I found this week to be very interesting and actually reassuring to hear about what communication might look like in the future. In her video, Shannon Vallor did a great job explaining where AI was likely to go and how AI can be used to make good social change. Having watched many movies about cyborgs taking over the world, she made me feel at ease when she explained that this type of technology is extremely far away from being achieved. Although we can’t really predict the future it was interesting to hear the thoughts and opinions of some of the leaders in these technologies. I especially like the discussion from Vanderbilt University with Doug Fraser, Corbette Doyle, and Jaco Hamman  (This is where I got the inspiration for my two narratives). Even though they all had different educational backgrounds and expertise, they had similar thoughts about the future of AI and its challenges.  I particularly found it interesting when they discussed the ethics of AI and what that meant for its future. Corbette Doyle brought up the idea of humans having personal androids (or AI personal assistants) to be used as extensions of humans where they can be conscious and prompt for wisdom (Bruff, 2019). To me, this is a scary thought but with how fast technology is growing it could be a likely scenario.  Another interesting topic that was brought up from a question from the audience, was the problems that current AI has with intersectionality. Everyone seemed to agree with this but Doug Fraser admitted that it is a current problem with AI but he thinks that AI, if designed correctly, could do a better job with these issues than any human could. He was very optimistic that AI could take in all of the factors and limit bias to solve the problems of intersectionality (Bruff, 2019). As I reflect on the challenges and concerns with AI, machine learning, and automation, I want to be optimistic too but I think there will  hesitancy when using this technology. See my 2 Speculative Futures in the videos below.

References

Bruff, D. (Host). (2019, May 12). Leading Lines (No. 60-The Future of Digital Literacies) [Audio podcast episode]. https://soundcloud.com/leadinglines/episode-060-future-of-digital-literacies-faculty-panel

Vallor, S. (2018, November 6). Lessons from the AI Mirror [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40UbpSoYN4k&t=824s

Resisting the Attention Economy. (2020)

The “Attention Economy” has become a major issue in the world and it is affecting billions of people. It effects how people use the internet, how they communicate, how they shop, what news they receive, how they vote, and how they think, etc. In Tristan Harris’ 2017 TED Talk he says “What we don’t talk about is a handful of people working at a handful of technology companies through their choices will steer what a billion people are thinking today.” (Harris, 2017, 00:41) This is a major problem and many people in the industry are waving the red flags. In most cases, it is not as a result of poor intentions but as a result of the business models and algorithms that are currently in place with the single goal of making the most profits as possible. When most web or UX designers build websites they are most often done with good intentions but it is not always true. Some individuals and groups have been able to use these algorithms in bad faith to manipulate and take advantage of people to acquire some sort of monetary or power gain. Users may not even know that they are being manipulated until the damage it done. Also, sometimes the results of good intentions are actually not good at all either. There are many ways to design websites that grab our attention, alter our behaviors, and manipulate us into clicking or entering different websites. These can sometimes be wanted or sometimes unwanted by users. Most often users are unaware that these things are being done to them behind the scenes. Therefore, it is important for the word to get out, so that users can be aware of this and limit the chances of these unwanted results.

“User Inyerface” is a web based game that was designed to show how manipulative/tricky Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) can be. It contains web design elements that are meant to draw a users attention and/or to steer them in a certain direction. Our task this week was to play the game and reflect on our experience. At first, when I went to the website, I thought it just had a bunch of “bugs” which prevented it from working correctly, but then realized that it was designed to fool the user. For example, on the first page there is a big green circle button with the text “No” inside. In normal circumstances, this green button would be a button that you would click to start a game because the general public knows it stands for “Go”. However, in this case when I clicked on it, the site didn’t do anything. Again, I was drawn to this green button as it really stood out but it had no use. Also on the first page, it said “Please click HERE to GO to the next page“. Normally underlined or highlighted words are where users click, but in this case I had to click on the word “HERE” to go to the next page. Even at the beginning of the game I was confused and frustrated. What if clicking on these buttons or words took me to an unwanted site or exposed some of my personal data? I would have no way of knowing.

Once I got to the next page, I had to enter a password, email account, and accept the terms & conditions to continue. This brought up a few issues for me, one being that I was weary of providing my email address to an unknown website. So instead of using my own email address I just made one up.  Another problem for me here was there was a timer that counted how much time it was taking me to fill out the form and below the timer there were flashing numbers. This immediately changed my behavior and affected how I was playing the game by speeding up my typing and making me a bit nervous. Unfortunately, I was not quick enough and a warning window popped up . See below.

