MT6.2

The printing press is very methodical and precise in what it does. What is to be printed is set into the machine then it prints out what it is supposed to do. This is very different then how thinking actually works. Thinking is often very random. If you are pondering something it often just hits you without rhyme or reason. Whereas, with a machine like the printing press the end result, or thought, is figured out ahead of time. It is a process that is performed to get the end product. This hides some of the complexity of the brain. The brain is more random, or at least has the ability to be.

The computer highlights how a human being thinks better than a printing press does. A computer is very complex, as is the brain. It is able to do much of the same thinking as a brain, most of the time even faster than the brain could. The one thing a computer can not really do is have judgment. So in comparing a computer to a brain judgment is lost. If you compare the process of thinking by a computer and brain, they too are similar. As with the printing press the computer is very planned out. Computers, except those built to learn by the use of artificial intelligence, are built a certain way to perform certain tasks. They do things a certain way, and they are unaffected by feelings, unlike the brain and its thought process.

MT6.3

The system of brain chemistry exchanges is like a washing machine.

I think this just over simplifies the brain’s activities. To say it is just like a washing machine dumbs down the brain’s complex nature. It doesn’t have any kind of dangerous affects. People still know it is a machine with some complexity. It is just that it seems to lessen the brain’s chemistry functions down to nothing more that running water over the brain, to clean it off.

Blue moods can be compared to the scratchy music coming from a radio that is not properly tuned to the station

I didn’t understand what blue moods were. Does it just mean like being sad? I understand the metaphor though, if it does have to do with being sad. When you are sad it is like you are mentally out of whack. Nothing seems to go right or be right. So what you have to do is to find what makes you happy and focus on that to help get you through your troubles. That goes along with the radio being out of tune metaphor. You just have to tune in to what comes in clear. I think this is actually a very helpful metaphor. In a time with depression and sadness seems to be a real problem, simplifying it is probably for the best. If you think about it too much then it will probably get progressively worse. That is at least what my experiences have shown to work.

Exploring the brain’s past to find out what is wrong now. This is like archeological work on the brain.

I think this metaphor is a little misleading. It makes looking into someone’s past by examining their brain seem like a very simple act. It gives the impression that you just open up someone’s head and start digging for what you are looking for. In actuality I think the digging would have to be figurative, like by using CAT scans or some kind of medical device. This metaphor is a hindrance to what it is trying to describe.

Hysteria involves the raising of tension. This is compared to raising walls of defense, like the boundaries of a castle or something like that. I can see how this metaphor makes sense. Hysteria is like a kind of defense mechanism. It over simplifies hysteria though. I see hysteria as this uncontrollable thing that just happens to people when stress or tension drives them over the edge. This makes it sound like some kind of conscious effort to deal with stress and tension. I think this metaphor is a little misleading.

MT4.2

If a person’s unusual behavior is thought of as a disease, it is something that can be cured. If a person’s unusual behavior is thought of as a spiritual problem, it can’t necessarily be cured or fixed in the same way. With a disease, for the most part, people know what it is and how to treat it. If they don’t then they can research it and at least find more information about it to help out people that may be afflicted with it in the future. If someone is being possessed by the devil, spirits or something of that nature, it is not a problem that is so easily remedied. You can’t just give a person some pills and say takes one ever 5 hours and the devil will be out of your system within a week. This is partly because these problems are all based on beliefs. Illness is based on facts and figures while spiritual possession is based on what religion or ideology that one goes by. So I see it as a difficult thing to remedy. If you don’t believe in a devil or the same kind of devil as someone else, then how do you know what is afflicting you? How can you be helped if you don’t believe in the problem? If a Muslim is possessed by the devil can a priest save his soul?

Metaphors are used to describe things that we can’t describe with our regular vocabulary. That is why we have to use examples that people can more easily understand. I think that both of these scenarios are things that people don’t fully understand. I think religion is an obvious thing that not everyone understands because religion isn’t about understanding. Religion is about believing. You are taught to have faith and believe. With a medical problem, such as a disease, there is more proof and factual information to back it up, but there is still that cloud of mystery. We only know what is wrong because some doctor tells us so. So in a way isn’t that the same as some priest or other holy figure telling us to believe in what they say?

