Jenna's Blog

Metaphors

2004-12-08T15:55:00.000-08:00

The main thing that I realized is that most of my metaphors involve technology as a metaphor for humans. I think that this could have a huge impact on the way that we think and feel about ourselves. We have begun to look at ourselves as machines and this mean that we’ve quit paying attention to many human tendencies. For example, cooking used to be a gift that many women possessed because it was necessary to cook for their families. Now, women are working alongside the men and their families have to fend for themselves when it comes to meals. Many of my friends in high school had this experience.

Another way technology affects the way we think and feel about ourselves is that it eliminates emotion from our lives. In today’s world, it is becoming less and less common to express emotion in public. People are holding in their emotions and finding it harder to express their feelings.

Technology is also making society a less social one. People no longer need to meet with people personally to do business, they simply e-mail or talk on the phone. This will change public policy eventually because people will communicate a lot less. People will become less social and they won’t be able to deal with people as well. Problems will go unsolved and laws will be broken.

Sense of Self

2004-11-28T13:00:00.000-08:00

I think that in today’s world, the media uses images for pretty much everything. You can’t pick up a newspaper or read a book without seeing some sort of images. A newspaper – something that is supposedly text-based is just packed with images.

Television, though, is probably the worst type of media we have for using images. We flip through the channels and can’t help but notice thin, beautiful, young women and muscular, handsome men. This has a huge impact on our body image. Young girls think that they are supposed to look like the women they see on television, and young boys feel the same way. When they get to be teenagers and realize that they will probably never look that way, it has a huge impact on self-esteem. People wonder why so many young people have eating disorders. All they have to do is turn on their television to find out.

I’m not saying that all we have to do is censor images to correct problems with body image, because it wouldn’t completely solve the problem. However, young children need to know that beauty is only skin-deep and that not everybody needs to look like the people they see on TV to be beautiful.

Virtual Rape

2004-11-21T22:07:00.000-08:00

After reading the debate between Dibbel and Miller, present an argument about whether a person can or cannot be raped in cyberspace. How are sexually violent crimes like rape connected to a person's identity beyond the physical body?

I think that in a sense, a person can be raped in cyberspace. Rape is more or less a mental crime committed through a physical act...people regularly participate in the physical act, it's only through mentally not wanting to participate that it becomes a crime. So if a person does not want to participate in the act, whether in real life or virtual reality, rape is still rape. As seen in the article, the woman had emotional trauma after she was raped in cyberspace. She was less effected by the rape online than she would have been had the physical act actually been committed against her. Being raped in cyberspace has a great deal less of an emotional effect, but the crime of rape was still committed.

I think that it would be much harder to punish anybody in virtual reality than in real life, because a person can simply log into the chatroom with a new account and nobody would ever know the difference. I don't think that a case like this would make it into a court of law anytime soon, and it'd be very hard to actually prove who committed the crime.

Turkle and MOOs

2004-11-18T15:55:00.000-08:00

In Turkle's essay, she argues that identities can very easily be changed in a MOO. When playing in a MOO, she says that different personalities can be cycled through very quickly. Being online and anonymous allows us to become anybody we want to be, regardless of our bodies and personalities.

In chat rooms, I find that this is pretty much the case. You can switch from one personality to the next with the click of a few buttons. In real life, there's no way this is possible. It's kind of like Blade Runner and those machines you can use to change your emotions. In cyberspace that's pretty much what you do - dial up an emotion. You can be anybody you want to be in cyberspace because it's just a bunch of words; nothing is physical.

Module 1 Assignment 2

2004-11-14T23:23:00.000-08:00

When I talk to different sets of people I tend to speak differently, or "speak another language." When I'm talking to my friends and family, I tend to speak my mind and say how I honestly feel about things. They know me well, so they would know if I was lying or not being honest. Also, I don't feel the need to come off as something I'm really not; I don't need to impress them. I know them well and trust them, so I can confide my true feelings in them.

When I'm talking to peers that I don't know well, I tend not to say much sometimes. The same goes for when I'm talking to professors or other adults. I don't know how they feel about me, and I don't know them that well so I stay quieter than I normally am.

