Final Project Venue

Thanks to Dr. Burton's post about undergraduate research, I've found a journal I'd like to submit my final paper to. I'll submit my final paper about perceptual dialectology and smartphone technology to the Literary and Linguistics Computing journal published by Oxford Journals. I will submit the findings of my survey and other data in the traditional style of a linguistics research paper.

So far about nine students from one of my professor's UVU ESL class have taken my survey, and this week the director of the International Student Association at BYU should be sending out my survey to a few thousand international students. I'll be analyzing the data as more students take the survey and keep you all updated.

Research for Shelly: Youth Online

I find Shelly's research about youth online (such as she discussed in her recent post) interesting because even people who know little about digital culture are discussing the implications of allowing children to interact with this new digital world. I decided to do a little research for myself (and for her).

Scholarship

This article is one of the older of the bunch (2008) but is interesting because it talks about people's fears that MySpace would spread personal information about teens that would lead to sexual assaults.

This 2011 study examines how youth use new media in safe and unsafe ways with regards to their sexuality. It includes detailed stories--a good source.

This 2013 article in a journal about crimes against children says "In spite of continuing anxiety about the impact of the Internet on the safety of youth, encouraging trends suggest experiences, behavior and education are moving in the direction of greater online safety and improved experiences for youth."

This 2007 article says "talking with people known only online (“strangers”) under some conditions is related to online interpersonal victimization, but sharing personal information is not. Engaging in a pattern of different kinds of online risky behaviors is more influential in explaining victimization than many specific behaviors alone. Pediatricians should help parents assess their child's online behaviors globally in addition to focusing on specific types of behaviors."

Blogs

This blogger on Gizmodo talks about his decision to remove pictures of his children from the Internet. He quotes several other influential blog posts where people have discussed the topic of having an Internet presence for their children before they are old enough to decide what they want to have posted.

What about Internet filters, I wonder? This router allows parents to very strictly control and view what their children do online. Is it best to filter and constrict or teach best practices to your children?

I could go on for a long time with these resources--there is clearly a lot out there. Hope this helps you, Shelly! 

Altruistic Research for Smartphone vs Dialects

+Mary Wright Layton has recently posted about her final project examining dialects and smartphones. You can read that here. I was really intrigued by this idea that maybe voice activated technology do favor certain languages and accents over others. To help out, I dived a bit deeper into the technology that goes behind voice activation and did some linguistic research. Hope this helps!

Under the eBooks search on the Lee Library site, I found this Google Book called Psychology Study Guide for Smartphones and Mobile Devices that talks about how "making a principled distinction between one language and another is usually impossible." It gives examples of how some dialects are similar to one another like German and Dutch, or Spanish and Italian. The similarities between dialects means "the transition between languages within the same language family is sometimes gradual" (under subheading Human Languages). It also mentions the phoneme of languages. The Google definition of phoneme: any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, like p, d, and t in pad vs pat. So when we look at dialects, which languages have spelling that also corresponds to how it's pronounced? Which languages are easy to guess spelling, but not pronunciation? Which languages have difficult spelling and pronunciation? I think in terms of your final topic, Mary could look at how the phonemes of languages changes the likelihood of a smartphone or any voice activation device understanding what is being said.

I also went through JSTOR just for kicks and found two articles Mary might be interested in. They are all a bit dated, but I think the concepts are still worth exploring. The first one here also has a subheading about speech recognition problems. It does point out the advancements that have been made so far with the technology though (by so far, it means in the last ten years from 1995). If we've made that many improvements so far, hopefully today there's work going into making it better now. This article explores how Spanish Dialectology is being taught with digital audio technology. Not exactly the same as voice recognition, but there are technologies out there working on different dialects that perhaps smartphones don't employ as successfully yet.

As for how the technology itself works, I did a quick Google search on "voice recognition technology" and found this quick explanation of how it works. You can read that here.

I know in your post you mentioned the Dragon software. Looking at Google+ articles under "voice activation" search I found a few people talking about Snapdragon and OK Google. I'm not sure if they're necessarily better than the Dragon software; however, but it may be a good idea to compare different software to see if there are apps better at listening to more/different dialects than others.

Good luck with your final project! And it's great that you've already got some social proof going on with the director of the International Student Association! Hope you get back plenty of results from there.

Citizen Journalism Best Practices

What are best practices for citizen journalism? If one were to create a guide for citizen journalists, as Kayla has proposed, what would be the best approach? Here are my suggestions.

