivan discusses how blogging is an "in the moment" type of reporting in a sense. Bloggers write as the news occurs, with less revision and editing than would occur in a newspaper article. Jarvis portrays the "new press-sphere" as also being continual, but in some different ways than blogging. In Jarvis' blog, he says "Now a story never begins and it never ends...But the story itself — in whatever medium — is merely a blip on the line, a stage in a process, for that process continues after publication."

Jarvis' model of the me-sphere seemed to be accurate. It listed all of the ways I could think of that we get the news. The size of the circles containing each individual way we obtain the news also seemed to be a correct model of the amount each is employed. The largest circle was the "peers" source, which, in our class we determined was an increasingly common source of the news for us.

Overall, I believe that even though the two articles were fairly different, the authors had some of the same ideas on news and the transformations that have taken place with new technologies and ways to obtain and spread the news.

The Past, Present and Future of the Press & the News

Jeff Jarvis defines the press-sphere as what has replaced the previous way of obtaining news, which was news stories provided through the press straight to the public. Now encompassing a wide variety of sources as opposed to the simple world-to-press-to-public scenario of the past, the present press-sphere provides a number of ways to get the news. Jarvis lists peers, media, links, government, search, companies, work, and of course still the press all as "choices we call upon" for the news. Especially with today’s technological advancements, the old ways of the news have been almost completely transformed.
Jarvis’ statement “If the news is important, it will find me,” reminded me of our class discussion on how we obtained our news. As most of us concluded, we don’t really read the newspaper or technically seek out the news as much as we maybe should. This relates to Jarvis’ previous statement and his idea that we get a lot of our news today through peers and links online. Peers transferring stories and news has contributed greatly to the change from “the way things were” to how they are now.
I thought his “New News Process” illustration and discussion was rather unusual. The idea of the actual story only being a small point on the whole process of a news story was odd to me, when the actual story is seemingly the whole point of the news. I guess it does make sense if you view this as simply the polished written story being only a small point in the whole process of developing a story, but the whole process involves the actual story (or the information part of it). It is a kind of complex idea, though I assume it is different depending on how you define the news “story” (the actual written story, or the whole idea of what is written). Also, I was confused on how this process of creating a story might differ from the "old news process," if there is one. Jarvis mentions "Text and photos come in and paper goes out...Now a story never begins and it never ends," but I didn't really understand how the actual processing of a story might have changed. The new process includes the idea itself, discussion, questions, answers, interviews, reports, story, publishing, links, corrections, comments, follow-ups. To me, most of this sounds like it has always been a part of the news process and Jarvis' idea of the old process might have been over-simplified. When the newspaper was still the main source of news, they still had discussion of the story and reports before it was published. Then, readers could submit letters or comments by mail to the newspaper. Basically I think Jarvis' "New News Process" was rather confusing, but that may just be me.
I particularly liked his explanation of how the media has changed. He says that the discussion of the future of news is too press-centric. "It focuses on the press as if it were at the center of the world, as if it owned news, as if news depended on it, as if solving the press’ problems solves news. That’s not the ecosystem of news now. There’s a fundamentally new structure to media and there are many different ways to look at it."

Reading the 'New York Times'

Just as with my starting of writing a blog at the beginning of this course, following blogs (or online news) is also new to me. I have never really followed any one blog or kept up to date with stories posted on news sites for an extended period of time, though I have read a few posts on various blogs here and there while browsing around on the internet. The hardest part of this has been, embarrassingly so, the actual daily reading of the Times, simply because I am not yet used to checking it every day and have a tendency to forget things. (My schedule is rather odd most of the time, so remembering to check up on the blogs and the New York Times every day has been an unexpected challenge for me, but I guess that’s one of the advantages of Post-It note reminders...)

The articles that catch my attention most aren’t really the political or economic ones, but the articles on topics that I’m more interested in or those with fascinating titles. A few examples of those that I’ve read are: ‘Women: Intrinsically evil or tragically misunderstood?’, ‘Experts Puzzle Over How Flight Overshot Airport’, and ‘For Some Parents, Shouting Is the New Spanking’. I noticed these while looking in sections I’m interested in. In the art section, I saw the article ‘Women…’ about a controversial new film that was about to be released. I noticed the article about the overshot flight because, with a few family members being pilots, my family has always been into airplanes and such. Last year, in my psychology class, we spent a lot of time covering developmental psychology and parenting, so that’s why the last article that I mentioned caught my attention. By only looking at the articles that interested me I probably missed the important events going on in today’s society.

