live for now

Emergence-Ch. 4

2006-11-26T23:25:00.000-06:00

Chapter four discussed feedback systems. Feedback systems are a little hard to relate to emergent systems. Generally a positive feedback system is defined there is an amplification of the output signal. Negative feedback is defined as feedback that reduces the output of the system or brings the system to equilibrium. I thought that the example in the book of the thermostat was pretty good. The room kept getting warmer and warmer with a positive feedback system and warm or cold air was blown into the room depending on what the temperature of the room was currently at. I thought it was interesting that Steven Johnson, the author, connected the media with feedback systems. I had never thought about media in this way. I believe that they do exhibit positive feedback in many cases. It seems that many times a simple story can get blown out of proportion due to the media coverage it receives. I think it is interesting how media no longer can be controlled by a few papers or outlets or people. I hadn’t realized that a story could be silenced if the major papers or news shows didn’t broadcast it. CNN changed that. They opened up many more opportunities for the local news shows to choose what they wanted to run instead of only getting a few stories. Feedback systems seem to relate easily to media. However, the internet is a little more difficult. I am still not sure if the internet should be considered an emergent system or not. I think it is hard to determine if the internet has a feedback system or not. I don’t think that it can be categorized as solely one or the other. I think different sites or software on the internet use different feedback systems. Sites like amazon.com could be considered as a negative feedback system because of the recommendation feature. The software adapts to your reading likes and dislikes. As a whole I don’t think the internet exhibits a feedback system because each site is exactly linked to the next site. Visiting one site and then another doesn’t exactly amplify the site or what you are looking for. As connected as the internet is, it seems like there should be a feedback system working behind it. One question that I thought of after talking about this chapter in class was, Do you need to have a feedback system in place for a system to be considered to be an emergent system? I’m not sure of the answer to this question. It seems that many emergent systems do have feedback systems, but I don’t know if it is a requirement in order to be one or not.

Emergence

2006-11-21T17:21:00.000-06:00

This week’s readings were very interesting. Emergence is a little tricky to think about. I thought that it meant getting something out of nothing. I still believe that but I also think that it means getting more complex things from simple things. I really like the ant example used to portray emergence. I had never initially thought about ants having a system, let alone a bottom-up system that allowed for emergence. It is very interesting to me how something as simple as a basic computer program or an ant colony can develop in pretty complex things on a macro scale. I wasn’t expecting to learn so much about ants and how their system works. I thought it was interesting how there was no real “authority” over the colony. No ant was in charge, not even the queen. It was hard for me to relate things that happened in an ant colony to humans. Our discussion helped me better see that connection. Before doing this reading I hadn’t really considered much in the way of how emergence occurs, only that it does. It has some threshold associated with it. For example, there needs to be a certain amount of slime molds present in an area in order for them to aggregate together. This seems to be more of an instance of probability. Is the basis of emergence probability based? The slime mold example seems to fit that, however, I am unsure if that is just a special occurrence. I had another question after looking back over the reading. Is emergence and evolution the same thing? In some ways this seems to be true. Johnson states that emergent behavior show the distinct quality of growing smarter over time, and of responding to the specific and changing needs of their environment (pg 20). According to that definition they are very similar things. Even after our discussion in class, I am still a little confused on the difference between the two, if there even is one.

One of those days

2006-11-16T23:05:00.000-06:00

Ever had one of those days that you just should have stayed in bed? My day seemed to start out like that today. I got up early to go into work this morning. I got there about 8 am in order to start my dissection and experiment. I was setting up and I cut myself opening the scalpel. I’m not normally this clumsy and I’m still not quite sure how it even happened. It was one of those cuts that didn’t even hurt and just started gushing blood right away. I finally got started after searching the lab for a band-aid with a paper towel wrapped around my finger. I think I went through about five band-aids today. My experiment didn’t work today and I couldn’t print off my timesheet. I hate computers. The day is finally coming to a close and I learned that you must be more careful when breaking off the protective plastic on the disposable scalpel blade. I ended up with a very sore finger and nothing really to show for it. I should have just stayed in bed today. Tomorrow is another day and hopefully I can make it through without any major mishaps like today.

