My Archives: January 2005

Monday, January 31, 2005

Today's purchase:

Eccentric Soul.
What if you recorded a bunch of music, and no one ever heard it? Such is Arrow Brown's story. And such is the story of Bandit Records. The whatever happened to . . . except few even remember enough to ask that. Yet this disc isn't about nostalgia or undiscovered tunes. It's some kind of anomaly, a what the hell is this moment within the suite of soul-funk-gospel music; a hybrid. Imagine The Delphonics meet up with Solomon Burke. Throw in some Ike and Tina (the early stuff) and Nina Simone and the Jackson Five and you still aren’t there.
There is something allusive about late ‘60s/early ‘70s soul that nostalgia only partly explains. I’m not nostalgic for this music (my earliest record spending only came about 1980). But I’m drawn to it in a way I can’t explain. We can easily say that nostalgia is a fabricated feeling anyway; one doesn’t have to have experienced a moment in order to feel for it again. But this kind of nostalgia I see as something outside of such cultural fabrications. It’s more like a wish for encounter. Imagine the soundtrack of a Tarantino following you around (Bobby Womack singing “110th Street”) and you can feel this music with you. You wish for it. You wish to hear it around you in odd moments and encounters.
What if you recorded music and no one heard of it? This is such a bizarre album if only for that one point.

Posted by jrice @ 08:04 PM EST [Link]

Friday, January 28, 2005

Pet Peeves
Today is Friday, kids, and it's time for Pet Peeves Friday! (soft sound of applause). One of many horoscopes of the day tells me that Pet Peeves Friday should be on full steam today:


You're furious, and that's just not like you. Ordinarily, you'd rather make a joke out of a bad situation, put some distance between you and the opponent and forget it. But this time?

So, with that insightful advise in mind, let the party begin. I GOT A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH YOU PEOPLE!

  • Open Source. Open shmorse. Or better: Creative Commons type stuff. Who gives a damn anyway? So you slapped a "you can copy this" icon on the bottom of your webpage. Did you really think I wanted to? And if I did it without you having put up that pretty little icon, what would you do about? Nothing. I knew it. Sister, I was copying crap off of the Internet without credit long before you all made those fancy icons. I called it Yellow Dog: the digizine.
  • Technorhetorician. Who the hell came up with this term? Part of the "let's slap techno, multi, digital as preface to everything we already do and really make no difference" camp. I'm a technorhetorician cause I made our dept's website! If anything, a technorhetorician should be someone who listens to techno.
  • Cathy. Honey, you are fat. So stop acting surprised every time you step in front of a mirror.
  • Christmas. Yeah, I know. I'm not the only one. Thank heavens it ends as fast as it starts.
  • Big Shot Name Game. Here I'll get a little academic on you people. David Shumway's whole take on the academic star system should be read and re-read by every damn one of us from time to time (yeah, even me). Other word for impressive big shots and big name schools: FETISH.
  • CNN. It ain't news. It's a bunch of pretty people reading teleprompts and "associate" producers gleaning each other's work and writing the same story ten times a day. So why the hell do I keep watching it?
  • Marxism. Yeah, sure it's useful. But it's so 1800s.
  • Sports Talk Shows. The only thing I watch more than sports is shows about sports. But all these shows - PTI, Around the Horn, TNT's threesome, etc. have turned into the latest variation of Entertainment Tonight meets Christian morality. "Can you believe what Randy Moss did! OMIGOD! He should be fined!" Since when did sports become so puritanical? Heaven forbid players should do interesting things out on the field when they score, curse, or speak their minds when "interviewed." Rasheed had it right when he rejected the whole concept: "Both teams played hard, man!" Answer the cliché with cliché. That ain't no interview. That's a way for you to pass time.
  • College Board. This thing never ceases to amaze me. A bunch of folks preaching "critical learning" as mantra for educational policy follow the whims and uninformed decisions of the College Board - a big money making enterprise dependent on cheap labor to function. Critical what? Maybe you folks ought to pay more attention to your own mantras before you turn to yet another "saying nothing" College Board report on learning and literacy (not to mention the scores that business generates for students).
  • PMLA. Seriously. Does anybody really read this thing?

