Mobile Writing

2. What do you see as a potential future for the development of technologies heading towards? Do you perceive it as heqding more towards texting or perhaps is the use of texting now a side effect of a lack of mobile technology that would allow the user to write complete or more thought-provoking sentences. Why do you agree or disagree. Justify your answer.

The more advanced technology becomes, the easier it becomes to carry it with us. For instance, the telephone used to be attached to the wall. Telephones then evolved so that we could carry them around the house without a cord. And now, we have cell phones that we can carry across the world. I think that the next step(far, far in the future, though) is having a chip inside of our brains that we do not have to hold. Anyone can contact us at anytime (I haven't been watching too many sci-fi movies, I swear). Of course, how soon this will happen, I am not sure. It may get to a point that as soon as a baby is born, the chip will become surgically placed inside his/her brain instead of it being optional. This has many drawbacks in regards to privacy, of course, but then again, in the future it may not be seen as invasion of privacy. After all, people used to think that a telephone inside of their homes was an invasion of privacy but now they don't.

In regards to texting, I think that maybe texting devices will all have a stylus so that it will be faster to write/text. The problem here is what the book, txting the gr8 db8 notes: if someone's handwriting is bad, the device will not input the correct letters/words. The stylus, for people with good handwriting, will aid in longer and more complex sentences and thoughts.

I obviously agree(from what I wrote above) that texting will have to change eventually since it is hard to type long sentences quickly on a cell phone.

txtng the gr8 db8 by David Crystal

Crystal's book was very enjoyable for me to read. I think that it is because I already know a lot about texting; it is something that I do all of the time and it is a more modern invention. I especially liked that he defends a lot of the stereotypes about texting. It feels good to have a defender of something that I like. One of the stereotypes that Crystal defends is that texting is causing linguistic problems in society! The shortening of words and acronyms, or initialisms (pg 41: "reduction of words to their initial letters) are hated by "outsiders" of the texting world.

Crystal explains that the shortening of words and using initialisms is NOT a new phenomenon. In fact, "people have been initializing common phrases for centuries" (pg 43). Crystal goes on to list several examples of old initialisms like SWALK ("sealed with a loving kiss"), ETA ("estimated time of arrival"), and TTFN (ta-ta for now). Thus, the "outsiders" that think texting has caused an obssession with shortening words and initialisms are wrong. Texting has just shed more light onto this culture's obssession with it.

Besides defending the stereotypes of texting, Crystal also answers some common questions. A common question about texting is why people do it-- I knew I could answer this question for myself, but I was not sure about other people. I do it for four reasons: I am shy and feel more comfortable texting people, I often do it out of boredom(page 110 notes that "the aim is escape"), it can be fun, and in case I do not want people to overhear what I am saying, I can discreetly type a message anywhere, anytime! Crystal not only covers my reasons, but he also goes on to explain five more reasons that I found intriguing-- on page 73 of his book, Crystal introduces a concept that he coins "upping the ante." Friends will play a game where the one will text an acronym and the other will try to lengthen the acronym and outdo the friend. It sounds a bit silly, but it gets the creative juices flowing and is really no sillier than some other board games one can buy at K-Mart. It does no harm. Another reason that texting has become popular is economic issues. In some countries, texting is a lot cheaper than making a phone call, especially if it is a long distance phone call. Crystal also explains that when one wants to quickly give information to someone, this can be done easily by texting instead of calling. A text is short and gets to the point-- as Crystal puts it on page 97, "You can send me a text which gets to the point immediately, and I won't feel you have been impolite." On page 94, Crystal writes that "texting quickly emerged as an index of belonging." I can not relate to this one. Lastly, texting is a "welcome alternative to speech" in noisy environments(pg.94).

Additionally, Mizuko Ito is qouted as saying "mobile phones... have also created new disciplines...accompanied by new sets of social expectations and manners." (pg. 29) I agree with this statement. My boyfriend expects my phone to be on me all of the time. If I do not respond to a text message within 5 minutes, I either get a phone call or another message asking if I am alright. Sometimes it can be annoying. However, it does not work like this with all of my friends. What I really like about texting on the cell phone is that the message I send does not require my friend to be sitting at a computer, for instance. People generally have ther phones on them everywhere they go. I can also respond to a message when I am good and ready to respond and the person will respond whenever they are good and ready to. Texting is very convenient and non-confrontational.

Finally, I would like to say that I am glad that Crystal writes that there have never been any real studies suggesting or proving that texting can degenerate the English language and create teenagers unable to write in proper English. One girl's school paper, which supposedly was done completely in a texting style and never actually found (so probably did not exist), was used to make a general statement about all youngters. He also notes, on page 153, that "conclusions [on such degenerative language studies] are distorted by media hype" and "present an unclear picture." I feel that texting can actually make one better at thinking and writing. I, myself, have full philosophical conversations by texting. Even if I did not, I still get a lot of practice writing that I would not get if it were not for the cell phone.