Translation please

2006-11-12T22:49:00.000-06:00

In the concrete reality of today’s world, places and spaces, places and non-places intertwine and tangle together. The possiblility of non-place is never absent from any place.
This passage is from Marc Auge’s piece “From Places to Non-places”. I think there is some real truth to this statement. Places and non-places are opposites and you can’t have one without the other. This makes sense. The movie Lost in Translation is a good illustration of this. Initially, to everyone that lived in the city, Tokyo was a place. However, to Charlotte and Bob Harris the city was a non-place. They moved between places and non-places very frequently throughout the movie. Gradually as the movie progressed, they generally were in places. Their interaction with one another during the movie helped to cement them in places verses non-places. There is a complexity when you think about the idea of place and non-place. I feel that this movie showed that. The setting of Tokyo allowed for the idea of non-place surrounding the American characters to be relatively obvious. They were in a strange place and didn’t always know what was being said to them by the Japanese people. There were often many people around the characters giving them the opportunity at any time to make the switch from non-place to place. Simply interacting with another person rips you out of you safe place in a non-place and throws you into a different one, a place. In one scene, the character, Bob Harris, is doing a commercial. The director doesn’t speak English very well, if at all. He is giving Bob directions on what he wants him to do. It seems like the Japanese director talks for a minute or two, giving directions. Bob looks to the translator and she only says a sentence or two. She gave him two directions. Bob is confused because for everything that the director said, he should have gotten more direction than just two words. I think it is a place were the place and non-place are blurry because even though the characters are interacting with one another. They can’t understand each other. So does that make it a place or a non-place? Does it matter if you can understand what is being said to you or not? I think that he is in a place but I am not completely sure. These ideas are complicated in their definitions. That is what can make it tough to distinguish between them. Place or non-place, everyone will be a part of both “places” at some point in their life and go back and forth between the two many times.

STS class: Dreamweaver 2

2006-11-10T00:17:00.000-06:00

I went to my STS training tonight. I went to Dreamweaver 2. Suzy and Bryan took it tonight too. It is always nice to see a familiar face when you are taking something. I thought that I would take the second one because we went over the stuff in class that was covered in Dreamweaver 1. I actually learned a lot tonight. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. First, we reviewed a few things that were covered in dreamweaver 1. We spent most of the rest of the time talking about cascading style sheets (CSS). We went over a lot of things that we had to do in fireworks before. We were able to create roll-over buttons without making them with fireworks. We learned several ways to do different things that seemed so much easier than how we had to do them before. Making a CSS rule was so much easier than making the roll over buttons. I learned how to make a bulleted list out of the links and how to change the bullets to something other than a circle. We also learned how to code different items to do different things. It actually made sense. I know what different letters/symbols in the code means now. I think that this will greatly help me with my final project. It amazed me how simple things worked when you used a CSS instead of doing all individually. I would recommend this class to anyone else.

Postmodernism

2006-11-06T16:47:00.000-06:00

I thought this week’s readings were very challenging. They were difficult to read and difficult to understand what the author was talking about. I had to present for Wednesday’s class. The reading was Fredric Jameson’s The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. This article was our first reading on postmodernism. It took me a while to figure out what Jameson was saying. I even had to discuss the reading with Scot before class in order to get a better idea of what Jameson was saying in this article. I think the most important part of Jameson’s article was his comparison between the artists Van Gogh and Andy Warhol and their work (pg. 9). I thought that this was a great illustration of the differences between (high) modernism and postmodernism. The most obvious difference between the two paintings of shoes was the depth and detail in Van Gogh’s shoes and the lack of depth or depthlessness and flatness of Warhol’s shoes. Warhol’s shoe seems very superficial to me. His painting/photographic negative seemed to lack any kind of meaning. Van Gogh’s shoes, on the other hand, were very thought provoking. Looking at it makes you think about a point in history or what was going on when it was painted. His shoes could make one think about the labor movement or what the life of a peasant was like. His shoes evoke some kind of feeling or emotion in most people while looking at it. Warhol’s shoes don’t seem to have that same affect. I thought that the flatness and depthlessness was the largest difference between the two paintings. I also thought that the Westin Bonaventure was a good depiction of postmodernism in architecture (pg. 38). I thought that this building was very interesting. I think it would be a very neat place to visit but not to stay at. It is very interesting that the building is so fluid in how it was built. I thought that it was a nice contrast from the very grid structures we have talked about earlier in the semester. I think it is a good example of a network. As difficult as this article was to get through and understand, I think it did a good job of giving the basics of postmodernism.

