So, what is your dissertation going to be? (Reading, Reflecting, and Thinking #10)

Dear Dr. Rodrigo,
Thank you for the open reflection blog, and I hope you will indulge me as I veer a bit away from your particular course only to see how it fits into my PhD puzzle.  Read on ... there just may the seeds of a dissertation planted somewhere in here.
Sincerely,
Susanne

Going Academic on Turkle (Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #9)

Alone Together, Chapters 11-end: 

I have to admit: Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #8 is a much more satisfying post -- I really enjoyed that week and enjoyed capturing it in a new blog form for me.  This week it is a return to academics.  Ultimately, I will present this book to my class, so I want to start getting my head around what Turkle says about our core course concepts (garnered from New Media: The Key Concepts and Lingua Fracta). Here go the ones I have played with so far, and I have found constant overlapping in the robotic and digital environments Turkle is studying.

My Life Collides: Grad Class, Colleague, and Church (Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #8)

Alone Together, Chapters 7-10:
 Let me tell the story of my week in this post.  I learned as I finished reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand that what draws me to nonfiction is the existence of a narrative, something Hillenbrand is a master of. So let me try to draw you into my nonfiction life as I lived the very things of which I was reading.

Children Dream of Electric Furbies (Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #7)

The Gray Furby

Alone Together, Chapters 1-6:

As I move deeper into this course, I am finding the connections fascinating.  I was assigned to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I got my second choice when I read Understanding Media, and I am now reading my first choice, Alone Together. None of these were assigned to me or selected by me with any thought to the others, yet they fit into a thought-provoking single picture of our current society.

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #6

 My Book ... Too Full of Ideas to Contain! 

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, chapters 12-22 and chapters 22-33:One of McLuhan's running themes is the difference between tribal and literate societies. I have been tracking this thread ...

- "Literacy creates very much simpler kinds of people than those that develop in the complex web of ordinary tribal and oral societies. For the fragmented man creates the homogenized Western world, while oral societies are made up of people differentiated, not by their specialist skills or visible marks, but by their unique emotional mixes. The oral man's inner world is a tangle of complex emotions and feelings that the Western practical man has long ago eroded or suppressed within himself in the interest of efficiency and practicality" (75).

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #5

Understanding Media: The Extensions of ManChapters 1-11:
Marshall McLuhan ... "McLuhan wrote with no knowledge of galvanic skin response technology, terminal node controllers, or the Apple Newton. He might not have been able even to imagine what a biomouse is. But he pointed the way to understanding all of these, not in themselves, but in their relation to each other, to older technologies, and above all in relation to ourselves our bodies, our physical senses, our psychic balance. When he published Understanding Media in 1964, he was disturbed about mankind’s shuffling toward the twenty-first century in the shackles of nineteenth century perceptions. He might be no less disturbed today. And he would continue to issue the challenge that confronts the reader at every page of his writings to cast off those shackles" (Gordon).

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #4

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, chapters 16-22:

"Because without the Mercerism experience we just have your word that you feel this empathy business, this shared, group thing" (209-210).

After our 1/23 class when Dr. Rodrigo shared that one reason we are reading this book is to think about empathy as we study new media, I have found myself pondering this idea even more. When I first wrote about empathy, I was thinking about whether digital networks can ever replicate the empathy drawn from physical proximity that underlies non-digital social networks. Dick wrote (see above quote) that empathy will always be the divider between human and android -- which makes me think about whether humans can ever find full empathy through digital connections. Does the inherent lack of empathy in something digital create a barrier to the conveyance of human empathy across digital channels? Dick's empathy box does generate human empathy across its technology -- is this something possible outside of science fiction?

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #3

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, chapters 11-15:I am going to wait to comment on this novel for my next post when we have finished reading it all ... Today instead I would like to explore our next text ...

Lingua Fracta, chapters 1-4I somehow reached my place in life as an English major and teacher without taking classical rhetoric. However, I am lucky because I am married to a Latin teacher who pulled right out of his files this when I asked him about the classical rhetoric canons. I hope you find it helpful too -- I keep mine in my Lingua Fracta book as my reference. My husband says the picture is of him at a younger age ...

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #2

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Chapters 6-10
I am still enjoying reading this book. Dick has set up parallel story lines that I know must cross in significant ways as I finish the book, and I am curious how that will happen. A version of Rachael Rosen showing up at John's apartment was the first link, but now with the android faux police headquarters appearing, it seems certain that the idea of separating android from human will only tangle up more. I did wonder how the (as we were to discover) android police were able to run the bone density test so quickly on the victim in Rick's car; that test had been said to take a very long time at Rosen. Maybe androids are more adept at pinpointing other androids? Which is intriguing -- how the humans are worrying so much about correct identification, while the androids are either better at it or care less for accuracy.

Reading, Thinking, Reflecting #1

(A note about many of my blog posts this semester: I have started my New Media Theory I class in my doctoral program at ODU with Dr. Shelley Rodrigo. Many of my posts will be reflections on the reading and work we are are doing. I will always note what reading I have done in case you want to find the texts yourselves. I am loving Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep!)

Chapters 1-5, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
I am thinking about empathy right now. Empathy -- the connection to others that androids cannot feel. Rick's realization that he was caring for an android in the form of his electric sheep (42) really spun the idea of empathy for me.