Week 7 Baron ch 1-6

Moving on to Baron and A Better Pencil.  We are constantly posting on Facebook and Tweeting and texting and because of this our grammar has supposedly gotten worse...how is it then that there are still Grammar Nazi's lurking in the shadows.  People still correct each other's grammar in these forums and there are even those that send the grammatically correct text (gasp!).  There's even a Facebook page called Grammar Police that calls out people's grammatical errors.
The supposed degradation of our language is contributing to what Baron calls Teknofear.  This fear of technology taking over and destroying our lives has caused things like the Unabomber attack.  I think it is an irrational fear.  While we are getting more technologically savvy, people adapt and still maintain forums in which correct grammar must be used.
There are problems with this technology as Baron points out.  Once we send something we can't take it back.  Once it's out in cyber land it's there...so you really have to think about what you want to say.  On the other hand Baron says that we react to things quickly but with no wisdom.  We can respond so quickly that we don't think first. Even though we can respond quickly we are only human and want to avoid awkward conversations and miscommunications.  For these reasons people do actually think before they send especially if there in a situation where they want to make a good impression on someone.
I did however like what Baron said about the keyboard and not the pencil being the connection to our inner thoughts.  Basically everyone has a computer or at least knows how to type.  You don't have to learn how to hold a pencil or form letters. You just start typing and immediately your thoughts are on paper (using the term very loosely).

Week 6 Ong ch 4-7 and Helvetica

Continuing on with Ong we talked about technology and grammar.  I found it interesting that Ong brought up the point that an abundance of books makes men less studious.  I actually think this is true.  As an English major I am constantly surrounded by books and the only daily assignments I have to do are reading books.  But because I am bombarded with books every day I find I want to read them less.  I feel like all I do is read and therefore the thing I really don’t want to do is read.  When I was younger reading was fun and I liked to do it in my spare time (which I don’t have any of now) and it was a rare treat.  Now when my friend says you should read this book I say Nah I think I’d rather do something else.

Another point that made me think was that grammar rules are in your subconscious and that you can’t teach them to other people.  This is because there is a disconnect between what’s in your mind and what you put on paper. I had edit a document in my technical editing class and fixing grammatical errors was the hardest part.  I knew things sounded wrong but I didn’t know why.  Even after I read a chapter about grammar in our textbook I still felt lost.  This also reminded me of trying to learn grammar rules in Spanish.  I’ve been taking it for years but still have to think of a sentence in English and conjugate it in my head.

This week we also watched the documentary Helvetica.  I had no idea that there was so much history behind a single font.  I also didn’t realize there was such a thing as typeographers and type designers who devote their lives to inventing new typefaces.  I don’t know where I thought they came from I guess just sprouted out of the ground somewhere? 

It was pretty cool too that the Swiss have their own typeface (you need to get on that America!) .

It was also interesting that at first Helvetica was popular and modern and stood for a sense of openness and transparency, but in the 70s came to stand for the people supporting the Vietnam War and big bad corporate America.  And then came back through the grunge movement of all things.  Now it stands for clean lines and minimalism.

Week 5 Ong Ch 1-3

   

This week we moved on to Ong.  One of the things I found interesting in the first three Ong chapters was that different cultures used writing for different purposes.

In Mesopotamia they writing was used to establish their empire and to keep affairs such as business transactions in order.  In Egypt a lot of writing was used as propaganda to promote certain rulers and people of the elite class.  In China their writing was centered around the art of divination and more mystical aspects of life.  The Phoenicians used their writing mostly to conduct business transactions and for things related to numbers.  Mayan writing was centered around time and events in history and Greek writing was mostly used to compose poetry and to vote for senate members. 

A question that Ong brought up was that history is predominantly oral so how much of it was changed? If a civilization that has writing conquers one that doesn’t they civilization with writing can obliterate the one without and change or completely erase its history.

Another argument that Ong poses that I found interesting was when he said oral literature doesn’t exist because it doesn’t have to do with writing.  My teachers have always used the term oral literature so I guess I just adopted it.  So when I read that passage in Ong it shattered a little part of my world view which was kind of scary… 

The Homeric Question and the fact that everything has an epithet attached to it in Homer’s works was also interesting.

The study that was conducted on illiterate and literate people was very intriguing.  I thought it was strange that illiterate people couldn’t recognize geometrical shapes; they assigned names to them.  For example they’d call a circle a plate.  But I guess it makes sense since they had no reason to know the names of geometrical shapes.  It didn’t have a place in their lives.

My favorite thing that we talked about was the “Everything is a Remix” video.  I always use the phrase “there are no original ideas” so that was very validating.  I’m kind of a Star Wars nerd so all the information about that was really cool. I was a little mad a George Lucas afterwards, but I guess I can forgive him.  He was inspired by some pretty interesting stuff. 

I also thought it was interesting that reading has pretty recently become a solitary activity and that people used to always read out loud.  I feel awkward enough practicing a speech alone in my room let alone walking around reading aloud to myself. 