In a Cultural Simulation

2006-10-29T22:38:00.000-06:00

This weeks readings dealt with establishing an identity online. Carolyn Miller’s article, Writing in a Culture of Simulation, was difficult to understand. Miller started off the article with a transcript of an encounter on the internet involving Julia (pg. 58). Julia is computer program or an agent. Julia was designed by Michael Mauldin to help MUD users find their way around the virtual rooms, locate or pass messages to other players, gossip about other players, or accomplish other tasks (pg. 59). She was also designed to take the turning test. Participants in this test are trying to figure out if a computer could behave like a human. Judges have to determine if each participant is a human or a computer. Miller says that the turning test is a test of rhetorical ethos. That is difficult idea to understand. Our discussion helped to better understand this idea. Ethos refers to the character a person brings or creates. It also deals with the audience’s perception of the speaker’s character.

Julia is only one of the several agents discussed in this article. Miller also talks about ELIZA and PARRY. Miller defines an agent as “a program that helps a human do a task better no simply by having a usable interface but by having a degree of autonomy that a word-processor or spread sheet doesn’t have, allowing the human to delegate work to it that will proceed independently” (pg. 62). Much of this article deals with the concept of anthropomorphism. I think that these agents need some kind of anthropomorphism in order to be a believable agent. I think that we relate better to them when they have some human qualities programmed into them because that is what we know. It gives the agent trustability. I still don’t fully understand how the turning test is useful if passing means that the test was not a sufficient condition because the test was too narrow that it eliminated important aspects of intelligence that can’t be demonstrated in conversation. However, failing means that the test is not a necessary condition of intelligence (pg. 65). I don’t understand how the turning test gets someone anywhere because passing the test and failing the test seem to get you to the same outcome, that the machine needs more work.

We also discussed how much deception played in the effectiveness of these agents. Miller talks about the Eliza effect which refers to delusion created by the computer program. I think that there is some illusion in these programs but I believe it is a needed part of the program in order for users to relate better and more user friendly. We finished our discussion looking at ethos and the relationship between the real and the constructed simulation. The idea of ethos dates back to Aristotle and Plato. The simulation is constructed and distorts the ability to get at the real or the truth. Miller believes that there isn’t anything outside the simulation. It is difficult to decipher this. There must be more than just a simulation. Miller mentions that rhetoric is an art of simulation. I think there is something to what she is saying but I think there is something else than just a simulation.

Time Flies

2006-10-26T18:51:00.000-05:00

It is hard to believe that this weekend is Halloween already. Wednesday is the 1st of November already. The semester is half over. Where did the time go? I don’t know about everyone but I think that the time just flies by. It seems like we just started the semester. This may seem strange and make little sense. It feels like the days go by slow, but the weeks go by fast. The semester may seem to take forever but when you look back at it at Christmas time; you may wonder where the semester went. This seems like an oxymoron but I always find myself asking this question at the end of every semester. Our perception of time is what changes. I’m sure that I will continue to ask, Where did the time go for yours to come.