    Posted by jrice @ 08:37 AM EST [Link]

    Thursday, January 27, 2005

    Detroit Yellow Pages
    Amazon's new feature (is it new?): Find It On the Block. A way to search neighborhoods, streets, etc.
    Here's an example from Detroit:
    What About Bob's Sandwiches.
    I love this pic (which is the highlighted pic on the page meant to represent this place):

    Seems Bob is out of business. Detroit searching at its most realistic.

    Posted by jrice @ 04:34 PM EST [Link]

    Wednesday, January 26, 2005

    The Singhsons
    The Simpsons flash mashup. Thanks to Renuka for the link.

    Posted by jrice @ 11:59 AM EST [Link]

    Tuesday, January 25, 2005

    Google Video
    Google Video: http://video.google.com/. The global database economy of information opens a bit more. No online videos yet (Yahoo does that somewhat). Instead, a popular culture treasury of TV references and allusions Chora-writing machines. What kind of space is this anyway?

    What new kinds of databases is Google going to invent?

  • personal.google.com - records of every personal conversation ever ("So, what's up?" "Not much. What's up with you?" "Not much.")
  • embarrasment.google.com - records of every personal embarrassing situation ever ("Oops. Did I just make that sound?")
  • idiot.google.com - lists of the world's biggest idiots. But, of course, not you.
  • fetish.google.com - uh, I think you can guess this one.
  • drunken.google.com - places, events, poses, stories, pics, of drunk people.
  • bathroom.google.com - places to make #1 or #2. In case you are on the road, and well, you have to, um, that is. . .
  • kevinbacon.google.com - taking the game to new levels.
  • trash.google.com - looking to dumpster dive? Look no further. It's all indexed for you here.

    Posted by jrice @ 08:07 AM EST [Link]

    Sunday, January 23, 2005

    Beer Tour
    Summer project: Beer tour of the region.
    Start at Dark Horse or Jolly Pumpkin (which comes first? must look at map)
    Head over to Kalamazoo for Bell's and New Holland. Cross into Wisconsin for New Glarus. In Chicago - on way back - stop at Goose Island. Come back by way of Munster, Indiana for Three Floyds. Finish up in Detroit at Motor City (not top quality, but it's home). Any other places to visit?

    Anybody coming with?

    Posted by jrice @ 02:57 PM EST [Link]

    Early Show
    Insightful segment on this morning's Early Show: the rhetoric of advertising and its power within the networked culture we live in. Yes, the power of advertising is a trope common to many of us, but what I always find insightful about these segments is how the advertising world continues to understand the information economy in terms of new media logics (emotional imprinting, networking, connectivity, iconicity) and how the university resists. The university believes too strongly in the purity of the text, the "ah, the great idea/how beautiful this is" mantra. Because of that, and because of some of its members' purity belief in Marxism, it resists examining how advertising might teach us a great deal about rhetoric in the networked age. Advertising promotes global capital! Sure. But look at how it does what it does.
    Tie-ins: I wrote about tie-ins briefly in my textbook because they exemplify the power of linking. How do so many things connect? How can I make them connect even when they appear not to? It's one thing to bemoan the commercial experience of going to the movies today (the candy bar, the t-shirt, the Happy Meal, the toys), but it's another to think about how tie-ins as linking are quite successful rhetorical moves. Google and A9.com seem to understand the tie-in extremely well. WebCt pretends it does, but then removes itself from the Web where a great deal of this activity takes place. Artificial tie-in is more like it in managed courseware.
    Affect: I don't write about affect. But the question of associating products with a moment, an experience, an emotion is such a powerful move. Writing within and aligned with a moment is much different than comparing two poems/short stories/novels or critically unraveling the race/class/gender thread in a given text . Blue book that.
    Imprinting: this is quite a complex task, but consumer culture understands how to implement it. How do you imprint (a wonderful part of the segment discusses the Coke/Pepsi test; even when folks thought they liked Pepsi better, they still bought Coke)? Repetition? Maybe. Absurdity? Maybe too. Connect the "thing" with a number of other things, moments, experiences, emotions? Probably as well.
    The implications could be quite astounding for intellectual work. The lament of student production, I've always contended, stems from misplaced logics: the university and its single thought, textual appreciation, print logic, question and answer, cultural studies' obsessed critical thinking system MEETS the networked, hyper logic of consumer culture. The tropes of "critical thinking," for instance, ("we should teach critical thinking!") are circulated in a very non-critical economy of pedagogy. To be critical, we must re-evaluate our own practices and approaches to contemporary phenomenon. Merely dismissing consumer culture as is does not represent a critical moment. Neither does believing in the cliches of audience or purpose or race/class/gender. I think of all those so called professional writing courses stuck on teaching formal genres (report, memo, resume) without any of the rhetorics of professional discourse - represented in Amazon, eBay, Buzzmetrics, or other networked thinking enterprises. Or I think of Gerald Graff standing for critical pedagogy in Clueless: let's teach popular culture as we taught everything else in our lives. But what does popular culture do that is so important? Ah, that we never find out. . .

