Language, Texts, and Technology

A blog for students in Dene Grigar's course, DTC 375 "Language, Texts and Technology"

If you missed class today due to the weather, please make sure that you answer the six questions I posed in the iCal site. You are welcome to use your handout to do so. I will take these up at the beginning of class on Wednesday.

You should ask your classmates for notes.

--Dene Grigar

posted by: grigar at 07:44 | link | comments |

Here is the web address for Ron Burnett's online site meant to accompany his book, How Images Think.

http://www.eciad.ca/~rburnett/HowImagesThink.html

Note that you will find at the site information about the book that may be helpful for you to understand this next section of our exploration into languge, texts and technology.

I left handouts outside my door for you all on Wednesday that you need for Monday's class. I noticed yesterday that few were gone. Please make sure you have read the material before class.

--D

posted by: grigar at 01:41 | link | comments |

I want to post the second part of the conclusions made in the discussion yesterday about why it is important for you to know how computers work. These speak to issues relating to information and ethics, an area that the DTC Program works to address in its courses and will become more important as the program grows and changes. Those of you who know me know that I am passionate about computers, computing, and digital media. But this passion does not mean I do not look critically at computers or the objects they help us to produce. With this in mind, here are the final statements I made.

---

First, speaking philosophically, the structure of binary code (a byte of 0s & 1s), upon which computing is generally based, boils down all operations, all ideas, all concepts into oppositional forces: this or that, black or white, up or down, in and out. Even when there exists three possible statements, four statements, etc., these are re-expressed for computing as two: flow, no flow; 0 and 1. Classic argumentation, however, is based on thesis and antithesis that together leads to new thought, or the joining of ideas, or compromise, what we call “synthesis.” And so, if you think about it, computers are limited in the way they can articulate the world for us and can, indeed, limit our own expression of our world.

Second, speaking socially, while there is nothing problematic with 0 being equated with no flow, with nothing, nothingness, there is something wrong with it being equated with blackness. 000000, as you web coders know, is the hexadecimal rendering of black. White, on the other hand, is expressed as everything, 255, 255, 255 (or FFFFFF). How, then, does it feel if you are a black person and know the world is being expressed for you in computing with black meaning such a thing? How does this affect people of color becoming programmers, computer engineers, web designers? So, we can say that computers express blackness in negative terms. Additionally, that computer language was built upon the Latin and English situates the West, particularly the English speaking West, as the privileged culture. Remember that hexadecimal numbers are based on A-F and ascii in its original form did not allow for foreign letters.

Finally, speaking politically, the way in which computers hierarchize information, while helpful and necessary for computers to function and carry out their tasks efficiently, presents a top down system where some ideas are dominant over others, where ideas cannot exist without the permission of others. In this sense, computers enforce dominance as a way of existence, a way of thought, a way of normal functioning.

Speaking personally, not understanding these basic issues relating to computers and data renders us ignorant about a technology that is quickly becoming more ubiquitous every day. If we do not learn to master this technology, it has the potential to enslave us.

posted by: grigar at 22:42 | link | comments |

I want to reiterate the points made today about the patterns that are arising from the IM argot. You guys identified several:

1. Omission of vowels ("yh" for yeah)
2. Use of numbers to represent letters or words ("l8tr" for later)
3. Phoenetic spelling ("fone" for phone)
4. Use of symbols (">" for after)
5. Preference for letters that require minimum work ("d" for "th" in that)

Driving these, of course, is the amount of real estate available for texting, the need for speed, and the way the device used for texting is constructed––alphabetical keypad, for example, was devised for telephones, which are a heck of a lot bigger than cell phones.

So think about it: An entire vocabulary has been created in order to satisfy the parameters of a machine. The machine has not been created to text; rather, the text has been redesigned to fit the machine.

Now, if that is not an important issue to note, I don't know what is.

posted by: grigar at 09:03 | link | comments |

I have made a video out of the lecture I gave on the first class day for you. You can access it at:

http://www.nouspace.net/dene/375/introducing_digital_media.mov

Please make sure that you read the two chapters I gave you on Wednesday. We will finish the presentation I began on Wednesday and move on to that material.

--Dene

posted by: grigar at 04:09 | link | comments (3) |

I would like to thank Shannon for his very thorough presentation today on sensory modalities and for linking this idea so closely with the production of digital media. It is not easy to take over the class discussion on the second class day, so I appreciate this dedication. Excellent work, Shannon. His URLs will be most helpful and I have post them by Friday.

I will also make available Lecture 1 as a Quicktime movie for those of you who missed the first day of class.

--Dene

posted by: grigar at 08:50 | link | comments (1) |

Thank you to all of you for your attendance today. I did order work tables and additional chairs for Wednesday, onward. So, the few of you sitting on stools or squeezed into the computer pods should be able to have more room then.

I have updated the calendar to reflect the questions for you to think about while readings the handouts you were given today in class. If you downloaded the calendar already, you should be able to simply "refresh" your browser and the new information I added to the calendar should appear.

Shannon Peake has volunteered to act as our first discussion leader. He is a Psychology major studying cognition and sensory modalities. He will focus his introduction to the class discussion on these two topics, synthesizing the readings in this context.

On Wednesday I will take volunteers for future leaders of class discussions or demonstrations. Please check out the document in the Links section, entitled "Leaders Sign Up Sheet" to choose one that appeals to you.

--Dene

posted by: grigar at 08:19 | link | comments |

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