The Wikipedia Assignment was something different for me that I’ve never done before. In my experience many professors told me that using Wikipedia wasn’t allowed because anyone and everyone can go into whichever article and alter it however they please. Doing this assignment taught me new things about how editing Wikipedia really works if one does it the correct way. During the training I learned the five core rules of Wikipedia, what the sandbox is, talk pages, watch lists, and wikiprojects. This exercise also gave me the opportunity to actually edit articles. What I liked about the training and exercise was that it included actual tutorial videos of what to do. Also while actually working on the actual wikipedia page it had little bubbles that had directions to guide you to the next step or what to do. I learned that editing on Wikipedia is actually not that quick and easy like everyone thinks. Each fact that someone writes on there has to be referenced from a reliable source that cannot be biased. In order to add images to Wikipedia you can never use images found through image search, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit, Imgur, or even the “Free image” or “free stock photo” websites. You have to find images with proof that the creator gives permission for people can use their photos. In addition, I already knew that Wikipedia articles were edited by many people but I didn’t know that they had a talk page where editors discuss among one another, their edits why they’re making changes.There’s really a lot of rules to using Wikipedia and I don’t see myself ever editing an article on there again unless I take another course that requires me to do so.
Frida Barolli Wikipedia reflection
All my life I was told not to use wikipedia as a trusted source when it came to doing research and writing papers. I never had an issue using wikipedia as a place to get some quick information on something. For this assignment I posted an Albanian flag since there weren’t many pictures of it. I wanted to use a picture that I took of the Albanian flag myself. Wikipedia did not let me use it because it might have been someone elses work when in fact it was not. I started to get frustrated because I really wanted to use it but then, I gave up. It was so interesting to see how easily you can change pictures and information on a source that millions of people access every single day. I still trust wikipedia I think it takes a lot to put false information, there are guidelines and precautions that Wiki takes on what you post. I’m sure there is some information that is false or misinterpreted but for the most part I think it’s mostly accurate. I still wish I could use that picture because it is my own picture that I took in Albania this Summer!
Frida Barolli Blog Post #9
For this week’s blog post I chose to write about Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan. This article struck my interest because I grew up in a time that technology was just starting to advance. Computers were starting to become smaller, laptops were being introduced, ipod and iphone was introduced, T.V.’s were becoming plasmas etc. My generation knew what it was like to go outside and play everytime there was a school break, computers were used once in a blue moon for homework only, schools didnt really use computers either. Now, technology is accessible for anyone at any age. I think it is important for the newer generation of kids to read about this or watch this. We have smartphones that can do anything with just a click of a button. You can research and find anything, you store your entire life in a smartphone. We have grown so attached to phones and computers that sometimes you get anxiety when you dont see your phone. This year alone I went to Albania two times each way was 12 hours then I went to Jamaica. I was so itchy to use my phone because I kill time when I am on my phone. I read the news, I go through my pictures, I go on facebook or instagram etc. It just shows you how much weve grown to be so attached to something so small yet its the biggest part of our lives.
Isaac Espinoza NYPL oral history
I know from personal experience that transcriptions can be very challenging. People simply speak at a much faster rate than we can write or even type. When communication transitions from orality to literacy there’s a lot that can be lost or misunderstood. It’s the same reason I prefer calling or talking in person over texting. Because it’s not what you say, its how you say it. Simple things like sarcasm, aggression, or sorrow simply require more effort to communicate through writing. While completing the NYPL oral history assignment it was obvious that the technology that automatically generates transcripts needs to be improved upon. But what struck me most was the consensus percentage points on some of the stories. It just goes to show that even though we might all be presented with the same material the interpretation of this material isn’t always going to match.
Milagros’ Post for 10/30
This week I decided to reflect on Ochoa’s “Aurality”. As soon as I started to read the introduction, I was already hooked because she was talking about Latin American country. But then this statement came “The apparent lack of documentation of a collected folk corpus has often led to the assertion that in the nineteenth century there were very few studies of folk expressions in Colombia.” (Ochoa, 1) This really made me think about history as a whole because there are a lot of things that we don’t really know about but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. What if there is actual documentation but someone just decided to ignore it and make whatever it is they want their own? This also can lead to “the use of inappropriate methodologies in the study of local expressive culture,” (Ochoa,1) which basically leads to people looking or thinking a certain way about a culture because what has been presented isn’t correct. But why is this such a normal thing and who is there to really stop these kind of things from happening if the people that actually lived through these times are no longer present? I think this is why it’s so important to know one’s true history and culture and to pass it down to different generations because it’s so easy to forget these things.
Work Cited
- Ochoa Gautier, Ana María. Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia. Duke University Press, 2014.
