Class Notes Monday 2-21

Class notes 2/21:

-          Coursekeeping:

-          Watch film in preparation for a panel discussion (Conceiving Ada)

o   Pick someone to speak as

o   Think of who you would like to be. Bonus points if you dress up. Open to just about anything

o   Post by Friday who you will be, with a small description of who you are! Prepare to do research

o   This will help you prep for the next paper

§ Webpaper should connect to the panel.

§ Imagine that the person you pick is someone you would like write a paper about

o   You could even be Anne or Liz!

-          Look back before we look forward

-          Information is organized data or signals that has the potential to be meaningful in an exchange.

-          tangerines: it has to be meaningful to be information. It doesn’t have to have meaning for both parties, but it can’t be gibberish. Gibberish isn’t information.

-          leamirella: can’t you have information that wasn’t in an exchange. If you post something on the internet, it’s not necessary for someone to read it.

-          Aybala50: does just one person need to read it?

-          tangerines: if a tree falls in a forest...

-          Anne: does it only become information when it is taken up by a receiver?

-          izemmahi: is there an exchange between me and myself? Monologues, you are writer and reader

-          Aybala50: you always have information in your brain that you might not be thinking of/that you’re unaware of.

-          PhreNic: emphasize the external. A monologue is spoken out loud. Even if you’re reflecting on something, it’s not an exchange because you understand your own thinking. Part of the thing about making something information is that it needs to be put out there—it needs to be externalized so that it can be received by someone else [potentially], even if the receiver is yourself

-          Liz: clarify—when you get actual meaning, then you know it was information. Until meaning is created, you don’t know if it’s data or information?

-          Tangerines: it has to have meaning, for one or both parties.

-          Aybala50: like speaking a foreign language…if you don’t understand there’s no exchange. It’s still information?

-          Tangerines: you’re still giving them information, they just don’t know what to do with it.

o   [Then does it have meaning?]

-          Liz: meaning is totally not being exchanged or created. One side can take a lot of organized data and call it information because it has meaning for them. The information and the meaning created in the exchange of information…

-          Anne: Lots of times we argue about covering information…is it covered if the teacher is rushing through it?

-          Liz: I usually think of information of having a purpose of clarification. But you can use information to obscure information or hide patterns. Is it important to hide information?

-          Rubikscube: ATM card, national security information… (quote in class notes about the importance of hiding information

-          Hilary_Brashear: it’s possible that hiding is important for some information

-          PhreNic: history is about choosing what to present. Omissions influence how the receivers will pull meaning out of it

-          Anne: my scientist friends don’t like poetry because it’s so encrypted

-          Fawei: (quote in class notes) literary theory, new criticism, affects how you read because it changes the purpose of your reading. Your thinking is altered in terms of your goal.

-          Liz: if we’re seeking a certain reading then we’ll pull out the information to support it.

-          Class doesn’t seem to think we’re in crisis. Different ways to read are broadening/enabling.

-          Shin1068111: (quote in class notes) trajectory into new types of reading is a natural progression

-          MSA322: (quote in class notes)

-          Does anyone keyword their notes on their computer? …I should do that.

-          Hilary_Brashear: (quote in class notes) meaning is created in the space of interaction. It’s not a subjective creation. Even if students aren’t making connections with information taught in class, it’s still information.

-          Cara: (quote in class notes) a video to explain how the web is evolving. How users are interacting and on the web. More community-based instead of learning by yourself.

-          Observe the image, and make some observations:

o   Shapes, colors, patterns, etc.

o   What is it that you’re looking at? What do you see?

o   My notes: Two figures in a bottle, naked. The one in front is female, the one in back is male—broader hips broader shoulders. Embracing, kissing, cork, water ripples, a frame that disappears into the water, the water that turns into the page. Grey, “message d’amour des dauphins”

o   See dolphins—THE SHADOWS ARE DOLPHINS cool.  

o   Apocalipsis: lamp figure or open legs? http://www.dvorak.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/lamp_illusion.jpg

o   Shin1068111: If you show pictures to younger children, they won’t see the sexual images.

-          Leamirella: It’s up to you to decode the meaning.

-          Perceptual fluidity – the constructedness of what we see.

-          Second visitor to serendip!

-          Anne: There are readers here, decoding what some of you say

-          Moving on to…Hayles

-          Last time: If you pay more attention to pattern, you might miss the context. If you pay more attention to the meaning, you might miss the pattern. Re-think what reading is.

-          Now: re-think how we think.

-          Describe your mind: I don’t really know Sometime it’s hard to tell when I’m thinking clearly. My mind in particular has a very bad sense of time or placing events chronologically for context. I think I am somewhere in between this transition to hyper-reading and the like. I feel like I’m constantly bordering on the edge of something new while others are still trying to teach me old methods so there’s a kind of pull from the past.

-          Describe your partner’s brain as a way to re-introduce them for the name game.

-          Liz: difference between mind and brain. Mind extends beyond physical boundaries of our bodies. Mind is constructed by the brain

-          Anne: it’s Emily Dickinson’s fault that I get the two confused! “The brain is wider than the sky”

-          Anne: acknowledge that our brains act very differently.

-          PhreNic: I find myself having trouble with a lot of what Hayles is saying. End up close reading a lot of things. I understand the merits of what she’s talking about, but I have trouble accepting a lot of what she is saying.

-          MissArcher2: Acquired ADD—a term that’s becoming more used in psychology to describe people who don’t necessarily have ADD, but they’re acquiring similar symptoms due to the way they’re processing things.

-          Need to have traditional humanities and digital humanities in conversation with each other. Bring this back to your web projects. How might thinking differently be expressed differently online?