When I talk to my friends, I feel like I am truly myself. I say pretty much anything that's runs through my mind. When I talk to others, I still feel that I am myself, just much more reserved.

The Monster's Stigma

2004-11-11T13:00:00.000-08:00

When creature in Frankenstein comes to life, he thinks that he is normal - just like everybody else. Then, he is rejected by his creator so he ventures out into society. Everybody is scared of him, but he doesn't know why. When he starts reading, he reads about monsters. He identifies with them, so he starts to act like them, even though he knows that's not what society expects from him. The literature he reads and the actions of others combined are what turns the creature into a monster.

I think that reading and watching movies does make people feel excluded in some ways. For example, when you read a romance novel or watch a chick flick, you realize that the things in those stories aren't going to happen to you. This makes you feel excluded. Or if you read a book about something you have always wanted to do you'll feel excluded from that.

In Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pip first achieves consciousness of himself as a self when he is talking to the poor man in the graveyard. He steals from his sister and her husband to feed the homeless man. He feels awful about it because society tells him not to steal - that it's immoral and wrong. This is similar to the monster's situation in Frankenstein because they go against the expectations of society.

Frankenstein...

2004-11-09T23:09:00.000-08:00

The creature in Frankenstein is born with a good heart, but he is treated horribly by other people because of his bad looks. In the beginning, he can't communicate and he can't understand anything going on around him. Victor flips out on him and runs away from his own creation. Everybody else does the same thing; they see the creature and think monster. They cannot get past his outer appearance. People are projecting their own fears onto the creature. He becomes a monster in their eyes because that is what people fear deep down inside themselves. Little do they know that if they tried to be peaceful, a whole lot of pain and torture could have been avoided.

This is the same way that many countries are seen in the eyes of U.S. citizens. If we see a person from Iraq walking down the street, we instantly think terrorist. However, we're not looking beyond the surface. We need to realize that the people of Iraq are peaceful, it's a select few that want to bomb the United States.

Another thing that we project our fears upon is people with AIDS or other transmittable diseases. We frown upon these people sometimes, but we need to realize that they have good hearts. While their outward appearance may disintigrate, their hearts stay the same and we shouldn't project our fears onto them.

Or how about first impressions in general? In school, there was always this one boy that I thought was really feminine...and i thought he was a geek. I never gave him the time of day...i had 80 kids in school with me...and i still wouldn't give him the time of day. Then high school rolled around and it turns out he was in most of my classes. Then I ended up tutoring him in a math class. By the end of the first semester we were best friends and pretty much inseparable. He's probably the best guy friend I have from high school. At first, I projected my ideas onto him, but then I realized that I just needed to give him a chance...that he was completely normal and a really a great guy.

Assignment 3

2004-11-08T01:54:00.000-08:00

Brain=Washing Machine
This metaphor compares the processes of the brain to the way that a washing machine works. The bad thing about this metaphor is that it makes the brain seem way too simple. It's a good model for the way that serotonin works, but it doesn't tell us anything about the way the actual brain works.

Brain=Radio Frequencies
This metaphor compares the way the different moods we have to radio frequencies. If we're in a "blue mood" then the radio channel isn't coming in clearly and we need to adjust the channel so that it is clearer, meaning that we will be in a better mood. This metaphor fails to show that switching to a different mood is not as simple as turning a knob on a radio.

Brain=Archeological Ruins
Freud compares the brain to archeological ruins, in that our thoughts are buried beneath the surface and it takes effort to bring out our true thoughts and emotions. This metaphor goes along with Freud's theory that we have to figure out what caused the problem in the past (hence the digging) and solve that in order to reach a solution to the problem.

Brain=Machine
This metaphor compares the brain to a machine. This metaphor seems to leave out human emotion and feeling.

Freud Metaphor
I didn't really understand what this was a metaphor for...I think it's similar to the other metaphor he made: that the brain=archeological ruins. He ties in the past to solve present problems.

Assignment 2

2004-11-07T22:28:00.000-08:00

Over the years, new technology has been invented and our metaphor for how the human mind works has shifted from mind=printing press to mind=computer. Both metaphors highlight and hide some things, which changed not only the way we think about the human mind, but what we expect from others because of their brain capacity.

