Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening is a digital essay that uses the affordances of the web to bring this Robert Frost poem to life in a very personal way. This digital essay aims to capture not only how I believe poetry should read but also how I actually read this specific poem both literally and figuratively.

I’ve always been astonished at how Frost is able to write deep meaning into simple images of the New England outdoors. My literal reading of the poem is shown on the left side of screen. I think this poem is so beautiful in the literal sense, but has deep figurative meaning as well. I always think of this poem when I’m sleeping and don’t want to get out of bed.. a la “my bed/blankets are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep…” etc. In my video, this personal, figurative reading is shown on the right side of the screen.

Last semester, I took a poetry course with Joseph Donahue that I absolutely loved. I’ve always loved poetry, but this class did a great job of fostering an intense appreciation for images, and the actual art of reading poetry as well as writing it. We learned that poetry is the only art form that can isolate and elucidate single images within the mind using a functionally artful combination of words. I tried to illustrate this process with my digital essay.

Many “readers” commented that they might like to hear Frost’s voice reading the poem itself throughout the essay, but this would defeat the purpose of reading it for yourself. I feel as though my digital essay offers the reader an opportunity to read the poem properly on their own, and then get a glimpse into my personal reading as well.

My two favorite blogs have been The Blue Devil Bucket List and The Durham Dish. I would day, “maybe I don’t give Durham enough credit,” but after spending 4 years here, I can’t help but tell everyone what a great place it is. The Blue Devil Bucket list, Lauren’s blog, has been a cute, entertaining, well written and relatable blog that I’ve love reading. She somehow found a way to do justice to riding the bull at Shooters in a tasteful way. Her post in Vin Rougue made me both hungry and jealous at the same time. How did I not think to do a post on that? Awesome job, Lauren. The photos were mouthwatering. I thought Lauren’s blog was an adorable idea, and inspired me to go on some senior adventures of my own. I still have yet to check out the Fullsteam  Brewery, and Mix It Up, but I’ll be sure to!

Another blog I loved reading was The Durham Dish. Although this blog could have ended up being similar to my blog, because we had different slants, I was always excited to get the “New Post” email in my inbox. I thought that Victoria and Kristen had unique writing styles that I enjoyed reading. I thought it was interesting to read about how they talked about food. I had to make a very conscious effort to vary my word choice, thinking that there were only so many words to describe food, restaurants and dining experiences. I enjoyed reading their posts and their pictures were fantastic. I learned a thing or two from these two legit photographers. I think the posts on Guglhuf were my favorite. I had never been until after I read their posts, and man was that a mistake. It was as amazing as they had described and photographed.

I found this article by Cathy Davidson to be interesting and very true. Although it was written more than 4-5 years ago, it was moving in the right direction. For Middlebury college to ban Wikipedia.com seemed like a brash decision by the institution. Shouldn’t students at a school of such a high caliber be able to decipher what’s accurate and what isn’t on a Wikipedia page? It all needs to be cited, after all, right?

In one of my classes at Duke, the Social Psychology of Business, our weekly assignment was to write a 3-4 page analysis on each company that we studied. The moment we were told that we were allowed to cite Wikipedia, a wave of confusion and surprise rolled over me. “I thought this class was legit, but now we can cite Wikipedia?” I think that was my first thought. Where else though, could I easily access the yearly revenue, number of employees, first year of operation, name of the owners’ number and location of offices, and so much other accurate information all in one place at one time? Absolutely nowhere. Backing up my findings with more financial figures found on Hoover’s and other sources helped me feel better about the legitimacy of my work, but why would Wikipedia ever be the enemy? I guess it goes back to my teachers in middle school. We weren’t allowed to use it for any of our projects in middle school, and only some of the most progressive teachers in high school understood the good in Wikipedia.

As I read The Digital Divide on Google Books, off of my computer screen, I chuckled thinking about how we really can’t ignore the influence of the digital world. Today, we’re engulfed by it – we live within it for a good amount of time. There’s still something about turning the last page of a great book, closing it, and laying it down to rest as you reflect on the experience of the book as a whole that is irreproducible. With that said though, there is so much to be said about finding accurate information in one swift click. Even in college today, many of my professors have wanted “at least 3 book references” and “5 scholarly articles” in addition to any online sources. Although I totally understand this, I think this way of thinking is starting to age and decay.

I was most struck by Social Currency by Douglas Rushkoff because I thought its claims were ridiculous. I’m not sure if this essay is outdated, but by next year, the smartphone will be the ‘first screen’ as opposed to TV or laptops. This means that yes, although social content is extremely important and is becoming increasingly important, it is not the ultimate form of “sticky” content. The essay claims that people only care about the internet because of email and other means of being able to be in touch with other people. Although the social aspect of the internet is extremely sticky, interactive content such as games are an enormous entity that aren’t always socially based at all. Yes, humans are social creatures, that is their specialization as animals along with learning, but access to “movie schedules, stock quotes and sports scores” are pieces of information that people are always seeking whether or not they are seeking them hand in hand with social interaction.

The wireless industry, in my opinion, is doing everything they need to do to ensure that people have the best, most aesthetically pleasing access to the information that they’re seeking at any given time. I don’t believe that people buy albums so they can listen to them with their friends, or that people check sports scores for the sole reason of discussing them with their friends. The internet provides people with the information that keeps their worlds turning, and by next year, experts estimate that their first source for that information will be form their smartphones.

I would say that the wireless industry is doing a great job of keeping up with social media innovations that are supporting the leaps and bounds being made in interactive content. I can’t get the link right now because I’m on a bus, but take the Starbucks magic cup (I think it’s called, I can’t google it right now), for example. You take a picture of your Starbucks cup in any setting with your iPhone and you can send it to your friend’s phone or facebook. What’s the point you ask? Well, animated hearts along with your personal message are dancing on the screen around your Starbucks cup in your apartment! That’s the point.

Brands know that they need to tie the social aspect of things into the content of their campaigns, but content is not al about selling a brand all the time. Content is sometimes just simply content. I don’t want to tweet the weather for tomorrow to all my friends, they can check it themselves. I liked this piece, but only agreed with specific pieces of it.

For my Micromessage, I wrote on newyorktimes.com on an article titles, “Wait. So People Are Cooking?” Trying to stay in the ballpark of Goalie Spoon I delved into this article to see what it was all about. I was interested in the truth about low-income and middle-income Americans and what they actually are eating on a regular basis. I’ve always thought to myself, “even though fast-food is semi-inexpensive, wouldn’t it be mrie expensive than grocery shopping?” The article proved, somewhat condescendingly/patronizingly that low and middle-income Americans are actually cooking dinner most of the time. The article didn’t report what they were cooking however – which is where my comment comes in – “Although it’s great that more families than were expected are cooking, I’d like to know what the “four meals made form scratch” are in addition to boxed macaroni and cheese, boxed flavored rice and a fast food dinner. Cooking doesn’t necessarily mean healthy eating by any means.” 5 people liked/”recommended” it, which was exciting!

The article can be found here (it’s short and pretty interesting)

http://bittman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/wait-so-people-are-cooking/

I enjoyed reading the other comments on the article. I didn’t realize the extent of the ridiculousness the article until reading a few of the other comments.