Reading the New York Times has helped me stay somewhat more informed on what’s going on in the world. Especially since, like I admitted in a previous blog, I don’t really watch or read the news ever, except for checking the New York Times recently. It has influenced how I think about the news a little bit by providing me with insight to current events. As I continue to read articles on the Times website, I will be more updated on world news than I have been in the past.

Analysis of the Artblog & Daily Kos

The blogs that I have been following, Daily Kos and the Artblog, are very different in subject matter—the first being a political blog with a liberal perspective and the second being a blog about the arts, primarily visual. The most basic similarity is that they are written by a number of writers all writing for the same essential purpose. Aside from this though, they both have such a wide variety of topics that they cover within the overall subject matter that the blog is based on.

Daily Kos is a collaborative blog that is contributed to by mostly liberal activists on political issues and other happenings in the government and society. Since it is written from a liberal point of view, it seems to be directed at a liberal audience that is interested in the current issues dealing with politics. The purpose of the blog is to inform readers about new issues and topics in politics from a liberal point of view.

The Artblog is also a collaborative blog. While it was founded by Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof, there are many other authors interested in art and art fairs that contribute to the blog as well as the founders. It is directed at readers interested in all aspects of art: art festivals and shows, news on emerging and established artists, and news related to art from around the world and of many different styles. The purpose of the blog is to inform readers about what is going on in the art world: what’s new with certain artist’s projects, who has won awards recently, and news on recent art fairs for example.

Blogs I'll Be Following

I chose to read Daily Kos and The Artblog. The Daily Kos caught my eye at first from the required list of blogs because it's "one of the best-known liberal blogs." I was basically looking for a reputable liberal blog to read because most of my family and a good majority of my friends are conservative and since I'm not as informed politically as I probably should be, I thought it would be a nice contrast to the conservative side of everything that I've been hearing. I chose the Artblog because in comparison to other art blogs, this one seemed to be the most interesting, it includes a wide variety of aspects of art, and posts new blogs most frequently.

Our Generation & the News

A common theme that I think we all noticed in our habits involving the news was that we don’t expose ourselves to enough news. Even if we are inevitably exposed to some amount of news without really trying, overall most of us don‘t search out the news. There were a couple of people that made an effort to stay in the loop by watching, reading, or otherwise getting the news.

Many of us appeared to have a somewhat guilty feeling for not keeping up to date with what is going on in the world, yet don’t seem to be doing much to improve our knowledge of current events and important happenings in the world today. Especially with being our age, just starting college, trying to be responsible, and making an attempt to appear intelligent in conversation, there is a lot of pressure to keep up with the news and know about what is happening in the world, given that it is rather important to our society. In my opinion, we might sort of feel like, as young adults and newly independent individuals, we have a responsibility to society to care about what is happening, whether we really do care or not. It is increasingly easy to become engrossed in your own life and what is happening in the small sphere of society that you interact with. Therefore taking time away from this social sphere we surround ourselves with simply to hear about news that may seemingly not effect you just doesn’t always seem worthwhile or necessary.

The lack of motivation some of us have to seek out the news plays into Hedges’ thoughts on how the internet is effecting our intellect. These days it sort of seems that there is just generally not much inspiration, mostly in younger generations, to take time from our daily routines to keep up and hear about what is going on all over the world and keep up to date with the news.

The Grapevine

It's safe to say I don't actively seek out news on a daily basis. I'm slightly embarrassed to share that I never really watch the news, unless maybe I hear about something of interest that will be covered or if for some reason someone else turns it on. I'll read a newspaper on occasion ("on occasion" being once in the past few months) and thanks to the iPod, I don't really have the need to listen to the radio either - eliminating yet another common news source.

My source of news is ultimately the people I'm around. I hear about local and worldwide current events and happenings from friends and family. Usually, when I hear about an important or interesting bit of information, I'll find some form of news about it, either by looking it up on the internet or by watching the television news coverage of it.

The "grapevine" style news source that I've been relying on, while not quite complete and often skewed, is actually more appealing to me because in a sense it weeds out less important information by default. You might sit through an hour of local news and hear of a few interesting events and one or two important news stories, but between all that, you get countless advertisements and small filler type stories about a variety of seemingly unimportant topics and events. For this reason, I've come to prefer simply hearing about the important things through daily conversation and similar sources.

Of course, this does have its drawbacks. I don't get much news at all about politics (or many other intellectual topics for that matter) that isn't horribly distorted by opinionated viewpoints. The few avid followers of politics that I know and talk to regularly have rather strong opinions on any given topic dealing with the government, so in the end the "news" simply serves as a platform to present their views. Also, I obviously am not as knowledgeable on some world events, politics, and basically much else that would be covered on a news station.