The mind=printing press metaphor highlighted the fact that impressions are made upon the mind, and there are some things we'll never forget. However, it hides the fact that humans are not perfect and that we forget things. We don't remember every experience we have and every feeling we have as we experience it. Our "impressions" of our experiences change and sometimes we even forget the experiences we have, or at least parts of the experience.

The mind=computer metaphor highlights the fact that we can "save" data in our brain, but it hides the fact that we can't simply hit save and remember everything we want to remember. It also hides the fact that we forget stuff. If a computer crashes, it loses all the information stored on it, and this usually doesn't happen with the brain (except for when a person gets amnesia).

The metaphors have changed the way we perceive the capacity of the human brain. The printing press metaphor helped us to realize that in order to permanently keep a memory there has to be a force applied. The computer metaphor helped us to realize that memories can be saved. I think that today people expect more from others because we think that people can store all this information and remember everything. People get upset with others when things are forgotten. I think people tend to be alot harder on each other now than in the past because we have such high expectations.

Understanding of Bats

2004-10-31T19:06:00.000-08:00

I think that our understanding of bats has changed over the years because of advancements in technology. New technology provides for new metaphors, in turn providing for better understanding of everything around us. Since it's nearly impossible to describe anything literally, we use technology to describe things metaphorically. I think that we understand animal behavior much better now with the use of the radar/sonar/echolocation metaphor than we did using the metaphor of impressions and the printing press. I think that scientists use metaphors bases on technology to describe and explain animal behavior because it makes understanding their behavior easier than it would be if you described it literally. For example, it's easier to say bats have radar than to actually go into full detail and explain what they actually have.

Rachel Carlson on Bats

2004-10-31T18:11:00.000-08:00

Rachel Carlson writes an essay in Readers' Digest in which she talks about radar and sonar as a metaphor for the way bats fly. At the time she wrote the essay, radar, sonar, and echolocation were new technologies. These technologies provided a more accurate metaphor for the way bats fly then the metaphor of print. We know that bats don't actually have a radar device inside them, but this is the closest we can get right now to describing the way bats maneuver in the dark. Yes, it's very, VERY possible that this metaphor will change in the future with the developement of new technologies.

In the essays, she uses words that make references to radar, sonar, and echolocation. She uses words like "signals." This references directly to radar and sonar because these technologies use signals to sense objects and avoid running into them, the same way that bats use high-pitched sound waves to sense objects in front of them and avoid running into them.

Bats

2004-10-31T16:15:00.000-08:00

Cuvier uses the metaphor of impressions for the way that a bat flies through the air. He believes that bats fly through the air in the dark by recieiving signals on their skin. He uses impressions to describe this because he makes a reference to the printing press. He wrote the paragraph in 1827, so he wouldn't have known about radar or sonar...he would have known about the printing press.

He feels that bats get signals on their skin, similar to the way that words are imprinted on paper by the printing press. The technology wasn't around in the early 1800s to know that bats really maneuvered around obstacles in the dark by sending out high-frequency sounds and then getting them back after they bounce off an obstacle. At the time, impression was the best metaphor to describe the way that scientists thought bats flew in the dark.

A War of Ideas

2004-10-24T22:44:00.000-07:00

I agree that waging a war of ideas can be much more effective than waging a war physically. If we use force to beat terrorism, we will only create more terrorists because we will increase the hatred of the United States. If we wage a war of ideas we may potentially impact some people to change their way of thinking about the United States. If we change peoples' minds about the U.S., we will decrease the hatred of the United States, therefore decreasing the number of terrorists. If we decrease the fuel (hatred) we use to power the terrorists, we will decrease their power.

However, I feel that using information may not always work. I think that the terrorists are so fanatical that there is pretty much no getting through to them. We need to use brute force to nab the ones that we can, and if we can't talk some sense into them then I think it is necessary to put them in prison. I think that by befriending the peaceful people we will decrease the number of terrorists because people will realize that the U.S. isn't really the enemy.

