Monthly Archive for July, 2010

Reading the Remix

Published
by
Tom
on July 28, 2010
in Copyright, Internet and Media
. 1 Comment

During the spring semester, we had some excellent Cac.ophony posts on the theme of remixing: “Agents of Information Change? Perhaps Not” by Melissa; “Vanilla Ice All Over Again” by Lauren; and “Lessig on Remix” by Wendy.  These posts raise essential questions about how we teach students to produce media in this digital age when it so easy to sample others’ work.

For anyone interested in this topic, I highly recommend  “Texts Without Contexts,” an essay from this past March by literary critic Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times books section.  Kakutani begins with a review of many of the challenges involved with production of media in our time, including reviews of texts new and old that challenge the boundaries of copyright law.

I found this part interesting, but was most struck by the next section, beginning with the following:

THESE NEW BOOKS share a concern with how digital media are reshaping our political and social landscape, molding art and entertainment, even affecting the methodology of scholarship and research. They examine the consequences of the fragmentation of data that the Web produces, as news articles, novels and record albums are broken down into bits and bytes; the growing emphasis on immediacy and real-time responses; the rising tide of data and information that permeates our lives; and the emphasis that blogging and partisan political Web sites place on subjectivity.

Kakutani focuses on intellectual, cultural, and social changes associated with the consumption of media.   She is not writing about teaching students how to read and research, but it is not difficult to see the implications for the classroom, as well as for graduate-level research, and the general communication challenges we grapple with on this blog.

Text v. “Book”

Published
by
Diana
on July 12, 2010
in Art and literature
. 0 Comments

As those of you who are “friends” of mine on facebook are already aware, I recently purchased a Kindle. It will arrive tomorrow, with three “books” already transferred to it. I’m very excited, as I have coveted the Kindle (2) ever since I read an article in The New Yorker about two years ago. Sadly, I never had the spare cash lying around.

Although it has come down significantly in price, what inspired my purchase was actually a debate between two friends over 4th of July weekend. Both book lovers, one was arguing that it is “text” that he loves — the content, not the object. The other, identifying herself as perhaps a more authentic, or sentimental, book person, argued that it was the entire experience of the book.

I identify myself very much as a reader and “book person” — but for some reason the e-reader concept immediately appealed to me. No more lugging books around, no more dusty bookcases (last year I brought 19 boxes of books down to storage, got rid of another five, and still have four full bookcases in my apartment). As for book versus text, I reasoned, when I loved A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or Heidi, it was the story and the writing that captured my imagination.

All that said, I was very moved by this article in The New York Times that describes the positive results of giving kids 12 books — physical books — to take home over the summer. Suddenly I had a different take on the e-reader issue. The physical book is part of the experience. I remember a fierce attachment to the physical book, walking around with it, curling up with it, just examining the pages, staring at the cover… And it seems that at least for kids this physicality is part of the experience. Not to mention the pride in building a library.

The Times article compares learning outcomes associated with reading physical books with a generalized experience of the Internet, not with e-readers specifically. I’m wondering how e-readers will impact children’s formative reading experience, and am thinking that these devices are more appropriate for mature readers who are already hooked than for novices. autocad 2008 and autocad 2010 adobe acrobat 8.

In any event, I still can’t wait for my Kindle to get here!