• Who is the Audience?
  The audience for a guide is different than the general audience that consumes user-generated journalism. Is this a guide for communications and journalism teachers? Is this something that might accompany a citizen journalism platform (perhaps even as part of some training)? See, for example, the various categories in the help section for the AllVoices site.
• Where is citizen journalism happening?
  On private blogs, via news sites? dedicated citizen journalism platforms? Advice may differ based on these factors.
• What media and what technology are used for citizen journalism? Are citizen journalists submitting photos, text messages, videos, blog posts, links, curated content, etc.? Is this submitted via desktop computer or via mobile phone? All of these make a difference in terms of best practices.
• What about existing guides or guidelines?
  Research what's already been done so you can build upon others' work or fill in holes in what they've done. See, for example, the ethical and blogging guidelines from the University of Oregon, or
• When were guidelines published?
  A lot happens quickly in this rapidly developing space, and what was good advice in 2006 may be irrelevant or plain wrong in 2013. Like a good journalist, sleuth out what is most current.
• Who are the experts?
  People like Jay Rosen and Dan Gilmor have written key works about citizen journalism (like Rosen's "The People Formerly Known as the Audience" and Gilmor's We the Media), but you might also check to see their blogs or Twitter accounts for their most recent thinking.
• Where and how is citizen journalism being taught?
  While researching this topic an ad popped up for a New Media Journalism degree from Full Sail University. I suggest doing a search for syllabi at .edu sites that include terms like "new media journalism" and "citizen journalism" (like this search). Check a very good (though early) syllabus from Howard Rheingold at Stanford. Great readings from a real digital authority.
• What is the business angle?
  Journalism is an industry and a profession, not just a hobby for amateurs. The smart newspaper and media companies are tapping into crowdsourcing by creating platforms and business models that capitalize the user-generated news reporting that's going on. I recommend highly reviewing John Paton's "How the Crowd Saved Our Company" 
• Who is in the trenches?
  Get some social proof from people that are doing citizen journalism. Contact bloggers or those who manage platforms for crowdsourcing content. Check out Deseret Connect, a very innovative networking and crowdsourcing platform. Reach out to some of the contributors or editors that are part of it and interview them about the issues. Someone else in the trenches to consult would be Melissa Wall (bio) who is very current (doing Syrian citizen journalism November 2013) and who authored a recent (2012) book on Citizen Journalism 
• Where are guidelines for citizen journalism being discussed or debated?
  Try this Google search for starters: (forum OR debate) guidelines "citizen journalism" 2013
• What format is best for such guidelines?
  Is an FAQ, an eBook, a wiki, a print book, a video -- or some combination of these most fitting? It depends upon your audience, of course, and perhaps on which variety of citizen journalism you are talking about.

The Altruistic Scholar

So I read about what Heidi was researching with Diigo. You can find her post and my comments here. She's exploring gamification and more specifically gamification in the workplace. I think this idea is really relevant. Games are a large part of U.S. culture, and as we've discussed in class many times, they're not just for teenage boys anymore. Games can be used as teaching tools and can offer motivation and incentive. Heidi found some good sources that predict more companies will be gamifying elements of their workplaces to engage employees.

I searched on the library website to find some scholarly references for her. I found an article where researchers made a game for a university course to see if it affected students' performance. They found some positive impacts: better overall score and better scores in practical assignments. This isn't directly related to gamification in the workplace, but maybe Heidi will find it useful. It looks like there are some other helpful articles in the same journal.

I also searched online to find more about gamification in the workplace. I found an article from InformationWeek about Blue Shield trying out a gaming app for health and wellness in their workplace. They think it has been beneficial to their employees.

It was kind of fun being an altruistic scholar. It was easy to do research and find something helpful, and I enjoyed learning about a topic that I'm interested in but not exploring in depth. Hopefully I will get some good feedback on my post as well.

Ishmael: Teaching the Dos and Don'ts of Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism may sometimes seem like a field with no rules--anyone can upload videos or stories, and no overarching organization controls what goes out to the public. There are, however, some best practices being discussed in the media and among citizens. As I thought about Moby Dick's Ishmael as a citizen reporter (which isn't too hard to connect), I wondered where he was a good or bad example of media ethics and best practices.

I combined my curation tool of choice (Google alerts) with this topic and started to see some patterns and connections emerging between current stories and Ishmael's past, fictional one.

