My digital essay, A Tale of Mother & Son, can be found in its keynote format (the format I would like anyone who has keynote to view it in) here, and in its Quicktime format (for those of you who do not have Keynote), here.   A Tale of Mother & Son is a humorous story about a mother, Harriet, who happens to be a dog (mine, actually), and her son, Rollo, who is also a dog, and also mine, and the change in their relationship over time.

The story is about how Harriet and Rollo have a very human, and a very humanly dysfunctional, relationship.  Harriet is a selfish mother who neglects her only son, Rollo, and pursues pheasants and runs in the park all day without a care in the world for her son, Rollo.  To cope with his terrible relationship with his mother, Rollo sees a therapist every Tuesday (Mrs. Smith to be precise).  The turning point in the story is when Harriet has a mid-life crisis (as we humans often do), and “sees the light.”  She realises that pheasant-chasing and running through Hyde Park offer her no joy when she knows her only son Rollo is feeling rejected.  Harriet, very sensibly, seeks peace with Rollo but by this time, Rollo is very serious, and does not believe his mother could turn a new leaf so soon and so genuinely!  In the end, Harriet gives Rollo a tummy rub (his very first), and Rollo succumbs to his Mother’s apology, and after this particularly expert tummy rub, Rollo and Harriet are not just mother and son…they are friends.

I knew from the start of my project that I wanted to form some sort of spoofy story centred on my dogs: Harriet and Rollo (they are so cute after all).  I originally thought about doing the project in powerpoint  because I like how the slides and their timings can tell a story, just like a book might.  I switched to Keynote when I fiddled around with it and saw how many more options there were for effects.  After my first draft was finished, I played around with the project to add more of a “second voice” to it (the text written on the slide provides a humorous sub-text to the voiceover of each slide).  To do this, I made all the font for the second voice in the same style and in italics, so that the reader would pick up the pattern.  I also workshopped the presentation so that the slides transitioned more smoothly, so the story was easier to follow.

The most frustrating part of my project was exporting the keynote to a quicktime movie (Apple does not make it easy).  Every time I exported it, the music would get lost.  I hope that most of my classmates view the project in its Keynote format since this format has music… but for those of you without it, the Quicktime version is exactly the same, just without music.

1. Curator’s Code (unicode icons that you can embed in blogs and articles. E.g. a sideways S means “via” that links you back to original material).  This is a new and interactive form of microstyle.  Not only can you tell your reader something by using shorthand icons, but you can also show them something (e.g. a link). It is also a new way to credit inspiration for an article (to link to someone else’s).

2. Journalism and the web.  The interview includes Carr’s thoughts on whistleblowers such as Wikileaks and whether governments should punish them or not, when information is now so easily available on the web.

3. Crowdsourcing.  Carr seems to think there can sometimes be too much information on the web to use crowdsourcing.

I am certainly no tech-savante, but I found this text easy to digest, and interesting.  Perhaps the most important factor to take away from this article is that it combines a discussion of the web with ethics and politics.  Crediting sources, government action against whistleblowers, the new face of journalism, and crowdsourcing are linked to politics and ethics, and Carr makes this important assertion.

In Jabari’s blog, I especially like his most recent post.  The prose is eloquent,  succinct, and (I don’t know if this was a conscious decision or because the subject of this post is something Jabari is personally attached to) poignant. He says:

My name isn’t Jabari. It’s Parker. And Ahbleza. And Lorenza. And Sonny. And Andrae. And Hashim. These are some of my closest friends, and in many ways, we are all one in the same.

I don’t mean that in a loving “we’re all united” way, I mean that I’ve been called all of their names and they mine on more than one occasion. Why? Because we look alike. Yep. My friend who is three shades lighter than me and has braids that reach his shoulders looks just like me. My brother who weighs 100 pounds fewer than me and who couldn’t grow a beard to save his life, is my identical twin! I’ve had so many non-black friends, teachers, and colleagues call me the other black guy’s name that I’ve lost count. Instead of getting angry, I most feign utter disgust and as whoever has made the mistake if all black people look alike. The guilt and shame on their faces makes up for any hurt feelings. But in all seriousness, do we all look alike? If not, then someone needs to inform about 90% of all comic book artists.

The opening statement of the post is complex.  It is not until one reads the whole post that one sees that the opening statement is at one true and at once false. The statement is wistful, but also truthful.  Jabari is linked to his friends through friendship but not through superficial surface qualities that other people (choose to) see.

