Category: Weekly Response

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Jessica Colasacco Week 7 Blog Post

This week, “The Emergence of fate Digital Humanities (as the Network is Everting)”, by Steven E Jones really stuck out to me. The one line Professor Jojo had us examine in class, which stated, “Cyberspace is everting, as author William Gibson has repeatedly said, turning inside out and leaking out into the physical world,” had me thinking about all the ways that cyberspace consumes ones life. There is the physical aspect of it, in which people imitate things that were meant for the internet in real life, such as Mario Kart races in Tokyo. But mentally, cyberspace effects people as well.

Each and every time someone posts something onto their social media accounts, they are allowing an aspect of them to be shown to others in a way that they have chosen. People allow other people’s social media accounts to influence their own lives in specific ways. If someone whom they consider influential is always posting a new designer bag they are obsessed with, this person may find it necessary to buy one of these bags in order to keep up with their life. They might also censor their own social media account to output the same type of message that their “idol” puts out. This whole process can be seen as going full circle and can be very dangerous for a person to live through.

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Isaac Espinoza 10/15 blog post

”The electronic letter functions less as a material artifact than as a medium. The handwritten letter carries an elaborate signature of presence, concluding with an author’s signature.” (Nunes, 97)

This statement can be applied across most forms of technology. If we take an email for example and compare the effect that has on a person than the effect a handwritten letter has on a person. An email cannot be done without the use of a computer and will always be less personal than a letter. It lacks the character that can be transmitted through a letter through functions like handwriting.  Anyone can take my computer and send an email pretending to me and it would be believable. But the same could not be said with letters. Now I can argue that photography has passed through a similar process as it has shifted from film to digital. Photography in its earlier days involved more input from the photographer. He or she was required to not only take the picture but measure the light, focus the lens, and then snap the picture. Then that picture would have to be developed and printed in the darkroom. It took much longer but in the end, the final product had “presence”.  Its something that we can hold in our hands and in its imperfections lied its beauty. This is what leads us to value something like a handwritten letter or printed photograph more than an email or picture I posted on Facebook a couple weeks ago.

 

Works Cited

-Nunes, Mark. “The Email, The Letter, and The Post.” from Cyberspaces of Everyday Life. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

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TingFung 10/16 Weekly Reading

TingFung,Chu ” Email, the Letter, And the Post”

In this weekly reading, I choose “Email, the Letter, And the Post”  by Mark Nunes, the author describes the development and history of email, how the email this concept came up in the early 17th Century.  Back to that period, people communicate with the mail and the post to post by the delivery. In fact, the process of mailing is basically the same as the email system. Due to technology was not highly advanced back to that time, the email was just a theory. Subsequently, with the internet was developed into people daily, people are able to connect the world through the computer,  the email becomes the essential software in the electronic devices, people just simply open the email box, would receive multiple messages or advisement from Travel agency to promote the cheaper air ticket,  inform people that there is new clothes or shoes or any other kind of promotion. More importantly, email has become part of the life for the modern era, without the email, there will be more inconvenient for the people in this era.

Although when the email came out and being used on the internet, this was the new hit for the people having a new way for communication. Technology, however, will be constantly to change in a period to period. For instance, virtually every single person has a smartphone, not many people are still using the old black and white screen cell phone that only has a few functions for calling and sending the message, no taking photo or recording footage function. The points, people are still relying on the email without it, but once the new device is similar to the email and has been using in our lives, the email will become the history and won’t be using anymore.

 

Source: NUNES, MARK. “Front Matter.” Cyberspaces of Everyday Life, NED – New edition ed., vol. 19, University of Minnesota Press, 2006, pp. i-vi. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttttrmg.1.

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Miranda Pacheco // October 15th : Letters, Postcards, Email: Technologies of Presence

In Letters, Postcards, Email: Technologies of Presence author Esther Milne speaks of the origins of what we know present day as EMail. Something I found quite interesting was this concept of language, and its involvement within the creation of electronic mail. An example of this is the “@“ sign, its was introduced by a man named Tomlinson “because his email program required a distinction in the address between the name of the user and the name of the user’s machine” (Padlipsky 148). This symbol was meant to be translated in a specific way in order to describe a specific function, and throughout the chapter Milne shows how it was misinterpreted in the cyber world. The “@“ sign meant something completely different in the multics operating system, interesting enough according to Milne’s research it was interrupted negatively. The ARPANET “interpreted the @ sign as a ‘kill line’ command” (Milne 149). Which led to the debate of what an email header would look like and how it would be translated. Back to the reason I find this interesting is because my deep fascination with language. I’ve always been intrigued about one word, or even one statement being translated in various forms and holding its own meanings. I never thought the same would apply to technology and language, I never thought that the “@” sign is an actual form of language that has become universal and can be used by all people.  

CITATION:

Milne Esther, “Letter, Postcards, Email: Technologies of Presence” , Taylor & Francis, 2010.

A. Padlipsky, “And they argued all Night . . .” in Peter H Salus (ed),The ARPANET SourcebooL The Unpublished Foundations of the Internet (Charlottesville: Peer-to-Peer Communications LLC, 2008) 506.