1. Provide information where other journalists can't. Recent bombings and attacks on school children in Syria were reported on by citizen journalists. Professionals couldn't have known where to be to get this information in real time, but local citizens stepped in to provide photos of the attackers and details on the story. Likewise, Ishmael provides a unique point of view on the adventures of the Pequod. He is in an isolated location (on a boat in the middle of the ocean) where others would be hard pressed to find them to report on the fate of the ship.
2. Weigh the risks before going into a dangerous situation. Professional journalist Lindsey Hilsum gave an address this month about why reporters go to war when there are so many risks. It's a balance between "no story is worth dying for" and "this story is important and worth it." Does Ishmael really assess the risks of reporting on the Pequod? In some ways, we can argue that he didn't really know the risks (or the true mission) when he first boarded the whaling ship, but he also knew that some things were off, and he was warned by others to not continue. 
3. Use the technological resources available to you. iTunes approved a new citizen journalism app this week that allows users to upload short videos, photos, and text updates. This app could arguably be used for lesser forms of journalism and take the form of a celebrity gossip or paparazzi venue, but it also has the potential to spread useful information. Ishmael uses technology in the sense of the first definition in the OED, "treatise on art," but it is sometimes difficult to see where the connection is to a more modern idea of technology. Does Ishmael really take advantage of resources available to him to publish this story?
4. Ask: Why is this information being published? The murder of an 18-year-old boy in a South African school in late October was recorded on video by a fellow classmate. The video spread quickly and made many question the ethics of circulating such a video. Was it purely for spectacle, for commercial purposes that drew more people to news outlets' sites? Does all truth need to be circulated? We can then think about the purpose behind Ishmael's reporting. He tells a gruesome tale at times, but the information is not purely for spectacle--there is context for the story. He hasn't simply uploaded a video titled "Huge Whale Sinks Entire Ship and Crew." He tells the story of the people involved. 

 This is all hopefully leading me to what I hope will become my final project, as I've discussed earlier, which would be a guidebook of dos and don'ts to citizen journalism.

Moby Dick: A Book Before It's Time

At the time of publication, Melville only sold 500 copies of Moby Dick in the UK compared to 6,700 copies of his first book Typee; although it sold fairer in the US with 3,215 copies, it still sold less than four previous books by him (source). Considering how famous the book is now, what is something Ishmael is doing that gets his every day journal entries, random rantings, and mini lectures so many views? Perhaps it isn't the book itself finally getting credit where it's due, but in this day of age the readers have adapted to the book's style. To put in layman's terms: Ishmael is actually a first edition blogger.

Final Project: Smartphones and Dialects

For my final project, I wanted to combine the digital world and linguistics. I was just reading online when I came across an article about people in the U.K. having issues using their voice activated Smartphone features because of their dialect or accent. It seems that Smartphones aren't really programmed with the capability to understand non-American dialects. The article is a bit dated, but it got me thinking, and I did some more research.

My husband has an Australian coworker, and I asked her if her Smartphone understood her voice. She said it was horrible at understanding her, but she thought there might be some way to change a Smartphone to get it to recognize your dialect. I work at the Office of Information Technology on campus, and I asked some programmers I work with if they knew anything about a dialect app for Smartphones. They said they hadn't considered that problem and didn't know of any, but one told me about high tech voice recognition software called Dragon.

This led to more researching. I found an article from USA Today detailing helpful Smartphone travel apps, including language apps. None of the apps mentioned have the ability to recognize foreign dialects. They are all mostly for translation purposes, which makes sense, but there is a need for a lot of improvement in this field as well.

Then I found another article where I found out that Google and other companies are using Dragon software to improve their Smartphone's recognition. I also found out that Google and other companies are crowdsourcing to find a solution to their phone's voice recognition problems. The article also discusses a little how complicated it is to have Smartphones recognize dialect. Voice recognition technology relies a lot on statistical models of language that try and predict which words will come next in a sentence based on probability. A Google product manager interviewed in the article gives the example of saying the "empire" into your Smartphone. He says that statistically it is more likely for someone to follow that word with "state building" or "strikes back" than another word. He also mentions that continuously collecting linguistic field data helps improve voice recognition.

But is there really a demand for an app that can recognize different dialects and not just foreign languages? I found another very recent article from 2013 in Forbes magazine about what customers want in a new Smartphone. Among the list of wants is better voice recognition. The author acknowledges that even with just a standard American accent, his iPhone has trouble understanding what he says at times. He also recognizes that dialects and other "lingo" make a potential Smartphone user's experience not ideal.

So this brings me to my project. I've met with the director of the International Student Association, and he has agreed to send out a Qualtrics survey for me that would get the students' opinions and experiences on using the voice activated features on their Smartphones. I chose the International Student Association because I knew that they would all have non-American accents and that, for the non-native speakers, their English was at a level where they could read and understand the survey questions. I am sending this survey to get an idea of the demand for a Smartphone or a Smartphone app that would allow them to use voice activated features with their version of English.

What are your thoughts?      