    Posted by jrice @ 09:46 AM EST [Link]

    Saturday, January 22, 2005

    Gamecube
    From the better late than never department:

    I may be the last person left who doesn't game. My lovely sister bought me this Gamecube, and my first purchase sits nicely to the side: a used copy of NBA Live 2004 (hey, I wouldn't want to do anything like buy the latest version of something, would I?). Yesterday's score: San Antonio 145. Miami 43. You can guess which side I was on. Beat on the fast break every time. I miss the three - BAM. Some defender has already hit offense and put in an easy lay-up. The logic of gaming? Always being too late to be with it. . . .hmmm. Maybe my logic of gaming. The other logic of gaming: time goes quickly. What the hell? How long have I been playing this dang thing anyway?

    Snow pounds outside. That means only one thing: plenty of time to bug students to post to the listserv (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), reading, college hoops, cooking, Bell's Amber, annoying the cat, and time to write/think about the city and the digital.

    Ok. that was more than one thing. No doubt later blog posts to come as well.

    Posted by jrice @ 09:56 AM EST [Link]

    Thursday, January 20, 2005

    Webloggraphy
    A division of self into the list. Apply < self >tags < /self > where needed:

  • Beers I drink: Bell's, Dark Horse Crooked Tree, Chimay, Karmeliet, Duchess, Dogfish, New Holland, Guinness. Belgian, Belgian, Belgian.
  • Teams I root for: Gators, Heat, Pistons, Fins, Lions. Sometimes Tar Heels. Used to like the Jags.
  • Books I'm reading: Dreaming Suburbia: Detroit and the Production of Postwar Space and Culture, Urban Encounters, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System. Always in the back of my mind: Attitudes toward History.
  • Carbs I eat: bread, beer (eating?), potatoes.
  • Cheese: lots. French and Spanish. The smellier and runnier the better.
  • Weight: Never above 150. Seldom at 150.
  • Wines: South American. But Sideways suggests Pinot.
  • Place to live near: Detroit.
  • Place to live in when it gets real grocery stores: Detroit.
  • Bakery: Avalon (Check out the new Saveur for a blurb).
  • Music: Funk, DJ stuff, blues, jazz, hip hop (not hip pop!). Oh, and Dylan.
  • Research methodology Part I: Make it up.
  • Research methodology Part II: Take two things that don't belong. Put 'em together.
  • Research methodology Part III: Sample. Mix. Remix.
  • Media guru: McLuhan.
  • Writing guru: Burroughs.
  • Comics guru: Herriman.
  • Food guru: Alton Brown (What the hell? Ah, the show's pretty funny).
  • One time basketball guru: Alonzo Mourning.
  • Fetish guru: Elvis.
  • Soul guru: Otis.
  • Most admired voice: Miles.
  • Place to hang: Sheinkin Street. Oh but so far away. . .
  • Profession: Doctor of Philosophy, baby.
  • Master of pedagogy: Bobby Knight. Bear Bryant right behind.
  • Master of: the pizza.
  • Can't live without: mortar and pestle. And pizza stone. Powerbook?
  • Favorite thing said to me lately: "You don't look like your writing." (Sorry if you're reading this; it was funny to hear).
  • What people believe about me: He's mean.
  • Why is this blog called Yellow Dog. My one time dog Butterfield: she was a yellow dog.
  • Reasons to divulge personal tastes: None.
  • Reasons why I'm doing it: Eh, nothing really to say. Might as well blog something. Ain't blogs supposed to be some kind of diary, or something?

