Is the Machine using us

In class we watched a video made by a anthropologist about technology. He showed us a basic map of the history of technology and the internet. In this is a massive network of people making things with technology. This machine grows larger and larger everyday by people adding to it. Now the real question is do we use it or does it use us? Who is really in control?
I think because of our nature as humans we would like to say that this is our creation and we dominate it and form it. This statement is becoming less and less true as time passes. Our society is becoming dependent on technology. Almost every business uses the web for their daily operations. Undoubtedly the web controls our society, and without it our culture as we know it would fail. The real question here is does this machine control our personal life? I think it does to an extent of how much we let it control us. We use the web to socialize and tell others about ourselves. If we really wanted we could not use technology. The post office still exists even if it is hardly used. Some people have been so engrossed in modern technology that if they tried to not use it there would be a struggle. I think the machine controls them, but not all of us are controlled by it.

Diction

In the sixth chapter of John Trimble's book Writing With Style he trys to tell us about diction. There are many things that he says in the chapter, but there are a few that really apply to my writing. The first thing he talks about and probably the most important for me is about being concise. He says on page 49 that a writer should act like they earn a dime for every word that they delete. I need to take this advice not because I am overly verbose but that I use just a little too many words. I like to make things sound nice by adding words, which isn't overly too much, but it is not perfectly concise. Another thing he talked about was freshness; using nice words to make the whole piece of writing sound better. I feel like I try to make things sound interesting through my words, but I tend to overuse certain words or cliches. Those two things are ideas that Trimble introduced that if I used I could take my writing up to the next level.

In class work

This is a variety of questions and observations that we have made during the past few weeks of class.
10 things baseball players do: Eat, Sleep, Run, Walk, workout, practice, throw, catch, spit, talk on tv.
list of nouns: book, fan, water bottle, balloon, dog, aardvark.
combinations: spitting book is a description of an aggressive writing. a cursing fan is probably broken.
10 questions about Heineken commercial: Whose living space is it? what kind of living space? is it a party? why is the guy on the left so funny looking? does the girl in the scarf want to try something on? is the living space new? Why the order from men to women? do women scream for Heineken? why do men need a whole fridge just for beer? What is the commercial saying about women?
10 questions for AT&T commercial: Why pick the city setting? why use a childrens story? Why the background music? what are they trying to sell? skipping vs walking? why use breadcrumbs when they had the cell phone the whole time? why dressed in so old fashion? what city is it? who is the target audience? why does she have a cell phone? why no dialogue?

Salsa or Guacamole?

One very simple question asked from one friend to another. Guac or salsa? You would think that this would be quickly and easily answered. Not in this case. The question lead to a chaotic stream of consciousness with random statements and questions. This madness concludes with one of the spitting guacamole during a massive food fight. Now did these crazy shenanigans accomplish anything? Did the man ever decide between guacamole or salsa? Do events like this actually happen in real life?

The company Bing thinks so. not necessarily in active life, but that is more of an allegory to how search engines like to answer questions.They are stating that if you use one of the normal search engines you will not find an answer unless you wade through a thick swamp of random pages. Bing knows this is not fun, and see this as an opportunity. They want to make you think that if you use Bing you will quickly get to an answer and skip all the commotion. If this is true or not who knows; at least they want you to think that it is.

The Symbol in the City

Bright lights, large billboards, throngs of people, speeding cars, chaos in every direction. The city can be very overwhelming for most people who go there for the first time. Why would anyone want to venture out into this giant mass of seemingly unorganized movement you might ask? Well there is a certain charm to the city. The city is a place of success and opulence. You could say this is where all the magic happens. Cities are the cutting edge of all society. Anybody who is anybody wants to live in the city.
AT&T can see the attraction to this idea of grandiose success. They probably even have some large buildings in some cities. They want the public to think that if they have an AT&T phone that they are on the cusp of greatness. They try and get across this idea by juxtaposing this brand new city against two children presumably named Hansel and Gretel. Hansel and Gretel is the antithesis to this idea of brand new and successful. They are two poor children from one of the worlds most old and dated fairy tale. Wait a second, even they have an AT&T phone. Wow if they have one and you don't you might want to go out and get one. You don't want to be that person with the outdated technology do you?

FFW 9/16/11

What is your writing process like?

           My writing process is not as extreme as Chel White's. What I like to do first is just brainstorm a few ideas for what I am about to write. From there I weigh the pros and cons of each idea that I thought up. Once I have decided on an idea I then either on paper or in my head build a set of points that I want to get across. Then I structure them all so each piece fits together like a puzzle. My last step involves brushing up my sentences. This is when I try and make it sound nice, and check for grammatical errors. My writing process may not involve almost driving off a cliff, but it works for me.

Bing Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx9Cmp6qQzY

Heineken Commercial

           Beaming smiles are seen across men's faces. Pure delight is gained from the sight they beheld. In this room sized refrigerator all around them they see one thing. Bottles upon bottles of refreshing cold beer. But wait, all of the bottles are the same brand. Heineken is all that they have. Maybe it is this Heineken that is bringing them all of this joy. Maybe if we buy Heineken we can also be filled with this overwhelming ecstasy; or maybe that is just what they want us to think.

Extraordinary Pantene Commercial

In class we were shown a very long pantene commercial from Thailand. It has many messages and great examples of visual imagery. She told us to find one observation and to expand on it. The following is a link to said video, and my essay is here also.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um9KsrH377A

          During her performance the deaf girl imagines herself walking through a field of wheat. From this one can infer that her focus was not on the crowd or vain pride, but on feeling the music in order to perform the best she could. Now this is obviously an important performance, why would she focus less on technical skill and the crowd's reaction, than the emotion of music?
          There are many ways once can view the way she performs. One could say she after all she can only feel the music given her deafness, but there is another way to interpret this. That would be to see this focus on emotion as a way for her to perform her best in honor of her mentor. This is more likely because during her performance she has a flashback from when she was next to her mentor's bed, where he is dieing. This would indicate that her focus on the emotion of music is really a telling message of love to her mentor. Another more cynical interpretation can also be gained from this commercial. This is that the company pantene set up a very joyous,inspiring story to try and leave viewers happy and more willing to buy their shampoo. Unforunatly this more depressing interpretation is most likely the accurate one.

FFW 9/12/11

John Trimble makes the case that all writers are like warriors, defending claims and fortifying arguments. How do you respond to this trope, this figurative turn?

I completely agree with this idea. I think a week ago I probably would have disagreed with this statement, but in one of my other classes we are reading something that changed my mind. The book we are reading is about the romantic poets and their lives. This is mostly about Leigh Hunt and Shelley. In all of their writings they had an underlying, social, political, or emotional point they were trying to get across.They always put evidence in their poems and novels of these ideas. This is more prevalent and seen when The Quarterly Review attacked their writings and the poets had to defend their claims. These scathing attacks seen between writers to me truly appeared like two intellectual warriors battling.

So Here I am at Hofstra with a Blog...

Writing online makes me feel very curious and/or adventurous. This is probably because I really never do too much online. Even with Facebook I didn't get one until a few years after all of my friends. I guess it is just part of my personality. I would much rather have a personal face to face conversation with someone then to do it with technology. This kind of turns out to not work well in our modern culture where every teenager and their mother is constantly texting. That is besides the point I guess though. I am excited that I can put up the work we do in class here so we can view each others writings. Also I need to make a twitter for the class so that should be exciting.