Content Like Queequeg: the Ability to Be Alone in the Digital Age

For my first post this week I analyzed two paragraphs from Chapter 10: A Bosom Friend. You can find the post and text here. The paragraphs describe Queequeg from Ishmael's perspective. As I read closer, I noticed something interesting that I think applies very well to the digital age.

"I had noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was something almost sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is--which was the only way he could get there--thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that."

In today's world where it seems vital to be connected to each other through our Smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc., could any of us be like Queequeg? Are we content with out own companionship? Are we equal to ourselves? I personally am an introvert, and so I don't always need as much interaction and connection with people than others do. However, I do greatly value connection with others, like family and friends. This class has also taught me about the value of connecting with strangers. There is no doubt that social media and connection through technology serve valuable purposes. But at the same time, I do worry that people are beginning to rely on constant connection with others through technology to avoid deep contemplation about themselves and their life. I know I've done this. I will distract myself with media when I feel depressed, overwhelmed, or find myself unsatisfied with my life in some way. 

I decided to do some research about this tendency, and I found something interesting on the American Psychological Association website that relates well to the above Moby Dick quote.  

"It’s a great psychological truth that if we don’t teach our children how to be alone, they will always be lonely. When they’re always connected, children, adolescents and adults become dependent on the presence of others for validation in the most basic ways . . . Rather, other people are used, as what one might think of as part objects — spare parts to support a fragile self."

We've talked a lot of about social proof in this class, which is valuable and necessary for academia and other projects or trains of thought we undertake. But I think it would be sad to live in a society where we need social proof about our own self-worth. Will we only feel good about ourselves and be confident in our own ideas unless we get positive feedback from X amount of people or get X amount of likes on Facebook? There really is a beauty in being satisfied and confident with who we are and in enjoying spending time with ourselves. This is part of the beauty Ishmael sees in Queequeg. Ishmael calls this trait about Queequeg "a touch of fine philosophy."  

I searched Google+ for more insight about this topic. I found this image.

    

Although this quote is from a comedian, it brings up an interesting philosophical issue. Is the ability to "just sit there" to just be a defining feature of what it means to be a human being? Be is contained in the word "being" after all. I think the capability to have internal peace and an "utmost serenity" as Ishmael puts it is an important aspect of what it means to be human. It speaks to a sense of self-mastery and disciplined contemplation that makes human beings capable of great things. Look at all of the rich insights that the character Ishmael comes to from his own contemplation and observations. Perhaps he would have come to greater truths with more networking and social interaction, who knows? But we value Ishmael as a narrator and give him credibility because of his reflective prowess. The journey through Moby Dick would not have been the same from a third person point of view where we read dialogues among characters and see all of their social interactions. Ishmael's own contemplations about other characters and the world around him add a thought-provoking personality to Moby Dick. Ishmael is able to come to these thoughts because he is on a lonely ship, isolated from towns and cities of people. His solitude shapes the story.    

With constant connection, we can forget about the importance of solitude and contemplation. I've talked with friends and family about this topic. One of my family members is a hard worker and thoroughly enjoys being busy. Sometimes they are so good at being busy that they don't take time to reconnect with themselves and evaluate whether they are truly happy. I have also done this as well. There are times when I just don't want to sit alone and meditate on my life, but when I do take time to contemplate, I never regret it. We lead busy demanding lives, and it is rare that we have the opportunity to just do nothing. But in this digital age it is important to remember that disconnecting from media can mean reconnecting with ourselves. 

Moby Dick Typography

So I made Moby Dick digital by taking the following excerpt from Chapter 10: A Bosom Friend and putting into a Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) analysis machine. You can find the link for it here. Just put any text over 200 words into it for an analysis about what an author's writing reflects about his or her emotional and psychological state. I chose an excerpt from Chapter 10 for analysis simply because I like this chapter. I think Ishmael's reflections on his new friend Queequeg are interesting and heartwarming. Here's the excerpt.

"With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face--at least to my taste--his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes,fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous,but it reminded me of General Washington's head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.

Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference of his very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do not know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there was something almost sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is--which was the only way he could get there--thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have 'broken his digester.'"

Here are the results. 

Liwc Dimension	Your Data	Personal Texts	Formal Texts
Self-references (I, me, my)	3.29	11.4	4.2
Social words	8.72	9.5	8.0
Positive emotions	3.29	2.7	2.6
Negative emotions	1.74	2.6	1.6
Overall cognitive words	5.81	7.8	5.4
Articles (a, an, the)	7.17	5.0	7.2
Big words (> 6 letters)	20.54	13.1	19.6

The numbers listed are in percentages. So for example, in the passage analyzed, 3.29% of the words from the passage were self-reference words. The percentages are also compared to a range of other personal and formal texts. So we see that Melville really didn't use very many self-reference words at all in this passage. I initially found this very surprising considering the entire book is from a first person perspective (Ishmael's), but I realized that this passage may not be as characteristic of the whole novel because Ishmael is primarily describing Queequeg in this passage. Or maybe it is reflective of the book as a whole since Ishmael spends a great deal of time describing the things and people around him. 

