Final Fails?

I feel like the topic i picked is pretty developed but I know that will only make it more of a challenge. The biggest obstacles I foresee in creating my final paper will be being unable to interview the span of people I would like to in order to get the full scope that I have intended to cover in my paper. I do have a question though. If I wanted to interview someone I won't be able to see to interview can I pose my questions through a facebook message? In this way, I thought it would be easier than trying to call them and record over the phone because it will be saved on my message to refer to.

Group Discussion- Klosterman

1.As he talked with Ira Glass, we learned that Ira was projecting more than actually sharing, he edited as he spoke. However, if you sound sincere people are more willing to talk to you which is what Glass uses to interviewees to open up. This applies to the concept of the cultivated identity and how people try to seem like what others think they seem like. 2.Klosterman wonders why people answer questions about themselves. Why they would open themselves up to an audience they don't know and talk even though there is a good chance they can be misrepresented to that large unkown audience. 3.He tries to answer this question by asking himself why he answers questions. Is he a nice person? Is it just human nature to answer a question? Or do some people just like to talk? In some ways this is adequate because he brings up good answers to these questions but personally, I think that there is no standard formula why a person is compelled to answer a question. 4.Errol Morris talked about priviledged access and how we should be able to ask ourselves a question and get the answer. When talking about Rick Rosner he mentioned that people have a little black box inside that needs to be opened up and that talking it out with someone else helps to figure out what is in that box. Both of these apply to the idea of trust in the answers because sometimes a person doesn't know how to answer if they ask himself but when talking with another person, it helps to release ideas he may have realised he even had. 5.It is a reasonable assumption. If you don't like what is going to be printed you probably shouldn't be interviewed but I think faith comes into play. Having faith and being optimistic about what will come out of an interview is usually what compels a person to openly to talk, so that they are understood better or that we as a whole can understand human nature.

The Cool Hunt- Simpsons Style

The definition of cool is always changing and people are always looking for the new "it" thing. It went from Teenage Angst songs to watching people get hurt. Rock and roll, that lost it's title of cool was moved to the oldies and newer music was the next best thing. Homer was caught in a struggle between thinking rock was cool then trying to be the new, updated version of cool by working at the freak show in Lollipolluza. The kids and youth seem to be the group that dictates what goes and what stays, even if the older population doesn't understand or doesn't agree with that idea. The Simpsons episode may have exaggerated some ideas in the episode when it went from thinking music was cool to thinking strange is cool. In today's society we see that. Specific example- people focused on Lady Gaga's music at first but then she started dressing a bit more.. out there... and the idea of cool shifted from music to "freak show." Homer was trying to be a freak to be accepted in society and by doing so he was famous. In the readings, a boy liked a womens' shoe so the company tried to advertise it towards men. By being a little different, the company found a new "cool."

Is How it's Said More Important than What is Said?

I don't know how I felt about this article. It was extremly interesting for sure but it seems to me that everything Chuck Klosterman writes about tries to be at least that, extremely interesting. What makes his style extremely interesting is that he poses the questions that everyone else subconsciously wonders but either is too shy, to inarticulate, or too arrogant to ask or even to consider asking. Maybe that's being harsh but as I tried to digest what Chuck was saying, I started thinking more and more about how and even why he writes especially in the manner that he does. Any journalist can ask a question but Klosterman asks the right questions. I'm not sure I can explain what the "right" questions are other then what I already mentioned that the most people don't think to or just don't ask the questions that he does. As I thought of that in the context of the two readings of his that were assigned, personally, I thought that only someone who knew he wanted answers, knew exactly what he wanted answers about, and though I find Klosterman more than a bit cocky about his own musings, he is more curious than conceited about getting answers from anyone who is willing to talk to him. I feel that whoever has the ability to support himself or herself under Klosterman's approach of the Spanish Inquisition is already a great and deep thinker just like Chuck which is why most people are intrigued enough to read his work. Whether you like his opinions (or style) or not, almost everyone wants to find out what ridiculous questions he has ready for his interviewing prey. It makes him lucidly enigmatic. People know he won't beat around the bush and usually people like straightforwardness. Like Errol Morris' list of interviewees on First Person, Chuck usually finds these larger than life people to talk to. It's a dynamic concept mostly because he can get those people to talk to him. That works to his advantage.