MT1.2

When anger is equated with dynamite or an explosive property, the suddenness of anger is highlighted. Anger is something that can just happen or in the case of dynamite it can just go off. Like dynamite, anger can be very powerful. It can also build up. If you keep stacking up sticks of dynamite, after a while you will have something that can hurt a lot of people. The same is true for anger. If you just let your anger build up and you just keep adding to it, after a while that anger will be released and some people may get caught in the middle of it that didn’t even have anything to do with you being angry. I think the dynamite metaphor hides an important thing about anger. That is that anger is not only directed towards those you dislike. Anger can be directed towards those you love like friends and family. The dynamite metaphor, in my opinion, can make that less clear because of the destructive nature of dynamite. That destruction it can cause isn’t something one would often relate to their friends and family.

In Blake’s poem anger is a poison tree, and the anger grows into a poisonous fruit. The plant grows the same way that anger can grow. It can just grow out of nothing, unexpectedly, or it can be nurtured into a perfect thing.

And I watered it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears:

And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

The above stanza is an example of how the anger can be transformed into what a person wants it to be. Anger is a thing that when it is allowed to build up, or if someone purposely tries to add to their anger it can get out of hand. This is true just like it was for the dynamite metaphor. One just must add sorrow, deceit and anything else that hurts them and anger will sprout. The tree metaphor hides the quickness of anger. It does show how anger can just happen. Someone can instantly become angry. It isn’t something that only comes with time. That is the key idea that the tree metaphor hides and the dynamite metaphor shows easily.

I grew angry with my neighbor.

His actions planted the seed of anger inside of me.

MTintro.2

Webster’s Dictionary defines technology as the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area. I believe this definition is vague enough to encompass writing as a technology. Before this class, I did not see writing and/or other means for thinking as technology. In my mind technology involved objects and science. Words just seemed to be something simple, but now I understand how words are a technology, though they are an older one. Many millennia ago writing and even speech did not fully exist as it does today. When the first person decided to try and put into symbols what they were saying and/or thinking, it was no different than when the first person programmed a computer to print what he was saying and/or thinking out on the screen. As Goody said, the difference is in the interface. Instead of a machine being the interface, one’s own mind or the mind of another is the interface with which the technology of writing is performed.

14.2

Three of the ads are for products the consumer is supposed to use to clean themselves, like deodorant and soap. Their ads show that the affect of using one of these things will make the consumer irresistible to the opposite sex. Another ad shows a rock star smoking cigarettes. This image takes advantage of everyone’s inherent wish to be famous. So if you smoke these cigarettes you will at least be just like the rock stars of the world. This image also seems to have a Christ factor. The rock star just has the crucifixion pose. It was the first thing I noticed when I saw the ad, which may be trying to hit on the idea that doing this will make you more like a god. Another ad is a celebrity sponsored drink. It shows the celebrity in his nice house with a lot of women. He is reading the Wall Street Journal and drinking this beverage with his name on it. This, like the cigarette ad, takes advantage of people’s desire to be rich and famous. Well if this celebrity drinks this maybe I should because then I will be more like them. My last ad shows a man wearing a certain pair of shoes with a lady in a short dress straddling him. He is wearing nice clothes and expensive jewelry. This is another ad that takes advantage of people’s desire to be cool, trendy, and attractive to the opposite sex. If you wear our shoes, women will just walk right up to you and sit on your lap.

These ads all give the idea that if you use this product you will be something better than what you are now, and that being this better thing is what you should strive for. I think there is no reason why these products shouldn’t exist, but I think the way they are being marketed to the people is wrong. Why not just show the product and what it can do or how it tastes? Why do advertisers have to show unrealistic situations just to get people to buy? It all seems to come down to money. As long as the money is there, it doesn’t matter how you badly you warp the minds of the consumers, as long as they keep buying the product.

