Personal writing history, Fall 2011 #252ac

Reflecting on our relationships with writing can help us understand how and why we write and, by extension, how our own writing strategies are similar to and different from those around us. By putting such reflection into the form of an autobiography, we have a chance to get to know each other better in a unique way.

So, compose a piece of at least 750 words detailing your life of/with writing. The approach you take is rather open-ended. The main focus should be on your relationship with writing, but you can take a chronological perspective, share a series of anecdotes about writing, and/or note particular progress in your ability and understanding of writing. If you have any questions about this, don’t hesitate to contact me. I’d be happy to discuss approaches/ideas.

  • What early experiences with writing devices or artifacts can you recall? What do you remember about your earliest writing(s)?
  • Who do you identify as being most literate person in your life? What makes that person's relationship with writing so special; that is, what behaviors or characteristics does he or she exhibit? What have you learned from him or her?
  • Do you think there are social consequences or potential impacts on your lifestyle that depend on your writing capabilities? What might these social consequences or potential impacts be?
  • What will it mean to be a writer in the near future?
  • What's on your desk at home and/or office at work? What writing devices are you carrying now? What's on your writing “wish list?”
  • What writing technologies do you own or know about that would be of benefit to your classmates?
  • How do you learn new writing technologies? What process do you go through? Is it hard, fun, easy, traumatic, boring, annoying, or some combination?

Be sure to post it to your blog by the start of our 9.12 session.

 

"there were a lot of 'distractions' built into a medieval book" #wymhm

Engaged by brilliant illuminations; challenged by reading in Latin, without spacing between words, capitalization, or punctuation; and invited into the commentary of past readers of the text, medieval readers of Augustine, Dante, Virgil, or the Bible would surely be able to give today’s digitally-distracted multitaskers a run for our money. The physical form of the bound book brought together all of these various “links” into one “platform” so that the diverse perspectives of a blended contemporary and historical community of thinkers could be more easily accessed.

via religiondispatches.org

"if people in the future are going to understand what this society is like, they need to understand gaming" #wymhm

Ars: Why do librarians and archivists want to preserve games?

JM: The really simple, one-sentence answer is because games are important. In the United States we're looking at about 80,000 people who are directly employed by the gaming industry and maybe another 240,000 people involved in related, tangential industries that rely on gaming companies for their existence. So just as a monetary phenomenon, games are important. You probably saw the sales for Modern Warfare? We're talking a single game that realized over a billion dollars in sales. Sort of shows on a monetary level the importance that games have taken within our economy.

This has certainly made librarians take note of games, but also they've become important culturally. There's a long history of wanting to say "popular culture is lower culture and therefore we should not be preserving it." For all of us in our project, we're rejecting that point of view. Popular culture is the most important culture we need to preserve. It shows what people were actually interested in and what they were doing.

via arstechnica.com

Further ammunition for those arguing for the validity of videogame studies as well as their preservation.

Also: on this here laptop, I have Fallout, World of Goo and two emulators, one for DOS and one for NES.