Literacy in the 21st Century

Pre-post reminder: this week’s Reading Response topic: “How would you make Cathy’s Book better? And now onto the post.

A few items of multimodal, multiliterate interest. First, my laptops are having problems. Ugh. The Mac PowerBook G4 has decided that Firefox is no longer interested in playing embedded YouTube videos. Other videos (mostly) work. But YouTube? Nope. There’s a URL-by-URL fix out there, but that doesn’t help with embedded videos. And yes, I’ve tried all of the suggested fixes. No good. So, on the Mac I surf with Firefox and keep Opera open to do nothing but watch videos. How tedious.

And then the sound capabilities of my PC laptop started to go. First the speakers got scratchy, then they crapped out altogether. Now the earphone jack does nothing, either. Double-ugh. Of course, the PC laptop does have its zombie sound moments — usually involving some irritating system sound or beep that comes out at ear-splitting decibels because I’ve forgotten to turn the previously uncooperative and utterly silent sound to off.

But to get to the good stuff, make the jump.

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Welcome back from our loooooooong break! Here are three things to ponder.

Thing the First: I updated the renga post we did before break with the image files from our collaborative poem. Check it out. Now that some time has passed, you may be able to read it without being overwhelmed with memories of the experience of writing/reading it. We often find that in participatory literacy activities the experiences of the participants are much more interesting than the resulting work. What do you think?

Thing the Second: While flipping through the latest issue of Duke University’s alum-stroking magazine, I noticed that prominent digital textuality theorist N. Katherine Hayles is now at Duke (she was at UCLA last time I spoke with her). I also noticed that she has a column out discussing the future of textuality. Here’s a bit of her argument:

Why isn’t everyone gaga, then, for the new literary art forms emerging in digital media? One reason is the “bathtub” argument: Folks say they can’t read a digital artwork in the bathtub or curl up with it in bed. That is changing with digital readers like the Kindle. Of course, it is hard to beat the portability, low cost, and convenience of the paperback book. Unlike computers, even very old books almost always work when you open them. Still, if we have learned anything since programming was done by plugging cords into ENIAC, it is never say never when it comes to advances in networked and programmable media.A more serious objection is the charge that electronic literature lacks the subtlety, richness, and resonance of print literature. In part, I think this objection comes about because literary critics, nearly all of whom took in print with mother’s milk, do not fully understand how to read digital art.

You really should read the whole thing.

Thing the Third: While bopping around the interwebs, I happened across this post on Jill Walker Rettberg’s blog, and I was struck by this slide from one of her presentations:

What do you think?

Go here.

(Link removed.)

We went to http://etherpad.com You should, too.  I’ll post the results soon.

Okay, bowing to the will of the people, below the jump is the result of our collaborative poem-writing experience.  I’ve removed the names, but each writer is shown in a different (slightly) color.
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Not to be irreverent, but Lindqvist’s book, A History of Bombing has had me thinking about form and content, about what we use war for. And this is what keeps coming to mind:

If you’re not fluent in New Wave German, here are the lyrics to the English version of the song, but don’t peek at them until after we’ve talked about it.

Here’s a song that didn’t seem to get as much radio play in the US as it was getting in the UK when we were there last summer: The Last Shadow Puppets’ “The Age of the Understatement”:

What I find fascinating about this video, of course, is the way the video director uses the Russian military. If you just listen to the song, it feels more like a Western film, much like Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia”.

I’m also reminded of this classic song from Kate Bush, “Experiment 4″:

This song isn’t about the visuals at all, but rather the story retold by the lyrics.

And lastly, a song by The Skids covered by U2 and Greenday that uses the military (especially the air capabilities of the military) in a different, but still heart-wrenching way. “The Saints Are Coming”:

The lyrics for this one are here, though the visuals are far more arresting, I think.

Note: I think this version of the video is a little more powerful, but embedding is disabled.

So much going on!

Think you’ve got this whole “new media literacy” thing down? Try this: a new “novel” by Aaron A. Reed, Blue Lacunae. It’s a hybrid novel/interactive fiction, and it’s quite interesting in the parts I’ve “read” so far. I won’t give anything away, but I did enjoy the avatar customization he includes. It’s rare to find that in a book. Even an eBook.

And perhaps most importantly, Amazon unveiled its Kindle 2 today. We’ll watch this video in class and discuss it, but there’s more info at Amazon if you’re interested.

After last week’s post about TV watching and book-being-read-to-you-ness, I finally got around to watching the Superbowl ads. And what did I find, but this:

And not only that, but another New York Times article for us! This one is why TV is still around when we have computers to satisfy all of our needs. In case you’re not sufficiently piqued to read it, here’s Randall Stross with a daily dose of infuriation:

Consumers are increasingly avoiding newspapers — and books, too — because the text mode is now used so infrequently that it can feel like a burden. People are showing a clear preference for a fully formed video experience that comes ready to play on a screen, requiring nothing but our passive attention.