Michael Farias Blog Post for October 30
For this weeks blog post, I chose to write about Ana María Ochoa Gautier’s “Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia”. The main reason I chose to write about this writing in particular is because the author is from Colombia just like myself. Ochoa talks about many artists in Colombia. Ochoa herself is an artist specifically a musician and she is the chair of the music department at Columbia University. She talks about things like the botanical aspects of Colombia. Colombia is not very known for this but we have many different types flowers throughout the country. People mainly associate drugs and great coffee with Colombia but the truth we are so much more. We have a coastline with great beaches and places for tourists to stay. Pablo Escobar is not the only famous person from Colombia but he is always the person we are asked about. If your thing is music you ask me about Shakira, if it’s soccer ask about James Rodríguez, and if it’s reading ask about Gabriel García Márquez. We are past narcos era so people should stop asking us about it.
Blog Post #9- Abby Potashnik
For this week’s blog post, I chose to write about Marshall McLuhan’s Medium is the Massage. I absolutely loved reading this work because I believe it is extremely valuable, and imperative for the young generation of today to hear. McLuhan states that all the technologies that were ever created are the messages themselves, not exclusively the messenger, delivering the message. Technology is something that was originally created to help mankind, to benefit us. Today, it has become something that, while yes, it is super beneficial, and is so helpful and quick in everything, has crippled us and made us addicted to, on top of what Marshal calls the “Age of Anxiety”. Anxiety is definiltey one of the top words I would put hand in hand with technology. I can say from personal experience how any times my outlook and stress level would’ve been better had I not been attached to a device or connected to a technological relation of some sort. I won’t sit here and write how we would’ve been so much better off before smartphones, or advanced robotic equipment, because everyone is born in their right time. Not as second to early or late, and how they navigate this world is intended for this time period. But it is so crucial to check in with ourselves, to make sure we aren’t falling to prey as much as we unfortunately do nowadays.
Jessica Colasacco Week 9 Blog Post
This week, Johanna Drucker’s article “From A to Screen” stuck out to me the most. In this article, she states “We take the virtual letters as things, mistaking their appearance for substance, and we also overlook the agency of alphanumeric code, taking it for granted.” This is extremely true. When we see a letter on our screen, we can tell if it is from a different font but do we ever really question where that font is coming from? Before class today, I had no idea that there was an entire folder on a computer that held all the fonts that are freely available for everyone to use. These letters have significant meaning to us but how do we distinguish between them? Does an A in Times New Roman differ from an A in Ariel? Is the difference importance to us as humans that use this letters everyday? In Spanish, the letter A is pronounced as “ah” where as in English we say “aye”. But, the pronunciation of the letter A can change depending on where it is located in a word. In the word “apple” it is pronounced as “ahh”. It is importance to recognize how the letter A gained its meaning, from writing and then further, to the screen.
StClair Weekly blog post
For this week’s blog, I will talk about Johanna Drucker’s “Comparative Textual Media”. Specifically, I will focus on one of her chapters called “From A Screen”. In this chapter, Drucker talks about letters and the alphabet. She brings up “who created the alphabet?”. That is a good question. Most people believe it was the Greeks. Others do not believe it was the Greeks. Everyone has a different idea of how the alphabet was created. Drucker did debunk this concept by saying “The Semitic language speakers forged an alphabet to serve a tongue whose consonantal morphemes communicated adequately without vowels, and the technical specifications for their writing were different than for the Greeks, who later modified the writing for their own use”(Drucker, 2013). However, who is to say that the Greeks didn’t invent letters? They simply just changed what they learned. Other cultures also do this with letters and make it their own to fit into their society. Letters and the alphabet change throughout cultures, however, they all consist of the alphabet that is conditioned into our minds when we were young. The ABC song is the same, but in every culture it’s different. It isn’t about who came up with it first, it’s about who can modify it into their own.
References: HAYLES, N. KATHERINE, and JESSICA PRESSMAN, editors. Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era. University of Minnesota Press, 2013
Isaac Espinoza 10/22 Post
“Documents are important not because they are ubiquitous, I should be clear, but rather because they are so evidently integral to the ways people think and live”
Documents as said by Gitelman are forever entangled to power. Once an idea is “put on paper” its as if it gains value. People are more likely to believe something that is written in a book or an article online than their best friend who is talking freely from thought. Even though the idea that is now on paper was once a thought and probably expressed orally before it was documented. I don’t agree with the first part of the quote that mentions the ubiquitous property of documents and how this doesn’t make them important. There is nothing more powerful than a convincing idea that is spread to the masses. If documents were not ubiquitous they would not have nearly the same impact on people and their lives.
Gitelman, Lisa. “Paper Knowledge.” May 2014,