    Posted by jrice @ 07:19 PM EST [Link]

    Wednesday, January 19, 2005

    Tags
    It used to be that the tag was just a formatting device. Want to bold? use the < b > tag. Want to underline? Use the < u > underline tag.
    XML has changed everything. The tag organizes our world. Metafilter's tag system is now up and running. Flickr's is already out there. Del.icio.us makes the Internet a series of named events. The next step? The university as tags. Design your own studies by tags. Sure, will become a common tag. another. But imagine the transcripts! Who will be able to make sense of this kind of structure?

    Posted by jrice @ 07:43 PM EST [Link]

    Imagination
    I'm waiting for the snow to taper off this morning so I can make my way to the gym.…
    Lately I'm thinking more of the new media models which drive much of the general interest surrounding hypertext or related applications, and I'm thinking of the unbreakable tendency to frame everything in terms of the restrictions of print literacy - we look at the new through the rear view mirror of the old, McLuhan says (or something like that). One of the basic problems involved in theorizing new media, writing, and rhetoric is the failure to imagine what doesn't yet exist. To imagine what doesn’t exist is to allow for an encounter, a meet-up, a linkage, that we wouldn't expect; it is to apply the avant-garde principle of the accident to invention. It is to move beyond the familiar.
    Two literary models often adopted by some new media folk are Borges and Calvino. Their work is applied for its so-called non-linear approaches, the desire to highlight non-linearity as the sole property of new media writing, at least as it applies to narrative. This is the quest for the familiar; we already read Borges for non-linearity. Slap that on the Web. But the more applicable move, it seems to me, is the model of imagining/re-imagining what doesn't yet (or ever) exist. The alternative worlds of Borges. The invisible cities or unfinished manuscript of Calvino. The What If principle of composing.
    The composition model is not in the imagination but in the completion of skills (outcomes) or the restriction of thought for purposes of organization and focus (outline/thesis). It is reconfirmation when carried over into literary or film studies (“tell me what the text means”). A new media update would be to accept the imagined possibility (not an anything goes/and not a “be creative” prescriptive) of a situation. This imagined possibility - like Calvino's invisible cities model - involves a series of encounters and/or experiences. Meet ups. Out of those encounters, what has happened? What was unexpected? The mashup might be one example of the encounter realized (albeit for musical purposes). What if these two bands came together? The mental move is to reapply the encounter to other kinds of compositional experiences/situations. It is not a practice of pure fantasy (“what if I was living on the moon?”), but rather an investigation of what if in terms of unexpected results – of possibility. It is to take the linking principle and allow links freer reign in terms of the “hook up.” What if this and this link up? What is that encounter? What if I imagine this text in terms of this situation? What if I imagine this street in terms of this image? What if. . . .

    Posted by jrice @ 08:22 AM EST [Link]

    Tuesday, January 18, 2005

    Mixtape Culture
    Mixtapes mean something else these days. . .
    The Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 mixtape.
    Story here. Dig Uraqt. That's the "Sanford and Song" theme song, no? Maybe not. The mixtape provokes the rhetorical guess: what the hell is that from? Name that sample. Discourse as allusive gesture. An experiement in mixthoric: imagine the new essay as mix. Go ahead. Do it now!

    Posted by jrice @ 08:19 PM EST [Link]

    Sunday, January 16, 2005

    Flyer for a Detroit art exhibit:

    Posted by jrice @ 03:05 PM EST [Link]

    Saturday, January 15, 2005

    Home Blessings
    A letter I received the other day offering my home a blessing:

    All I have to do is use this prayer rug (a piece of paper actually) and my prayers will come true.

    An interesting usage of the postal mail. Jesus as Pony Express. And it's done up like a chain-letter. My task is to fill out the questionaire and send it on. When I do that - along with my usage of the rug - I might even win $40,000! Despite my efforts here to mock this, I find it quite scary - occult like. When I first tried to scan this stuff in, the computer kept crashing/ my scanner wouldn't start. DON'T MOCK ME HUMAN! What's worse? Messing with the postal authorities or mocking the Jesus prayer rug-chain letter?

