FINAL

1. Book groups: The thing about book groups that was significantly different than the other medias of communication we used was how none of us were ever actually talking directly to anybody else when we did our first post of the week. Our replies were to a person because we were replying to their post, but we never knew who they were or engaged in any sort of conversation, there were simply posts and replies. I’d say the book groups were similar to the blogs and to the plurking in different ways. Plurking was similar to the book group discussions because we had the ability to reply to what the person was saying, yet the difference in the time lapse between responses was much greater than in plurk. Blogging was similar because of the idea of posting one’s ideas for people to read. Although people could comment on my blog I couldn’t respond to a comment they left. Also the blogs and book groups were similar because they were both a relaxed and unprompted way of putting our thoughts about the literature we were reading into writing that other people could (if they wanted) open up, read, and respond to. I’d also have to say that the book groups generated way less conversation between peers than inclass discussion or plurking did. I found that most people agreed with everything I had to say, except for once and even this one time the situation wasn’t like those disagreements in class where someone says something and others say how they feel and the conversation goes back and forth between multiple people and we get to see many different ideas and views of the spectrum. It was more along the lines of, “I don’t agree, I think…” then I responded with a more elaborate reason of why I felt the way I did, yet the response I gave was never responded to. I feel because of this “distance” between the book group members and the requirements of only needing three to six posts a week keeps, or kept, all of us from really engaging in active conversation. At the beginning of the quarter Kai mentioned something about plurking about our book, yet it never became organized and we never actually did it. I think it may have been beneficial although I never really enjoyed plurking and did the required once a week plurk in order to meet the requirements. But, had my book group formed a private plurk where we discussed the book at some length I think it might have been very effective. I think it would have worked well because of the instantaneous replies we would get from our peers to what we were saying; also the conversations may have involved more people and become more detailed than the postings on blackboard. Just like Blackboard, plurk gives us a sense of some anonymity which in turn makes me a feel more comfortable voicing my opinion. This anonymity aspect of blackboard was nice, but to pair the anonymity with a means of a more immediate conversation, like plurking, I think may have been a better way for the group to discuss their thoughts. It also would have helped all our karma!

3. Blogs: I decided to read Brynn’s blog for the quarter and see how hers compared and contrasted to my own blog. First I think I’ll start with similarities because there are only a few. In fact, the only thing we may have in common is that we both only have six or seven total blogs for the quarter. As far as differences go we both are very different in how we view things and how we organized our blogs. Brynn, for one, didn’t blog about the specific books that we read. I chose to title my blogs according to the books that we were reading at that time and to reflect upon how I felt about the book and what I found interesting or disappointing. Also, I mostly tried to do these blogs before the class discussed the book aloud so I could know what stood out to me and what I thought mattered before my thoughts and ideas were expanded (or tainted) by my peers views of the book. The content in my blogs pretty much sticks to the concepts I thought were interesting and why I thought the author was doing certain things. Brynn’s blogs mentioned a variety of different subjects, including discussions we had in class and her frustrations on the impact of her art class. Through reading her thoughts about these topics I see that she is much more inquisitive and critical of things than I am. For instance, we are both taking the same art class, and although we are in the same class we don’t sit next to each other and I really don’t know anything about her except that she has a really eclectic sense of style and beautiful cheek bones. But, her comment, “the critique was two hours of people explaining their projects which all looked the same,” was really interesting for me to read because I felt completely different. And this is where I see that she is much more analytical than I am. I saw the critique as a bit boring because I didn’t necessarily want to sit and listen to every single person tell me about their painting, I just wanted to look and them and appreciate how creative everyone was. I felt that the projects were all different, I don’t think they looked the same at all. I understand how she felt they all looked the same, but only to a certain extent; they all had the same elements in them so there were definite boundaries and similarities, yet I was impressed how everyone did something different with the boundaries they were given and did what they could to be original. The point of the project was to take the elements we were given and try to do something different with them, we had to include all of these things into our artwork. When I think about Brynn’s piece (which was really interesting) I see how what she said in her blog really illustrates how she thinks because hers was very different from everyone else’s. Brynn’s had meaning. She incorporated everything like everyone else, but she didn’t make it all artsy fartsy looking, she made a ‘story’ out of it. I think this is especially where we think differently. Overall, our blogs differ greatly because we organized them differently, wrote about completely different stuff, and we both think and write quite differently. Her writing tends to be much more thoughtful than my own. I merely pick what stood out to me about the story and she ponders upon subjects a bit more. Her ideas are more developed than my own, I can see that she’s sees beyond what I see. Her blog about tattoos was interesting and her view of how she’s was not, ”just another bro at the parlor,” told me that there is much more to her than simply following the flow. An act like getting a tattoo doesn’t define who a person is and if they’re trying to be a part of the ‘crowd,’ it takes much more than that. Yet, Brynn sounds like she’s aware of her actions and she does things for bigger reasons than becoming a ‘robot.’