The last thing I particularly enjoyed was the freestyle rapping.

Week 4 Powell 206-254, Breaking the Mayan Code

   My favorite part of this week was watching the documentary Breaking the Mayan Code.  It was full of cool facts that I didn’t know about.  I really didn’t know much about the Mayans before I watched this documentary so it illuminated a lot for me.

  I had no idea the Mayans had books and that they were so beautifully illustrated.  I was so upset when I saw all of those books being burned.  A huge part of a people’s culture was just destroyed right in front of their eyes…shameful. 

   I also thought it was interesting that they valued time so much.  The fact that they had specific “day keepers” who could read the calendars and were in charges of keeping track of important dates seemed so foreign.  I guess I’m just used to opening up my planner and having all the holidays and everyone’s birthdays written out for me.  My whole life is in that thing…

It’s also pretty amazing that there are 30 Mayan languages! How did they keep all of that straight? I really liked when someone said (I don’t remember who it was) said “words are the vehicles of history”.  It is really true…words are how we are remembered.  They’re what remain after we are gone.  It made me think of how hundreds of years later we are required to take classes of Shakespeare…that’s all we really have left of him.  This documentary showed just how much we can learn about a culture from what they wrote, or drew. 

    Another thing I found to be really interesting was that glyphs could be abstract and morph into each other or even be hidden behind each other.  I feel like that could get really confusing, but it made the Mayans even more mysterious. 

   I was also really intrigued by the calendar round that Fursterman discovered.  I think it is amazing that they had technology like that back then.  It also made perfect sense…maybe even more so than our current calendar.  Once they discovered the day that marked the beginning of the calendar round and of time in Mayan culture it seemed to unlock so many other parts of the code. 

   The importance of the invention of Xerox was also interesting.  I didn’t realize how much simpler making copies could make a process like deciphering glyphs.  I thought it was really cool how they could cut out the glyphs and arrange them on huge pieces of paper and put together a whole story like a giant puzzle.

   Finally I really liked that the Mayans put their books on altars.  That’s where I think they deserve to be…well the good ones anyway.

Week 2 Powell 100-205

    This week we got more into the meat of things.  Powell talked about Egyptian writing.  One thing I found particularly interesting from this reading was that there are three different forms of Egyptian writing: demotica, hieroglyphs, and hieratic.  I thought it was pretty cool that the Egyptians had different types of writing for different parts of their lives.  They separate their writing for the common people from their sacred carvings, and priestly and literary works.  This concept reminded me of how we use writing now.  We have our more informal writing that we would use to write an email to a friend (a conversational tone), our formal writing used for things like the Bible and official books and writing papers, and our informal writing that we use when we’re texting someone about their date last night. 

    I also didn’t know that the Egyptians had a cursive script they used that was faster than their normal writing, which is what ours was originally used for and then went by the wayside…I still find myself using it when I want to write quickly on paper. 

    Another thing I didn’t know is that they used their skirts as desks.  I don’t what I thought they wrote on, but that’s pretty nifty…wish I could do that. I also thought it was cool that scribes were part of the elite and spent their time in the company of nobility earning a good wage. What happened to that?! I want to be a writer, but I know I’m going to be eating Ramen noodles and living in a shack for most of my natural life.

   It’s pretty amazing that with all the technology we have now a lot of its components are based on old technology. Scroll, trash bin…etc.

Week 3 Powell 1-99

     This week we learned about the basic terminology concerning types of writing.  I had no idea there were so many different types.  I always just categorized writing into the basic sections of text, pictures, and some combination of the two.  The chapters in the Powell book we read opened up a whole new world of writing for me.  Now whenever I go anywhere I look at signs and things and think hm is that a semasiograph or maybe a logograph?  In a sense this new terminology has “ruined” me.  I analyze everything…it used to just be books and movies, but now it’s signs and pictures too. So much for ignorant bliss.  I also thought it was interesting that musical notes, math notations, and computer symbols are considered their own kind of language.  I never really thought of them that way before.  I hate math so I always tried to ignore all the symbols it uses outside of how will these help me solve this problem?

     In the first three chapters of Powell he also discusses some misconceptions and problems with writing technologies.  He scolded his readers for automatically assuming that writing comes from pictures…which is what I was always taught…sorry Powell… I liked what he said about writing only doing as much as it needs to.  When I would look at hieroglyphs and pictograms…etc. I always thought wow this is doing so much! It’s creating this beautiful art while telling a story and giving us a key to unlock the history of an ancient civilization.  But I guess he’s right.  In context writing is kind of lazy.  A group of people need a way to communicate the word man so they draw a picture of a man…that kind of thing. 

   It is interesting that writing was originally used for everyday mundane things like business transactions.  I don’t know why we think it served some grander purpose, but I guess if you see a pretty picture that represents 4 instead of just a number you assume it stood for something more elaborate.

    I also didn’t know anything about phonetic compliments.  I never knew what the little nd at the end of 2^nd was called I just knew it went there.  And I didn’t know that abbreviations like St. for street had a name either.