Lesson 1.2:Hyperlink to a Global World: How the Internet is changing how we perceive stories

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Greetings,

This post is a response to question 7 in lesson 1.2, and will attempt to address the ways in which aspects of “digital literature” are “impacting literature and story” in the modern world (Paterson, Lesson 1.2).

I am eight years old, sitting at my parents old desktop computer, the one that still has to use the phone line to connect to the rather primitive internet connection. I’m on a mission, a quest, like the Arthurian Knights I love to dress up as. I’m on the hunt for stories, expanding on a literature that I’ve recently devoured like the starving little cub I am. I am hungry for knowledge, in this case knowledge about an era that hasn’t yet earned the title “steam-punk”. I don’t even know how to spell the name properly, but with the tenacious fervor of the young, I doggedly pursue primitive search engines for any new material to sate my insatiable obsession. Having consumed everything Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has ever written about his erstwhile detective, I’m searching for some new literature, a new story to capture my imagination, but with those same beloved characters. I discover the world of pastiches and parodies(they’ve updated a little in recent years), long before I know what the words mean, scrolling through antiquated pages of text that are mere cue cards in digital form. These pages contain no extra information, not even the hyperlinks which I will later take for granted when browsing for information, instead I’m forced to write things down to look up on a new page later. It is laborious, and mostly fruitless, and my first attempt at internet searching. I’m looking for something that doesn’t really exist yet, in a world of cutting edge technology that hasn’t quite left the old world behind yet, hasn’t quite matured, much like its user.

I am ten, finding my first ever online Holmes story, printing over a hundred pages which I quickly loose in dust and time, bookmarks still a physical object stuck between the pages of my favourite novels.

I am twelve, discovering a world which I’ve only dreamed of, where anyone can write something down, expanding on existing literature, or inventing a whole new story, imperfect in its gloriously unpolished creativity.

I am fourteen, discovering my tribe through a digital medium, scattered across half the globe and yet right beside my desk.

I am sixteen, an auditory learner doing distance ed-i.e., reams and reams of printed digital text that makes no sense really- who has always struggled with math, suddenly pulling straight As because the teacher chooses an alternative teaching method, posting recorded videos of himself walking one through the steps to solving equations, teaching orally from a completely different city.

I am nineteen, a decade long Tolkien fanatic who suddenly finds a like minded individual to geek out with, using Yahoo Messenger to have a virtual conversation, words typed, tantalizing pauses between key taps instead of breaths, but no less oral, no less “real”.

I am twenty-one, clicking a link on my instructor’s blog, discovering added information about a topic which enriches my reading and learning experience, and engages me with the dialogue in a deeper way, by drawing me in to the topic, that coloured text daring me to click, to discover, to join the conversation and the rest of the world.

The narrative above is designed to highlight some of my own personal experiences with digital forms of literature. As highlighted above, digital mediums such as social media and hyperlinks fundamentally change and reinvent the way we perceive stories and literature, rewriting them, adding depth and layers of meaning which were previously unstated. In the case of the hyperlink, enabling us to learn more about a topic with the click of a button. This is both amazing, but perhaps also damaging. If finding information is now that easy, surely more people will learn about a given topic. But, what happens to traditional research skills. Are they no longer relevant? And what about our imagination? If everything is explained by the click of a button, what is left to the reader’s imagination? Are we no longer passive readers, or were we ever passive at all?

Hypertext’s effect on literature and stories is perhaps more about structure and format than content or medium. In other words, hyperlinks add extra layers of information, and make accessing information much faster and easier, but often act much in the same way appendixes, footnotes, reference books or dictionaries would in printed texts. However, hypertext takes this added information to a whole new level, allowing readers to access information and make connections which ordinary text simply doesn’t have the layers or tools to provide access to. Landow of Brown University suggests that by “emphasizing connections and relations” hypertext “changes the way texts exist” and “the way we read them”(Landow, 1989). This highlights the connection MacNeil makes between orality and digital media, suggesting that digital mediums, in this instance hypertext, could perhaps function as a form of orality, providing information as instantly as if someone was speaking it to another person.

Perhaps an even more obvious change in literature and stories since the advent of social media is the increasing ease with which informal publications, writings, and stories can be circulated, often unedited or published, and even more often for no profit at all. My own personal experience lies more in the world of the so-called “Fanfiction” phenomena, which involves the informal, non-profit publication and sharing of fan writings about existing literatures-the ultimate answer to that hungry questing eight year old.

In more mainstream spheres, the world of blogging has fundamentally changed who can allow their voice to be heard, and who can tell a story and have some expectation that more than the handful of people they meet will ever hear it. More recently, sites like Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook have created features which not only allow stories to be circulated, but allow the authors-and the rest of the world-to know that someone is listening. Reblogging and retweeting can cause one story or idea to be nearly instantly circulated between millions of people, creating an entire new literature of thought and ideas, seconds after the original “author” posted. Tumblr and Twitter also raise points in favour of MacNeil’s observations, as audio and visual files and links become intermixed with text, creating the so-calleld “mixed media” of social media. In these ways, readers become listeners, observers become authors, those who previously have no voice and no way of being heard have an avenue to circulate their stories and ideas. And yet, just as Chamberlin points out in his story about the man who declined to tell his stories because nobody would understand them any longer, it’s not enough to just have a platform to speak on. People have to be willing to listen. Even more importantly, people have to be willing to listen with the realization that it’s possible they won’t understand what they will hear.