U.S. policy will change if we use this idea because we would use a great deal more psychological warfare. We would try using persuasion to convince the Iraqi people that they want to live the same life we do.

Terrorism = War

2004-10-24T22:20:00.000-07:00

In "How to Build a Better Democrat" Joe Klein suggests that instead of using the metaphor of war to describe global interactions, we should use the metaphor that the United States is a vaccine. This metaphor highlights the fact that we need to take preventative measures to ensure the future of the country and the world. However, the metaphor hides one major thing...solving the problem. If we simply act as a vaccine and that's it, how do we punish the people that started the problem?

The terrorism = war metaphor highlights the fact that there are soldiers involved that are overseas fighting a real war. However, it hides the fact that the U.S. is acting as a vaccine by using agencies such as the CIA to intercept information in order to squash further terrorist schemes to harm the country.

The terrorism = war metaphor is a metaphor in the fact that it both highlights and hides certain things about war itself, but it can also be looked at as simply describing the activities of the terrorists. War has changed over the years. It used to be that war was an accurate metaphor because it really was war that the country was involved in. There wasn't all of the media and technology that we have today. For instance, today we can do extensive research in seconds, and it's all at the tips of our fingers. Back in the day, they had to wait days or even weeks to get any information from somewhere far away.

Rabbi Moshe Waldoks writes an essay called "Bomb them with butter...." in which he uses the word bomb as a metaphor. He uses the word bomb to mean information. He feels that we should send food, clothing, and luxury items to the Iraqis instead of bombing and killing them. By bombing them with information, we'll prove to them that the U.S. wants to help and the terrorists will become less in number because they will realize that we aren't bad people and we are here to help. This shows that the terrorism = war metaphor hides the fact that we can use soft things to win a war. We can use information, food, and luxuries to win instead of shrapnel, bombs, and guns. It shows that the vaccine we can use to beat the terrorists is the use of information and food. By befriending nations, we can decrease the hatred of the U.S.

War on Drugs

2004-10-24T19:49:00.000-07:00

After reading Metaphors We Live By, it was apparent that the metaphors we use determine how we treat the problem we're dealing with. Jimmy Carter used war as the metaphor for the energy crisis, and that metaphor pretty much determined the way that the government and the American public dealt with the problem.

The war metaphor is also applied to drug usage and the problems it causes in the United States. We are filling our jails and paying huge amounts of money to keep inmates there. A great deal of people are in jail because of drug addiction. These inmates go to jail, but can't get over there addiction because no treatment is provided. If we try to use a softer punishment to cure the drug problem in this country, we could decrease the amount of people in our jails and the amount of money spent each year to take care of inmates.

By applying the war metaphor to the drug problem, the American public feels that we need to use "hard" punishment to solve the problem. The metaphor highlights the fact that we need to FIGHT the problem. However, it hides the fact that fighting the problem by throwing offenders in jail isn't going to help. "Soft" punishment will help the problem because the only way that drug users will beat their addiction is by receiving counseling and rehabilitation services. These people have a disease in a sense - an addiction that hard time in a prison won't cure. They need to go to rehab to get over their addiction.

John Locke Essay - Assignment 1

2004-10-21T19:00:00.000-07:00

John Locke published an essay in 1690 titled Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In the essay, he uses many metaphors to represent the mind. First, he uses the metaphor of mind=white paper. This metaphor highlights the fact that experiences are necessary in order to remember things and think about things. I'm not exactly sure what it hides...maybe the fact that it's harder to remember things than to write them down and be able to look them up at any time. Some people in society feel that humans need to be perfect (patients think their doctors need to be perfect, etc.). This metaphor demonstrates that thought, but hides the fact that, in all honesty, nobody's perfect. He also compares the mind's workings to painting. You paint on a blank paper, just as you learn new things and remember them from experience.

Locke asked the question, "How comes [the mind] to be furnished?" He's using the metaphor furniture=thoughts. He compares thoughts to furnishings of the mind. (The mind must be a cluttered place...) This metaphor highlights the fact that thoughts are something you rely on, but they are constantly changing, just as people change their furniture. You are constantly replacing the old with the new. This is true of thoughts because the old are replaced with the new, and the old thoughts become harder to remember with time. The metaphor hides the fact that some thoughts are easier to remember not because they are newer, but because they are more important.

