In the symposium I mentioned that I use a blog client. I have used ecto, which looks like its become shelf ware, am currently using MarsEdit, but this one turned up today which I particularly like the look of, Blogo. All of them let you write blog posts without being logged into your blog, and they know about your categories, tags and so on.
Excellent Simple HTML Resource
A very good place to start if you want to know more about writing HTML. Dave Raggett’s “Getting Started with HTML“. And in case you’re wondering, code and its basics is going to be much more valuable and useful to you than launching DreamWeaver and not ever having to see code.
Thickness of Ideas
A lot going on here in Monique’s post. The intriguing thing becomes the new distribution of expertise, with two consequences. How do we now determine expertise, and what do the old experts (who relied on place, not necessarily knowledge) now do about expertise? One answer is that you can find a blog, by an expert, on any topic, and the information and knowledge is extraordinary. The other answer is that the old institutions that safe guarded expertise will often insist (more and more loudly) that they are the ones who have this expertise, or knowledge, or know how, and the others are frauds. The one’s that make the loudest noise are probably the ones with the most to lose, most quickly right now (movie studies and ‘piracy’, Rupert Murdoch and any public media, those insisting books will survive as sales of paper bound books continue to decline).
Memex, Camera’s the size of Walnuts
Mia likes the Bush reading and wonders about the camera of the future. It’s here, there’s a couple out there, narrative clip is one. Michael is also impressed, the memex that Bush describes has been influential in helping the original hypertext theorists think about what hypertext should do.
Après Symposium
George on validity of things. For me this is ‘validity of things’ and not ‘validity of things online’. The rules we use off line apply online too. Laura makes the well made point that literacies are a continuum, and Natalie wonders is we really need worry too much and is the internet quite, well I guess have the impact we’re saying. My own view is obvious, that horse has bolted. Not just the internet, most of the apps on your phone rely on the internet (for example). Just make a list of what you do, each day, that involves the internet, and be surprised. (And some of these things don’t involve you.) Alexandra found the discussion of validity interesting, I don’t think popularity is a good judge at all, but will talk about that next week (as Kony2012 demonstrates well, thank you Sophie). Amy also picks up the quantity mode of validity, I’m going to need to have some things about this next week I see. Louis thinks the metaphor of book versus code is broken. It isn’t a metaphor though, it is literally the case. You can write a book, with simple basic ingredients (pen, paper), I work with people who build entire complex websites and databases with dynamic scripts with a text editor, that’s it. Luke on wikipedia and validity, some good points.
(Note to me and readers. This is one of those moments where the blogs are interesting. Personally, as someone who has been very online since about 1992 – before visual Web browser if you can imagine such a time – the validity of online stuff is just, for me, a no brainer. Trivial. So the number of posts where you have said that was really interesting and valuable and useful just leaves me sort of gobsmacked. I just assumed this was a trivial question and problem for people who pretty much have only known a world with an internet. How wrong I was. And even more worried about what the heck you get taught in high school. This is why I’m not a fan on gatekeeping so much, you can’t learn how to test validity if the only things you’re ever allowed to see have already been vetted. It really matters, simply because the world does now run online.)
To Essay
Luke on essay, argument, voice, and pleasure. James has a nice discussion with Graham on Graham and the essay. Caitlin muses on essays and argument, it is probably important to realise that even the sort of essay writing that Graham discusses involves argument, but it is a different sort of argument than what we might ordinarily think is the case. But it still needs evidence, argument, and research. Stephanie thinks Graham might be right that the internet heralds a golden age of the essay.
More on Ted Nelson
Callum with some good observations about Nelson, though I hope as we will find out soon the idea that search engines have realised what hypertext is will be seen to be fairly wide of the mark. Amy has some good musings too, and finds print literacy easier. yes, that’s one of the subject’s points, we’re actually up to our necks in print literacy yet think we’re all digital natives because we know our way round Facebook and mum doesn’t.
Right now the most important people in the world are the coders, they are the renaissance geniuses of this time, for example they gave us WordPress, a free complex thing that lets non coders play, write, share, design online. And they decided to give it to us because they could, and thought they should.
Reading 05
So we’ve looked at some prehistory, now the theoretical work around the first big mutlilinear shapeshifter, hypertext. Why hypertext?
It is about story and text and we already know a lot about that. It uses a nice set of post-something theories that are relevant to media, communication, cinema, radio studies. It has, theoretically, done an outstanding job of thinking about multilinearity, form, readers, and writing.
So:
Key
Extracts from: Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print. (low rez PDF)
Extra
Extract from: Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale (N.J.): Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991. Print. (low rez PDF)
The novel is dead this time it’s for real | Books | The Guardian
The novel is dead this time it's for real | Books | The Guardian.
This course, what it’s about, why, and what is really happening around us. By an author.