References:

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.

 

Fanfiction: Unleash Your Imagination. Fanfiction.net., 1998. Web. May 22, 2014.

Landow, George P. “Hypertext in Literary Education, Criticism, and Scholarship.” Computers and the Humanities. 23.3 (1989): 173-198. Web. May 23, 2014.

Livejournal. Livejournal, Inc., 1999. Web. May 21, 2014.

Louden, Jennifer. “Find Your Tribe.” Jennifer Louden: Savor & Serve. Jennifer Louden, 2012. Web. May 22, 2014.

MacNeil, Courtney. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 1.2: Story and Literature.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies Canadian Literary Genre. UBC, 2014. Web. May 22, 2014.

Redmond, Chris. “Sherlockian.net: Traditional and Print Pastiches.” Sherlockian.net. Chris Redmond, 2014. Web. May 22, 2014.

About Me

Posted on by under Unit 1 and 2 posts

Greetings!

I’m Breanna Simpson, a fourth year UBC Arts student, majoring in English Lit and Classical Studies. My focus is mainly on my Classical Studies degree, and I plan to pursue a Masters program in the subject after completing my fifth and final year in the coming winter session at UBC. My main area of interest is ancient languages and literature, primarily koine greek and greek verse.

I’m currently enrolled in several courses this summer, primarily languages, but EN 470A is my only distance course this term. It is also the first course I’ve ever taken which uses social media as a medium for learning. I’m finding this format both refreshing and surprisingly challenging, thus far. I’m taking the course both to satisfy my Canadian Lit requirement, and to help rectify my own ignorance about Indigenous issues. So far, both the readings and the other course content are proving more than up to the challenge, and I find that my awareness of some issues has already increased.

An online course designed to cultivate and stimulate a critical understanding of Canadian literary canon; what our stories are, where they come from, and how we perceive them, “Oh Canada! “Our Home and Native Land”” seeks to challenge our assumptions about what makes up”our”stories, as we think we know them. It does this by presenting a variety of primary and secondary sources which examine issues of storytelling, colonialism, and racism, from both Indigenous and European perspectives. The course offers a cutting edge approach to utilizing social media to facilitate student learning and participation, turning the sometimes alienating and anonymous world of the WWW into a chance to connect with other students and contribute opinions and content on an entirely different level to the traditional classroom environment. This course joins a growing wave of change in the way learning is presented and experienced, feeding off of the phenomenon of distance education which increased exponentially with the advent of the WWW(Bruce, 1999). Thus far, this course shows every sign of far exceeding Doyle’s(and my own) rather poor opinion of the potential of distance education to become a force of learning capable of rivaling more traditional, classroom based systems.

While in some ways I represent the epitome of a privileged young Canadian WASP, if there is such a thing, my family background, consisting of mostly dirt-poor Irish immigrants and coal miners, coupled with my own experiences growing up as a bullied loner from an extremely fragmented extended family, has led me to often question the labels and categories we freely assign to people based on our cultural and societal preconceptions of how different groups are supposed to behave. I have every hope that this course will enable me to answer some of my own questions about these labels, perhaps through a deconstruction and examination of the socio-political climates that created some of these labels in the first place.

In my personal life, I am a book crazed menagerie owner who adores anything with fur or feathers, works long hours in UBC libraries, and intends to volunteer at the local animal shelter this summer(RAPS-check it out, they’re a great organization with thousands of animals in need of good homes), since three rescue additions in three months has left my living space full to capacity with cages and food pellets. I have great hopes of making lots of new online buddies in this course, and hopefully increasing my understanding of what it means to be Canadian at the same time.

 

Sappho the Parrotlet

References:

Bruce, Bertram. “Education Online: Learning Anywhere, Any Time.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 42.8(1999): 662-665. Web. May 14, 2014.

Richmond Animal Protection Society. RAPS, 2007. Web. May 16, 2014.

Lesson 1.1: Crashlanding in Blogging, 101!

Posted on by under Unit 1 and 2 posts

Greetings! 

My name, as the title of this blog suggests, is Breanna E. Simpson. I’m not telling you what the E. stands for, you’ll just have to guess in the comments! Welcome to my first ever blog.

I am a fourth year Arts student at UBC’s Vancouver Campus, majoring in English Literature and Classical Studies. My main area of interest is ancient languages and literature, primarily koine greek and greek verse.

This is my first online course through UBC, although I completed high school entirely through distance education courses, administered by the VLN(Vancouver Learning Network). It was a digital and WWW run education format which operated several years behind its time in terms of technological and educational standards, and left a residue of excellent online research techniques in my consciousness, but little else besides. One area which was singularly lacking in the curriculum was any formal or in-depth study of First Nations history, cultural, or stories. My focus in university has been on Middle and Old English studies and texts, and my knowledge of First Nations issues is still rather lacking in some areas. I am hopeful that EN 470A will assist me in correcting this deficit, and so far, it has risen to the challenge.