PowerPoint is Evil

Tufte's criticisms of PowerPoint were cutting and got straight to the point. He did not try to hide his complete contempt for PowerPoint and its ability to turn a simple presentation into a cheap, unnecessarily confusing mess on some slides. I definitely understand where he is coming from and I even agree to some degree with the majority of what he said. I also feel like PowerPoint is too, too structured for what it should have been intended to do which is to easily inform an audience instead of its actual purpose, to make it easier for the presenter. PowerPoint allows little content and fun animations take greater importance in creating such presentations. This is perfectly fine, I think, when in a business meeting the point of the pitch is to give as little information as possible because most business men and women do not want to hear pages upon pages of logistics even though it may be the more beneficial route. As people, we don't like doing more work then we have to especially when it is something we dislike but at the same time, we don't like our time being watsed by someone reading slides with little to no useful information about the topic in question.

Beeyyond Cool

This article talked about cool; what is cool, who is cool, how can one spot or be cool? It also seems that there are no clear cut answers to these questions either. This article specifically dealt with which shoes were cool at certain points and the people who buy them. These coolhunters go to the most fashion forward / larger populated cities and study the people that go in and out of the stores seeing what they do or do not buy and from time to time testing or interviewing people they think look cool to determine whether or not their products are a hit or bust. It's an interesting concept. Everyone has seen the cool kids at school sporting some accessory and then trying convince their mothers to take them to the mall to go and get it too. However, most of the time, those kids are not the cool kids who started the trend, they are the early followers from which everyone else follows behind. Usually, by the time everyone else has jumped on the bandwagon and bought whatever it is they think will make them stand out as fashionable the originators will be bored and begin the search again for the next hot thing. We who are not deemed cool or fashion forward, in essence the followers, are at the mercy of the cool people and we just have to go with their flow because there will always be that next hot thing for someone to find and make trendy, for someone else to see and think that they too must have it until everyone has it and then the people who started the chain reaction find something else for us to all run out and buy.

Is Google making us stupid?

1: The amount of information that is out there on the internet seems intoxicating because it breaks our focus on what we really use it for. The way we perceive information is changing because when we look up topics online we rarely spend the time to actually remember it, but rather just reference it since we could easily look it up again at anytime.

2: The internet is one of the most convenient information databases to look up practically anything that you find interesting. Your able to post opinions about anything, speak freely, explore any topic in great detail. Pretty much you can live in the internet. The tools out there are vast and rising, as well as the ability to purchase anything that you would need to live from the internet. I'm pretty sure Amazon.com has virtually anything the consumer would need.

3: British library offers access on online journals. People who read these articles that are offered online make people impatient because they end up just skimming through a few pages of the article and then if they can't find what they want they just skip to the next website. Reading online causes people to interpret text, which makes the mental connection that forms when we read in detail without being distracted, makes us largely disengaged.

4: A big concern of his seems that Google tries to lead us to distractions, as a way for companies who sponsor Google to make money. Some of the information is right there at your fingertips so since you can look it up so quick, he says then why bother even trying to remember it.

Stupid Google or Google Stupid?

This article was not very hard to understand; the author was making a point which many people have made throughout the years which is as technology improves or excels, we as humans regress to a more primitive state. All of the great philosophers or thinkers, from the ancient Greeks to the modern theorists of today, have a skeptical outlook on technology and its advancements in our world. People as a whole either wish to improve themselves to a point of unrealistic perfection or do not know enough about the things they tamper with just to make life as easy as possible. Either way, the reasoning behind this is disconcerting. All of the futuristic books most people read in high school like Ayn Rand's Anthem, George Orwell's 1984, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World warn us of things that are bound to happen once we have become too dependent upon those things we create yet we still have people in the world, like the creators of Google, who wish to ignore these prophetic warnings in order to create artificial intelligence to supplement or replace our actual intelligence. It seems like we are or have been entering an age similar to that of Sodom and Gomorrah, where we become so driven by vice - finding the easy way out through quick answers and unnecessary consumerism from ridiculous advertisements - that eventually we will be wiped out not necessarily by God but by the machines we have created to be more powerful and greater than ourselves thus trying to put these machines in place of God.

