POST 9

In the article, "from pencils to pixels" our sweet Mr. Baron discusses the transformation of technology in our world, not just the technological changes for the utilization of writers but also changes made throughout history to help the betterment of mankind.  He brings up these changes to compare technology of today and to show that some people who believe technology is destroying what we love about writing may be wrong about that assumption because there has always been technological advancement.  In this section of the reading Baron states that Thoreau is not as against the advancement of technology as Henderson is trying to let us believe.

"And it is true that some well-known writers have rejected new-fangleness. Writing in the New York Times, Bill Henderson (1994) reminds us that in 1849 Henry David Thoreau disparaged the information superhighway of his day, a telegraph connection from Maine to Texas. As Thoreau put it, 'Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.' Henderson, who is a director of the Lead Pencil Club, a group opposed to computers and convinced that the old ways are better, further boasts that Thoreau wrote his anti-technology remarks with a pencil that he made himself. Apparently Samuel Morse, the developer of the telegraph, was lucky that the only letter bombs Thoreau made were literary ones.
In any case, Thoreau was not the complete Luddite that Henderson would have us believe. He was, in fact, an engineer, and he didn’t make pencils for the same reason he went to live at Walden Pond, to get back to basics. Rather, he designed them for a living. Instead of waxing nostalgic about the good old days of hand-made pencils, Thoreau sought to improve the process by developing a cutting-edge manufacturing technology of his own."
 (425)

 You see here that he is not against technology but actually condones it.  It is my belief that he is a man of many talents who knows of technologies evils, and its goodness too.

post 8

It seems to me that it hasn't been until the past decade or less that most public schools have truly started integrating computers into their educational programming.  As a young Vinnie, we had a computer in our living room that I wasn't allowed to use but I sometimes watched my mom clack away on, I didn't really care much for computers. When I was in elementary school, education had a more traditional approach.  We never used computers for anything until we reached about 4th grade and still at that point they were used about twice a year just for some sort of computer quizzes and puzzles. It wasn't until 7th grade in middle school that we started taking mandatory typing classes.  We had to learn typing skills, how to surf the internet, how to delete cookies, how to work Microsoft word and other basic computer necessities.  I didn't pay much attention to the teacher in those classes because they were fairly straight forward things to do, mostly I would just look up Garfield comics.  After 8th grade I wasn't required to take anymore computer classes, but I did take two computer classes my junior year which helped me learn a lot about computers and messing up the system at the school.  I learned about photoshop, excell, some sort of newspaper program, how to design a basic website, and other intermediate skills.  The most important skill I learned from that class was not taught by the teacher but by one of my friends who had a game called Unreal Tournament on his flashdrive.  He gave me a copy for my flashdrive and we ended up putting it on every computer in the school, creating LAN games across school networks, and really making the computer technician hate his job.  These skills helped me very little outside of school because it wasn't until the end of my senior year that I even had a computer to use.  In 7th grade my step dad bought a computer and then told everyone that it was only to be used by he and my mom, which was fine with me.  When I got a computer of my own I decided it would have to be great for gaming, so I have a laptop which holds a great capacity for new age games.  Since I rarely use my laptop for schooling assignments besides writing and reading online I would have to say my education with computers and schooling has a good amount of contrast, this could also be due to the fact that I'm an Outdoor Recreation major.

post 7

In Brandt's article, she talks about literacy in terms of a economical stand point.  She explains literacy as if it was some sort of currency or better yet a service or good you would trade for currency.  I think that she has a pretty interesting point of view.  Brandt says that sponsors are the teachers, elders, or military officers who have some sort of knowledge or higher discipline or credibility that makes them suitable to be sponsors.  She says that in most every case a sponsor also has something to gain from being a sponsor.  I think that this could be true just because she also explains that sponsors lend their skills and resources and even sometimes their credibility to the ones they are sponsoring.  To me this means that if they are willing to risk something like that for someone that they are able to gain.  It seems as though these people are able to gain something because they are also losing a small something too, they give and take, eventually they are able to gain more than they give. 

