I am having a terrible time with Facade.

Does anyone know what to do once you open the door? (this took me like 20 minutes alone) I've tried talking to them, but all I've been able to do is grab items, put them down, kiss, hug, and comfort.

After we finished our collaborative Oulipo poem game two weeks ago, we concluded that many of these constraints did not lead to "literature." What we created was "concept art" in which the process and the input was the art, not the output (I forgot who mentioned this in class).

Can we have constrained randomly generated text that is also literature?

The Postmodern Essay Generator would say yes. Created by Andrew C. Bulhawk, he used a programming tool called a Dada Engine which randomly generates numerous essays on postmodernism. Refresh the page and you get a similar yet entirely different essay.

The readings this past week characterize hypertext as non-linear, devoid of a structure, lacking centrality, and linking between anything and everything.

Much of their work seems to be made in opposition to the idea of an author and his complete, linear, and structured work. However, aren't these characteristics more a part of life than just a literary tradition?

Take Pomona College for example. You could argue that everyone's schedule is like a hypertext since there really is no set path to graduation. However, the institution is such that all science courses are generally in Seaver North/South, math courses are in Milikan, theater classes are in Seaver Theater, and everyone registers at Alexander. People need organization in their lives.

I'm taking another class called "Journalism in America" and we have been looking at newspapers during the colonial period. Most of those papers were supported by political parties, so the editorials were usually written to bolster the popularity of their affiliated party and/or lash out at editors from the other party. The latter involved very very harsh critiques.

As I mentioned in my first post, I am a sports nut and read sports blogs. I have started seeing a recent trend in the NBA in which players would avoid media questioning by referring to their blogs. Sometimes, the actual reporter questions would be about the athlete's blog.

Somebody suggested that our Wiki be a database on Web 2.0 companies.

I found this site which has a ton of information on Web 2.0 companies. I think it is a good starting point if we decide to do Web 2.0 companies for our project.

Of course, I am still all for the Wiki that shows the interconnectedness between all our lives. I feel that the sharing and the connections aspects capture the true essence of Wikis. A few people have been discussing it on our Wiki

On an unrelated note, I would like to apologize to my group on Wednesday.

I found the following passage interesting. It is from "New Media from Borges to HTML"

"Thus in my view this book is not just an anthology of new media but also the first example of a radically new history of modern culture--a view from the future when more people will recognize that the true cultural innovators of the last decades of the twentieth century were interface designers, computer game designers, music video directors, and DJs--rather than painters, filmmakers, or fiction writers, whose fields remained relatively stable during this historical period." (16)

I do not believe that Lev Manovich is saying that people like Shakespeare, Van Gogh, etc. should be forgotten, but he does make the claim that we are moving from the romantic notion of an individual artist or author to this wave of new media. He believes the technological advancements in these new media forms are worthy accomplishments. In addition, the creators of these new media forms are the Shakespeares and Van Goghs of this generation.

Instant messaging programs have a unique lingo (eg. rofl, lmao, gtg, brb.) so I wondered if blogs had their own.

Through an "advance" technology known as a search engine, I came upon Samizdata.net which contains a few terms that we covered like blogosphere. It also covers very obscure terms like blogroach and xenoblogger.

I do not know if we will adopt this lingo for our class blog, but I just wanted to put it out there in case we come across these terms later on. I do not believe this list is exhaustive.

By the way, xenoblogging refers to any work you do on another person's blog.

"Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?" mentions that Wikipedia has very good science articles. The idea that an internet entry created and edited by "hobbyists, teenagers, and even the occassional troll" has as much legitimacy as one written by a scholar completely boggles my mind. Perhaps students' fears about O-Chem could be mitigated if professors assigned reading from Wikipedia...

The fact that many people on Wikipedia are very devoted to this issue of quality intrigues me. I believe (this could be a misconception) that anyone obsessed with the Internet is socially awkward, has way too much time, never spends much time outside, and values knowledge that most people would consider unimportant or trivial. The person that comes to mind is the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.

I was first introduced to blogging in my early high school years when my friends would use LiveJournal, DeadJournal, Xanga, etc., and rant about how much homework they have or how some teacher was unfair to them today. This would soon evolve into the Facebook and the MySpace of today; both turned me off towards blogging because I really didn't care "What cereal mascot I was" or "What percentage of my kiss is passionate." Mead apparently found this type of blogging fascinating. I could do without it.

I have no answer as to why people create these personal blogs, but I can say something about "interest" blogs. Before I worked for TSL, I blogged on a couple of sports blog. Like any other sports fans, I consider myself pretty knowledgeable of my favorite sports, especially basketball.