    Posted by jrice @ 12:57 PM EST [Link]

    Tuesday, January 11, 2005

    Where is Detroit?
    Being the snow wimp I am, I turn on the Weather Channel this morning to check out how the commute into the city will be with the snow falling. Ooooh. I hear that they will be broadcasting live from Detroit. Great. This will be helpful. Only - the reporter is in Madison Heights reporting on conditions. Madison Heights is about 20 minutes to the North. Oh wait - he promises a live shot from the city. Excellent. Only - it's from Southfield, to the West of the city.
    Where indeed is Detroit? Does this not exemplify the failure of the topoi? No fixed placed for Detroit. It moves. It's chora. It's digital: speculative. We can only speculate, conditionalize its location.
    Unless you live there, of course, Then the question is: where are you? In the encounter. . .

    Posted by jrice @ 08:50 AM EST [Link]

    Monday, January 10, 2005

    Computer Literacy
    I'm gonna snag this off of John's blog (dang, John, that Manila makes linking to posts hard to do), a post
    on a recent TechRhet thread on Computer Literacy.
    I link to it because such topics are the focus of much of my critique on how composition meets the digital: we see everything through familiar eyes. I call this practice conservative pedagogy, conservative not for its political view points (Bush vs. Kerry) but rather for the act of conservation/preservation. Pedagogy depends on being conservative in order to function, no matter what label it slaps on its practices (radical, progressive, etc.).
    Since I bailed TechRhet awhile back, I rely on John's quoting of the thread. These quotes are all about how to use tools. Students should be able to identify file formats, turn on the box, save, print, attach, use images, break the defaults, etc. Great. All very useful things we should know how to do. Are these traits of a literacy? To an extent. But they lack something else. They lack the knowledge generating skills necessary for negotiating information in a new media environment. Typically, we see that part met with demands for "critical" thinking or "the ability to identify reliable sources" or something else of this sort which doesn't come to mind at the moment. Ok. Again, all useful.
    But is that it? If that is all this notion of "computer literacy" entails, is that all these negotiations demand, and how is it all that different from the literacy we already know? Well, you use a computer. And. . . And nothing. That's it. And there lies the limitations regarding this kind of thinking; it's conservative. Its basis comes from the conservation of an already established definition of literacy. In other words, there is little which recognizes that the logics of computers (whatever I may mean by such a general term) may, in fact, alter our perceptions of literacy in quite dramatic fashion. To negotiate the new media environment may have little in common with the non-new media environment (a point I do find truth in and often write about).
    All of this is to say that I’m drawn into these discussions easily, for I don’t understand yet why we continue to force new media/computers/whatever into the mold of literacy. The easiest answer is that: we only understand new concepts in terms of familiar ones. But by doing so, we also prevent any new understandings of rhetoric and writing, and – what Brendan is writing about over on his blog – invention. To work with the unfamiliar is not necessarily to be progressive (a term I find equally as conservative as conservative). Instead, it is to work with the notion of possibility. Once you frame an emerging logic as the known (thinking critically, for example, or how to use a tool, or the essay form), you are not working with possibility (which always suggests the unknown). You are working with what has been preserved. If the outcome of these investigations differs little from what we’ve already been doing (and I believe that is what most of the scholarship/discussion so far reveals), what has been the point of calling any of this computer literacy, digital literacy, techo-literacy, whatever flavor you choose? Meet the new boss. Just the same as the old boss.
    This is a blog post, so the argument is simplified, of course. But one last point to leave hanging: the notion of critique. Cultural studies found the discovery of critiques centered on race/class/gender to be radical for challenging the status quo’s choices for representation and power sharing (and even more radical when shifted from literature to popular culture). Very helpful. But the practice of critique is still conservative. The teaching of this practice becomes quickly very conservative (show the race/class/gender breakdown in this ad/pamphlet/novel/song). The actual teaching practice is seldom – if ever – broke down. We preserved the same methods without ever addressing whether the new objects of study forced changes in how we use the methods themselves.
    That’s my analogy with computer literacy. Do with it/jump all over it/as you will.