He compares the mind's workings to Fountains of Knowledge. He says that thoughts about our experiences are one fountain, and thoughts about our thoughts are another. The metaphor highlights the fact that people are constantly thinking about both experiences and their thoughts, and the fact that our mind is an endless spring of water that is always working. It hides the fact that people don't always think the smartest, most intelligent things. People aren't always thinking about something important, we may just be thinking about ordering pizza or taking a nap. It also hides the fact that when people sleep we don't usually remember what we think. If society used this metaphor to think about thought, people would be working all the time because society would feel that people are constantly on task.

To have truly lived your life...

2004-10-20T01:50:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to have truly lived your life? Many people have different way of defining a happy, worthwhile life. In my case, I think of it as fulfilling all of your dreams and achieving everything you’ve wanted to get done. I think that if you are a happy person when you pass away that you have truly lived your life. I don’t think that living life necessarily has anything to do with material goods, but if you have achieved your dreams then you have lived your life to the fullest.

When I’m eighty years old, I want to be a genuinely happy person. I want to look back on my life and think, ”Yeah, I’ve done everything I’ve wanted to do and if I die tomorrow it would be fine because I am happy.” I want to graduate from college and get a degree, get a job, get married, have a few kids, raise them well, travel the world, etc. There are a great deal of things that I want to do, but if I don’t do them all then I think it’s fine because plans can change. If I’m eighty and I haven’t traveled the world, I don’t think that it means I haven’t truly lived. As long as a person can look back on their life and be happy with everything they’ve done and have few regrets then they have truly lived their life.

Walden

2004-10-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

Thoreau uses the Walden pond as a metaphor for truth. He feels that he needs to get away from society and all of the new technology in search for truth. He builds his own home and only relies on the bare necessities to survive the two years that he lives there. Thoreau feels that the train's engineers and passengers are "better off or the sight" of Walden pond because they get a short glimpse of truth. He feels that the truth has been corrupted by the Industrial Revolution, and that by seeing his humble abode and lifestyle, they get to see what it's like to live a simple and truthful life.

Humans need truth in their lives, and this is one thing that technology cannot fulfill. Technology can make humans unhappy with their lives; everybody feels that they need something bigger and better. However, Thoreau is honestly happy with his life because he doesn't worry about how he measures up to the next guy...their is no next guy. He can look at his life and be truly happy because he has nobody to measure up to.

Falling in Love

2004-10-12T23:08:00.000-07:00

Society uses the metaphor of "falling in love" to describe love literally. Love isn't something that can be put into words, so a metaphor is necessary in order to talk about it. The metaphor highlights the fact that a person has no control over who they fall in love with and when they fall in love. Falling means that you cannot stop, so we think of love as something we can't stop doing - something that is endless. The end of a fall is painful, so we think of the end of love as being something that will end painfully.

However, the metaphor hides the fact that you do have a choice as to who you fall in love with. You may pick a partner based on religion, race, social class, or ethnicity. You're not going to marry some homeless guy off the streets, and if you're a rich socialite you won't marry a poor person. Many people also have problems with interracial marraiges. Still others want a partner of their same religion. So, you really do have a great deal of choice and you're not simply "falling" for any random person.

The metaphor has many effects on how we act and think about love. For example, let's take the movie, The Notebook, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks. A rich socialite falls for a poor country boy. The two have an amazing summer together, but her parents disapprove of their relationship. She moves back to the city with her family and meets a rich young lawyer. She gets engaged to him, but something pulls her back to the poor country boy and she meets back up with him shortly before her wedding. She ends up cancelling her wedding and staying with the boy that she fell in love with as a teenager. Classic chick flick. Basically, society's saying that you can't control who you fall in love with. In the movie, the girl's parents want her to marry a boy based on his social class but she has to follow her heart. She fell for the poor boy and she can't control her feelings. She can't stop loving him. This is how we tend to think about love, but we have to remember the hidden part of the metaphor - that we actually do have control over the choices that we make about love interests.