"Sim"ulated Reality

1. We thought the most interesting part of the reading was how philosophical he became when playing God. At first he was addicted because he could make SimChuck could do whatever he wanted but he saw how materialistic his character was and he became conflicted with the game by intertwining the reality of SimChuck with the reality of real Chuck and not seeing that sometimes a game is just a game.

2. Vanish by Evan Ratcliff was the first reading that came to mind because Evan changed his appearnce and his identity so many times trying to reinvent himself the same way Chuck was trying to reinvent himself through SimChuck.

3. In some cases, children may advance too fast depending on the uses they have for the computer, but it would be a stretch to say that children would solely think like a computer because they have the capacity to imagine, to create out of nothing whereas a computer only has the capacity to do whatever it is programmed to do.

Virtual Personality

I immensely enjoyed reading this piece. It was witty and cutting while giving great insight into how people live their lives through the eyes of simulated characters. After some time, it became difficult for Chuck to differentiate between himself and SimChuck. I thought it was really amusing that he started having a nervous breakdown because he could not comprehend "the meaning of life" in relation to the Sims world. Then, to add to the headache he had created for himself, he calls the creator of the Sims, Will Wright, and they have a philosophical debate on the purpose of the Sims. From their conversation, it seems that the game teaches quite a few of its players about themselves and the selves they may not have been aware of their whole lives. Personally, I felt that Chuck learned some very important things with his own self reflection. For one thing, I think Chuck found out that trying to simulate his real world life or understand himself better using a game like the Sims, only answered a few of his questions about himself and people in general while opening up a whole new can of worms filled with more questions than he started with. I think he also learned that obsessing over and living his life through a game for hours upon hours instead of actually living for himself was slowly taking away his free will just as he had control over and eventually gave up SimChuck's free will.

The Final Draft of Who We Are

I believe that there is a "final draft" of who each person ends up being, but I believe that each person will never know his or her own "final draft". I believe that a person will change many times in his or her lifetime and even if he or she does not change significantly it is still a slight "revision" on which each person actually is. However, when each of us has died there is a "final draft" which we have left on the people we have met, known, loved, or even hated. They end up carrying that version of us with them for the rest of their lives which will inevitably alter their personal "drafts". It's like remembering something profound in an earlier draft and that something sticking with you even if it gets cut or changed for the final draft. We affect and effect everyone and we remember things about them that change who we are and decide what kind of person we will be in the end.

Slumdog.....Billionaire?

So my first feelings after reading this piece were awkward and really uncomfortable. It just came off as really strange so I didn't blog immediately after reading. Instead, I thought it over and realized that maybe it wasn't so strange, maybe I was put off by it because it was just delivered unexpectantly. The basic summary is that a couple of Old Money billionaires, Packer and Evelyn, led very busy, very empty lives. They see friends of theirs dressed like hobos drinking a mixture of different alcohols and having sex on the street. They are told that this is the newest fad. So one day, they try it themselves and they love it. They feel more alive than they ever have. However, they know this will not last, that they will have to return to their high class superficial lives of silent auctions and banquets and what not. Before they can return to normalcy, they witness a naked girl being kidnapped and her ear being ripped off, begging them to help her. They didn't want to be degraded by revealing their strange circumstances so they don't say anything and a few days later the girl winds up dead. Shortly after that, Packer and Inky are also murdered for witnessing the event. So now Evelyn doesn't leave her house, never deals with the news, and sends checks to all of the causes she did before because she still wants to help. I thought this was stupid and that's why I felt weird about it. Obviously, you can see the character or identity in Packer and Evelyn. They want to help stupid causes (that kind of sounded fake to me) they aren't really involved in but when it came down to helping someone in real need what did they do? They waited it out to see what would happen to the girl and when she died they didn't mind (or seem to mind) that much. Then Packer was murdered for witnessing the kidnapping and Evelyn is sad but continues in her stupid ways waiting for the murderer to come for her. I like the style of writing and the point it got across I just really hated the storyline which conveyed the authors point.