Here is what the word categories mean. Here is the link where I found this information.

Self-references: People who use a high rate of self-references tend to be more insecure, nervous, and possibly depressed. They also tend to be more honest.

Social words: Social words are words that make reference to other people (e.g., they, she, us, talk, friends). Generally, people who use a high level of social words are more outgoing and more socially connected with others.

Positive emotion words: The more that people use positive emotion words (e.g. happy, love, good), the more optimistic they tend to be. If you feel good about yourself, you are more likely to see the world in a positive way.

Negative emotion words: Use of negative emotion words (e.g., sad, kill, afraid) is weakly linked to people's ratings of anxiety or even neurotic. People who have had a bad day are more likely to see the world through negatively-tinted glasses.

Overall cognitive words: These are words that reflect how much people are actively thinking about their writing topic. Examples include: thinking, wonder, because, knowledge.

Articles: The three article words -- a, an, and the -- account for a huge percentage of the words we use. People who use articles at a high rate tend to be more concrete and impersonal in their thinking.

Big words (words with more than 6 letters): Use of big words is weakly related to higher grades and standardized test scores. People who use a high rate of big words also tend to be less emotional and oftentimes psychologically distant or detached.

Some interesting takeaways for me when looking at this data are 

1) For such a grim story, Melville uses a surprising amount of positive emotion words, more than most personal and formal texts.

2) Melville uses a high percentage of articles, yet according to the above information, people who use high amounts of articles "tend to be more concrete and impersonal in their thinking." However, I would not describe the tone of Moby Dick as impersonal. I think it is very personal. Ishmael is a very personable narrator, so this analysis seems to be a little off. 

3) Melville uses a lot of big words; 20.54% of the words in this passage are 6 letters or longer. I think this is interesting because this percentage is much closer to formal texts and a great deal above that of personal texts. We know that Moby Dick's form is hard to define: is it a novel, en epic, etc? However it is a non-fiction story, and people recognize it as a novel, so it surprises me that in this part of its analysis, it reads like a formal piece. I guess I always considered novels to be more like personal texts than formal ones.

Congratulations if you've read this whole blog post and made it down to this point. Do any of these findings strike you as interesting? Do you think they are accurate? This type of analysis is obviously not an exact science, but I think it is still revealing.

Final Project Thoughts (Extra Post, Prologue to Post 2 of this week)

Beware! I am posting my prewriting and rough drafts, showing my progressive steps, diving into the second stage of academic blogging, and saying social proof doesn't always work.

This isn't my second post for the week about digital tools with Moby Dick, but I will link to it at the bottom after it's published. This is a prologue for what I'll do in that post and how I got to that idea.

This is a post about my final topic. If you guys can comment, it will help me with my theme and tell me if this is something I can actually do a final project on. Even if you only read the last couple paragraphs under the asterisks, that will really help me. Or comment here on Google+ for an even faster read and respond. Give me social proof, homies and peers!

Ahab's Poetry: Reformatting the Text of Moby Dick

After reading Professor Burton's post on digitally mediating literary texts, I immediately wanted to try making poetry out of the more poetic passages in Moby Dick. I decided to take Ahab's soliloquy from chapter 37 and see what I could do with it.

It was surprisingly easy to see where the line breaks should go, though I'm no poet myself. I felt like the stanzas fell together into themes. After I made the poem, I printed it out and made notes on it like I would with any other poem.

I've linked here to the original version I made and my annotated version.

Some of the most interesting things I noticed were the use of color imagery and Christ/Satan imagery. I looked up the iron crown of Lombardy, which I had just skipped over when actually reading the novel. In some ways, I think poetry just helps us to slow down when reading texts and look for meaning in every word.

But seriously, the last few stanzas? They look like perfect poetry to me.

Moby Dick Digitized

(focusing on illustrate the text/make typography art, #7 and #8 on this post about making literary text digital)

I was originally going to translate sections of Moby Dick into Spanish and use my mic to make an audible Spanish version, but my mic is quiet so I decided to do something else: typography art. Then it got me thinking of something else that's taken texts and even movies into the digital world. Minimalist posters are everywhere on the internet. So I did a bit of both and may have even gotten carried away with it. Here are some minimalist posters-ish pictures I found for Moby Dick (image 1, image 2, image 3) if you don't know what they are and don't understand my creations below...