    Posted by jrice @ 07:14 PM EST [Link]

    Sunday, January 9, 2005

    NBA Trades That Should Happen Soon

  • Jason Kidd to Dallas for Jason Terry and Jerry Stackhouse.
    If the numbers work on this one, it has to happen. The Mavs get the floor leadership that they need badly. Kidd gets one more shot at a title and the chance to finish his career where it began. The Nets get a future point guard with more than two years left in the tank, and another scoring option to push them into the playoffs this year. When Stackhouse comes off the books (I'm assuming he has a short contract left), they get cap room for free agency. Terry/Carter/Jefferson gives them longer youth stability.
  • Kwame Brown for Theo Ratliff and Derek Anderson (or a future pick)
    The Wizards are tired of Brown; they're winning without him. In Ratliff they can get the tough inside presence they need and which they feel Brown won’t give. They already have plenty of scoring and are the only team with three guys averaging at 20 ppg and above (Jameson, Hughes, and Arenas). The Trailblazers dump Ratliff (who no one really likes anyway) and get rid of the over-hyped Anderson. The Wizards can use Anderson for backup duty and then dump his salary later.
  • Peja Stojakovic for Tyson Chandler and Eric Piatkowski. Stojakovic wants to go to Chicago; Chicago wants him. Chicago needs scoring help. The Kings run at a championship is pretty much over. They need help at the point now that Bobby Jackson is probably done with for good. Chandler has flopped in Chicago but maybe he can give the Kings some size in the middle as Webber slowly deteriorates. Why not do this trade?
  • Wally Szczerbiak for Kurt Thomas and Tim Thomas. Yes all my trade scenarios are two for ones. But if cap room allows these deals, then that’s the way to go. KG hates Szczerbiak. Isaiah wants Szczerbiak. Kurt Thomas is a bruiser who can help the Twolves get tough. Tim Tomas sucks, but throw him in the deal for bench help and when Spree is acting like a baby. The deal gives the Knicks yet another unreliable scorer, but who cares? I hate the Knicks and Isaiah has already proven that he can’t GM. This deal just seals his fate.

    Posted by jrice @ 02:04 PM EST [Link]

    Saturday, January 8, 2005

    Digital Detroit
    As I still work to publish The Rhetoric of Cool in a shrinking book market (see the latest Profession for more dreary-eye views), I'm mapping out a new project tentatively called Digital Detroit: Rhetoric and Space in the Age of the Network. The premise:
    The places of Detroit as rhetorical encounters. A theory of the digital in which Detroit, the city of technology (auto industry, techno), is the focus and meant to be generalized as electronic writing. I'm influenced by some of Jenny's ideas regarding ecologies (rhetorical situation updated) and Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift's Cities: Reimagining the Urban. But this project also represents the nature of my thinking: to juxtapose unlikely ideas in order to invent (cool + 1963 + composition = digital rhetoric/ Detroit + space + chora = digital writing). The avant-garde premise as well: begin with the unlikely, the uncanny, and work from there. Methodology of the speculative.
    But that I cannot not write also speaks to a number of things, notably the nature of academia itself. Writing. The thing most troublesome for the profession (how to teach it/students can't do it), and the thing many who are within the profession don't want to do. The years devoted to a dissertation, the requirements of tenure, the graduate student seminar papers. . . . feared by many. So many writing instructors don’t even write. If you write too much, maybe you are guilty of trying to be a hotshot, a publishing superstar. But what if you just have to write. You cannot help yourself. You sit at the computer, see interesting ideas, hear stuff that moves you, and feel like jotting down ideas, assembling weird notions of space and rhetoric, digital culture and writing, pedagogy and networks.
    In this last point, I find some comparison to general misunderstandings regarding electronic writing and those pedagogies seeking out to work with such apps. “Teaching with Blogs,” “Getting Student Zines Published: Zones of Proximity,” “How Writers Use the Web: Usability Testing and Student Experience.” These are not so much speculations, but quick solutions meant to convince teachers (and of course, students) the necessity of writing with technology. Yet every time I surf the Web, jumping from link to link, from site to site, I am amazed with how much writing exists on the Net. So many weblogs. So many newspapers. So many zines. So many wikis. So much writing. How is that “our students can’t write” or “we don’t have time to teach with technology” when there is already so much writing in circulation in the digital sphere? I am not the only one obviously who cannot not write.
    He says. . . as he goes back to his writing. . . .