Disappearing Act

I was extremely intrigued by this story. You have a man, Evan, who decides to up and quit his life for no other reason than to see if he can. It wasn't because he was unhappy with his life or on the run from the law, it is simply because it would be interesting to see how long he could survive in our world being someone or someones entirely different from himself. At some point, I think everyone would like to know what it would feel like to disappear just for a little while, to do what you want without friends or family or school or work getting in the way. It's an adventure everyone has dreamed of trying but few people actually ever would.
I liked how we got to see through Evan's eyes and his in depth how-to about the overall experience. Not like I want to drop off the map but sometimes it's cool to know how a trick is done rather than being in awe of the feat. I liked learning about his disguises and the tactics he used to hide from his pursuers and their responses to it. It makes me feel more apart of the topic we are discussing and more apart of Evan's journey.
The story overall demonstrates that it is possible to disappear from your life and start another. How long that lasts is another question entirely. If you're addicted to Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, or technology in general it might be extremely difficult to give up your life to start another. But if you were going to give up your life, you probably don't want the people from your past (or your Facebook) in that life so you wouldn't get tracked creeping on your past life. I think it is very possible for a person to stay connected and "in the know" and start a completely new life if they have enough will power they just need to be patient and careful. Evan said that he got lazy and careless towards the end and that is how he was found. The hunters said at the beginning that Evan was always several steps ahead of them in this game, he had prepared and they joined in late. If someone wants to leave their life behind badly enough, then they will. And not every person who disappears is going to have the following that Evan did. If he just decided to leave, no one found out, and there wasn't a prize or drive to find him, he might never have been found. It was because this was a game all along that made it that much more difficult, not because it is impossible.
I really liked to see the other side of the story as well, the side of the hunters. These people didn't really have much incentive, a little money and the thrill of the hunt. Apparently, the thrill of the hunt won. These people went to ridiculous realms of crazy and inventive deducting skills just to play the game. I see some irony in this because it seemed like some of the people playing played so they felt like they were apart of something, like a family or a team which is what Evan was trying to escape for that time of isolation. This was probably my favorite reading of the semester.

Are We Writers?

I think there are a number of types of writers whether they be professional writers and writing for pay, educational writers and writing for a grade, or leisurely writers and writing for fun, etc. I consider myself a writer only at certain times like when I am in school writing for an assignment or when I am bored and just passing the time. However, I think there is difference between professional writers and any other types of writers which should be noted only because professional writers are majorly labeled as writers and any other type of writer does not necessarily fall into the sole category of writer. I feel that if one writes for learning purposes like a class assignment, that he or she could be defined as anything. Is he a science major? Is she a an art major? Is he a musician? Anything could be applied to student writers which might not define them distinctly as writers. I feel that this same idea holds true for leisurely writers. They write because they want to, not because it gets them a paycheck. However, I suppose one could argue that those who choose to write instead of those who have to write are probably more of a writer. I don't know, I see both sides but I do consider myself a writer even though its for my own enjoyment and not my lifestyle.

Questioning Our Literacy

Facebook and texting is more conversational writing. Writing is a large umbrella with many little topics underneath it, such as conversational writing, scholarly writing, and free writing, just to name a few. People are able, hopefully, to tell when each one is appropriate to use when composing something.

I think, to find one’s own voice, you have to write how you feel comfortable with and in a way that gets the point across. We believe the writer might take bits and pieces of anothers' opinion but not all of it. Once they read some topic, that idea is in the mind of the other person and the writer works from there to construct their idea. Everyone’s voice is kind of a patchwork of others but by doing that, we are able to create our own.