Fire and Anger

2004-10-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

In our everyday speech, we use fire or dynamite as a metaphor for anger. An aspect of this metaphor that's highlighted is the fact that some people let their anger build up and eventually "explode." These people will yell and scream and maybe even become violent. However, this metaphor hides the fact that some people don't explode...some people don't vent their anger. These people hold their anger inside and let it fester - they may or may not ever explode.

The metaphor in Blake's poem does the exact opposite. He uses the metaphor of anger=poison tree to show that not everybody is verbally angry. It highlights the fact that people let anger grow inside of them and don't let it out. The metaphor hides the fact that some people don't let their anger build up they explode. It's a very interesting metaphor...something I haven't thought about anger as being. I'm the type of person that doesn't express my anger, so the metaphor Blake uses works much better than the metaphor of anger=explosion. If we used Blake's metaphor in our ordinary language, we would use sentence such as, "my anger is growing inside me" and "don't water my anger." The first sentence is actually not uncommon, so maybe our society has picked this up from Blake...?

Goody vs. Socrates

2004-10-05T23:20:00.000-07:00

According to Socrates, writing hurts human beings by making us lazy. In The Phaedrus, Socrates seems to think that people in society will not be able to speak as well as a result of writing. He thinks that these two things can't coexist in the same society. Socrates also sees writing as a way to cover up the truth. It's easier to be dishonest in text than it is to be dishonest to somebody's face.

Goody has a very different opinion about writing in society than Socrates. He feels that writing provides a more logical way to organize thoughts and record information. "Leaving aside the implications for history, [writing] permits the accumulation of knowledge in a way that is inconceivable in a society where virtually everything has to be stored in the human memory" (Goody, 141). Goody feels that by writing things down, people preserve their society and their culture. When stories are written down, the same message can be conveyed through the generations and the stories will not be changed. However, if nobody writes down the stories the message can change and the stories could eventually be lost.

I feel that Goody has some good points in his essay. I feel that much of our society's culture could be lost if things were not written down. People would be much less educated without the use of pen and paper; our's would still be a primitive society. We wouldn't have computers, medicines, the Bible - the list goes on and on. There's no way that humans could possibly store in their memory all of the information that has been accumulated. I think that the technology of written text has not made our society lazy, but has provided for many advancements that we would never have without writing things down.

Robert Markley

2004-10-03T18:28:00.000-07:00

Well I went to Robert Markley's talk on Friday night and it was actually very interesting. He stated taht people respond differently to complex, embodied experiences differently than they do to text. This is the reason that the "talking heads," as he called them, were on his website rather than text. It is a more involved experience to actually see people talk than to read a script of what they said. He tried to incorporate this thought into the creation of his DVD-ROM. This is the reason that it is DVD-ROM instead of just a plain DVD - it's interactive and you can navigate around the DVD by yourself and on your own time. Overall, it was a very interesting talk and opened my mind to some things that I've never really thought of before.

Eloquent Images

2004-09-30T17:16:00.000-07:00

Several points struck me as being important in Eloquent Images. Images are eloquent because of the fact that they can convey much more emotion to an audience than text could ever do. It's difficult to communicate feelings and emotions in text, but a picture can do it easily. As the saying goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words."

Images also tend to be much more believable. It's easy to twist words around and exagerate a story, but when people look at a picture they believe what they see. Pictures are easier to understand because they put complex ideas into an image. Words originated as images, so it is difficult to put some images into words.

In ancient Egypt, words originated as images in hieroglyphic writing. Pictures were used to convey meanings, thoughts, and feelings. This was an early form of communication, and it was very useful to their culture. However, I think that text is essential; society could not sustain itself on images alone. There are many things that cannot be communicated through images that are necessary to put into text.

People tend to learn and understand more from pictures than from words. It's difficult to put information on a chart into words and still get the same effect. This is evident in textbooks sometimes. If there's a chart it is easier to get the information straight, understand it, and compare it than if the information is put into text. Sometimes (although not all the time) information is more easier to understand as an image than as text.