This warning pop-up was confusing as well because I couldn’t get back to the main page. I thought if I clicked the green button that said “Back”, it would take me back to the main page but this didn’t do anything. I had to actually click on the word “close” which was in small text and written in the bottom corner of the window. If I didn’t try to click on the word “close”, the game would have been over for me. To make it even more frustrating and nerve-racking, the popup had a message that said “Hurry up, time is ticking!”

As I continued on through this game, there were more and more confusing forms and prompts. The way the toggles, checkboxes, and buttons worked were not how they normally work on websites. The way this website game was designed definitely affected my behaviour through persuasion and manipulation. But this goes to show how easily others can be persuaded and/or manipulated to do certain things on the web. It is the architecture and algorithms behind the scenes that allow the website to do this.  See a video of my gameplay below.

This week’s module was very eye-opening for me even though I have watched “The Social Dilemma” and know about these issues of the attention economy, online privacy, and persuasion algorithms. In Zeynep Tufekci’s 2017 TED talk video she talks about how the same algorithm architecture that is used for advertisements to persuade us to consume, is that same algorithm architecture that is being used to manipulate our thinking and politics (Tufekci, 2017). She says “As a public and as citizens, we no longer know if we are seeing the same information or what anybody else is seeing. And without a common basis of information, little by little public debate is becoming impossible.” (Tufekci, 2017, 15:28) She also says “The algorithms do not know the difference. The same algorithms that are put upon us to make us more pliable for ads are also organizing our political, personal, and social information flows.” (Tufekci, 2017, 18:35). Every time I hear about this it makes me frustrated and a bit angry yet I still continue to use the web and some of these controlling/manipulative social media platforms. It shouldn’t have to be this way. The web shouldn’t be a place for deception or manipulation just so organizations and companies can gain profit, power, and control. I am hopeful that the world is waking up to these issues and that citizens will continue to push back. Individuals should have the right to the their privacy, their own data, and the same factual information.

References

Harris, T. (2017). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day.
Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention?language=en

Tufekci, Z. (2017). We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. Retrieved from (Links to an external site.) https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads?language=en (Links to an external site.)

User Inyerface. (2019). User Inyerface – A worst-practice UI experiment [Image]. https://userinyerface.com/

Zigmond,D. (2020). Resisting the Attention Economy [Image]. Tricyle.org https://tricycle.org/magazine/jenny-odell-attention-economy/

Last week, my classmates and I were tasked with completing the Golden Record quiz where each of us had to choose 10 out of the 27 golden record songs that were sent to space on the Voyager spacecraft in the 1970s. After the quizzes were complete, our instructors took all of the data (songs we chose) and linked it all together using code to produce a .json file. This file contained all of our song selections and linked us together based on the songs that we selected. Once we had the .json file we had to load it into a web application called Palladio which created visuals of our dataset including graphs and charts, etc. Below is an example of a screenshot of a graph of our dataset in Palladio. This is a data visualization.

Data visualizations  like the ones presented here are a form of text or visual language and are meant to show data in a way that can be more easily interpreted by humans than just numbers in tables. Algorithms are run on the data behind the scenes to make connections with that data which is displayed in a graphical form. See the data visualization below.

The Palladio software was easy to use and allowed me to analyze the data in a number of different ways. The graph above is one example and it shows the relationships between the curators (i.e. students) and the tracks (i.e. songs chosen from the Golden Record). The nodes are represented as bubbles and the edges are represented as connecting lines (Systems Innovation, 2015). Each highlighted (dark grey colour) bubble (i.e. node) represents a track and the size of the track represents how often that track was chosen. In other words, the larger the bubble, the more often that track or song was chosen by my classmates and I. It is hard to tell from this screenshot, but the track that was chosen most (16 times) was “Flowing Stream”. The tracks that were chosen the least (4 times) were “The Well-Tempered Clavier” and “Wedding Song”.  The non-highlighted (light grey colour) bubbles represent the curators where the size is determined based off of how many tracks where chosen. You can notice that most of these bubble sizes are the same because most curators chose 10 songs. Another observation that can be inferred from this graph is the grouping of curators. The closer curators are together means that they had more similarities in the songs that they chose and vice versa, the further away curators are from each other, the greater differences in song choices they had.

The second graphic above shows the connections between my song choices and my classmate Emily’s, who I shared the most connections with. Looking at this data visualization you can see that of the ten songs we chose, seven were the same. Unfortunately, this visualization is limited and these connections are one of the only things that can be interpreted. Yes, Emily and I chose seven of the same songs, but why? Was there reasoning behind our choices? One would assume yes but from an outsider just looking at the visualization, the reasonings (or variables) are difficult to determine or in this case not even known. Did Emily choose her songs based off the same criteria I used? Why did she choose the other songs that were different from mine? Were there other variables that influenced our songs choices like politics, emotions, culture, age, gender, or education level? Again, it is difficult to tell. This is one of the downsides of simple data visualizations like the ones presented here, as a lot is left up to the individual to analyze what is displayed. There is no story. Without more detail (connections, visuals, or text) these questions can not be answered and a story cannot be made.