Go on, I dare you to read it. On a screen, of course!

Holy crap last weekend was full of literacy-related stuff! Here’s a quick run-down.

In the comics we had Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman’s Zits talking about childrens’ books. Here’s the first two cells:

And Bunny Hoest and John Reiner’s Lockhorns discussing reading skill and its inverse relationship to TV watching:

And then in the New York Times Mazagine, Virginia Heffernan’s “The Medium” column asked “What are kids learning to read when they learn to read online?” That’s more than relevant. I think our classroom is bugged.

Heffernan opens:

“Did you like this book?” asks the computer. It’s a customer-satisfaction question, but it seems more profound than that.

We hesitate. Ben, my 3-year-old son, shoots me a puzzled look. The answer should be yes. Ben enjoys what’s on the screen right now: Starfall, an online medley of free learn-to-read activities. But he doesn’t like the question.

“It’s not a book,” he explains, emphatically, to the laptop. “It’s more like a movie or a video.”

Read the rest — it’s really interesting, especially from a childrens’ lit perspective. And super interesting, from a Proust and the Squid perspective, when Heffernan notes that:

I’d like for Ben to sit with One More Story and come away with the impression that he’d been read beautiful books all afternoon. But Ben tends to ask for One More Story when he wants privacy, the same state of mind in which he likes videos. Books, by contrast, are for when he feels snuggly.

As I said, read it all. It’s well worth your time. Even if you have to read it on a computer monitor.

So, you’ve all read (or re-read) Frank Stockton’s classic short story, “The Lady or the Tiger.” (And, as I mentioned, there is a sequel: “The Discourager of Hesitancy,” in which a delegation comes from another kingdom to ask the semi-barbaric king which door the lover opened. I highly recommend it.)

Time to settle the question once and for all, my legionnaires of literacy. Which door did the lover of the princess open? And why?

As we discussed, your answer might connect to Stockton’s fascinating (and quite fun) prose, or to your experience with the reading, or to your knowledge of the history of the story, or to… well, you tell me.

The lady? Or the tiger?

Okay, I HAD entered this same post nearly three days ago, but apparently it did not show.  So here it is, again.

During the first day of class, I made a joke about writing my final project in “leet.”  For those that are unfamiliar with this internet “language,” allow me to make a quick definition.  Leet is short for elite and refers to any and all internet lingo that uses non-standard characters in place of standard characters.  For example, spelling leet itself can be accomplished with numbers alone like this, 1337.  The number 1 looks like the letter l, the 3’s make backwards e’s, etc.
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Choose Your Own Adventure 2: Journey Under the Sea, by R.A. Montgomery. 1978 and 2005 editions.

We probably all remember the novelty of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, favorites in school libraries everywhere. I selected these because I was interested in the differences between the two editions. The 1978 edition depicts a hulking Soviet-era submarine outfitted with a giant flashlight and a few antennae,  piloted by a man seen through a glass dome. We see a scuba diver sucked into a whirlpool, a great white ominously swimming by, and what appears to be the lost city of Atlantis; suggesting the dangers and mysteries of the deep we will encounter as we embark on one of several adventures of our choosing. The cover art of the newer edition is noticeably digitally generated, and looks a bit like an arcade game of the early nineties. There are faceless fish, a couple of disembodied tentacles,  and a submarine casting its headlights into the darkness, but no people. The absence of life represents the starkest difference between the two versions, and perhaps of the cultural shift from one era to the next. The older drawing is like a kooky comic - somehow friendly despite the dangers - the newer spooky in its sterility. The blurb on the older back cover mentions your friends in the sub, the “marvelous mammals [that] sometimes help people in trouble”, and the threat of physical exhaustion. The newer edition is concerned with your ship, and untested new equipment, such an experimental diving suit. This contrast is indicative of the contemporary preoccupation with technology and our resulting alienation from one another and the natural world.

Meanwhile, by Shiga, and is a sort of create your own adventure book, as we all may remember from our childhood.  You might remember from those books statements like “if you choose to fight the dragon, turn to page twelve.”  Meanwhile, however, is different from those books in a number of important ways.  First, it is a comic book.  That is, instead of the single picture and accompanying text, these pages are loaded with pictures with the text embedded in the action like a comic book.  Unlike a comic book this book does not have a left to right, top to bottom orientation.  Instead, small “tubular vessels” connect each drawing to another, be it on the same page, or on a different one.  By making choices that are also embedded in the pictures, you can lead your character to a large number of stories, some ending without much incident, others in death.

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