Because of the lack of news I have been exposing myself to, I am looking forward to getting more involved in staying up to date.

Second Essay Draft

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Ac7_MhwIgbuLZGd0aDR0bnpfMmM4aGMzOWhj&hl=en

^ Here is the second draft of my essay.

Reading and Writing on the Web: Roughdraft

So here is my roughdraft of the first extended essay on literacy and the Internet. I pretty much just did a free write and limited revision and editing, so it needs alot of work.

literacy article

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B87_MhwIgbuLOWM1ZTQ4ZDAtMDg5Yi00YTVkLTg5ZjctNzBkYTBkODFlZmUx&hl=en

This article caught my attention mostly because it focuses on an analyzation of the new literacy studies. It seemed interesting because it deals with cognitive development and new literacy.

The Intellectual Recession (P7)

(I was trying to edit this post and accidently deleted it...so here it is again.)

In the article ‘America the Illiterate’, Chris Hedges makes the statement that America’s population is divided into two groups rapidly becoming uneven in number: the literate and the illiterate; and surprisingly the one that’s growing by 2 million a year isn’t the literate one. He says that the group of literates as a whole is “a minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth.” Hedges also says that the other group of Americans “dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information” can’t tell the difference from lie or truth.

The most profound point made in this article that stood out to me was the bit of statistics given about literacy in America. I guess that I have lately just assumed that we were advancing and improving our statistics as a country, so learning that in something as important as literacy we were actually slowly falling behind was rather unsettling to me.

Carr’s thoughts in ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ can easily relate to Hedge’s article. They both discuss negative impacts the internet has had. This alone makes them unique because a tool that has helped us so much as a society is usually not analyzed in a negative light. Though Carr’s article is a bit more argumentative, they both present strong evidence for ways that the internet has been a hindrance to our society intellectually. This is a very unique perspective of a tool that was developed recently as a new technology to ease everything about communication and retrieval of information.

I found this article very thought provoking. I’ve never looked at something as common and widely used as the internet as a possible cause for the slow “intellectual recession” America is experiencing due to the simple lack of a real need for Carr’s idea of literacy in modern America. Everything is so simplified and altered now that our values, like, as said by Carr, “the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable” are becoming much less common.

My Blogging Experience

When I first heard that we were going to keep blogs as a class assignment, I'll admit I was (and still am) a little skeptical of how well I would do with this. I’d never written a blog, or really read any, prior to this course, and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. It took a few posts to adjust to the whole idea of blogging: putting your ideas out where everyone (..well, our class anyway..) can see and judge them. Having now written a few blogs, I’m actually very glad that I got to have this experience with blogging.

I have learned more about writing responses to articles and forming sound opinions on the topics. I’ve always had some trouble with putting together my thoughts and opinions in a logical manner, especially in writing; I know what I think or how I feel about a topic, but how to word it in a reasonably intelligent manner is usually rather difficult. Knowing that everyone can read what I write, rather than just the professor as is most often the case, added a little pressure to writing the blogs, but I think blogging is ultimately easier than turning in formal essays and such.

It was kind of surprising to me that it wasn't more difficult to write some of these blogs. Though starting them off was sometimes reasonably difficult, once I began writing, it was easier than I expected. This is probably because the whole process of blogging seemed less formal than submitting papers for class. For me, it seemed that posting class assignments on the Internet in a blog was easier because in some aspects the Internet has already become kind of a personal outlet for thoughts and ideas.

The simplest way in which my web habits have changed is that I have been spending a little more time on the Internet- reading and taking notes on the articles; writing, posting, and reading blogs; looking up things relative to our readings. Other than this though, I did attempt to pay more attention to articles on the web for a while instead of simply using the Internet as a distraction from things I should be doing. However, I quickly fell back into my old habits for the most part, with the only alteration being that I am more conscious of how I spend my time on the Internet.

Internet vs. Newspaper: Opinion vs. Fact

In his article ‘Bad Days for Newsrooms’, Chris Hedges says that the Internet is “strangling” newspapers. People just get on the internet and browse the newspapers’ websites or get information from the internet and bloggers. He elaborates on his belief that newspapers are unfortunately being replaced by stating that most reporting is done through newspapers and wire services and with that being shut down, we now have bloggers and biased internet sites to get our information from.

When people get their information from the internet instead of the news, we get everything “filtered through an ideological lens,” Hedges states, and that just reinforces our beliefs, instead of giving us the straight facts. I think we need some source of pure information, other than everyone going and hearing biased and skewed stories and believing it as fact instead of opinion.

