Fire in the Hole

We have been asked to discuss our feelings regarding the “Fire in the Hole,” prank that seems to be sweeping the country at the moment. The prank involves pulling up to a drive-thru window and tossing either the ordered beverage or a pre-made mixture of pepper sauce and alcohol at the worker in the window. The lack of ethics involved here is disturbing. This may have started as a harmless prank, but it seems to have escalated into something that is legitimately dangerous. Police consider this an act of harassment. In addition, the pranks are often recorded and posted on the internet which only serves to garner attention and further humiliate the worker involved.
Things like this are only giving the media a tool to disrepute our generation and posting these pranks on sites like YouTube is really about the immaturity of the pranksters. But, when we look for a bad guy we needn’t look farther than the media that spreads the word on “pop” pranks like this. If there was no coverage of this then it would be far less widespread. Stories like this should be shown once with a clear warning and never again. However I think that it is not right for the media to associate our entire generation with something like this prank.

Blog Week 2

This week the class was presented with an image by Barbara Kruger which is untitled, but is referred to as “questions.” You can easily find this image through Google’s image search. The image consists of an American flag with the phrase, “look for the moment when pride becomes contempt,” replacing the stars, and questions like, “who is free to choose,” “who is beyond the law,” and” who is housed,” replacing the stripes. Our task was to decide whether the words compliment the image, or vice-versa. I responded by saying that the image magnifies the meaning of the words. I think this because while these questions have a lot of meaning behind them, the presence of the flag broadens the viewers understanding of the topic. In other words the image addresses the feeling that our government has taken pride to an extreme to the point that we think that it is our responsibility and our right to police the rest of the world, and make all of the decisions because we see ourselves as better than the rest of the world. In other words, our pride has led us to contempt as the image hints at.
I do not necessarily believe that the government is making the wrong moves, but I think that we are causing a lot unnecessary animosity to be directed toward us because of the way we have handled some situations. More importantly, I think that we need to focus more on protecting America itself instead of trying to targeting everyone who dislikes our country. After all, this strategy doesn’t seem to be working (the group responsible for 9/11 has yet to be brought to justice). My point is that we will never be able to make it so that everyone thinks that America is the greatest place in the world, but we can make sure that everyone in the United States loves America by giving them a reason to.
On a lighter note, we were supposed to read the online article, “Taking the You out of YouTube,” which is about the recent sale of the new media monster YouTube to Google. The article’s main topic is what will happen to these Web 2.0 companies as they are assimilated into the giant corporations like Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Basically, the article presents two possible outcomes of these buyouts. One is that the corporations will take the “you” out of these online places and overflow the sites with ads. An alternative is that the vast networking power of these conglomerates will actually improve the quality of the site. Only time will tell.

Blog Week 1

I recently read the short story, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” written by Jorge Luis Borges. In it Borges describes a reality in which all possible outcomes of every possible action can, and do exist in some alternate reality. This was the beginning of the hypertext novel, although it is not a hypertext novel in itself. The idea is that of a character in the story named Ts’ui Pen. This character was said to devote thirteen years of his life to the creation of a novel and a maze. Eventually, the protagonist realizes that the novel and the labyrinth are one in the same. This is the main idea behind the hypertext novel. A novel with no real end, but instead a never-ending circular path of cause and effect. This idea is important, in my opinion, because it introduces the idea of divergent reality, and cause and effect.
I think that the author’s point was that every cause entails at least one, and in his reality infinitely many, effects. A philosopher would have a field day with this work because of the broad ideas contained within, but its real contributions may be the ideas themselves and their connections to modern technology, like the game Zork, created by the Programming Technology Division of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. I am not proposing a connection, but the ideas are similar. The obvious difference is that the game Zork relies on specific inputs and outputs, whereas Borges’ reality was said to contain infinitely many convergent and divergent paths like a very large garden. Overall, I thought that “The Garden of Forking Paths” was interesting and insightful.
I have also read an excerpt from the first chapter of Italo Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a Traveler,” which was a difficult read. Although its connection to the other selections is obvious it lacks the depth that “The Garden of Forking Paths” had. Though, to be fair I must say that I only read an excerpt from the first chapter, and it is unfair to judge it based solely on that. In this excerpt the author describes the most likely scenarios that led the reader to seek out and buy the book. This book is very unorthodox in this way because instead of a traditional third person narrative, the author interacts with the reader, which makes it interesting. The author’s purpose seems to be to get the reader to think about what a book should be. He proves that a traditional novel is not the only way a book can be organized. It is similar to “The Garden of Forking Paths,” because the author presents several possible reasons for a particular action which shows the convergence idea of Borges’ short story.

Hi again, I have clarified the purpose of this blog. I will be postion weekly in response to course readings and discussion questions in my Engl 108 class at Purdue. I am really excited about this because it is my first blog. The focus of the class, and by extension this blog, is "new media" and the role this technology plays in todays world. New media basically refers to all of the new forms of communication and expression that have appeared as technology has evolved.
Here is a little information about me. I am a freshman at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. I am from a small town near Terre Haute, Indiana. My high School had less than 400 students total, and less than 100 in my graduating class. I love playing guitar in my free time as well as fishing, bicycling, and playing video games.
Well, that's about it for now. I will update soon.

Welcome

Hello to all. I have started this blog for my English 108 class at Purdue University. I don't know exactly what this blog will consist of yet, but i will make a new post soon.