Sampling

2006-10-22T23:19:00.000-05:00

This week’s readings were very interesting. They brought up some things that you wouldn’t normally think about. We all watch shows or listen to music and we recognize a song or melody or something else that we’ve seen or heard somewhere else, but we probably don’t think about the money that was spent to use that object or melody. I know I don’t. Both the Shaviro and Rice reading discussed the idea of sampling. Rice defines sampling as the process of joining pieces of different songs together to create a new song (pg. 58). The idea can be applied to other things as well. In writing you could sample something and use that as your starting point and build you work from it. We use other people’s work all the time to support our ideas while writing. However, we must always give credit to the source where the sample was taken from. The class discussed the difference between sampling and plagiarism. I think that it is sometimes difficult to determine where the line is between the two. I believe it isn’t stealing as long as you get permission to use the material. Shaviro discusses the album Deconstructing Beck which was made entirely out of samples of Beck’s music (pg. 66). It was done without permission and they inevitable weren’t allowed to continue selling it. They went against copyright laws by not gaining permission to use it or paying compensation for the opportunity to use the music. I think that almost everything in our society has become very owned and under protection. Every icon you see, music you listen to, or book you read is copyrighted and no one else has the right to use that material without permission. I think that it is possible that this type of ownership has the potential to decrease creativity. I agreed with Derek that there are only so many ideas out there for music, movies, and everything else. Without the opportunity to use pieces of other people work to build off of and make it your own, new ideas are going to continue to diminish until they may no longer occur anymore. Every artist gets their inspiration from something that already exists. I know that I would get very tired of listening to only songs that have been redone by a different artist. I think it is fine or even nice to cover someone’s song to pay respects to another artist as long as that isn’t the only type of music you perform. Sampling is a large part of the music and movie business and I believe it will always be. I’m sure that companies will continue to pay big bucks to use a piece of music or an icon in their movie, commercial, or song.

Interesting job

2006-10-19T18:36:00.000-05:00

Starting a new job is always a little nerve racking. I just started working in a lab in the School of Veterinary Medicine. I started working on a project that is looking at breathing in turtles. It seems like a very interesting study. We are looking at respiratory activity in the brain of the turtle. My supervisor is interested in how some drugs depress the breathing in reptiles. He is hoping to find drugs that will provide pain relief for reptiles without depressing their breathing or find two drugs that will work together to provide the same result. Today was my second day and dissecting a turtle to get the brainstem out it much harder than it looks. After the second time I dissected the brainstem out of the turtle I think that I basically know what I’m doing. I also had to fill out the usual paperwork that comes along with starting a new job. I had to take two classes in order to work on this project. I had to go through an animal user orientation online and an occupational health and safety training which I had to sit through on Wednesday. It is nice to be working again though. I am excited to work on this project. I think I will learn quite a bit from this project. It should be a good experience to add to my resume.

The Coolhunt

2006-10-15T23:39:00.000-05:00

I thought The Coolhunt was an interesting article. Gladwell stated out by talking about two ladies that were coolhunters (pg. 134). I didn’t know that there were actually people that were called cool hunters. I didn’t know that the people got that involved with the public when testing out a company’s ideas. This article explores how trends start and how they spread across the country. I didn’t know there was such a thing as the L report (pg. 134). I think it is something that would be helpful for companies to get ideas of what the American people like and think is cool. Gladwell discusses the three rules of cool: it cannot accurately be observed because this causes it to take flight, cool cannot be manufactured, and it can only be observed by people that are cool (pg. 144).

I enjoyed our class discussion. Cool things are so difficult to describe. It is very difficult to figure out where a fad started and how and why it spread. I enjoyed our discussion about commercials and the influence they have on our society as consumers. It is amazing to me what power and how affective advertising can be. For example, seeing a pizza commercial can make you want to order a pizza, even if you just ate recently. I believe there are so many factors that affect whether a product is cool that the designers can’t know until it either takes off or fails miserable. Reebok is a good example. They make perfectly good shoes but they haven’t reached the success that Nike has. We talked about why that was. We talked about the different icons that they used, athlete spokesmen and their symbols. We didn’t really come up with any real reason for the difference in popularity. We thought that perhaps they were trying too hard to design cool shoes and in turn they were missing the boat because that broke the second rule of cool. We also tried to incorporate Monday’s reading with the tipping point. We were trying to figure out when in the category of people in the spreading of a trend the tipping point occurred. I think that the tipping point would come with the early majority because after this group the trend seemed to take off. I thought it was interesting that designers were now looking at what the public liked and then trying to copy that to sell more cloths. I don’t think I ever paid much attention to what the newest fashion trend was so I never noticed. I believe people will always be hunting for the next cool thing.

Winter already?