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Oct 16

Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet written by NYU’s Finn Bruton, describes the problem with the modern day of technology and shows the connection between the advancement of technology and the resulting exploitive actions. Showing examples of computer hacking of companies solely done of the internet. However, the most important aspect of Bruton’s work shows how computer technologist are stopping these types of hacks. However, the government is shown to have the most influence in the ability to stop these hackers with the use of regulation against such things as spam. Even the term ‘spam’ is revealing. Spam referring to the canned meat where it may be delicious for a moment but overall it cannot sustain you. Such as spam on the internet may be interesting, but it cannot be the active ingredient in a healthy diet for the internet.

Brunton, Finn. Spam: a Shadow History of the Internet. MIT Press Ltd, 2015.

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Anthony Sierra Week #8 Blog Post

Anthony Sierra

10/15/18

Blog Post 10/16

For this week, I decided to reflect on “Emails, Letters, and Post” by Mark Nunes. Throughout chapter three, Nunes highlights how technology evolved from handwritten letters to the convenient process of typing an email. Emails have become the social norm. Also on page 86 Nunes states “In volume, email is equally impressive: the number of emails originating in North America per day outpaces U.S. Postal Service (USPS) volume by over 1,000 percent.” This statistic was recorded in 2006, where emails were at its peak of popularity, but technology was not as advanced as it is today. Being born in 1996 I’ve never seen the true importance of handwriting letters the same way as my parents or grandparents possibly did. The way we send messages and communicate amongst one another has evolved dramatically and it will never truly stop advancing. In the future there will possibly be a time where society only uses voice messages to communicate with each other, making emails obsolete entirely.

 

Works Cited

Nunes, Mark. “The Email, The Letter, and The Post.” from Cyberspaces of Everyday Life. University of Minnesota Press, 2006

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Marisa Brincat’s Post for 10/15

”The electronic letter functions less as a material artifact than as a medium. The handwritten letter carries an elaborate signature of presence, concluding with an author’s signature.” (Nunes, 97)

I totally agree with this statement because I personally feel that a handwritten letter has a certain feel and presence about it as opposed to an email that you may recieve. I feel that a handwritten letter has more substance. When reading a letter that was handwritten, you are able to see the person’s handwriting, which gives you a certain understanding about them. The paper that someone had written on has significance as well because you can tell how long ago it was written. For example, some letters dating back years ago may have crinkles and the pigment may be yellowish. This indicates time. I feel like a handwritten letter may be able to tell more of a story rather than your generic digital email that doesn’t have much substance.

 

Sources: Nunes, Mark. Cyberspaces of Everyday Life. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

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Brieya Walker 10/16/2018 WEEK 8 Mark Nunes: Emails, Letters, and The Post

For this weeks blog post I’m reflecting on Mark Nunes’ Emails, Letters, and the Post. In this reading he discusses the evolution of sending mail to one another and the drastic change in communication between present day and the 1600’s. He also connects how writing a letter and sending an email “define a well-established social space within the world.” (Nunes, 86) In addition, he made a connection between the telephone and virtual mail by saying with emailing being so instant it appears as the telos of telegraphe making the letter available in any place at the same time. In the text it also states, “In volume, email is equally impressive: the number of emails originating in North America per day outpaces U.S. Postal Service (USPS) volume by over 1,000 percent.” (Nunes, 86) Being that this book was published in 2006, one can only imagine the extreme change of numbers from then to now in 2018. The the evolution of mail very interesting and makes me think about how mail will be in one hundred years from now. I truly believe that eventually the only way to receive mail will be by an email. If you think about it everyone born in this generation and younger is/will be technology savvy so it definitely doesn’t seem impossible.

 

Continue reading “Brieya Walker 10/16/2018 WEEK 8 Mark Nunes: Emails, Letters, and The Post”

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Milagros’ post for 10/16

I reflected on Mark Nunes’ “Emails, Letters, and Post” because this reading really explained the beginning of the telegraph and the inventions that changed human interaction and communication forever. In the reading he includes an example that describes what the invention of telegraph meant “Neil Postman, for example, views the telegraph as a defining historical invention, reconfiguring ideas of transport, communication and corporeality.” (Nunes, 139) “Before its introduction in the nineteenth century, a message could travel only as fast as a human being could travel—about thirty-five miles per hour (on a train).” (Nunes, 140) I think that the invention of telegraph was so essential to how we communicated because thinking of like back in the day where they had to write letters and send them by either horse or walking was crazy. How about if these people lacked writing skills, or they couldn’t afford to pay for the letter to be mailed out and this was a life or death type of situation? This is bizarre to me to think that I would have to wait 2 weeks or maybe even longer in order for my message to get sent out, especially if I was trying to communicate with family in overseas.

 

Works Cited

-Nunes, Mark. “The Email, The Letter, and The Post.” from Cyberspaces of Everyday Life. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

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Michael Farias blog post 7 for October

For this weeks blog post I decided to write about “Email, The Letter, And The Post” by Mark Nunes. In his writing, Nunes talks about how email is one of the most popular forms of communication today. Before there was such thing as email, people used to have to write letters and mail then to the person they want to talk to. This is something that I think my generation takes for granted. A person who has never had to send a letter just to hello to someone who lives far away will never learn to truly appreciate the invention of the email.