in class- something instead of nothing

1) Klosterman says that sometimes when he is being interviewed he does not answer the questions truthfully and he cannot explain why. He said that maybe it was because he has no compulsion to do right when people interview him even if the person who suffers from it is himself. 2)Klosterman's overarching question was why do people talk to eachother, or even bother responding to questions that people ask. 3)He answers it by explaining that if the person interviewing someone has an interesting question, it is hard for people to resist answering it. If the person asking the questions acts like they care about the response the person is going to give, then that person is more likely to give a response and will talk more about themself. 4)After reading Klosterman talk about how trustworthy the answers of the interviewee are and how even Klosterman himself lies sometimes during an interview, it seems that you want to trust the interviewee's answer's are the truth but half the time they may be lieing. We are not necessarily the best informants of ourselves because Klosterman talks about how some people may subconsiously lie to make themselves appear in a different way or in the way they want to be themself. 5) People would not necessarily avoid interviews at all times because if the persons feels that the question they are asked they have an interesting response to they will be more likely to elaborate and talk about themselves. People like talking about themselves especially if someone seems like they care, even if they are just acting like they are interested even though they may not. 5)

inclass: Google

1. What is changing is how easy it is to find information online. This is making people lazy. You can search something and find exactly what you’re looking for in a matter of seconds. Also this is causing people to lose their ability to concentrate because they can read a small paragraph and have their questions answered, or summarized so quickly.
2. The convenience of it all. You can find everything so quickly.
3. “But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.” “You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler , Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”
4. That people are going to rely too much on the internet to do the thinking for them. He is also concerned about losing self-reliance.

"Billy Sim"

1) It was interesting how Klosterman was trying to re-create himself into a Sim character and how he tried to make it just like himself.

2)Klosterman's piece could be connected to one of the other readings Vanish, how the man created a new identity for himself, wore different outfits and then had people try to track him down. While Klosterman created a new identity for himself through a character just like him that he created on the Sims.

3) We don't necessarily agree or disagree with Klostermans arguement, it just depends on how much time children are using computers and how dependent they are on using them.

In Class 03/14

I'm interpreting this question as asking if there is some point at which we stop developing our identity or personality.  I definitely don't think that there necessarily is some stopping point like that, and I'm not sure that one ever exists absolutely for an individual.  As long as a person continues to experience things, those experiences will in some way be assimilated into that person.  Development is continuous, and I think that there is always some kind of capacity for change in everyone.  A person might be more or less comfortable or secure with their self at different points in their life, but there is always the possibility of something happening to upset that security.

02/21 In Class

I don't call myself a writer.  I guess that's because I don't write very much and I don't feel like I put a lot of effort into what I do write.  I usually don't feel motivated to write because I don't have much to say.  I'm not even exactly sure what I think makes someone a "writer."  There are a lot of ways you could define it.

Literacy & Voice Questions - In Class Response

(3)  We came to a conclusion that both Facebook and texting are forms of writing, which are usually for an expressly communicative purpose.  And further, that most kinds of writing are for some purpose of communication.

(4/5/6) We think that it's becoming more common for an individual's voice to be a patchwork of quotations and borrowed ideas.  Taking into account technology's effect on voice (making it much easier to borrow ideas from other people), we think it's more difficult for a person to develop their own voice.

Joan Didion

I like this article a lot.  In short I tried to think. I failed.   This is resonant with me. I like that she focuses on specifics, on real things, rather than on abstract intellectual ideas.  It was insightful to read what she wrote about the significance that images have in her writing.   I've been trying to articulate something similar to that, in talking or thinking about images I get from reading.  I'm not sure why, but it seems more common for people to get intellectual when they talk about reactions to something read...the perception/interpretation of some supposedly greater and more universal meaning than the one that is simply there, that is the image in the reader's or writer's mind.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  I think it's important and meaningful sometimes.  But it also leads to a lot of bullshit intellectualism that doesn't really mean anything.  So it's nice to read something simply recognizing that specifics are the most important thing.

Why Write?

Thinking broadly about writing, it is probably the most effective way to communicate information.  I think the reasons why different people write are personal to the writer...there is a lot of variation in the details.  I would guess that the most universal reason to write is the need to communicate something.  Again, what exactly that something is can vary a lot, but I think that the need for communication is probably the most common underlying inspiration to the writer.

Obama speech

We think he made the revisions that he made to make the speech more personal and relatable to the audience. For example when he says “But those of us who knew Teddy” The way he says us and Teddy. We also think he made the speech more comprehensive to the audience. Also he gave very relatable examples for the listeners. We also agree with the blogger when he says the government "has to step in to help deliver."

Updike Discussion

1. The ending is liberating and risk-filled and it's kind of a writ of passage for Sammy because he made a change in his life. He's moving on to a new stage in life.

3. We think the piece fits with identity by his observations of people and giving them instant identities. He identifies people by how they dress and how they move and then gives everyone a profile. For example, there's a queen bee and she has two worker bees following behind her. He also gives the people he's annoyed with identities.

5. If we were Sammy we would probably still have quit, but looked for another job first. His decision was very spontaneous, but we think he wanted to be spontaneous for once because he was afraid he would end up like his boss.

All My Life For Sale

It's interesting to think about what it would be like to sell everything you own.  I do think most people attach their identities to their possessions to some degree (and to a high degree in middle class America), so it would be a stripping down of the self to sell almost all you own. I know some people who are dependent on material things so much that I don't think they know who they really are, or who they would be without being able to lean on their stuff.  It would have a devastating effect on the mind of someone like that to no longer have that crutch.

Other than that, I thought it was a decent read, and I liked the item entries.  His writing was a little bit dry to read, but I might be interested in checking out some of the rest of the book.  I could see it being more compelling than the introduction.

Reflection on my writing process.

I usually start writing without a very clear idea of where I'm going to go with it.  I can't remember ever making an outline for a paper when I wasn't required to do so.  Referencing what we talked about previously in class, my thoughts tend to form as I write and not before.  Any "steps" in my writing process are not really in any semi-consistent order...researching, mental outlining, editing, and writing are mixed up so that they often take place at the same time.  The only step that is (probably obviously) consistent is proofreading and editing the final version of a paper before I consider it finished.

Ann Raimes' Introduction

Raimes' "strategies for critical reading" are useful, even if they're probably nothing new to most people who have read anything that has challenged them.  It may be a rehashing of ideas, but they're not bad ideas.  Most of her strategies are things I think a lot of people do instinctively when reading.  Which makes the reading of her introduction dull, even if the information is accurate.

I had the same reaction to her writing strategies.  Nothing new, but still useful information, which she communicated clearly.

First Post

I have some informal experience with writing electronically, using the Blogger and Xanga websites in the past, as well as instant messaging and email.

I haven't found that my writing is much different necessarily because of the medium, although writing with a pen and paper does seem to have a more personal effect on me.  Whether I'm writing publicly or privately has a more significant impact on what comes out.