2006-10-12T14:46:00.000-05:00

I don’t know about any of you but I can’t believe how cold it was today. I am not ready for it to be winter already. Walking out the door this morning was just such a shock. I knew it was going to be cold because I looked at my weather bug before I left but that still didn’t prepare me for the wind and cold. I like winter as much as the next person but I always hate the transition to it. It was also very sad that I had to turn the heat on at my apartment. I got back from class and I couldn’t take it. It is much nicer in here now. Turning the heat of was the kicker for me. I think this is the end of our warm weather. I know that we will still have a few more nice days but they are numbered. The fact that it snowed yesterday makes me think that winter is on its way. The funny thing is though that I know that as much as I would rather it was still warm out, there are many other people out there that are so excited that it is getting cold because they love winter. Whether it means that it is closer to being able to ski or snowboard, ice fish or deer hunt, the weather change seems to help people get excited for the winter sports that they love. This weather makes me want to curl up in a nice warm blanket in front of a fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate and watch a movie. I know I’m not ready for winter but all I have to say is….bring it on.

Six Degrees

2006-10-08T18:33:00.000-05:00

Pg. 20 – using power lines as an example of networks
Pg. 22 – small events can lead to problems
Pg. 24 – how would protective relays make it more likely to suffer meltdown?
Pg. 30 – discussing how can apply math to other fields
Pg. 32 – jogger example-synchronized or asynchronous
Pg. 35 – cricket chirping experiment
Pg. 37 – six degrees of separation brought up
Pg. 41 – small world vs small group

The readings for this week by Duncan Watts were very interesting. I enjoyed reading these two chapters from Watts’ book. I wasn’t sure where he was going at the beginning of chapter one. I wasn’t sure how discussing how he came to work with Steven Strogatz and how Steven came to work at Cornell University tied into the chapter. After reading the chapter it seemed to fit because each professor/colleague he mentioned were all some how related to one another. I think we had a very good discussion this week. It clarified any questions that may have been lingering after reading the articles. The example of how one person in class who contributes a lot can be missing and the rest of the class must pick up the slack. This example was a good analogy for the power line example from the article. I also really like the popcorn example Derek came up with to explain the SIR model. It made a confusing model seem so obvious. Comparing it to popcorn allowed me to understand the model so much better. Before reading the second article by Watts I had never connected viruses and epidemics with the six degrees of separation. I am still a little confused how most successful networks have a built in component for failure. We talked about it at the very end of class. I didn’t fully understand what that meant. I think an example of it would help to understand that idea better. We just ran out of time at the end of class. These articles were among the most interesting and easier articles to read. I think that Watts’ book would probably be a very interesting book to read in its entirety.

from grid to network

2006-10-03T23:15:00.000-05:00

Pg. 20 – architects that will be looked at
Pg. 24 – fluidity of the boundaries of complexity theory
Pg. 26 – “pack donkey way”
Pg. 26 – start of Le Corbusier
Pg. 28 – formal layout, grid, assembly line
Pg. 32 – start of Mies van der rohe
Pg. 32 – comparison of grid work of Seagram Building and modern industrial society
Pg. 34 – superficial complexity
Pg. 35 – Venturi and Las Vegas
Pg. 37 – complexity of the strip emerges at the edge of chaos?
Pg. 37 – grids don’t work in network culture
Pg. 40 – network culture – structure now complex
Pg. 40 – network and Gehry
Pg. 42 – Gehry gives forms movement
Pg. 42 – sinks buildings into urban environment
In our class discussion we looked at what chaos and complexity theory meant. I think it helped me to better understand the difference between the two theories. Before class they both seemed very similar to me. I now can see how they are different and how they are the same. We also talked about how the industrial economy compared to the network culture, how Taylor referred to as today’s culture. Before reading this article I never would have related grids and networks to our culture. I thought that grids were associated with math and architecture. I thought that networks were associated with computers. I think it was very helpful to list and discuss what fit under each category that Taylor laid out in the article. This list helped me to see the difference between the three categories; grid, superficial, and network. I wouldn’t have made the same connections with grid and network and the economy without reading this article.