By copying a voice or someone else's voice, writers might not exactly have their own genuinely authentic voice of their own. I think many people would like to keep to the norm, so there is little room for variations in writing. In school, it might be hard to grow a new, unique voice because teachers (at least in high schools and middle schools) try to make their students write in a certain way because some ways of writing might be too “out there.” Not trying to bash the school system or how teachers teach, but sometimes they try to push their thoughts, habits, and ways of writing onto their students.

“It depends on what you open yourself up to…what you experience and even how you’re raised.”

“I think it goes back to what we said earlier… you adopt certain ideas from other readings and use a combination of them to make your own voice. … it really depends on each person because it varies”

The media plays a big role because it exposes societies to certain things that could influence certain behaviours, way of speaking, and even people’s way of life.

In Class: Why Write?

I think it is important to write in order to convey one's thoughts and feeling. It is a means for someone to make a point which is tangible for everyone to visualize as well as understand the meaning behind what the author is trying to say. Writing also helps people to release everything they have bottled up inside. It is very cathartic. It is also important for keeping records of things that are important or were once important to someone or some culture. Writing helps people come together all around the world. If writing did not exist and we only communicated to one another through word of mouth, then many people all around the world would be limited to half stories which have been changed a thousand times over the years.

Two Readings and a Couple Videos....

The point of the readings and videos we read and watched this week are directly related to the class theme of identity. Why I Write by George Orwell, in my opinion, dealt with what exactly influenced him to become the writer that he eventually became and how writing is horrible but there is something about writing which drove him to keep writing otherwise he probably would not have. Why I Write by Joan Didion also dealt with her personal style of writing which apparently was more about remembering and describing exact details than about the deeper meaning behind it all. The video New Media Literacies had people from MIT talking about how the media world is rapidly changing pace from producers and consumers being totally separate entities to the producer and consumer being one in the same using mediums like YouTube and Facebook to get their ideas to the rest of the world. The final video was a short interview with the awesome Johnny Cash. He talked about how a teacher told him not to try and imitate anyone but to make any song his own. I think that all of these materials brought up a good point on how we as individuals need to find our individual voice as a writer or a person in general.

Overall, Obama made the speech more familiar.
Makes it more listener friendly
Revisions pulled it all together
More personal
"That large-heartedness -- that concern and regard for the plight of others -- is not a partisan feeling"
Unified audience
"members of Congress -- Democrats and Republicans -- did not back down. They joined together so that all of us could enter our golden years with some basic peace of mind."

The People Watchers

1. He seems like a realist in the end in comparasion to the beginning and middle of the text. It seemed like he had always wanted to quit his job but this story gave him a profound reason to quit his job at the grocey store. The story was bitter-sweet because he has to come to reality at some point and realize what is going on.

3. He seems to be able to see others identites because people fall into a certain pattern after a while espeicially in the grocery store where you see people shopping in a grocery store every day. The setting of the grocery store never changes but the people who enter it and leave it do change which could give Sammy upper hand on seeing one's identity.

4. Writing in that intense detail is very interesting because it is evident that someone can get so lost in the moment with explaining one simple story. The purpose of the details is to give the reader a good image of what Sammy saw through his own eyes as well as the feelings he was going through at the time.

Spam Rhetoric

The spam letter that we read was the Spam Rhetoric letter. The letter shows all three rhetorical appeals in trying to persuade the reader to participate in working with him. The author uses ethos by telling the reader that he is aa Audit Debt Manager for the Bank of Africa. He also uses pathos by telling us about the family who died in Iraq and asking the reader if he can trust you and if you are ready to work with him. Logos is used in the introduction when he opens his letter with "How are you." He makes it informal to sound more like a friend than a stranger. He also uses it when telling the reader about the sum of two million five hundred thousand united states dollars. Another part that shows logos is when he makes the letter sound confidential by telling the reader if he is not interested to delete the letter. Overall the letter is poorly written but shows all theree forms of rhetoric.