Another problem that he pointed out was that “the rise of our corporate state has done the most, however, to decimate traditional news-gathering.” Big corporations, like Time Warner and Viacom, control what we read, hear and see and they aren’t concerned with society getting the real news because that doesn’t benefit them in any way. Hedges put this in very interesting words in his article: “[Corporations] hate news, real news. Real news is not convenient to their rape of the nation. Real news makes people ask questions.”

Clive Thompson’s ‘New Literacy’ was an intriguing contrast to Hedges articles on the Internet. While Hedges seemed to only attack the internet and it’s effect on our literacy and the newspaper, Thompson gave us a reason why the internet has proved useful. His point that the internet is simply changing the way we think about writing and actually making us write more often was well supported with the studies by Andrea Lunsford on writing. I think that, even though they discussed slightly different topics involving the internet, Thompson’s ideas were more strongly supported and logical sounding than Hedges’ articles.

Stupidity, Impatience,...or Neither?

[Just as a kind of side note: I found it extremely ironic that before I knew what the article was going to discuss, I checked the length of the article and started to skim, until I noticed that the focus of the article was about how our reading habits have been spoiled in this way by the internet…]

From what I gathered from the article ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’, Nicholas Carr doesn’t necessarily think that “Google” (or the internet in general) is making us stupid, but perhaps that it is changing everything about the way we think. Possibly the internet's immediacy and availability of information has simply spoiled us to the point where we can't wait to read an entire article thats more than a page long. Carr seemed to kind of present both the positive and negative effects of this change internet has caused on our methods of reading. In some parts, he made it sound as though literature was being ruined – “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” Carr also told of a blogger, Scott Karp, who admitted that he doesn’t even read books anymore.

Though he mainly portrayed the internet as a negative influence on our reading skills, he seemed to make a few points that could be considered positive changes to our methods of reading. When he compared the change technology is causing today to the change that the written word had in Socrates’ time it seemed that he was suggesting that maybe we just haven’t seen the benefits of the changes in our reading habits, like Socrates didn’t see the advantages of written word.

Our class’ internet habits seemed to play into Carr’s point that we have a very short attention span when reading and hardly any critical thinking goes into our readings, especially on the internet. Many of us had many tabs and windows open at once, doing multiple things by jumping back and forth through webpages. This relates to Carr’s idea that the internet has become a means to “scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.”

Harris' Ideas on Writing: Rewriting

In the first two chapters of Harris’ Rewriting, he defines reading and writing as he sees it. His idea of writing is that we draw off of the ideas of others in our own writing; he calls it rewriting. The process of writing, as interpreted from Harris’ introduction, includes drawing from others’ ideas, commenting on such ideas, and adding to previously given ideas. Harris believes that “intellectuals almost always write in response to the work of others”. He seems to be saying in the introduction that the most difficult part of writing is figuring out what and how to add to the work of others that you have read.

An interesting point that I thought about in Harris’ introduction was that reading could almost be considered simply a precursor to writing if you look at it from Harris’ point of view. If we write almost always in response to other writers, then isn’t reading just the first step to writing? It could be considered just the gathering of more ideas and further analysis of ideas already presented.

In the chapter Coming to Terms, Harris presents additional thought to what reading is. “Texts don’t simply reveal their meanings to us; we need to make sense of them.” Here, he emphasizes the point that reading involves serious analyzation to fully comprehend each idea in the text and to write about or respond to these ideas.

One of the first connections I drew between Harris’ and Sullivan’s ideas on writing was that they both portrayed writing as a type of commentary or response to something in a way. Both authors were related in the way they seemed to view writing in that they described writing as always involving or being influenced by outside sources or purposes. Harris stated that nearly all writing was in response to other writing and Sullivan gave the idea that writing (or blogging) is like a newsfeed, commenting on current events and beliefs for the most part.

Similar Yet Unique

Upon reading the assignment of recording all the websites we visited and then comparing notes, I thought everyone would have a rather unique list of visited sites. It seems that we all have nearly the same uses for the internet these days: getting information and communicating – everyone had some form of these websites listed in their log.

After seeing the websites that were visited, I think it’s safe to say that one thing everyone had in common was an email website and social networking websites. Almost everyone had checked an email website, such as Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail and a social website, mainly Facebook, but also some Myspace and Twitter. Our class’ overall internet habits were extremely similar, as well: check an email website, check a social website, and then some looked up news or entertainment website. Most of us also had a personal interest website that was for the most part unique to our log of websites, like photography, music, or shopping. This was the only thing that made our internet activity different from others’ really. Our habits online have become rather predictable: Facebook, email, and other entertainment.

