Post 12

“After books have been printed and bound, they are unchangeable. Thus the idea of a single author can be protected. Because books can be physical property, they can be intellectual property, protected by some version of copyright law. Thus the career of authorship becomes possible. And books create a natural authority: you can quarrel with them but only marginally or by writing another book” (Lanham 155).

I have never looked at books in this manner. Beyond their inherent intellectual value and enjoyment factor, they are also tangible. Just as a toy, hammer, or apple. And since you can literally hold a book in your hands, you can in turn build a bond with the book like you never could with a computer screen. Attempts like the iPad and the Kindle have tried to build a bridge between technology and our hands but neither possesses the connect-ability like a book.

As technology develops and further integrates itself into our lives it brings to question, will books inevitably become obsolete? And thus, will the connection we share with books also become obsolete? And further, what will fill the empty void? Or will books be the one thing in our current lives that doesn’t fall to the onslaught of technology?

Post 11

Post 10

“Rather than bring the virtual product into a real environment for testing, manufactures simulate the environment along with the product” (Wolf 426).

The virtual product in this instance is a vehicle. I speculate this virtual testing is taking place in many products, not just cars. In fact, it’s easy to flirt with the idea that all current products being designed and produced in today’s world are most likely simulated virtually first and then produced in a tangible form second. Something about that doesn’t sound right.

It’s depressing, but the act of failing is a deeply seeded human trait; one could say: to fail, is to be human. One-hundred years ago, a person trying to create something would take a shot in the dark, fail, and then try again, fail, and try again… until they succeeded. That’s human. That’s natural.

What isn’t natural, is plugging numbers into a computer and letting it tell you how to build something after running it’s virtual simulations. What’s the next step? Maybe in 50 years computers will be able to tell us what we should build based off what they think we need. And then maybe in another 50 years, computers will be able to tell us how we should live our lives based around the products they design and create for us. Sound familiar? I hate to reference Sci-Fi’s but the first two movies that pop into my mind are The Matrix and The Terminator. Machines, namely A.I., take over and destroy the world, as we know it.  

Maybe that’s a little far-fetched, but think about it. In a very short amount of time we are already at the point where iPhones dominate most peoples average day. Technology is sticking its ugly head in nearly every aspect of human life. Where do we as humans and technology go from here? I can’t see us becoming less attached to technology anytime soon; if anything, technology is becoming more human everyday and the bond only grows stronger. 

Post 9

“The physical fact of the text, with its spatial appearance on the page, requires visual apprehension: a text can be seen, must be seen, in a process which is essentially different from the perception of speech” (Bernhardt 66)

In this sense, words are the individual brush strokes of an entire painting. One stroke, one word, has almost no meaning by itself. But, thousands of each can create vivid texts and beautiful paintings. The quote above, and the majority of the Bernhardt text, combines both writing and painting (in a sense) and describes the undeniable power of this duo.

This concept of combining both text and visual art reminds me of the McCloud text we read awhile back, dealing with comics and their ability to communicate through both text and art successfully. I agreed with McCloud, as I now do with Bernhardt, the combination of text and pictures is extremely useful in communicating a point across.

It would be very interesting to dive deeper into this idea. I wonder if there is more in this concept of combining the two. What do you think? What fields do you believe could benefit from the combination?   

Post 8

“Teenagers with cellphones each send and receive 2,272 text messages a month on average” (Shellenbarger, For Teens, Has Texting Replaced Talking? 1)

Texting is undeniably important in an average day of my life. It’s sad, in ways my phone should really just be attached to my body as a fifth appendage. I own an iPhone and there truly is an app for everything a person could possibly do in a day. From communicating with others, listening to music, driving based off the GPS, watching movies at a theater, logging on to Facebook, tweeting, cooking, buying airplane tickets, shopping online, and the list goes on. My freakin’ phone tells me when to stop drinking alcohol…  It’s gross but I’m hooked. I have lost my phone at times and truly thought I was going to die. But, back to one small feature of the smartphone, texting.

“Instant messaging lets us detect whether our friends are busy without our bugging them, and texting lets us ping one another asynchronously. (Plus, we can spend more time thinking about what we want to say). (Thompson, Death of the Phone Call 2)

This is nothing but the truth. I love the ability to be able to text a friend and give them the time to respond when it is most convenient for them. And, on the flipside I can respond to a text I received two hours ago and pick up, right where the conversation left off.  Phone calls and voicemail are becoming irrelevant in my social network, which I feel is the same in most of my friend’s social networks. The majority of voice mails I receive I honestly don’t listen to:

“We apparently find voicemail even more excruciating: Studies show that more than a fifth of all voice messages are never listened to” (Thompson, Death of the Phone Call 2)

I honestly hate them. For some reason the last thing I want to do is have some person bicker at me for all of five minutes and at no point in the lecturing, can I interrupt and repudiate. Even my mom gets it, if she calls and I don’t pick up she will just leave me a text, that is quick and to the point. My friends just skip the phone call part and text me, as they know this form of communication is superior. The pros out weigh the cons when it comes to texting, as our generation ages it will be interesting to see if we continue to text or if this communication form will become irrelevant as did the phone call.

What do you think? Will texting be a communication form we take into our 50’s, or will a new superior form arise?

Post 7

I have heard the debate, held within this article, many times. Mostly from adults twice my age. They argue that technology, namely computers and phones, are slowly turning out society anti-social. The funny thing is, one of the main uses of computers and phones is to connect people who, in some cases, would not be able to connect. To this Jones makes a good point:

“Ironically, then, what makes CMC so attractive, especially for activities in which users desire greater control over their information preserve, is not just the sense of “connectedness” it fosters, but also the sense of “disconnectedness” (Jones 21).

On the outside computer-mediated communication or CMC seems to connect the un-connectable, but in fact it might be disconnecting the connectable. While the ability to communicate with anyone is always there, Jones makes another interesting point that looks at CMC in another light:

“Computer screens have a dual function—they allow us to project information onto them, but they also allow us to hide information behind them” (Jones 21).

This “dual function”, Jones speaks of presents an issue. While CMC allows us to communicate like never before, it also lets us lie and deceive like never before. An example could be, a 40-year-old man creating a Facebook and pretending to be a 20-year-old college girl. Then becoming friends with other, real, 20 year old girls and the creeping begins. Obviously CMC is not abused like this 100% of the time but there are predators out there that do abuse it in this manner.

In all, CMC has its pros and cons. In a “perfect” world CMC would allow us to become even better, more social humans. In this world it allows us to be, well human. Just like CMC, humans are not perfect.