Cool

2006-09-24T21:46:00.000-05:00

Jeff Rice’s book talks about ways that cool is incorporated into writing and technology.
Pg. 3 – hypertext operates by nonlinear, associative linking
Pg. 3-6 – discusses what book teaches
Pg. 4 – definition of cultural studies
Pg. 6 – textbook proposes that critique comes from the media itself
Pg. 7 – book focuses on electronic writing
Pg. 9 – definitions of cool
Pg. 9 – two types of cool
Pg. 10 – popular perceptions of cool
Pg. 11 – talks about the purpose of the textbook
Pg. 13 – discusses how internet evolved
Pg. 14 – why people were using internet in the beginning
Pg. 16 – think about if a link is a new site or part of the old site

During our class discussion we discussed what we thought the different meanings of cool were and how they were portrayed using people as examples. We also discussed how cool has changed over the years. I thought it was interesting that you could use the word cool to describe something that was linked to another. It still seems a little strange to consider linking things together as cooling. It doesn’t seem natural to me to “cool” something, well at least to call it that anyway. We also discussed what hyperlinks were and how to use them. We also did an activity using one of our previous blogs. I think it is interesting that anyone can post or change something on sites like wikipedia without having any expertise on the subject. I think it is a good idea to try and make the site more credible by checking the sources. I didn’t know that they could put a lock on a subject so it could no longer be changed. I think this is a good idea. I believe that wikipedia is one of the most hyperlinked texts that I’ve visited. I think it is nice though because you can learn so much about a topic or things related to it if you don’t know much about it. I’ve never thought that cool could be associated with a medium like the internet. This reading was very interesting to me because a lot of the ideas were new to me.

Living with Friends

2006-09-21T16:51:00.000-05:00

I believe that you never know how good of a friend someone is until you live with them. Living with someone is completely different from just being friends with them. I think that your relationship with that person changes when you live together. There are so many other issues that come up that could potentially start a fight that wouldn’t normally even be an issue between friends. I know this from first hand experience. My former roommate and I fought over a lot of stuff. We were previously relatively good friends and now that she has moved out we are still civil to each other but we aren’t very good friends anymore. I don’t know if this has happened to any of you. I’m not completely sure why this seems to be a common occurrence. It is too bad that this has to happen to friends though. I know that I personally would rather avoid confrontation with friends and it seems almost inevitable when you live with someone. I think we all go through this at one time or another. I guess it is just a part of life.

Confusing Reading

2006-09-17T21:07:00.000-05:00

Marshal McLuhan’s readings were difficult to understand. I know that I had a hard time understanding what he was talking about during most of the reading. Throughout the whole chapter I felt like he was talking in circles.
Pg. 24 – “message” is the change in scale and pace
Pg. 24 – giving example of how the medium is the message
Pg. 26 – technology isn’t good or bad…its how we use it that puts either to it
Pg. 31 – confused about how electric speed is being use and what his meaning is
Pg. 33—how does Japan example fit into his discussion
Pg. 35 – instability of society/ culture because of dependence on staples
Pg. 36 – his definition and example of hot and cool mediums
Pg. 37 – reduce experience to cool state before can be “learned”/assimilated-what?
Pg. 39 – what does “dig” it refer to
Pg. 39 – 3 stages that occur in every disease or stress of life
Pg. 40 – How does oral tradition correlate with electric technology
Pg. 43 – one way to spot basic differences….

Our class discussion helped me to better grasp what McLuhan was talking about. I have to admit that I’m still confused about what he means by the message is the medium. I helped to know a little about what was going on in the time period when this article was written. I wouldn’t have guessed that he was really referring to literacy. That helped to understand where he was coming from. He compared the print and oral literacy. I didn’t get out of the reading that he thought that print literacy led to negative consequences. He felt that it lead to fragmentation, segmentation, and individualism. I don’t agree that this is a bad thing however. I think it is good to be an individual and to make your own decisions about thing. I do think that it we have lost some of our tradition that was passed down orally because we have become such a fast passed society. I still don’t understand how the content of one medium is the reflection of another medium. McLuhan thought that medium and content were essentially the same. That is still hard for me to understand because I don’t understand how they are the same. Our discussion about hot and cool mediums made the reading a little more clear to me. I better understand what his meaning of each is. Most of the things that he categorized as hot or cool seem to fit the category. However, I didn’t understand how some of the things fit into the categories that he placed it in. I think that the reading as clearer to me than it was when I first read it, but I know that I still don’t understand the two articles completely. These were very difficult articles to read and to understand. I think that talking about them has helped. I don’t know if I will ever completely understand what McLuhan's meaning in these articles was.