To the Flarf Haters.

While I do not disagree with the flarf-haters, I am hurt by the ones(one blog in particular) who called my questions being ruled by folly. That's basically calling me stupid. It was a clever answer to the question, but extremely disrespectful and you didn't really think about the question by answering it that way. I'm a sensitive person and I don't like someone making fun of the work that I diligently prepared to present to class.

I had to do a presentation about flarf. What was I supposed to do? Bitch about it? I was there to educate the class on it-- on aspects of it that they maybe hadn't thought about (which YOU obviously did not). I knew the case for hating flarf was clear so I felt I had to show the other side and facilitate discussion(we were being graded on being able to facilitate discussion). I personally liked the fact that some people liked it and others didn't. It is what I was hoping for because I am unsure how I feel about it myself. In fact, Sharon Mesmer does NOT make me laugh. I am not a flarf lover. I did not like the fact that I was being called dumb in some blog posts. I think they were pretty good questions that anyone would wonder. If I didn't come up with questions, I would get a bad grade. What were you expecting? "Why is flarf stupid?" Yes, our professor would have liked that one!

Additionally, I was hoping "world poetry" was fairly obvious what it was supposed to mean. Since it wasn't and I admit that I was wrong, you could have asked. But I did clear it up, yes?

Anyways, I wanted to see how people answered our questions and was extremely saddened when I came across the one that basically called me dumb. I did the best I could with a topic that a lot of people love to hate.

Flarf/Spoetry Blog post

People will often fail to accept that flarf and spoetry are forms of poetry. They seem ridiculous, lewd, and not "beautiful" or "sophisticated" like more mainstream poetry. How could anyone, one might wonder, make poetry by exploiting search engines and blogs? This is fraud!

I would argue that, actually, it is not fraud because person A takes different phrases and combines them in a way that makes it unique to person A. I also believe that flarf and spoetry take more creativity to make and is often deeper than regular, "beautiful" poetry. I am currently working on a flarf play to present to class and it is very difficult to weave random phrases together to make a cohesive, well-flowing plot. I do admit that a lot of spoetry and flarf do not necessarily need to be cohesive, but I like the ones that are. The ones that are take something seemingly nonsensical and spreads a message. And the ridiculousness of the poems often make me laugh.

Unfortunately, I do think that flarf and spoetry can go "too far." What I mean by this is that it can be offensive. I do not care if flarf or spoetry have "bad words," because I say bad words all the time, but I am talking about including an event like 9-11 into the poem, like Gary Sullivan explains. The 9-11 references are of course to make fun of the media's portrayal of the awful event, but I am afraid that some people will just not find it funny. I want to know how a person who lost someone he/she cared about would react to the 9-11 references.

On the other hand, a part of me also thinks that the whole point of flarf and spoetry is to talk about what is not being said. No one would dare make fun of anything related to 9-11, but it cannot be ignored. This reminds me of racism-- people are scared to open up and talk about such things, but it benefits society to be talked about.

Anyways, what I also like about flarf and spoetry is that it takes those little annoyances in life (like e-mail spam) and turns it into something useful. It also questions what "poetry" really is. In my mind, poetry is an expression of self. When search engines are "exploited," I think it gathers the world's expressions and puts them together. Flarf and spoetry can apply to more people than a single authored poem. Thus, you know what flarf and spoetry should be changed to? WORLD POETRY!

Blog Prompt 3-16

"Reflect on the relationship of the body to the typewriter, citing work from today's reading in the Wershler-Henry."

The typewriter has a relationship to the body in 5 different ways. I will break them down:

1) The typewriter itself can be the dictator of the amanuensis. In many passages, Wershler-Henry gives examples where the typewriter is seen as possessed. On page 31, Wershler-Henry tells the story of Auster and Messer. Messer goes downstairs to look at Auster's typewriter and Auster says: "God knows what he did down there, but I have never doubted that the typewriter spoke to him. In due course, I believe he has even managed to persuade it to bare its soul." Thus, the human body is just typing what the type-writer wants him/her to type.

2) In the case of a woman, the typewriter can also be part of the woman. A woman could not do her job, apparently, unless she had her typewriter. They came as a packaged deal. On page 79, the caption under the picture says that "...the 'Typewriter' refers to the woman and the machine, separately and as an assemblage."