Emily’s blog takes a different, yet still personal, tone from Jabari’s.  I particularly liked Emily’s post, Magical Lies.  The writing is fluent, conversational in tone, but still professional, and interesting to read.  Here is a good extract:

Well it seems as though I should not be so judgmental of the Ancient Greek civilizations. To this day, people tell lies or tales or whatever you want to call them all the time. All it takes is a talented, charismatic speaker or a handful of easily manipulated people to turn a couple of lies into a truth. For example, have you ever collected those Tootsie-Roll lollipop wrappers that have a star and a Native American shooting at it? Well I did–as did a ton of kids in my city. We were all told if we collected a bag of them, we could exchange them for free tootsie pops. I don’t remember if any of us actually ever did this, but we would always try to save a bag full and then lose them all. Either way, cashed prize or not, there was no prize! Tootsie never made the competition as 1/3 of their lollipops have that design. Apparently it was something created by local stores to promote sales of tootsie pops. I am quite distressed to discover this….

But these lies, these misconceptions, whatever you want to call them, they’re everywhere. We tell them for all sorts of reasons. To make up for the fact that we don’t actually know the answer. To sell a product. To just look out for your family and friends. No matter the reason, it’s no lie that we do it. It spreads like rapid fire, almost to the point where the truth can get lost. Makes you wonder what you’ve been told is a lie doesn’t it?

Format: I will be using Powerpoint (I think..!) because I like the simplicity of it in its presentation, and the fact that I can embed photos and videos and audio into it.  I think a slide show format will work well for this spoof-styled essay because it will allow for a story to be told, but also for pauses where necessary to make the humorous parts effective.

Materials: My research will be mostly based on photographs of my two dogs and videos of them.  I might also record my family’s reaction to which dog is their favorite and add it to the story.

Questions: I was wondering if everyone thinks powerpoint will work well for this project?  Also, apart from just making the tale about the dogs as if they’re humans….how else can I make the essay more spoof-like?  I’m thinking about making it like the magazine Private Eye but I don’t know…

Instead, the chapter focuses on the different mediums of “interconnectivity” between people over time.  The author thinks that the “contemporary self” (this phrase itself is problematically ambiguous) has a different propensity for solitude now than the contemporary self of the romantic era.  I’m no sociology pundit, but I’d say that this trend is a given.  Don’t all humans adapt to changing times?  Doesn’t the introduction of mediums like computers and game boys force people to change their need for solitude compared to their more primitive ancestors?

Another thing: is the author’s title ironic?  He points out that friendship has a different meaning on Facebook when one has 532 friends than when one has 32 actual non-internet friends.  Is the author saying that the internet has ended solitude, or that internet inventions like Facebook have exacerbated it? I think there is a side for both arguments; I’m just not sure which one he believes in.

Apart from the fact that the author’s main point is difficult to make out, and that his language is sometimes sweeping (at one point he says, “like other religious values, solitude was democratised by the Reformation and secularised by Romanticism”), the thing that I’m afraid I have to criticise most in this essay is that I do not see how it is related to the internet and technology at all.  I do not see the link between the contemporary self and the internet in this essay.  Though, I do think there is room for this idea to be fleshed out.  It would be interesting, for example, to conduct a concrete study to compare how a contemporary person views solitude in relation to the internet.

In general, Digital Divide provides good food for thought on controversies about the internet, but the book isn’t meaty enough.  There are real political, ethical, and legal problems that are intrinsically linked to the internet…like Stuxnet worms in nuclear power plants and children abducted through conversations on Facebook and breaches of super injunction orders that are not discussed specifically or in detail in Digital Divide.

I wonder, though, does everyone think like Cathy Davidson?  Does everyone else find it exciting— riveting even— to research the functions of Wikipedia?  Does everyone want to “participate in a community of lifelong learners?”  Can Wikipedia editors even be called “lifelong learners?”  I don’t want to get too Socratic about it, but what does it mean to be an academic, a scholar, a lifelong learner?  Maybe because Cathy is a academic herself, she only sees Wikipedia as useful in terms of how “academic” it can be.  I don’t know.

