Response to Writing Machines

When I first saw my Writing Machines book, I was slightly upset. I knew I had gotten the book used, but I did not appreciate that somebody had written all over the sides of the paper. Then, I noticed that it was not somebody trying to mark up a book with a Sharpie, but it was actually printed on the book! I knew from there that this would be a very different book than I was used to reading.

I opened the book to begin reading and I saw that the font was getting larger throughout the page and then decreasing in size. It was as if an invisible magnifying glass was on the page highlighting the important parts the author wanted to emphasize. This sort of use of materials and presentation of the text ties right in with the author’s discussion of how images strengthen the written word. I know that the increase in font size is not really an image, it does strengthen the words and the points the author is trying to make because it attracts the reader’s eyes. In regards to images strengthening the written word, it reminded me of the old phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Another point in the reading that I found interesting was about literary critics. In the book it stated something about how literary critics think that verbal expression is more real than printed text. This is surprising to me because in earlier classes we discussed that written word is considered more permanent and professional than verbal expression. However, I believe that verbal communication has more of an impromptu air about it, so I guess there is no time to review what one is saying allowing it to be more “real”.

Something that I was confused about when I read it was about how some printed text or written word can bring the machinery that created it. Does this mean that if you read a newspaper, one can picture the huge printing apparatus that spits out thousands of newspapers? I suppose that when reading something like a newspaper, one can picture that the reading material is mass produced as opposed to a personal letter that only one person might read. This can put into view the purpose of the text that one is reading.

Another point mentioned by the author that I found interesting was about “hypertext”. It was said in the book that hypertext is printed text, or virtual text, that can be accessed through many different pathways. Links on the internet, Google searches, a website with the text are all different ways that one piece of text can be accessed. This made me think how easily people can access text. My mind immediately went to accessing newspaper articles from around the world from websites from the comfort of your home computer. The New York Times are no longer just for the people of New York. Hypertext allows the easy transfer of information that can span thousands of miles.

In the section about House of Leaves, I was surprised to find that it was advertised as a typical “haunted house story” so people would buy the book, even though there was much more to the book. It reminded me of movie trailers that you watch and then when you finally see the movie, it is completely different than the tone of the trailer. I suppose even books sometimes have to be sold short in order to get the public to recognize it.

Layout - John Ashbery Poem

I chose the poem "Some Trees" by John Ashbery. When I was deciding what to do with the poem, we were discussing as a class why poems are formatted the way that they are. For example, why the lines are broken up and what effect does this have. This influenced my spacing of the poem. At first, I had each stanza kept the same way, but chaotically arranged on the paper. I also wanted to accent certain words of the poem; words that I thought were important or words that I thought could be personified by the use of different fonts. Many of these words were verbs and adjectives. I went through changing the fonts of these words that I wanted to bring special attention to. Then, I started reading over the poem to try and find the full meaning of it. I found it somewhat difficult to read because of the awkward (it seemed awkward to me) divides in the lines. I decided that I would try and separate the lines by punctuation. Whenever there was a punctuation, I started a new line. The margins of these lines varied, as well. I tried to be artistic with it. I found that even though I broke up the lines much more than Ashbery did, it was easier to read for me and flowed better in my mind. In the readings, I read that the way a piece is formatted can really change the way it is read. I was tired of seeing the typical poetry layout so I created a different one to suit the way I needed to read poetry in order to understand it.

Response to Thinking With Type

In Thinking With Type, there was a quote that stated, “Text can be solid, liquid, body or blood.” Why blood? I understand the solid, liquid, and body. The “blood” part, however, took a little longer to understand. For some reason, I paired the solid and body form of text together. I do believe that they are different. In the reading, it said that text in body form is so much more that just text. It includes pictures, page numbers, headers, footers, etc. Instead of looking just at the text, the reader must look at all the details that surround the text. This is the entire body of text.

When looking at text in the solid form, I see the typical page in a book that has all the same margins and spacing. Text in solid form is very uniform. I believe it is looked at as a solid because when in a uniform format with margins and the same spacing, it looks like a solid being. The text becomes somewhat of a block of letters.

Text in liquid form is more abstract. The spacing is customized and the margins perhaps have a wave to it. By utilizing these formatting abilities, the text can actually gain phenotypic properties of liquid. Perhaps text in liquid form does not even fill up a full page. Maybe it just trickles down the page in a small wavy line. I like the liquid form of text because it allows a little bit more freedom than solid and body. I know that one could be abstract with solid or body forms, but I think that it would be a little bit harder. Maybe in order to be artistic with text in solid and body forms, the artist will create something like the picture on page 62. It is an actually body formed by words that are overlapping creating an actual solid body form.

Now on to blood… What does this mean? I interpreted it as something that is truly a part of you. This is a creation that came from the artist’s deepest darkest places of creative ability that when it is placed on paper, it is like a part of you is taken from your body and set free.

I thought that the point of typography is to “help readers avoid reading” was quite humorous. The point is true. When looking at my textbooks and books for school, the bolded words and italicized words are always what I jump to first. It helps outline the entire subject that the reader is trying to learn without having to spend time going through all of the fluff.

Another interesting tidbit that I came across was the Kerning effect. It was interesting to me that when the typed text tries to be too uniform, the spacing between some letters actually cause spacing that looks awkward and takes away from the uniform effect that it is trying to achieve. Even with the Kerning scaling applied, to me some of the letters still did not seem in line. Maybe by modernizing text, we are still unable to make it look completely proper.

Class Blog

How does writing create distance?