3) The typewriter also can simply act a medium through which truths flow through the body. It takes one's truths and transforms them into written form. It can also be the medium through which "spirits" tell the body to type. On page 46, for instance: "the invention was... for the purpose of illuminating...epistolary truths"). And Chapter 12's Theodora Bosanquet supposedly types James words even after he was dead.

4) Finally, the typewriter is that which one must position themselves precisely from, and have a precise typing method. It is something which the human must adjust to:

On page 142, a certain typing textbook explains: "There should be approximately 6 to 8 inches of space between the top of the knee and the frame of the typewriter. The front of the body should be from 8 to 10 inches from the base of the machine..." and goes on and on with numbered questions one must ask themself. In this manner, one also "becomes" the machine, but in a more physical sense rather than #2 where it is just society that sees the woman and the typewriter as one in the same.

5) This last relationship is again with the woman and the typewriter. Women and machines was a very different concept a hundred years ago and so it was seen as somewhat taboo, and, thus, created the "Type-Writer Girl."

The Iron Whim

Wershler-Henry begins his book explaining how, although the typewriter is "dead," one can find many variations of it on Ebay. Typewriters from the 70's are being called "vintage" and they are bought up. The funny thing is that most people buy them and never use them. I understand why this is so-- I used to have hundreds of toy cars from my childhood; my dad threw them out a few years ago. He claimed I didn't need them because I didn't use them. He just didn't understand. Vintage items, although obsolete, "serve as a sign of the passage of time" (pg 23).

How I interpret this is not that the old times are over and that time is ephemeral, but having vintage items is a kind of denial that the good times-- the known-- still exists. It keeps alive the dead, as paradoxical as that seems.

"Vintage" items bring back memories, memories of comfortable times, memories of the known. No one knows the future, and new technology is not received with open arms immediately. It is not immediately deemed as safe because it is not familiar. In fact, some technology, like the Dvorak keyboard (as opposed to the standard QWERTY keyboard) is never welcomed at all, despite the testings and proofs that less errors are made with it (chapter 19).

I like Wershler-Henry's approach to his book- instead of going through a history of mechanical invention, he goes through what purposes the typewriter was invented to serve, and how the type-writer influenced society.

I found it quite interesting that one of the reasons some inventors give for the invention of the type-writer (although it was not called this at first) was to produce "truth" (pg 37 among others-- on page 46, for instance: "the invention was... for the purpose of illuminating...epistolary truths"). One may just as well produce lies on such a machine as truth(well I thought this at first-- I will explain later). In fact, Wershler-Henry notes many times throughout the book that the authorship of type-written documents is ambiguous:

One never knows if the author is the dictator, the amanuensis, the typewriter itself, or a spirit that goes through the amanuensis ( a good example is Chapter 12's Theodora Bosanquet). I think it is kind of eerie, really-- if you sit alone with a typewriter, you are never really alone.

Now I will explain why I changed my mind about "lies" being produced on the typewriter:

After I read "Regardless of whether... these works are literary conceits...the works themselves remains valuable contributions to culture" (pg 77). I think that what these "lies" show are truth about a culture. The imagination that created a lie is a product of a culture, and imagination is a respectable trait. Therefore, it seems logical (yet absurd) to make a claim that the biggest/most-convincing lie is the most imaginative/creative and respectable person!

My next to last thought on this book concerns women. My friend and I were recently discussing feminists. I thought that women are not really treated inferiorly or seen inferiorly, but my friend thought they are. Now that I read Iron Whim, I see they really were. The type-writer SEEMED like a break through for women, but in a sense, it was not. Women did get into the workforce, but were always with the typewriter(and received little pay compared to men). It was as if it was OK that a woman was working only because men knew that the woman could not do work by themselves-- they required an extra assistant-- the type-writer. On page 88, Wershler-Henry writes that "the merging of the two[type-writer and woman]...alleviated the suspicion that either on their own might have elicited."

"If a novel presented a woman as an author, it would assign her with an emasculated hireling" (pg 92). This sentence reminds me of Harry Potter's author-- few knew that she was a woman because on the book, it was the initials of her first and middle name that appeared.

So you know, maybe I am wrong about women being treated equally, although I do think we (or them since I did not do anything?,...) have come a long way.

My last thought is about the typing monkeys! I never thought about that instead of looking for a unique story/play/poem, experimenters try to test if the monkeys can write Shakespeare. What good is this? I suppose it makes for some good philosophical debate or something, but it does not make sense to produce Romeo and Juliet when it already exists. Additionally, it is ironic that that chapter talks about probability of the monkeys because I am in Probability class this semester. I could do some of my own calculations to figure out these types of problems. Even if something is infinite (for example: there are 20 coupons, all different colors. If you pick up one, record the color, then put it back, how many turns will it take to get a complete set of colors? This could go on forever, never getting the last color...) an "expected value" can still be calculated.