2. Limits:
1- how have these limits made you think about language: I’m not entirely sure that plurking made me think of language at all. I had a tough time getting involved with plurk. At the beginning of the quarter I logged on and created my plurk account and I remember looking at the various plurks people put up and it reminded me greatly of a chat room. I couldn’t find the connection with the class. People seemed to write about nonsense, like buying xbox 360’s and how they were about eat a burrito. As the quarter progressed and we were given certain plurk assignments I realized that there was in fact a method to this madness. I knew the requirements were to plurk once a week, and I found out much later that we were apparently supposed to read all the plurks from our classmates, but I found this to be unnecessary. It would take up a lot of time to read everything that people wrote, and since most of the comments weren’t even directly related to the class I chose to spend my valuable time doing my art homework, reading the various books that we were required to read, and doing the required writing for the class. I will say that the one way I think plurking made me possibly think about language is how, since it is done via internet, punctuation doesn’t seem to matter, and small comments from people can in fact generate whole conversations of small comments from other people. So, instead of people talking in person and explaining everything they’re saying with great detail (the large), plurking allowed people to make a small (sometimes insignificant and sometimes intriguing) comment back, which in turn made the dynamics of the conversations quite a bit different had people been talking face to face about the same things.
2- how have these limits made you think about the small: plurking has made me think about the small mostly in how it takes up virtually no space. Everything takes place in the virtual world, nothing is being wasted like paper or pens. Yet, although plurking is small as far as taking up physical space it is very large in the way that the timeline stretches through weeks of time. The actual words and conversations take up no physical space as well as the timeline itself, but to sit back and scroll through the weeks and weeks of conversations all the little comments that people have made or conversations that happened between different individuals has created this huge collage of ideas and thoughts. All these little, minute to minute and day to day comments have contributed to this very large concept. So, when I think about the small, I can’t help but think about the large as well.
3- how have these limits helped you with your writing: I think these limits have limited the writing for me. If that makes any sense. Plurking wasn’t real writing; it consisted of little bits of information, comments made back and forth. There was no amount of writing where skill would be involved. If my writing was improved in a way it may have been in the blogs, but even in this sense there was no means of practice or concepts that were taught as far as the actual writing goes. My thought processes were improved by these limits because I had to become comfortable with turning in work online instead of creating a tangible draft of something to be turned in at the beginning of the class. Plurking and blogging made it much easier to procrastinate because there’s this level of wondering whether or not the instructor is truly expecting everything to be done at a certain time, the wondering whether or not the due time is in fact stressed. So, I pushed the boundaries and found that I did the work when it fit into my time schedule because I didn’t have to physically turn anything in to the professor. Had I been required to write a formal and tangible 750 word ‘reflection’ on the books we were reading I feel that I would have had them done at that particular time, but via internet means the teacher reads the blogs whenever they are posted. Late work may not be accepted, but the dynamic is totally different. I feel like the limits online were much more broad as opposed to turning work in during the actual class time when everyone was present. Although the deadlines may have been just as strict it took an extreme (and I mean extreme) amount of unknown self-discipline for me to turn the blogs and plurks in when they were supposed to be.