    Posted by jrice @ 09:16 AM EST [Link]

    Thursday, January 6, 2005

    Del.icio.us
    Although I read Del.icio.us links all the time, yesterday I finally set up my own bookmarks with the site: http://del.icio.us/drfabulous (linked also on bottom of blogroll). The move from reader to producer, a small but still significant move. I'm drawn into the social bookmarking - public announcement of what I'm reading/read, the always-available-world of information (open browser/click) as public, rhetorical gesture. More indications of how far the digital has taken us out of the private readerly experience - St. Augustine shocked (or was it he who was shocked?) by silent reading. “What on earth is that man doing???” And as I start prepping for the semester ahead, I am re-reading yet again Ong's Orality and Literacy - the notion of the index as print navigational device stands out. The index ideologically establishes the ways we organize patterns (linear and in the back of the book). Echoes of a Stallybrass talk at UF years ago that wonderfully took the index moment through various Medieval representations of reading.. . . the Medieval mind signifies our ancestor of thinking (“this goes here”). The Web is initially founded on the Medieval principle (first page of a website is index.html). But the Del.icio.us model is obviously much different. Now we are getting closer to the shifting digital mind which functions outside of straight-up indexing or private contemplation.
    This is what remix culture is about - a point made mainstream in the online (maybe print too?) New Yorker by the very online Sasha Frere-Jones. The individual author unsettled by the mashup. Of course, mashups will be mainstream too eventually (the inevitable task of composing – co-option? Maybe. I prefer back-forth influence; we learn from the corporate, they learn from us too). And then we will have endless debates over whether mashups unsettled the status go or re-enforced hegemonic practice (THE END OF THE MASHUP). But before I get too bored by such talk and premature suggestionulation, Del.icio.us and mashups and much more reflect digital thought. I bring these two writing practices together because they are both indicative of what is at stake when we pretend digital culture works otherwise; we become stuck in index mentality. Privacy. Remember McLuhan? Global Village? The global village was meant to shift the private models – not to a world of “can’t we all just get along” but a mashup world where information collides in all kinds of unsettling (and thus, also settling) ways. To compose is not to be private, not to be indexed, not to be static. And – it is to be suggestive, for mashups suggest the “what if” principle of digital thinking (what if Christina Aguilera and Metallica got together?) with the suggestive allure of book marking (“hey, want to see something?”).

    Posted by jrice @ 09:13 AM EST [Link]

    Wednesday, January 5, 2005

    Maccabees
    Detroit Funk documents very nicely the lovely building I work in at Wayne. I've been meaning to photograph the interior, now I realize I don't have to. I'm still not sure what the restaurant, currently being renovated, will look like or what it will be.

    Posted by jrice @ 01:36 PM EST [Link]

    BCS
    The season is over and no doubt that today every sports show from Cold Pizza to PTI will debate the BCS, whether Oklahoma was over-rated, and whether we need a play off system. USC's dominance over the No. 2 is evidence enough. Not evidence that Oklahoma didn't deserve to be there and Utah or Auburn did, but that college football needs to adopt the college hoops model: tournament. What makes the tournament so great is that it allows teams to have lost at some point in the year (how ridiculous is football getting? lose a game, lose your season) and still compete for the championship. On any given night, just about anybody can beat anybody. The tournament returns the competitive spirit to those best teams left and lets them fight it out. So what if a one loss or two loss team beats an undefeated? At that level, the teams are more or less equal - more or less because of padded non-conference schedules, different levels of conference play from year to year, and reputations. Utah's bad rep (conference and history) keeps them out of a game that maybe (I said maybe) they win. I want to see the WAC and SEC battle it out. I want to see the MAC and Big Ten battle it out. Why not? BCS has become too elitist in a time when there is more and more talent out there playing at all kinds of levels. We see it in college hoops - in a BCS system, St. Joes never would have been a number one seed the year they excelled. Gonzaga would never get any respect. And if the BIG MONEY argument surfaces, so what? The big money players can still sponsor tournament games and schools can still earn the mega bucks to pay for collegiate sports.

    Posted by jrice @ 09:39 AM EST [Link]

    Monday, January 3, 2005

    Phat Links
    Via Johndan I find Jakob Nielsen's latest rant on hypertext. Typically, I don't find Nielsen very convincing and see so much lost in the concept of "usability." But here's something I like: Fat Links.