As algorithms and digital technology have advanced overtime, individuals are now able to create data visualizations that tell real stories. Companies like Tableau can allow users take data and turn it into graphics and dashboards that can tell stories and/or “paint a picture”. Currently, these Tableau dashboards are being used by businesses/organizations to monitor, track, and analyze their data in order to make better decisions and/or improve operation efficiencies. Others are using dashboards to share stories about social or environmental issues. Below is just an example of how a dashboard (i.e. data visualization) can create a story from data.

Coral Bleaching #Viz4ClimateAction (Randive,2021)

https://public.tableau.com/views/CoralBleaching_16329323967840/Dashboard2?:language=en-US&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link

As data continues to be created and collected, visualizations will continue to be used to help explain that data. Even though algorithms are advancing to create these visualization automatically, it will still be important for humans to be involved to help tell the stories.

References

Randive, S. (2021, September 29). Coral Bleaching #Viz4ClimateAction [Image]. Tableau. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/shweta.randive/viz/CoralBleaching_16329323967840/Dashboard2

Systems Innovation. (2015, April 18). Graph Theory Overview [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82zlRaRUsaY&t=176s

What’s In That Bag? Trivia Podcast

Links to Podcast

https://open.spotify.com/show/5Qom95fh796Jwpjp3TG1LR

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4kjDKLMoBbdkkOSe9MrXwC?si=d889b0d338b54e8d

https://anchor.fm/daniel-macleod6/episodes/Episode-1-Whats-in-that-work-bag-e196oqn

Podcast Transcript

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WmnONbd7YvJpnELCh-Bob-MY_8rJckid/view?usp=sharing

Reflection

This week was all about digital and multiple literacies and how the advancement in technology in the 20th century has expanded literacy and the ways in which humans communicate. Whether it is through print like text-messaging, audio like in podcasts, or visual like in multimedia etc., all of these text forms of literacy have expanded through the evolution of our linguistics, social environments, and cultures. One challenge that Dobson and Willinsky’s (2009) discussed is the “digital divide”, which suggests the division between who gets and who doesn’t get access to digital technology. In the 80s and 90s accessibility issues were likely caused by the high costs and low connectivity of these technologies but they were definitely a result of political and social problems too (Dobson & Willinsky, 2009). As costs have come down and connectivity has gone up, the digital divide has become narrower but even today there are still populations that are trying to catch up or left behind. Even when we do have access there is such an abundance of technologies that coincide with traditional print that makes it challenging for us to keep up with, especially for older generations of people who are not as familiar with how these technologies work. Mabrito and Medley (2008) discuss the challenges at colleges where professors have to change how they teach to meet the needs of today’s learners who have grown up using digital technologies. They discuss differentiating “digital natives” (Net Generation or Millennial students)  from “digital immigrants” (Pre Net Generation professors) where the latter is having to learn all of these new forms of digital literacy just to keep up (Mabrito and Medley, 2008). Even being a millennial myself, with the continued evolution of digital technology I am finding myself getting more and more lumped into the  “digital immigrant” category. With so much digital technology, it’s extremely difficult to keep up with and has even made this week’s task a bit challenging.

For this week’s task, I had to transform or “mode- bend” my submission for Task 1 – What’s in your bag? This was a challenging task, as I had to think hard about how I would change what I did for task #1 in a way that was in-line with what the New London Group discussed about needed changes in literacy pedagogy and their ideas about multiliteracies. So after thinking long and hard, I decided to do a podcast. Although I have listened to many podcasts before, for this task, I stepped out of my comfort zone as I have never created my own podcast before. I was willing to give it a try and luckily I was able to find a website that made it fairly easy. 

For my podcast, I wanted to include more than just a verbal form of text as well as make it fun. So I decided to make it a trivia game and included different aspects of audio and visual like sound clips, music, and images to make it more engaging and entertaining. Using Task 1 as a reference I used bits and pieces while making some alterations to still represent the purpose of the task. To start I altered the name calling my podcast “What’s in that bag?” instead of “What’s in your bag?”. I then gave the title “What’s in that work bag? for the episode. I chose 10 items that were from my work bag in task 1 and then came up with descriptions/questions for each. In my podcast I gave an introduction and then asked the questions giving the listeners 10 seconds to guess before moving on to the next question. Some of the questions had audio hints as well. At the end I simply read the questions again and gave the answers just like a typical trivia game. 