It is not intuitive, but in the mathematics/probability world, it somehow works...

Graffiti Documentation Exercise

This week, please consider the reading assignment in Graffiti Lives as you do your documenting, and in particular consider that graffiti artists often refer to themselves as "writers." With this in mind, explore what it means to "write" in public spaces with the tools and methods of these writers. What relationship to self, thought, social order, economics, etc. do you see specific to these writing spaces/ materials. Who are these writing selves? Why write in these spaces?

Like Snyder writes in his book, Graffiti Lives, I do not think class, status, ethnicity, etc., has anything to do with who is "writing." Anyone can like writing.

Some people do it for fame; Synder writes that "[TAKI 183] made it clear what writing was all about: fame" (pg 23). TAKI wrote his name in strategic places and eventually was in the New York Times.

Others do have a message to tell and were inspired by politics. Snyder writes that, indeed, "...graffiti... served those who wished to influence public opinion about the culture and its practitioners" (pg. 28).

And then there are the others who do it for art. Some writers have "turned their youthful graffiti success into adult careers as muralists for hire, tattoo artists, graphic designers, and magazine publishers" (pg. 44).

For whatever reason writers do it, though, it is always an expression of themselves which is why it is called writing.

My dad was recently in Champaign, Illinois. Timing really could not have been more perfect. Let me explain: He loves trains and said how there was one near where he was staying. This gave me the idea to ask him to take pictures for me if there was any graffiti nearby since graffiti was very popular around trains back in the 60's and 70's according to Graffiti Lives and Style Wars. Lucky for me, there was graffiti! I think the following pictures do prove my theory of why writers write. For instance, this first picture shows the graffiti is near a train-- because so many people will ride by, the graffiti will have a lot of exposure. This gives fame. One can tell that some of the graffiti was done specifically for the riders, as well, since one throw-up says "Rider," unless that is someone's alias, of course. There are also a lot of tags all over the place, even on top of "Rider,"-- putting your tag up around a city as many times as you can gives you exposure, as well.

This next picture says "No war" showing that some people do it because they are politically inspired.

This last picture from Illinois I think shows that graffiti is an expression of oneself. Someone has written "I 'heart' (someone/something I can't discern)" which is obviously an expression of one's feelings for the world to see.

Does the writing define the writer, and if so, how? What relationship might these materials and spaces have to the writer and the writing? What counts as graffiti?

I do not think the writing necessarily defines the writer. For one thing, sometimes only the writer can understand his/her work. Others can only wish to come close to the true meaning of the writing. I can honestly say that I do not understand graffiti's meanings, although I can do take stabs at the meanings. Snyder also notes that it helps if one is an "insider" to understand meanings better-- the "writers... would often decipher the unique style of graffiti, which are difficult for outsiders to read" (pg. 15).

I think that these graffiti places in Illinois seem somewhat desolate. It is almost a win-win situation: no one will catch you doing graffiti and the trains going by helps get exposure. I do think that most people try to get their graffiti up in places with a lot of people and a place, as Snyder notes, wth little chance of removal. Fame is something that most people want. It is sad to think that someone does a "piece" and no one ever sees it.

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I walked around Mason Saturday night as it began to snow. I only found one graffiti there and I'm not quite sure what it is. I believe it's a tag, just in "Wildstyle" since I can't read it. It was going up the million steps to the John Center on a brick wall. The picture quality is not good since I took it at night:

I believe there is not a lot of graffiti at Mason because it would just get removed. Additionally, it is a place of "authority." People feel like the place is kept clean so there is less desire to add graffiti, whereas that place in Illinois has so much graffiti that one might as well add to it. Snyder writes that Jeff Ferrell, in Crimes of Style, creates a theory that "graffiti... upsets the 'aesthetics of authory' embedded in a clean wall that is meant to inspire order" (pg. 30).

Finally, I want to change the connotation of graffiti. Most people see graffiti as ink, aerosol cans, etc. As it was snowing Saturday night, I decided to create some of my own graffiti. I did not have any aerosol cans or ink, though, but I had a better idea! Observe:

Do you know what this is? Well, snow covered one of the tables outside of the Johnson Center. I used my finger and drew a smiley face, then signed it with my alias. I think it counts as defacing property, or maybe I am just full of myself. Either way, I think I found a way to do "graffiti" that does not involve ink and is not permanent. This helped me realize "what counts as graffiti"-- it can be anything that is not meant to be there by who owns the property. Or, in the case of legal walls, anything that is an expression of oneself that may be viewed by whoever passes by.