ENGL 3196/COMM 3000: Orality * Literacy * Computer Technology
“Those who use writing will become forgetful” (Ong 135). I can’t remember what I had for breakfast unless I write it down. I don’t remember my coffee order.
References:
Ong, Walter J. “Orality and Literacy” in The Book History Reader. eds. David Finkelstein, Alistair McCleery. Routledge, 2006
This week I decided to reflect on Italo Calvino’s “Cybernetics and Ghosts”. The reason why I chose this story was because there was a very specific part that kind of just blew my mind a bit. “Having laid down these procedures and entrusted a computer with the task of carrying out these operations, will we have a machine capable of replacing the poet and the author?”(pg. 12) Being someone who enjoys reading, I was very surprised to see that people are actually considering letting machines take over and wipe out the beauty and art that is creative writing or just writing in general. I don’t see how we could potentially live in a world without authors. There is no purpose or true meaning to a book without the author because the author, although may write a fictional story, can take their own experiences to create something that many people can relate to.
Citation:
Calvino, Italo. “Cybernetics and Ghosts,” from The Uses of Literature: Essays. Harcourt Brace, 2009.
For this weeks blog I decided to focus on A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway. Later on in the text Haraway introduces Richard Gordon’s concept of a “homework economy”. Here Gordon speaks about work being redefined as female and feminized because of a woman’s crucial role in the work place. The reading analyzes various means of employment and concludes that most jobs obtain feminine characteristics. What I found interesting is that these new systems reveal that women produce majority of the labor in the working class. When first reading about the “homework economy” I would think it’s purpose was to solely show women’s impactful & influence amongst the work force, but Haraway later points out that women are generally excluded from benefiting from increased modifications (specifically in the production of food) We go from readings about feminine influence to now women exclusion. I thought I had an understanding of this concept but then I came across these opposing views. I don’t fully know what to make of the “homework economy” and I’m curious of its impact on todays systems regarding the work force and women.
For this week readings I decided to write about Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” which she talks about an ironic political myth and the blasphemy the goes along with it. She says it’s ironic because she speaks about the idea of a cyborg promoting it as a gap between human and machine. Throughout the article the cyborg represents as a metaphor. Haraway defines cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creation of fiction. I found this to be interesting because there is a distinction between humans and technology. In this era where we use technology at its highest point and using it in our everyday life. For instance, you have computers and your cellphones that talk to you and do other things. Technology is starting be more lifelike.
For this weeks reading I chose to reflect on Cybernetics and Ghosts. The part that stuck out to me the most as I was reading the article was “Electronic brains, even if they are still far from producing all the functions of the human brain, are nonetheless capable of providing us with a convincing theoretical model for the most complex processes of our memory, our mental associations, our imagination, our conscience.” This part stuck out to me because being born in the early 90’s and now we are in 2018 our generation has seen a drastic change in technology especially in this day and age. Technology producers have always said that eventually school teachers will be replaced by robots, there will not be anymore teachers or customer service representatives etc. I am a chilhood education major and this made me reflect on how students are so phased by technology that education is not education anymore. Students are so stuck on there phones and tablets instead of picking up a book to read they pick up there tablets. It is sad but true how slowly we will see robots acting like humans and will have the functions to tell you everything you need to know.
For this week’s reading I decided on writing about “Cybernetics and Ghosts” by Italo Calvino. In this piece one part that stood out to me was when Italo states “Just as we already have machines that can read, machines that perform a linguistic analysis of literary texts, machines that make translations and summaries, will we also have machines capable of conceiving and composing poems and novels?” This made me think about how in this time and age with technology being as advanced as it is. It allows things such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to rise. However, going back to the question Italo made about machines replacing authors and poets I don’t believe a machine could truly replace the originality and empathy of a human. Italo then states that such a machine would only be able to “produce traditional works, poems with closed metrical forms, novels that follow the rules.” To which I agree, because as he mentioned throughout this article as humans storytelling is in our nature. We have the ability to create and express through stories. In order for a machine to construct a poem or a piece of literature it would have to already have it in it’s system in order for it to regenerate a “new” story.
For this week’s blog I chose to reflect on Italo Calvino’s Cybernetics and Ghosts. There was one part that caught my attention because it made me think about how this statement can be seen in everyday life. Italo Calvino states, “The immobile world that surrounded tribal man, strewn with signs of the fleeting correspondences between words and things, came to life in the voice of the storyteller, spun out into the flow of a spoken narrative within which each word acquired new values and transmitted them to the ideas and images they defined. ” (page 5) This statement stuck out to me because it made me think of what we do in society everyday like create slang where one word can have one hundred different meanings. Also one phrase here in New York can mean something totally different in another country. In Addition, this is interesting to me because there’s no formally written guide with these new meanings and values of these words that we create, but they’re passed on through verbal communication and different platforms such as television, radio, social media, etc. To me personally it shows that this world is more connected than some may believe or think and that we share interests in similar things that we may not even notice.
For this week readings i chose Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” which she talks about the bridges between humans and technology. One thing I found amazing about this article was that it was published in 1991 it talks about a “post-gender” and feministic world, which is discussed now in 2018. “When there was greater need for political unity to confront effectively the dominations of ‘race’, ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’, and ‘class’.” She talks about being against political identities, letting it be known that being female has nothing to do with natural binds women have.
For this week I decided to reflect and talk about Cybernetics and Ghosts. On page 4 of Cybernetics and Ghosts “The storyteller began to put forth words, not because he thought others might reply…” This whole paragraph really made me think deeper into the birth of words and communications. In the story, the storyteller just started to put words together to try to form sentences and this made me think about how other people started to communicate. What we learned were the first forms of communication was cave art. This makes me also really think about words and the significance of language as well. Towards the end of the page it talks about figures being a representation of what the storyteller wants to say. This tells me that although we have words and oral communication that we do use, figures/pictures and ultimately art is also very essential to us because it is another form of communication that people do understand and connect with. To think that it took one person to start just drawing on caves, to then words being created, to then different languages just shows the evolution of communication and shows how progressive we are.
For this week I decided to write about “Almanac of the Dead” by Leslie Marmon, Silko. The reason this reading grabbed my attention was the style of the way it was written. It wasn’t your basic reading that had one story to tell but it had various stories from various people. The fragments of these Ancient notebooks were unique. In all honesty, the fragments were hard to understand. Mostly because the way that we communicate now is different from how it used to be years ago. Silko wrote “If they had any curiosity about the writing, then their fear, which was greater had prevailed. What they feared were the spirits described in the writing and the glyphs on the pages” this shows the power that communication holds. In my opinion, this shows that although these fragments were written hundreds of years ago, these fragments were valuable and taken what was written seriously. The people who had written these fragments understood each of them but personally, I didn’t understand it as well because it didn’t follow the structure that I am normally used to reading.