Class assignment

1) When Cinderella wishes for things, the things she wishes for and gets are desirable. The way in which they are delivered is not so desirable. “Whenever she wished for anything the dove would drop it like an egg upon the ground.” This conjures up mental images of a dove laying a dress and slippers later on in the story, which in my opinion seems a little disgusting. Who wants to wear a dress that has been inside of a bird?

2) The idea of “living happily ever after” is one sought by many. Little girls have been taught, through fairy tales and Disney, that once you find the person you love it is smooth sailing from there. After love everything just works, without question. This same idea is found “Cinderella”, except Sexton paints the real picture. “Living happily ever after” wouldn’t be living at all. “Like two dolls in a museum case.” That isn’t real. That isn’t how life works. Sexton is saying that, even when you find that person you love and cherish, there are problems. There are diapers, dust, arguments, and monotony. I wouldn’t want to end up as some fake form of love, living only to smile and seem happy.

3) I believe women and men do ridiculous things to be something they are not just to impress the person they want to be with. Why else would plastic surgery be such a popular practice? It is really hard for me to believe that a woman or a man really wants to have a face lift every 2 months, along with liposuction and who knows what else, just because they want to do it. They do it because they are trying to fit into the shoe that society dropped. Society has created this basically unattainable mold for women and men to try and fit into, through television, magazines, music and any other medium where society can convey what people should be like to be happy and successful.

4) I think this passage really sums it up. “Advertising thus does not work by creating values and attitudes out of nothing but by drawing upon and rechanneling concerns that the target audience (and the culture) already shares. As one advertising executive put it: "Advertising doesn't always mirror how people are acting but how they're dreaming. In a sense what we're doing is wrapping up your emotions and selling them back to you." Advertising absorbs and fuses a variety of symbolic practices and discourses, it appropriates and distills from an unbounded range of cultural references. In so doing, goods are knitted into the fabric of social life and cultural significance. As such, advertising is not simple manipulation, but what admaker Tony Schwartz calls "partipulation," with the audience participating in its own manipulation.”

5) The commodity-image system is basically the idea that advertising tries to get us to buy things by making us feel that they will make us happy. So we are constantly be bombarded with things that we may not want and need, but are convinced to feel that we want and need them because they are supposed to make us happy. Jhally sees this kind of advertising as a type of propaganda.

11.2

Mary Shelley’s monster, in Frankenstein, finds out that he is very different from everyone else around him. First and foremost, the monster realizes how grotesque his appearance is. The monster sees how other people look and then how he looks and understands why everyone is so horrified by him. Also, the monster differs in the way that he doesn’t have any knowledge. He doesn’t know how to do things like speak, read, write or interact with people correctly. But these things all come from his interactions with people. Once the monster learns to read, he has a connection with what he reads. He finally feels emotions. It is because he gains access to his emotions through reading that it is even more significant. He feels the most emotions from his use of the technology of reading, and reading is a technology that isn’t as straightforward as it may seem. What is written is what is there, but if you are able to expand your mind you are able to read and see so much more. The monster was able to do this and was able to better evaluate himself and see how different he really was.

I believe that reading or viewing movies can make people feel excluded. I believe that, in both instances, the user of the technology is entering a dream world in a way. The user can easily read or watch something that is just entertaining or something that is entertaining but also makes you think, much like a dream when you replay it in your mind once you break from slumber. But just as a dream can be something bad so can what the user reads or watches. An example that comes to mind is someone that sees something in a movie and sees only what they will never have or never be. The person can feel excluded from the activities in the movie or reading because they know they will never have the chance to participate in an activity.

Another take on exclusion and feeling different because of watching movies and or reading is a category that I feel at home in. That would be the idea of being so geeky or nerdy when it comes to books or movies that you are seen as an outcast or just as some one weird. I will use myself as how this can happen. I am someone that finds some of the greatest happiness by being able to watch movies over and over again. I also love to quote and use my knowledge of movies whenever I can because I feel it is one of the few things I seem to be able to remember and do well, but to others I am often seen as annoying or weird for having my life revolve around cinema. To solve the problem of feeling different or excluded I just found people that share this love and knowledge that I have. So I believe these mediums can cause people to feel different or excluded but there is hope.