Wikipedia Article Reflection

After we were told that we had to write upon wikipedia, I became very excited.  Writing up a wikipedia article is something I've always wanted to do but have never had the motivation or determination to actually accomplish.  It's an entertaining idea to have enough information to add a noticeable amount to something everyone in the world has access to, it's like you become part of something bigger than yourself.  I think it's part of human nature to want to rattle off information one knows.  You see it in everyday life, someone telling a random fact, something they learned in class, possibly just the weather for the next few days.  There's just something about teaching people or reporting information to people that just feels fulfilling.
I think that part of the report to want to reveal information to others is, in a way, to boost one's own ego.  Not in the same way that someone would go out and chug down whey protein and pump iron 8 days a week, but in a subconscious way, just making you feel a bit more confident in your credibility or ability to converse and trade facts.  This makes me think that there is a link between giving information and Donald Murray's article on every part of writing being autobiographic.  He states that even the most formal writing, like a scholarly journal, can be called autobiographic.  I truly believe that the same can be said for every wikipedia article online.  Even though wikipedia is strictly an informational resource, there are many hints showing people's own personal work. 
I certainly felt as though I had a personal investment within the article I was editing.  After days of research and years of gaining personal interest and information I could really feel the article coming together before I had even written anything down.  "My war stories are constructed of what I experienced, what I heard later, what the history books say, what I needed to believe to survive and recover..." (College Composition and Communication 76)  In this quote Murray tells us that what he says about the war is not only from his own experience, but from the information he has gathered around him.  I think this is the same way most wikipedia articles are made; someone has to have some sort of initial interest in the subject in which they are creating a wikipedia article about.  That is personal investment.  I don't think that any one of the students in class picked an article that they very truly dislike or have no liking for at all.  The point I would like to make by bringing this up is simply that even something as formal as wikipedia articles can be found as autobiographic.  People are merely showing their interest in a subject by adding to the mound of knowledge of it online. 
This brings me to another subject brought up in the readings that I had noticed whilst writing my article draft, errors.  In The Phenomenology of Error Joseph Williams talks about what you can consider an error, and who has decided what these errors are.  He also states that most people who talk about these errors being some horrible thing end up making the very errors they are talking down on.  As I wrote my first draft I felt very confined on how I should word things or how I should present a bit of  information.  It made me think about the guidelines of formal writing and who decided that when we write an article it has to have these set boundaries to make it a legitimate piece of work for your peers to even consider reading. 
The fact that I had to make sure I was staying in the boundaries set before me made it very hard to concentrate on the content of the article.  As Joseph points out, errors can sometimes distract a reader, not allowing them to read what is being written, but see what has been done wrong.  With this in mind I was careful of my spelling, grammar and sentence structure.  I made sure I wrote down everything I wanted to put in the article on paper first, then I could read it over and rearrange things I didn't like and go back and see what I changed later.  Even after writing the article and looking through it again after having a day to be away from it, I still feel as though I've missed something or made some type of error I can't see.   Even with the stress of trying to make every aspect of the article as ship-shape as I could, I really liked the project.  I would definitely try it again on another subject, only if I had to for a grade though....

POST 5

Lamott writes up a very interesting view on writing; she believes that the first draft is the trigger which starts a stimulating paper.  I would have to agree with her, in her article she explains that the first draft is the best place to just let loose and spew the mucus from your brainshell onto the plate of human knowledge.  Her idea is that in writing your first draft you have already made the necessary steps to be practically done with the paper.  Not so literally, but you have enough content to cut things, edit and adjust to make a finished product.  After you finish the rough draft it becomes easy to finish your paper.  After looking at the writing found on wikipedia I would have to say Lamott has a very good point.  No one on wikipedia would just write up something and put it in an article without first considering someone's opinion whether it be the opinion of the community in which he is writing about or a friend.  Her point of first drafts being a crucial part of writing a good article seems like a valid one to me.

POST 4

Out of every reading we have been assigned so far, this has been my favorite.  Murry explains that no matter what you are writing about or how you write, all of your writing is somehow autobiographic.  We are asked to reconsider the constructs in which we have been raised up to believe about using "I" only in a autobiographic manor and never in any other type of writing.  He believes that this is something we have to get rid of completely because it teaches young writers that speaking about themselves in a text is unacceptable.  He brings up a great point; you realize more about yourself, what you're writing about, or who you're writing about after writing it, making it a chronicling of your own self, "We become what we write" (62)  Murry believes that autobiographical writing can also help the troubled mind, "writing autobiography is my way of making meaning of the life I have led and am leading and may lead." (61)  It is interesting that Murry uses his writing as an escape, yet is a very admirable practice.  His final statement about autobiographical writing, "The texts we create in our own minds while we read -or just after we read- become a part of the life we believe we lived." shows his strong belief in the inescapable fact that "all writing is autobiographic."

post 3

In Porter's Intertextuality and the Discourse Community, he explains that all writing can be in some way linked together.  He discusses the similarities between contemporary writing and writing of the past.  As he continues to explain, writing can also be linked by conventions of the era or an event, or series of events.  Porter believes that there may not be any writing in the world that isn't somehow a part of another writing.  He uses the Declaration of Independence as an example, stating that our dear friend, Thomas Jefferson was not the sole propagator of this document.  Though he was the author of The Declaration of Independence, he did not write every word in it himself, using different pamphlets, documents and events of his time to create a whole product.  Porter goes on to state that if Jefferson was a student in a university of today he may be charged with plagiarism.  In this frame of mind one can say that no writing is original, this does not mean that no writing can be heroic or individual. 
  Mr. James E. Porter also explains that the use of certain words and phrases can bring on entirely different feelings towards the text people are reading.  In his example about the Kent State shootings he describes Kifner's use of the sentence "two of them women" as something that can be taken as a fact, but also "presupposes a certain attitude." He brings up the idea as "what-if?" it were stated that two men were killed, would it have the same impact?