In my opinion, writing creates distance simply because writing is a form of communication that can be done over a long distance. Even though talking on the phone can be done at great distances, when talking on the phone you are able to hear the voice and feel as if they are right next to you. Writing, as in writing letters, takes a day or two to be received. This causes a lapse in the communication process and definitely distances the people. There isn't the instant gratification in writing as there is in speech. Writing takes a thought that is then processed and actually written out on some object and then it is read by another. This causes the reader to have to read everything before a reaction can be followed through with. When I am writing emails to people, it seems so hard to try and fit everything into a flowing manner when so many questions are asked. It would be so much easier to just answer them one at a time in person.

Second Response to Orality and Literacy

When first reading the selection for today, I was a little confused by the points that were being laid out in front of me. For example, “Print suggests that words are things far more than writing ever did.” I still am not entirely sure on how to interpret that quote. I look at writing and print similar things. Print is just a little more technologically advanced than the actual form of manually writing.

I guess the best way for me to interpret this quote from Ong is to assume some things. He talks about how the printing press has each individual letter before a word is formed on a page. Whereas, in writing, letters are simply figments of our imagination before the ink touches the page to begin to form them. The printing press made letters and words tangible objects before they even made a mark on the paper. I suppose this is the beginning of the transition between oral culture and sight culture/written culture. Actually, Ong would probably disagree that sight and written culture go together. It should probably be printed culture. This is Ong’s whole point that writing did not lead to a sight oriented culture, but printing did.

I thought it was amazing how accountants used to listen to numbers and figures and be able to do taxes based on that. I cannot imagine being able to just hear numbers and be able to figure out whatever it is they figure out. I know that I am a visual person, so I would never be able to do that. I cannot even spell words orally, I have to write them down to make sure it looks right.

That brings me to another topic that comes to mind when I read over this. Since people were very orally drawn, does that mean that “visual people” did not exist before print became such a common practice? Did these “visual people” have to sit and deal with hearing things orally without the use of print? Maybe they were considered the learning disabled because they could not function without something visually stimulating. I know there was not such a thing as a “learning disability” long, long ago, but perhaps these people were considered dumb and were not able to truly show their intelligence because the world they were living in did not function in a way that they were best able to. Now that I think about it more, people were probably just used to functioning orally and writing things down for record purposes only that it did not even cross their mind to do such things differently.

I suppose writing and printing has really changed a lot of things that are so transparent to us. For example, the idea of the a-typical plot did not even exist in oral culture. Ong states that the plot diagram that we have been taught since elementary school was obsolete in oral culture. He says that the plot was more like a knot being tied and then untying that knot. In stories that were expressed orally, people would tell of the problem that occurred in the story and then later explain how that problem came to be, rather than laying out all of the details as the plot progresses. This supposedly helped with being able to memorize the stories or poems being retold. I guess it is easier to remember the main points and fill in the details later.

Class Response

Respond to Ong's assertion that "all verbal expression is bound to sound forever."

I would agree with this assertion only because speech is natural. No matter how primitive it is, some form of speech has always been present. It does not matter if this speech is formal or not, it is simply the fact that there will always be verbal expression to hear. Unless the human population evolves into a vocal chord-less species, than speech will forever be present.

However, I believe that perhaps the importance of verbal expression might change over the course of time. For example in the chapter about how Homer was able to memorize the Odyssey and the Iliad in order to tell his stories, I think that the reasons for oral communication will change. This does not mean that oral communication will cease to exist. I just cannot believe that there would ever be a time in which there would be no verbal expression.

Like I said before, verbal expression is instinct. When something scares you, you may scream or make some sort of noise out of habit. This noise is actually warning others that there is something dangerous near. Nobody would be frightened by something and rush to a pen and paper to write down, "AHHHHHH!!!"

But I suppose there is always room for change.

Response to Orality and Literacy

In the beginning of the first chapter, the idea of language is very different from other readings we have had. In the reading, it talks about how language is not made up of letters and symbols, but of sounds and pronunciation. This seems to be so different from reading about writing technologies because now I am seeing the counterpart to writing.

Another interesting tidbit in the reading today was this quote on page 7.

“The basic orality of a language is permanent.”

In classes before, we were discussing the lasting power of handwritten or printed text. They say that some spoken languages today are not even written because they have not found a way to put the language on a tangible object. How can this be? I guess I never realized that there were still languages out there that did not have a written counterpart. I know now Latin is taught in schools without oral testing, but that is only because barely anybody speaks Latin in normal society. How can a society function in today’s world without a written language?

Another point about the quote above is that it was mentioned that the orality of a language does not mean the new age “computer” language. Well what does it mean? I suppose that it is true that the basic orality does not change, but I believe that the common vernacular is ever changing. The only time the true form of language comes out is in writing. However, basically the oral form of the language remains the same. Most of the basic words are still used, with the same meaning. Geographically pronunciations can differ and words can be used very differently, but people are still able to communicate orally, so I guess that is the main point.

In the second chapter, there was a section called “The Homeric Question.” Robert Wood is cited as claiming that he thinks that Homer was in fact illiterate. He was able to tell the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey by memory. Wood says something about how memory played a very different role in orality then than it does in today’s world. Wood is not sure how Homer was able to memorize these epic novels, but he claims that he did so without having it written down.

I just keep thinking that people must have had a great memory thousands of years ago. How can some people remember these long stories without missing a heartbeat? I would be stumbling over the words, trying to remember exactly what was said. Then again, these stories change over generations and generations. It is just amazing to me that people can memorize these things. I have to write down simple three to five word reminders on post-its just so I remember them.

In the fourth chapter, when I came across the title of it, I simply read over it without truly comprehending it, but then I read over it again and realized how powerful it was without having read the chapter yet.

“Writing Restructures Conciousness”

This is similar to what I have talked about in a past blog about how we are able to get our true feelings out without leaving bits and parts of the point out. I truly believe that even in personal writing people have to think whether or not they want to actually write down what they are thinking.