I love technology when it works...

2006-09-14T19:05:00.000-05:00

I know we live in a very technological age and that all of us can’t go anywhere without first checking to make sure that we have our cell phone, ipod, or other type of musical device. I know that I’m in that category and I’m sure that most of you are too. I love being able to do research for a paper and not have to always go to the library to get all of my information. I think that it is out of convenience that we are so addicted to our computers, the internet, and all of our other electronic and technological devices. I don’t know how many of you have been in this boat, but I know that there has been more than one occasion that I have wanted to throw my computer or printer out the window.

I have felt this way quite often since school started. I love all of the technology that we have as long as it works, but the second something isn’t working I get frustrated and upset. The internet at my apartment has been acting up since I came back from summer break. All I want to do is check my email and to talk to my friends online because that is what I am accustomed to doing on a daily basis. However, lately that hasn’t been the case. So the first thing I do is to try and fix it by myself because I think that I know quite a bit about what to check first. If I can’t fix it I call my dad, normally in a great mood as you can guess. Normally he can come up with something that works. If that doesn’t work I’m down to my last resort, to call someone else.

I hate talking to the people at the products company because you wait on the phone for 15 minutes. You always have to listen to the machine options first. Press 1 for English, la prensa dos para español ….. Press 1 for customer service and so on. I would much rather talk to a person than to listen to a machine. It always seems that you are on the phone for an hour anytime you call the company to fix a problem. I just want a simple answer, but there never seems to be one. I finally got my internet to work after over an hour between talking to the cable company and the product’s company.

I’m sure that most of you know exactly what I’m talking about because unfortunately most people aren’t techno wizards. I hope that this was the last time for a while that my computer, printer, cable modem, or router acts up and decides to randomly stop working at a time when I need the internet to finish what I was working on. I love technology when it works. I’m not so fond of it when it doesn’t.

Blog #1

2006-09-10T23:57:00.000-05:00

Prior to reading Herrick's intorduction I thought that a rhetoric referred to a story or anything that was written. Today's reading changed my thought of what rhetoric meant. I didn't realize that rhetoric was associated with so many different things. Rhetoric doesn't only refer to the art of persuasion, but it can also have social functions. This reading showed me that rhetoric is not only used by speech writers and pollititions. It can be used in everyday conversations without even realizing it. I now know that I have unknowingly used rhetoric while trying to convince someone of my point. I believe that rhetoric is most often associated with the art of persuasion and speeches because of its usefulness on determining the reaction of you audience. It allows one to better their speech by trying to guess what the audience is going to think of what you have written or guess what questions they are going to ask. I feel that the art of rhetoric is a very useful tool for most people because of the many different facets it covers. This reading has changed my idea of what rhetoric means. I believe that it is more of a tool that oneuses to better ones writing, persuade someone, and unite people with a common belief, among other things. This reading has shown me that what seems like a simple thing can turn out to be much more complicated and intrecate. The term rhetoric refers to many different things. I feel it is difficult to come up with just a single definition. This reading has shown me that the meanings of words change with time. Rhetoric is no exception to this. It originally had bad connotation to its meaning, but I believe that this reading has shown that it is a useful tool for all of us in a variety of ways from speech making and audiance analysis, to convincing someone of your idea or opinion, to decision making.

First Time

2006-09-08T12:47:00.000-05:00

My name is Christy and I am a first time user of blogger. Actually this is the first time I've ever written a blog. I am doing this for English 201. I don't have any particular direction that I'm planning on going with my posts. Some of these blogs will be assignments given to use in class and others will be about a variety of things. I think I will learn a lot about myself by doing this. I know I will be posting again soon. Until then.......