    Fat links are links that point to more than one page. Now that browsers like Firefox and Safari support tabbed browsing, it's possible to have a link that opens up multiple tabs, and thus lets users access several destinations in one click.

    That's a good idea. Only, why not make them phat links?

    1. phat
    1. cool
    2. Pretty Hot And Tempting
    Dude! That shit is phat!
    Dude! That bitch is P.H.A.T!

    Phat links not only open up more than one page, they open up tempting pages, pages that merge all kinds of news, fetishes, desires, sorrow, and . . . for want of a better word, shit.
    We gotta teach phat writing! Writing focused on shit (not defecation, but shit, "man, that is the shit"). Like VV's "the turd meaning," only recontextualized for the Web. Once we have phat links (Mozilla team, listen up coders!), we can start instituting a pedagogy of phat/shit where compositions link outward and inward, forging networks that are sensible and not so sensible. That I pull from UrbanDictionary.com should not be lost on you, dear reader. Composition’s heavy interest in the urban (represented in the famous “students right to their own language” and issues of access) speaks to generating phat links, to recognizing the importance of phat to digital writing (mood + shit). In other words, here is an excellent opportunity to open up the “gates” (isn’t that the SF CCCC call?) to the urban (and the implied population of people of color).

    Posted by jrice @ 07:50 PM EST [Link]

    Saturday, January 1, 2005

    You Say You Wanna New Year?
    "Hank Williams was found dead in the back seat of his powder blue Cadillac on New Year's morning 1953."
    Ulmer once speculated about this moment as a "what if": what if Williams, found with an unfinished song in hand, was working on a collaboration with Carmen Miranda to produce a hybrid samba-country tune?
    But way-a-ait-a-minute:
    "The year 1953 saw the development of IBM's 701 EDPM, which, according to IBM, was the first commercially successful general-purpose computer."
    The merger of entertainment and computing, the mix I call celebritacy, may have its origins in 1953. Using the "what if" principle of invention made popular by Marvel Comics, I propose my own what if: what if Hank Williams was in fact writing computer code for IBM based on country music?

    It’s a proposal I suggest in order to refocus the new year, to enter into a different kind of new year’s resolution, one focused not on personal ambition but rather on disciplinary speculation. What if we resolve to reform our understandings of new media and writing? Speculation, I note, is itself a new media principle (in addition to others) which shifts the topoi-driven methods of argumentation from fixed places to moving entities, questionable “open source” points of composition. Driven by my own disciplinary frustration, I use this 1953 new year moment to remember that Williams’ “Your Cheatin Heart” is one of 1953’s biggest hits. Not just Williams’ version, but pop crooner Frankie Lane’s as well. Lane’s cover of Williams anticipates the rhetorical move of appropriation, another new media principle. Thus, as Williams sat dying in the back of his Cadillac, could he have been contemplating how appropriation might play into IBM’s future?
    That a musical moment leads me to such speculation should be of no surprise. Early computing, as imagined by IBM, used musical terminology to describe and create memory systems. The drum is one notable musical item. The overlap in meaning, the puncept, another anticipation of new media composing, no doubt was on Williams’ mind as he attempted to use this new code for memory purposes (how to remember and revisit compositional ideas? Drums, man!). Jazz drummer Art Blakely has already arrived on the scene, drumming his way into compositional practices with his first album, the one recorded at Birdland. Williams appropriates this bit of knowledge, as he will be appropriated by Frank Lane, and proposes a writing system where computerized memory is “drummed” rather than written. It’s a revolutionary idea. Williams is further encouraged by early promotion for the 1953 film Jungle Drums of Africa.

    A sign! he thinks. The tropes of exploration (“an intrepid explorer and a missionary's daughter embark upon a perilous journey through Africa in order to get the rights to a uranium mine”) and technology (uranium the core of nuclear work) fit into his work for IBM. Of course, the film settles into obscurity, as does his eventual code which merges the principles of country music (loss, heartache, deception) with new media (film principles of cutting/editing), and music (drumming). “It’s a new year for writing,” Williams thinks as he pens his ideas to paper which becomes as lost to writing history as the film’s relevance to film history.

    Posted by jrice @ 09:15 AM EST [Link]

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