Minimalist Posters (made using Windows Paint - can you guess which was hardest?):

This is for Chapter 61 titled Stubb Kills a Whale, featuring the whaling
boats. The quote is found in the last paragraph of this chapter.

So we have the captain's hat for Chapter 28: Ahab where Captain Ahab is really introduced.
The quote describing Ahab is found on the first page of the chapter.

We have Moby Dick's tail featured in Chapter 41 dedicated to none other
than Moby Dick himself. The quote is found on the first page of the chapter.

Chapter 99: The Doubloon features the coin Ishmael describes
on the first page of this chapter.

Now for the typography pictures that will be under the read more to save on scrolling space.

1984 Video Review

I think the biggest struggle I had with creating this video review was the time limit. My video ended up being 2:11, so a little longer than the two minutes. I enjoyed doing the written review because I could expand on the concepts I was talking about and explain myself. But I enjoyed doing the video review as well. There is a certain freedom and a nice spontaneity of expression making an impromptu video. I definitely had to cut to the main points and couldn't elaborate, but I didn't have to phrase things perfectly, check for grammar and spelling mistakes, etc., which was refreshing. I didn't really try to do any high tech stuff with my video. I even did it in front of my cluttered kitchen for some extra ethos points (See I'm just like you. I have a messy kitchen too!). I didn't even put on makeup for the video, so it is definitely far from Hollywood quality. As long as the main points are clear and the review is helpful for people or at least thought-provoking, then I've done my job. Enjoy!

Video Book Review of We the Media

There's a lot going on in this book, so I decided the best way to review it would be by giving a one-sentence summary of each chapter. They may not have been the main ideas the author wanted me to get from the book, but here is my interpretation:

Things I wish I could do better technologically:

1. Get a better thumbnail so my face isn't frozen like that in the beginning.
2. Edit video down so I could cut off the extra couple dozen seconds. 

It's amazing how quickly the time goes. I mean, I thought with one sentence per chapter I'd be doing just fine. Too many chapters I guess. Here are my twelve sentences, more or less as I said them:

Video Book Review

So here's my video book review of Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (or follow this link for just the powerpoint version without voiceover). PS - don't know why the graphic is blurry for the voiceover version and not the music version, but I can try editing that later.

Steps:

1. Think a really long time about what to do to be creative at least a little
2. Go to YouTube and click on creation tools (that you read as curation tools and got really excited for but then realize you read that wrong)
• Let their free audio library entertain you for about ten minutes
• Download three of their free audio clips to use for video
• Of course reading the terms and conditions first to avoid copyright issue
3. Realize your camera on your computer is feeling uncooperative but no fear because creativity is here!
4. Make fun powerpoint to explain points of book and use microphone to do voice over parts do give it that personal connection feel
5. Edit a bit using Windows Live Movie Maker
6. Post it and tag it with digiculture326
7. Wish you had your puppets from last semester's videos with you and not at home so they can make a surprise cameo appearance (and then proceed to watch those videos again and appreciate the cheap quality and brevity there too)

Advertisement for Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man in the Whole Earth Catalog

I didn't find any video book reviews (and I've made a post before on how many interviews there are on YouTube) but I did find this fellow blog post that mentions how the book was meant to stir questions about the technological world and not meant to ask and answer those questions. I also found this cool image (left) on http://www.moma.org (click through for full link, scroll down a little more than half way to find subheading Mediated Art) and a mini review of McLuhan's Understanding Media. I thought it looked pretty cool. Plus it's a short review (tiered content model with this little ad and review all in one, yeah?) to get the book noticed and selling.

Lots of fun with making this review and researching this book. Hopefully all my mentions of it on here and Google+ (as well as to friends of mine) will spread the word some more about McLuhan's contributions to digital thought!

Goodreads Review of 1984

Most of you have probably already read 1984. I have to say it is the most unsettling book I've read. 1984 and other books like it are particularly disquieting because their plots are just possible enough to make you question the reality you live in and what could happen in the future. You can check out my review on Goodreads here.

As far as information and using technology to spy on and control people, 1984 is definitely applicable, especially after all of these NSA scandals have come about. Who knew our government was spying on the German Chancellor's cell phone! But of course now that our president is aware of such spying, that's horribly wrong, but spying on United States citizens without probable cause is perfectly acceptable. Sorry for the short political rant. Anyway, 1984 follows Winston Smith who is a citizen of Oceania, one of the three world superpowers in the future. All of the party members, a semi-intelligent class of people that work for Big Brother, are monitored day in and day out by telescreens and the Thought Police. The telescreens constantly play Big Brother propaganda and also collect audio and visual recordings of everyone within sight of the screen. Big Brother is a totalitarian regime that has found devastatingly efficient ways to oppress its citizens through brainwashing, distraction, information control, and fear.