Assignment #1 Part #1

2004-09-20T01:17:00.000-07:00

I wrote about a time when I was four years old and I went dress-shopping with my mom and grandma. It was lunchtime and I was hungry and dress-shopping for my mom wasn't on the top of my to-do list. I ended up hiding in between a bunch of dresses and my mom and grandma were flipping out. I came out about fifteen minutes later giggling and I think Mom could have killed me right there for making her so worried.

I can definitely notice a change of voice between the three different letters that I wrote. The one to my mom is semi-formal, while the one to my friend is very informal. In my mom's I tended to use proper grammer, and I didn't say everything I felt. On the other hand, in the one to my friend I included the fact that I have never been a fan of dress-shopping for my Mom. I also tried to include him in the letter. I used the phrase, "you know how I feel about this" in order to make him feel included. I also used slang and did the ... thing alot. I abbreviated my words and may ands (&). The published one is the most formal because there would be alot more people reading it. I use proper grammar and no second person point of view.

I don't think the "me" changes, it's still the same story getting the same message across. I think that the voice changes because the audience changes. I don't want my mom to read the same letter i send to my friend, and I don't want the rest of the world to read the things I would say to my mom or friend.

Narrative A2 M3

2004-09-16T22:15:00.000-07:00

Barthes and Ryan's essay on narrotology tries to educate us on the narrative. They tell us about more specific, indivual parts of the narrative in the essay. Their claim is that every narrative has a beginning, middle, and an end. Two key terms that they use are functions and indices. Functions describe actions, while indices are more about mood and emotions. One such story that I will use to demonstrate these two concepts is the legendary fable about the tortoise and the hare. This story demonstrates function by the actions in it. You can literally picture the hare and the tortoise racing each other. Indice is used because you know how the characters are feeling. The narrative also has a beginning, a middle, and the end. In the beginning, the animals begin the race. The middle is about the actual race and the feelings of the characters. The end is actually the end of the race.

In Ryan's essay, she asks, "What kinds of stories can be told in different medial environments?" There are not that many stories that can be retold in a different medial environment. This is shown by the differences between the movie, Blade Runner, and the book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. The movie omits many little details of feeling that are present in the novel. Ryan would say that the medium certainly did change the way a narrative comes off. By changing the method of storytelling, you are essentially changing the story itself.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road...A2 M4

2004-09-15T08:05:00.000-07:00

The yellow brick road serves as a metaphor to to life in the twentieth century in The Wizard of Oz. The movie starts with the twister and Dorothy seeing images of people in her town through her window. She sees her neighbor who changes into a witch and starts cackling, obviously paralleling the Wicked Witch of the West. Dorothy exagerates the personality of her neighbor, as producers do in Hollywood. Overall though, I think that this movie is one of the few that conveys the message that our lives are okay...that we don't have it so bad. Even as Dorothy enters Oz, she is looking for a way home. At the end when she finally does get back home, she's so happy and excited to be back, even though her life isn't nearly as exciting as life in Oz.

Once the house lands and Dorothy wakes up, she opens the door and sees the World of Oz in technicolor. Even though this world is new and exciting, Dorothy wants to get out of there so she can get back home to her life in Kansas. If you think about entering the world of technicolor as entering a movie, the movie has something to say to us. The producer is trying to say that even though movies are more exciting, home is where the heart is. There's nothing wrong with watching a movie, as long as you keep your life in perspective. Television and movies should not affect your life, they should be a form of entertainment.

Assignment 2, Module 2

2004-09-09T15:20:00.000-07:00

In Blade Runner, the reason that Rachel thinks that she's human is because she has fake memories. She even has pictures that convince her that she is indeed human. So, technology makes her feel human. I think that since she is a technological creation, she knows what a human is and what an android is, but she doesn't know the difference between what a human feels and what an android feels...if this makes any sense. She knows how she feels, and she thinks that she's human, so she thinks that all humans feel the same way as her. Androids use technology to create feelings, such as the photograph and the mood organ, while humans use technology to preserve memories and not to create them.