3. Animals and Machines: The difference between animals and machines. There are the obvious ones, I suppose, like the fact that one is human made and the other is naturally created, animals need food to survive as machines don’t, and animals are apart of the circle of life and are either the hunter or the hunted. The biggest difference is the first one I mentioned because without this difference the others wouldn’t exist. Animals are born to the world through natural processes, either asexually or sexually. Machines exist because humans have figured out through the ages how to manipulate the phenomenons of the world to work in their favor. Machines are created to do something specific, they’re created to do things we humans either can’t do or can’t do well enough to be satisfied. First, this need for finding easier and better ways of doing things came when we figured out how to use animals to do the hard labor for us; such as in farming in the fields. But, as we became more and more greedy and more and more materialistic or industrialized the machines became a much more “perfect” way of doing the hard labor. No longer do oxen pull our carts or plow our fields, we have cars to take us where we need to go and tractors to plow our fields. Our societies have become so fixated on the sense of the immediate. We want things done fast, and perfect. We want the most out of the less. Animals are good to eat, and for enjoyment (domesticated animals: birds in cages, dogs, cats, horses), yet machines can do things for us. We program them to do what we want them to do and it makes our life easier. As time progresses I find that the only difference between machines and animals would be how we use them for our benefit. But within this so called difference there are many things that are in fact the same which makes it hard to say there is a difference between machines and animals besides the biology of them. Humans manipulate everything, that’s part of being human, that’s part of how we became human. We started out as an animal living through the conditions that the earth put upon us and slowly evolved into a being where we no longer let our environment run our lives instead we have the cognitive power to manipulate our environment and master it instead of being subject to it.

4. Filth/Censorship/Mores/Sexuality and Technology: In the classroom, of course, our anonymity is at zero. When a person says something everyone know who said it and knows a little more about that person. Through blogging and plurking the anonymity is greatly enhanced and people feel more comfortable voicing their opinion because it’s done through typing and without the physical presence of people’s eyes on you and worry that a lot of people have about judgement. Mostly I heard people’s views and resistance of these books through the in class discussions. And the in-class discussions were limited to a few people who felt comfortable enough to say how they felt aloud. I know for as far as I go I didn’t say a word in-class, not because I was afraid of people judging me, but I felt very unqualified to give my input because I felt other people knew way more about the topics than I did, or maybe not the amount that they knew but the ways they were able to listen to the conversations and think analytically about the topics at hand. Maybe this is a judgement issue, but I never felt like my comments would enhance the learning aspect of the discussions. I felt more like my thoughts were opinions that I felt because of my experiences and my life as I know it, but others made connections that weren’t biased (although there were some biased opinions stated and sometimes I felt annoyed when a person’s opinion was stated as though everyone felt that way). So, to consider the consumption of porn in the red states. Am I supposed to consider the irony? I found it to be ironic that the most “religious” states were the states that were most into pornography. Of course I feel like the reason for this would the essence that you want what you can’t have. Things that are the most forbidden often have the most allure. Although, I don’t think there’s a reason for porn to be forbidden because there’s nothing wrong with it. I wonder who it is that’s consuming this porn. I would assume that it would be the men just because it’s generally assumed that men are the ones who like to look at pornography. And then, why is it that the men in these states feel like they need porn? Are they trying to fill a void? Are their wives so religious that they’re prudes and feel like an exciting sex life is full of sin? I’m curious as to what other reasons there could be. Or possibly it’s not heterosexual porn that is being consumed, maybe it’s gay porn and it’s being consumed at a much bigger rate than the blue states because red states are less open to homosexuality than blue states are. And, therefore, the men are married to women because that’s what they’re ‘supposed’ to do yet the void they’re trying to fill is the one where their heart truly lies. Burroughs and Morrison’s stories are stories where the sexuality in people’s lives aren’t hidden behind closed doors, it’s out in the open where it’s exposed and “normal.” The real world phenomena of porn consumption is weird because it depends so much upon the context and the views of the people every individual is surrounded by. Sexuality is so hidden in our real world, with a few exceptions, that our society has judgements placed upon it. Although men tend to have no problem admitting (at least in blue states) that porn is something they enjoy women may only admit it to men that they enjoy it as well. I think the difference between men’s sexuality and women’s sexuality says a lot about this topic. The fact that men are ‘sluts’ and not judged by it but the opposite where a woman is a ‘slut’ demeans her in our society has somewhat to do with how women are portrayed in these stories. In Burroughs, for example women are nonexistent, there is another means of procreation that makes having women unnecessary because men’s sexual pleasure can be met by themselves. And the pleasure in the sexuality almost has nothing to do with it, the procreation is the most important, the sex itself means almost nothing. In, The Filth, the society has evolved to where women have expectations put upon them by The Hand and for them to not be sexual would be surprising. The Hand expects the women to engage in these activities because it’s what they’re supposed to be, they’re not supposed to be the hero or make a real difference.
Lastly, why does porn work? I’d say porn works because visually seeing erotic images turns a person on. It brings out the animalistic urges (especially in men) where the semi-orgasmic feeling of being aware of a part of your body has an effect on your mind and the trails of thoughts your mind goes through. Seeing the images and replaying them in your mind has an effect on your body and your body responds to these images.