One thing I find particularly interesting about the book from a linguistic perspective is the language control Big Brother uses. Big Brother communicates through Newspeak, which is founded on the principles of English Socialism. The intent of Big Brother is to reduce the English language to such a degree that words for rebellion and critical thought will no longer exist. This brings us back to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in a way because Big Brothers seems to think that language structure in part affects people's ability to think or at least structures their thinking to a certain degree. For example, Newspeak morphology is simple. Orwell uses the example of the word "good" to explain it. So there is the root word "good," and it's opposite is simply "ungood." It's comparative and superlative forms are "doublegood" or "doubleplusgood." It's adjective form is "goodful."

I find this morphology interesting for two reasons: Newspeak morphology seems to be mathematical, which in my mind strips language of expressiveness and Newspeak morphology only has root words and standard prefixes and suffixes that attach to change the word, which to me makes it harder for opposing connotations to stick to words. When I say mathematical I mean the root word and its affixes make a symmetrical continuum that goes like this doubleplusungood doubleungood ungood good doublegood doubleplusgood. There are no nuances or creativity possible with such a language, which is exactly what Big Brother wants. Using a root word with affixes to change meaning rather than using a different word makes it hard for bad connotations to stick to the negative word in a pairing. Take some word pairings for example: grateful/ungrateful, smart/dumb, considerate/inconsiderate, nice/mean. Which ones seem to be stronger opposites? To me the ones where the words are not linguistically linked make it easier to assign a bad connotation to the negative words and a good connotation to the positive words. But in Big Brother's world, there is no "good" and "bad." There is just "good" and "ungood." So in a way, everything that Big Brother does is somehow related to the concept of goodness. So Big Brother is never bad or anything with a negative connotation. I hope that makes sense. I realize this is just my own opinion and may not be true for any of you or be true for all word pairings. Perhaps I have been biased in my choice of word pairings, but those were the ones I thought of off the top of my head. Anyway, it's something interesting to think about. 

Have many of you read 1984? What do you think of it?
 

Budding Thoughts on Citizen Journalism (and more on Google alert curation)

A video review of Dan Gillmor's book is coming soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd give a quick update on my thoughts with citizen journalism as a broader topic. As I've continued to curate content using Google alerts, I've come across some useful articles and some not-so-useful articles, which I fully expected. Luckily, it's easy to filter out the bad ones quickly.

Funding and Audience Participation

Image by Howard Lake

Through two articles in particular (one article on a Chinese man changing up his journalism career and crowd-funding his entire income, and another article on a new news outlet in Philadelphia to be run by "an army of citizens" who are interested in having a say on how the city runs), I've had some new thoughts.

For one thing, economics play an interesting role in this new form of journalism. The two articles I've mentioned take it as a positive that only stories that the public finds interesting will be funded. In many ways this makes participatory journalism not only about more citizens participating in the creation of news, but also its funding.

My Own Contribution

I'd like to also take my participation in news up a notch from a simple consumer to a true contributor by using both my personal passions and skills and the information I've gleaned in my research. My thinking so far has led me to the idea of compiling and laying out a guide to good citizen journalism using the information I gather. As I've mentioned before, I love design and editing, and I'm sure this will be a good mix of new information and my own expertise. The book (or short guide) will, of course, be available for free online.

Where Next?

Aside from the obvious of gathering more information to compile into the guide I've talked about, I also need to figure out the best way to get my creation into circulation. Something I need to focus more on is social connections and proof in networks that would care about such a publication. While Google alerts has been a great tool for research, I need to find another tool that is more suited for social connection. More to come there. I also should decide what I want the final format of my guide to be (a simple PDF? Many file types that can be read on e-readers?). 

Review: Dan Gillmor's We the Media

I've just finished Dan Gillmor's We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People as part of my research into citizen journalism. You can read my Goodreads review if you'd like as well.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. The stories made it quite easy to get through, though as I noted in my Goodreads review, the examples also dated the book quite quickly. Something I'd like to add that I didn't get to talk about before was Gillmor's brief discussion of copyright at the end of his book. Part of the reason I was left with a good feeling at the end of the book was the way he presented his views on copyright, which corresponded very nicely with mine.

Gillmor supports copyright. He thinks that creators should have incentive to create. However, current copyright law is abusive, and stems creativity (especially since there is no more incentive for creators to be creative if their copyright extends 70 years beyond their death than if the copyright period was much, much shorter). Gillmor licensed this book under a Creative Commons license, which is like saying, as he claims "Some rights reserved." He still believes he and the publisher will benefit from the production of the book, but he has also left it open to inspire more people creatively.