I think the use of Wikipedia and the brilliance of it is a lot simpler than Cathy’s suggests.  We don’t need to think of Wikipedia as having a puffed up academic function to be useful.  Wikipedia is great because it lets everyone and anyone access information really quickly.  It is not always right, but it is better than nothing. Cathy’s right, Wikipedia is a great place to start research.  But forget the idea of Wikipedia as an online forum of “lifelong learners”….even if for some people it is.  Wikipedia is useful.  Does the reason why matter that much?

The essay is a good example of a digital essay because it uses all mediums of the web to bring the story alive in a way a 2-D page could not.  Embedded among the text of the article are images, videos, hyperlinks, and photographs.

The essay is formally and neatly presented (which is tougher to do with a creative digital essay than with a non-digital one), but it still retains the sense of creativity that makes digital essays appealing.  One can approach the essay from any angle: maybe the video first, the photos second and then the text, or perhaps the text first then the video then the photos.  In any case, it doesn’t matter in which order one approaches the material, the core of the essay is always prevalent in each piece of the essay.

Lastly, the essay is particularly successful because there is not an overload of information or interactive material in it, which makes the essay as a whole manageable to absorb.

Let me try to pick apart and question Carr’s claims.  First of all, the yo-yo probably caused some outrage in the 1930s when it popped onto the toy shelves; parents were probably screaming about how Tommy Jr. wouldn’t pay attention at dinner because of it.  How is the internet any different from any other thing that supposedly causes lack of attention-span?

Secondly, if anything, the internet is making us gain intellectual abilities.  The internet can be the world’s greatest teacher if you let it.  A school in Africa with just one computer can offer its students a world encyclopaedia that before would’ve only been accessible through expensive books.  Maybe the internet is only making those who already considered themselves “intellectual” less intellectual? As Carr says, before the internet, he would troll through libraries to find sources and now he uses Google.  But, even then, does that make us stupid, or just more efficient?  Or maybe even smarter?  I don’t think a cave-man would pass up the opportunity of a lighter for stick-rubbing.

Thirdly, of course the internet has changed our ways of reading and writing! It’s a new medium, and so our way of writing and reading must necessarily adapt to it. The more important side of Carr’s point is, though, is that the internet, he claims, has changed how we think outside the realm of the internet.  I don’t feel like the internet Big Brother is in my head all day…but I could be wrong…. who knows what subconsciously influences any of us? Does it matter?

For my comment, I tried to make my tone friendly and casual.  I have found that Microstyle not only preaches that online writing should be accessible, its own style is an example of this.  So in my comment I tried to emulate Christopher Johnson’s neighborly tone and used an accessible example to illustrate my point.  I also took a stab at trying to be funny (which the online world of writing seems to well-suited to since you can write with a conversational tone)….but I am not sure how well that worked!  I added a recipe at the end of my review so that I could engage with fellow-reviewers (since I assume most of them like to bake).

I happened upon James Delingpole’s blog while trolling through The Telegraph on an I’m-trying-to-feel-intellectual spree.  Delingpole’s article titles alone are examples of Johnson’s advice to pay attention to the right details in order to provoke your reader; for example: “The fake disabled are crippling our economy” (I imagine a few good citizens wouldn’t like that one…) or “Why isn’t Lord Lawson dead yet?” (Lord Lawson definitely wouldn’t like this one).  Delingpole’s articles are no less clear or tickling than his titles.  In “Losing Nemo,” he writes:

This is terrible. Drowning polar bears you can just about handle (especially when you learn that the story was cooked up by a pack of Arctic researchers ravening after hard cash). But what kind of unutterable bastard would you have to be not care about clownfish, probably the cutest fish in all the oceans. And also the most intelligent. In a film I saw once, a clown fish was captured in the sea, put into an aquarium at an Australian dentist’s, and actually masterminded the whole escape of all the fish in the tank back to the sea, that’s how clever they are.

Here Delingpole achieves his overarching point (I won’t point out his overarching point since my argument is that it is clear) effectively through the right amount of detail (“especially when you learn….etc”) and the right amount of clarity (“and also the most intelligent”).

In my own blog, my newly-vamped post on Pride and Prejudice puts Johnson’s idea of e-clarity into practice by using the right amount of detail in the right place; for example, the sentence, “add a few chickens, a magnificent family estate, dreary British weather and a backdrop of deep green countryside and you will find yourself in Austen’s land of Pride and Prejudice.”  Chickens, estates and weather come together to give the reader just enough information to envision the backdrop of Austen’s world.  I hope I can keep up the clarity in the posts to follow.