I think that humans are technological because we have to be. Where would humans be if there was no dependence on technology? If we weren't dependent on technology we wouldn't even be able to communicate effectively. I think it is human nature to want more and to try to improve things. I think that technology is a part of human nature, and this is one of the things that make us human. Humans use technology to preserve the past, not to create it, so I think we are more human for creating the technology to be able to preserve the past.

Blade Runner

2004-09-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

I'm not a huge science fiction fan, so my views on this movie are probably a little biased. With that said, I thought that Blade Runner was confusing and I didn't really care for it. I saw the version with the Director's Cut, so the movie was probably more similar than the novel than we originally thought it would be. Even so, there were definitely differences between the two. In the movie the director failed to include the mood organ, which I thought was a very interesting part of the novel. It added to the fact that the androids were definitely not human. In the movie, it was harder to tell the difference between the androids and the humans. If the mood organ would have been included we could have definitely seen how inhuman the androids really are.

Frankenstein, Assignment 2, Module 1

2004-09-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

I think that the creature becomes more violent when he discovers language, reading, and writing. By watching and studying the Delaceys, the creature learns how people are really supposed to act to each other, but he also learns that he will never fit into society. He yearns for acceptance, but becomes bitter because he knows that he will never fit in. I think that technology (movies, language, and writing) affect the monster's take on society. He is, in a sense, living in a fantasy world because none of the stuff he reads or sees will ever happen to him. The creature is different from the rest of the human race, and as much as he wants to be accepted, it's not going to happen. It's like what we talked about in class on Wednesday; the things that happen in romance novels and movies aren't going to happen to anybody in real life. I think that the creature has a jaded sense of reality because of technology. He becomes more violent because he is angry that he'll never be able to be accepted by society or his master. Before the monster discovers how to read and write and before he observes the Delaceys, he is a gentle creature. Only after he discovers technology does the creature become a monster.

Assignment 1: The Birthmark

2004-08-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

After reading both Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein and Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "The Birthmark" it is obvious that both authors feel that science should be limited. In "The Birthmark a scientist, Alymar, tries to perfect his own wife's single flaw: a birthmark in the shape of a hand on the side of her cheek. She is perfect in every way except for this birthmark, and it bothers him so much that he will put his wife in danger to remove it. His servant, Aminadab, says that if she were his wife, he would leave the birthmark alone. Alymar feels that the servant is only good for obeying his orders in the laboratory, so he disregards the comment. He gives his wife the drink that is supposed to lighten the mark, and the mark fades, but she soon tells him that she is dying. Alymar loses everything by trying to correct one small deformity. Hawthorne shows that science should be limited, otherwise members of the human race will be sacrificed.

Mary Shelley conveys a similar message in Frankenstein by utilizing a slightly different scenario. In the novel, Victor Frankenstein creates a creature that becomes violent. At first, the creature is like a child, yearning for the acceptance of his master. Victor Frankenstein rejects his own creature, and he is rejected repeatedly by every human he comes into contact with. He then learns language when watching the Delaceys and begins to understand why everybody rejects him. The creature becomes bitter and begins to wreak havoc on peoples' lives to punish Frankenstein for creating him. Mary Shelley feels that limits should be placed on scientific research, otherwise the human race is in danger.

Both authors are trying to convey a message through their stories. They feel that scientific research should be limited or humankind will be put into serious danger. I feel that scientific research should be limited only by human consent. I think that if a person gives their consent to be experimented upon, then that person has to deal with the consequences. If the person is fully informed of the risks that they are bringing upon themselves, and they have given legal consent, they should be able to do as they wish. If we limit science, there are many things that scientists may never discover that could really help the human race.

The Zebra Storyteller

2004-08-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

The Zebra Storyteller is an interesting fable about a cat that hunts zebras when he surprises them by the fact that he speaks their language. One day, the cat tries the trick on the zebra storyteller, but he wasn't shocked because he had been imagining that very thing. This fable shows that it is very important to think about the future, so that when change takes place you are prepared for it. I think that the fable applies to technology in the same way. For example, robots that can interact with humans on an intellectual level are a thing of the future. It is important that we think ahead to a time when there are robots with intelligence so that we can control them.