Pip first achieves consciousness of himself by being threatened. An escaped prisoner threatens to kill him. He changes from a boy into something else. He begins to make decisions and do things he wouldn’t have done before, like stealing food from his sister’s cupboard. Pip’s situation is similar to the monster’s in the way that the monster begins to make decisions that will help him. He does things to get what he wants. He kills the family and friends of Victor to cause pain to Victor and to pressure Victor into creating a female monster for him. Pip begins to make decisions for himself so that he may save his life. He wants to ensure that he lives so he decides to do something that, only hours before, he wouldn’t have thought of doing.

NT5.5 part IV

By examining a story as portrayed through different mediums, I have been able to see how words and pictures must be transformed and recombined to fit each medium. For instance, if a narrative is being told through writing then thick description is necessary to portray the story in an eloquent way. For a film more of the story must be captured through actions and physicality than through speech. For a website it works best to utilize both visuals and description to best depict a story. These changes in how the story is told can also change the story itself in some ways.

Some factors necessitate change in a story. The audience to whom the story is being told can change the story. When I was writing the letter to my mom, I decided to not say exactly what was said by Greg in the story. I also included more details about my job and how certain things work. When I wrote the letter to my friend Chris I told him everything that was said. I didn’t leave anything that was said out. I also left out all the details about what certain work terminology means. I felt it was not necessary to include all the terminology because he also works at Bob Evan’s Restaurant. So, he doesn’t need all the details. He knows who the manager is and what my job entails. I included these details in the letter to my mom because she doesn’t know exactly what everything is or who my manager is.

The medium in which the story is told can also change the story being told. When my story was transformed, from a letter to a storyboard of a movie, many things changed. The key change was that the storyboard had very few words. Words were only included to clear up things that couldn’t be seen just by looking at the pictures. All emotion had to be shown by the actions of the characters. When the story was then transferred to the autobiographical website, it was kept in a format more closely related to that of the letter. I think, however, that the story lost some of its importance when it was added to the website. Though it is very similar to the letter, it loses its audience and its magnitude. It loses it audience because the website isn’t really addressed to any one person. It is for anyone in the world that would like to read it. It loses its importance or magnitude because it is just one of many stories. It is just one in a group of stories that can be found within my link to work stories that is within my young adult link. I think because of that factor its meaning, in my whole life story, is lessened. One thing that does add to the website version is pictures. There would be pictures of work. This would allow for the reader to better visualize the picture I would be painting with my words.

When a story is being told the main character is often seen in different ways to different people. That is one of the beautiful things about a story. The audience has the ability to make the characters look like whatever they want in their mind. This change in the main character can also occur when the story is transformed from one medium to another. In my eyes, I don’t think the “you” in my story or the story itself changes very much. I tell the story more or less the same way with my mother as I would with a friend, in the letter. The story is portrayed as I see it in the storyboard, and in the website the story is the same as the letter. The key difference in the “you” comes from the reader. Since the chances are that the person seeing my movie or navigating my website will not know me or my life personally, each person will see the “you” in a different way.

I think that both the audience and I, the storyteller, write the main character. When the reader reads the story online they will create a visual image of the situation and the characters that are included within the story. Once they are finished they are able to look at photographs, which will allow them to actually see what the characters look like. So the website allows the audience to create the characters and then interpret the story as they want, but then give them the option of seeing it more how I, the storyteller, says that the situation occurred. The reader is left with two views of the story they just read. They are allowed to choose whether to go with their original thoughts or to believe what the storyteller told them.

I think that narrative is a very powerful technology. It is one that can be used in most any medium possible. When it is changed from one form to another it still retains its key components and its importance and that is what I think is one of the keys to its power. No matter how you change it, it is still basically the same. The only thing that may change is how the audience utilizes it and interprets it in his or her mind.