I'm glad I read this book, but I know I'm not done yet. It's time to expand to new citizen journalism horizons.

My Review of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Click here for the short(er) and sweet version of my book review. Outside of that, prepare for the more in depth post review on Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.

Real quick. For those of you who just want the stripped Understanding Media version of the book, I made a bullet list of the main points McLuhan makes in the book:

• Media are extensions of man physically
• Telephones extend our hearing, electric technology is our central nervous system
• We do not recognize how media is an extension of ourselves because it acts like one of our physical senses
• We accept media so much we don't think of it as a separate entity from ourselves
• It is numbing us if we spend too much time with media
• Media goes beyond content
• See newspaper analogy explained above
• Hot vs Cool media
• Hot media is low audience participation, lots of data, uniform
• books, radio, film, printed media
• Cool media is high audience participation, less information, inclusive
• television, comics, oral speech, telephone

After all the research I did for Understanding Media, it did pretty well preparing me for a lot of metaphors and tangents that McLuhan uses in his book. I agree with every critic that says sometimes it's hard to follow his ideas. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people attribute his many metaphors and ramblings to lacking evidence, therefore lacking credibility. While the "lacking evidence" part may be true, it isn't something to be critical of McLuhan about. He didn't have as much as we do now on digital culture and technology. He is considered one of the starting critics of digital thinking. It's hard to defend brand new ideas when there isn't research to back you up. So as long as you take his theories and apply your own research and proof behind it, the book is really useful in getting you thinking.

Now to the meat of the book: McLuhan basically talks about how media (the literal object, see technology as a synonym) as an extension of who we are as creators and consumers of content. He also argues that the medium is more important than the content it produces. His famous quote "the medium is the message" rings loud and clear in both parts of Understanding Media. I'm going to restate a bit of what I said in my Goodreads review here. McLuhan explains that it is important to look at the media itself over the content it produces because without the media, there is no content. He uses the analogy of a newspaper. The impact of the newspaper is not the news it presents, but the fact that there is news to share because newspapers make it possible. I kind of thought of a neon sign. You have the lettering of the sign that says the name of a restaurant, but the technology behind the sign (the light) is what allows people to read the sign. Without the technology, the content means nothing. To some extent I agree. Without the computer or phone accessing the internet, the internet means nothing to me. But I don't want to take away all the importance of content either like McLuhan seems to. Sure we should look at how the technological world has literally become a part of who we are as a people and culture. But we should also look at who is producing this content, what the content does for us, and more importantly the people behind creating even more technology and content.

Understanding Media was meant to make people think and start considering technology as a serious topic to research and examine. It is also meant to warn us of the powers of technology. Media will take us over if we aren't careful according to McLuhan. I think if he saw the opportunities media gives us today he'd have a heart attack. He wasn't all adverse to technology though. He had a lot of great insight for a man who was talking about digital culture before it was really being explored seriously. What do you guys think? In the end, I didn't mind reading his book. Maybe a bit long and rambling, but then again I think I do that myself. I connect with McLuhan that way.

Curating Youtube (with my Topic)

My original idea for my topic was to look at "the person behind the content" and how they decide where to put their ideas from all the digital tools and outlets there are online (how does someone pick between uploading a video straight to a blog verses putting it on YouTube or Vimeo, what makes it different for one person, etc). This idea has kind of morphed now into authors on the internet. I suppose my thesis is that authors can no longer be successful (or at least it is very difficult to get successful) without putting themselves out there in the digital world to get exposure. Using YouTube, I've found out a lot about what successful authors think about the written word becoming a digital phenomenon.

First I searched "authors on youtube" and found the channel Meet Our Authors. They don't have very many views on their videos, but they are still videos on authors doing readings and explaining their works. Ironically, one of their videos is "Captain Ahab vs The Wind." Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with writing or Moby Dick.

I then scrolled down just a bit more to find the channel Talks at Google. One of their tags is author's@google so I pulled up a different window and searched that tag as well. There are videos on authors talking directly about digital culture, like Tom Standage. There are authors just talking about their works and themselves. Either way, these authors are taking advantage of YouTube, as well as other digital sources available online. The authors@google has a blog, the project Talks at Google as a twitter account and this post talks about the Google Talks project and the authors that have featured there, as well as links to free audiobooks by those authors (another way authors are getting out there - audiobooks!).

So there's a lot to look at and research. I have lots of videos to watch by the authors themselves and I'll have to comb through to find the videos directly talking about putting their work out there in the digital world and how they feel about it, but I've gotten more info than I thought I actually would using YouTube as a curation tool.

Do you guys know of any authors that have utilized the internet to connect with their readers or get their work out there?