{"id":11,"date":"2020-01-21T00:34:58","date_gmt":"2020-01-21T07:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/?p=11"},"modified":"2020-01-21T00:36:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-21T07:36:20","slug":"assignment-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/2020\/01\/21\/assignment-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Assignment 1:3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi, apologies for the late post, I had a really busy Friday and weekend. For assignment 1:3, I chose to answer question 7: “At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality, and suggested that this is happening for a number of reasons.\u00a0 I\u2019d like you to consider two aspects of digital literature: 1) social media tools that enable widespread publication, without publishers, and 2) Hypertext, which is the name for the text that lies beyond the text you are reading, until\u00a0you click. How do you think these capabilities might be impacting literature and story?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, information travels faster than ever because of the internet. With this advantage has come many social media platforms which make the publication of material easier than ever \u2014 material which can then reach millions of people instantaneously.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nowadays, quite literally anyone with internet access and a smartphone or computer can create a profile online. The lack of mediation in people\u2019s publication of content online gives the users creative freedom. The users are thus free to tell whatever story they want with this online presence by simply curating their feed to fit that vision. <\/span><\/p>\n

The combination of this creative freedom and how widespread social media use is around the world has offered different perspectives of this world we all live in. Social media users from different nations and cultures create content that is unique in its own way and this collection of online content becomes representative of their culture \u2014 an example would be the Facebook groups called \u201csubtle (insert culture here) traits<\/a>.\u201d I also find interesting how there exist memes such as baby Yoda nowadays that seem like they have propagated to every Facebook user in the world. The content, usually the caption, of the meme<\/a> is what makes it relatable, making it, by definition, according to Richard Dawkins, a meme: a piece of culture that can be copied from one person to another (1976).<\/span><\/p>\n

Another advantage of the internet and these tools is that they are multidimensional. YouTube, WordPress, and podcasts are examples of platforms that communicate to the audience differently. Videos themselves can be edited so that a single video is indeed aural, visual, and<\/i> textual in nature. This combination allows the way stories are told to be tailored to fit the tellers\u2019 exact specifications. Videos are also more engaging than text; if I had to choose, I myself would prefer to watch a video to learn a concept or skill than only read about it. They are dynamic in such a way that plain text just isn\u2019t \u2014 they are visually and aurally stimulating. This makes videos a a powerful storytelling tool and also blurs the lines between what is oral and a written story. Even plain text can be enhanced with hyperlinks \u2014 they appear simply as blue and\/or bold text, but are links to a whole new piece of digital content that can supplement the original text and lead to a new path of discovery on the web.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stories about the culture of peoples, over time, will perhaps evolve to be captured in digital rather than written form. It is fitting that major social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have a \u201cStory\u201d feature. The chronology of a user\u2019s stories actually itself becomes the story of their life, or at least the version of their life they want to portray to their followers. On a larger scale, cultures can be represented by the collection of content created by people who belong to that culture, like the Facebook groups I mentioned earlier, as well as the memes that have a global reach.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the rise of digital media and globalization, story is more likely, I believe, to prevail as the common ground between all nations and peoples. We all have our own beliefs and traditions, each rooted in the stories that are our own very lives. When we realize that what we have in common is that we all <\/i> have beliefs (Chamberlin, 2013) that gives us our identities, maybe that is when we will understand each other better be able to live in harmony with those who are \u201cdifferent\u201d than we are.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n

Blackmore, Susan. “The Power of Memes.” Scientific American<\/em>, vol. 283, no. 4, October 2000, https:\/\/www.susanblackmore.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/The-Power-of-Memes-Sci-Am-Oct-2000.pdf<\/a>. Accessed 19 January 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chamberlin, Edward. \u201cInterview with J. Edward Chamberlin.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0Writer\u2019s Caf\u00e9, http:\/\/writerscafe.ca\/book_blogs\/writers\/j-edward-chamberlin_if-this-is-your-land-where-are-your-stories.html<\/a><\/i><\/span>. Accessed 19 January 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene.<\/i> Oxford University Press, 1976.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kwai, Isabella. “How \u2018Subtle Asian Traits\u2019 became a global hit.” The New York Times<\/em>, 11 Dec. 2018, https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/12\/11\/world\/australia\/subtle-asian-traits-facebook-group.html<\/a>. Accessed 20 January 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi, apologies for the late post, I had a really busy Friday and weekend. For assignment 1:3, I chose to answer question 7: “At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/crodriguezengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}