The odd thing is that when we’re on the internet, it seems kind of personal, yet everyone has almost the same experience when they get online. Your own profiles or accounts, your own settings, and navigation of your browser totally under your control makes it somewhat personal, but everyone else (especially those in your age group) does basically the same thing on the same websites. What websites a person visits apart from the normal group of websites can tell a lot about someone- hobby, interests, sport, favorite music genre, or personality characteristics.

How to Waste Time...

Step 1: Spend entirely too much time on social networking websites.
Step 2: Look up random songs and videos, instead of looking up articles for class.
Step 3: Download Skype and waste hours video chatting.

Lately I have found it nearly impossible to get anything important done when I’m online with distractions like Skype, Facebook, and Youtube…So, anyway, here’s my past two days of internet habits.

Basically when I’m online I have 3 or 4 windows open and switch between them instead of just doing one thing at a time, so posting times or when I visited each site would be kind of confusing. Also, my internet habits were a little different this weekend because I went­­­­ home and didn’t have internet access on my laptop. Usually I would get on Youtube a few times and check out www.dpreview.com for new stuff af least once…

Day 1:
-Log on to Yahoo! Mail: Deleted 117 pointless emails from Facebook notifications, sorted through a bunch of spam and realized that none of the 129 new emails were anything that I wanted to read…
-Switched over to Facebook: read notifications & messages, answered comments, and chatted
-U of L: checked email & Blackboard for announcements
-Playlist.com: listened to music while checking email & chatting on Facebook

Day 2:
-Facebook: checked notifications, answered comments, and chatted
-Myspace: okay, so maybe I’m the only person over 15 that still uses this, but I’ll admit...I check it every once in a while
-U of L: checked school email & Blackboard
-Forever21.com: my new bad habit…online shopping.
-Yahoo: logged on, saw that I had a million new e-mails…decided to deal with it later...

"Online Disc Jockey"

Everything about our culture today is becoming immediate and increasingly fast-paced. We become impatient after waiting 3 minutes for a meal at fast-food restaurant, when it could take up to an hour to make a hamburger and French fries at home. People used to have to sail on ships for weeks to get to places that we can now hop on a plane and fly to within hours. Our society today seems to just need everything to be available instantaneously. This relates to the main reason Andrew Sullivan states that he blogs: it fits in with our need for immediacy. He says, “For bloggers, the deadline is always now.” Sullivan seems to be drawn to the ability to post about things as they are happening. For example, he says that he shared the experience of the attack on the World Trade Centers on September 11th and his reaction to it as it happened, through his blog. (“There is a vividness to this immediacy that cannot be rivaled by print.”)
Another aspect of blogging that has appealed to Sullivan is the intimacy of blogs. “You feel as if you know bloggers as they go through their lives, experience the same things you are experiencing, and share the moment.” Blogging is so current that it creates this personal feeling, as if discussing reactions to things happening as they happen with a friend, like a sports commentator, watching the situation and taking it all in, while discussing what is happening in the moment. Sullivan says that the writer and reader create an “intimate bond” because it’s two people alone at a computer: connected by the sharing of thoughts, news, or ideas.
One of my favorite statements that Sullivan made was “There are times, in fact, when a blogger feels less like a writer than an online disc jockey, mixing samples of tunes and generating new melodies through mashups while also making his own music. He is both artist and producer—and the beat always goes on.” I think this is a great expression of how he views blogging, as well as a very creative, unique comparison.
So why does Andrew Sullivan blog? To put it briefly, I gathered from his article “Why I Blog” that the answer to this is because he enjoys the combination of immediacy, intimacy, and creativity allowed by blogging. Blogging is unique in that no other form of writing seems to be able to offer this combination of defining aspects and advantages.

my thoughts on blogs

Since I have never created a blog before, starting it off was a lot more challenging then I thought it would be. The only blogs I’ve ever read have been on limited topics, like photography or fashion, so I wasn’t really sure where to start when making this blog. Having never kept up with any blogs, I thought they were basically only for people focusing on specific subjects that they are interested in. For example, an artist might create a blog to showcase their work and discuss art with others that were interested or a movie fanatic may create a blog to post about movies that they like, but because I have never had a purpose to create a blog, I haven’t ever thought about blogs or really formed an opinion on them. It seems that there are some similarities between Facebook, Myspace, and blogs. On Myspace you can post blogs, but other than that there are also similarities with bulletins. They both involve putting something out on the internet for others to read. Both of these websites relate to blogs because of the accessibility of people’s personal thoughts. They allow private thoughts to be posted on the internet and viewed by the public. Facebook and Myspace seem more based around communication with friends, whereas blogging seems to be based solely on sharing your own ideas. Making a blog is basically a form of writing, except it seems less formal then perhaps writing an essay for a class assignment.