An online course designed to cultivate and stimulate a critical understanding of Canadian literary canon; what our stories are, where they come from, and how we perceive them, “Oh Canada! “Our Home and Native Land”” seeks to challenge our assumptions about what makes up”our”stories, as we think we know them. It does this by presenting a variety of primary and secondary sources which examine issues of storytelling, colonialism, and racism, from both Indigenous and European perspectives. The course offers a cutting edge approach to utilizing social media to facilitate student learning and participation, turning the sometimes alienating and anonymous world of the WWW into a chance to connect with other students and contribute opinions and content on an entirely different level to the traditional classroom environment. This course joins a growing wave of change in the way learning is presented and experienced, feeding off of the phenomenon of distance education which increased exponentially with the advent of the WWW(Bruce, 1999). While some argue that such a “revolution” has not had the growth or impact that one might have expected(see Doyle, 2010), which one could argue is demonstrated by my own rather lackluster experiences with distance education, this medium of education’s potential for providing innovative and interactive learning environments is perhaps unlimited, in my opinion. (Feel free to discuss this issue further in the comments, or argue for a different point of view. I’ve only done some superficial research on this topic so far, and would be interested to hear others perspectives on the value/potential of online education). Thus far, this course shows every sign of far exceeding Doyle’s(and my own) rather poor opinion of the potential of distance education to become a force of learning capable of rivaling more traditional, classroom based systems.

While I’ve touched briefly on my hopes and expectations for this course above, I feel compelled to return to my earlier reflection on my lack of knowledge about Indigenous perspectives and stories, and what this deficit in our primary and secondary educational institutions might mean for the persisting attitudes of racism and silence surrounding the history of Europeans and Canadians’ treatment of Indigenous peoples. I have so far completed the first fifty or so pages of J. Edward Chamberlin’s excellent “If this is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?”, and am finding it both an engaging read, and a rather eye-opening one. For the first chapter and a half, I was struck by the contradictory reaction the book sparked in my consciousness, tapping into familiar language and universal social issues which I have encountered before(I have written several papers on colonialism and “The Other”, most of them for English classes), but in an entirely new context. I was startled to realize that while I recognized the framework of the issues being discussed and presented, the context was completely new. Every time I’ve studied topics of colonialism and the dangers of falling into a “settler’s” viewpoint, and  the prevalent “Us” vs. “Them” attitude, the subject of the discussion has always been far removed, discussing Slavery or the colonial practices in Africa or South America. It’s never been this personal. That both made me uncomfortable, and made me sit up and think, for a lot longer than a moment.

Why is this the first time I’ve ever really directly studied this topic in any formal setting? This is partly due to the teachers and/or courses I had in high school, as my brother, who was several years ahead of me in school, studied Indigenous issues rather heavily. Even so, I was a child who loved history, and devoured every history book, fiction and non-fiction, that I could find for children and young adults in the library. I read books about all aspects of history, from Ancient Egypt to the Slave Trade to the Romanovs. But none about this. Why? It wasn’t by choice as far as I can remember; there simply were no books about Indigenous issues, peoples, or their stories or perspectives readily available to a young person. It wasn’t a part of my education, and that bothers me immensely, partly because I’ve never really thought about this deficit in my own knowledge of my country before.

There was one issue mentioned by Chamberlin which struck a cord, albeit a rather distant one. It was when he discussed the “worthless horses” of the Navajo in Chapter 2, “Doodlers”(35-46). This issue, with Collier’s classification of the “worthless” horses into sheep units and the livestock reduction program, was something that I could at last claim some prior knowledge of. It’s a rather tenuous connection, but the issue was featured as a side plot in a series of novels I read many years ago, by Terri Farley, an author and activist who works to preserve the descendents of those “worthless horses”, some of whom still roam free on American soil. By finding this one tenuously familiar connection to the narrative, the book transformed for me from an informative and eye-opening read to a method of awakening a desire deep in my own consciousness to know, to question, to understand . Intellectually, the idea of questioning the stories one thought one knew is an easy concept  to understand. Emotionally, it’s a rather daunting idea. Once it’s awakened however, it can be a terrifyingly exhilarating and educational ride, as I’m currently discovering. If this course continues as it’s begun, I have a feeling I might never look at “our” stories, or “our” country, the same way again.

                                                                                                            

References:

Bruce, Bertram. “Education Online: Learning Anywhere, Any Time.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 42.8(1999): 662-665. Web. May 14, 2014.

Doyle, William R. “Playing the Numbers: Online Education, the Revolution that Wasn’t.” Change. 41.3(2009): 56-58. Web. May 14, 2015.

Farley, Terri. Phantom News. The Phantom Stallion, 2003. Web. May 14, 2014.

Vancouver Learning Network. VLN, BC’s Largest Online School, 1999. Web. May 14, 2014.

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