Using audio was a great alternative to the simple text that was used in task 1. I thought it allowed for a more engaging exercise but also another option for those who wouldn’t want to read written text. I really enjoyed this task but it was challenging to make the podcast flow in a way that was easy for the listener. I did a lot of editing to make the podcast work but I probably could have spent a lot more time trying to make it perfect. Even as I reflect on this now I am thinking about what I could have done or what I could have added to make the podcast better. Overall, I have gained a better understanding of multiliteracies and how our diverse cultures and changing social environments affect digital literacies. I even gained a better appreciation for podcasts as I once thought that they were simple but now realize that they take a lot of effort to make them well.

References

Dobson, T., & Willinsky, J. (2009). Digital Literacy. In D. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 286-312). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mabrito, M. & Medley, R. (2008). Why professor johnny can’t read: Understanding the net generation’s texts. Innovate: Journal of Online Education: Vol. 4:6, Article 2.

The New London Group.  (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. (Links to an external site.)  Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.

Reflection

For this task I had to select a recent book, tv show, or movie then write the title and plot using only Emojis . Please see the entry above. In chapter 4 of Bolter’s book, he discusses how the evolution of print technologies have allowed or encouraged humans to move from a linguistic (text) culture into more of a visual (graphic) culture for communication (Bolter, 2001). With the arrival of computers and the web, visual culture has grown even further and has become a dominant form of communication even to this day. In 2021, visual culture is still going strong and continues to grow with the evolution of technology (examples: video chat, holograms, emojis, memojis, VR, gifs, etc.).

One of the most interesting developments in visual communication in the past twenty years has been “Emojis”. According to Grannan (n.d.) from Briticanna.com, Emojis are pictographs of faces, objects, and symbols. They are the successor to the earlier emoticons which were glyphs or icons built in ASCII (a type of character code system) and read sideways (Grannan, n.d.) . Emoticons were used in electronic communication to represent emotions in a more graphical way then from a traditional textual method. When discussing emoticons, Bolter (2001) says, “such icons are meant to put the verbal text in context, as the writer tries to enforce a univocal interpretation on prose that is otherwise open to many interpretations.” (Bolter, 2001, p.72) Early emoticons were able to do some of this and modify traditional text. They were able to represent some emotions but they were still leaving room for many interpretations. With emojis, there are many more options for representing emotions or text but it still can be a challenge if there is no text (prose) to accompany them. You can see from my image above, emojis alone, by themselves, still make it difficult for the reader to interpret.

For this task, I used the emojis from my Notes app on my iPhone. I tried to use emojis to represent words and ideas, not so much syllables. I started with the title and then worked my way through the plot. I chose to start with the title because I thought this would be the easy part and if I couldn’t use emojis to represent the title, then using them for the plot, I thought, would be near impossible. From the many emojis that I had access to with my iPhone I think I was able to do a decent job choosing them to represent what I was trying to describe. I selected each emoji and organized them in a way that I thought was best for the reader to interpret and understand. Using just emojis to communicate was not that simple as there was a limited selection of emojis to use and they were more difficult to access as opposed to the letters that are present on the keypad. Having completed this task, I have a better appreciation for using emojis and will most likely use them more when I text. I still prefer regular text but I can see the value emojis have especially when you can’t quite get your message across or convey your emotions using text alone. Overall, this was a fun challenge and I hope my readers can translate my Emoji story!

References

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110

Grannan, C. (n.d.). What’s the Difference Between Emoji and Emoticons? Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-emoji-and-emoticons

A Day On The Water

Click on the link below to read the story.

A Day On The Water

Reflection

For Task 5 I had to create a game using the application called Twine. Twine is an opened source tool that allows users to create games and “Choose your own adventure” stories. Having learned all about hypertext and its history in this past week’s module, this was a great activity to experiment with and reflect on hyperlinks and how they have transformed writing/literature to what it is today. Bolter (2001) says, hypertext is “a path through virtual space” (Bolter, 2001, p. 29). Bolter (2001) also makes a good analogy when he says “a hypertext is like a printed book that the author has attacked with a pair of scissors and cut into convenient verbal sizes” (Bolter, 2001, p. 35). Twine is basically a virtual platform that uses hyperlinks to link text and passages together allowing readers move though text and space on their own choosing. It is a simple to use program and I like think that Twine is a modern version of how Ted Nelson and Vannevar Bush would have envisioned hypertext to be.

Unlike a printed book where the reader is kind of directed to read from start to finish, the text in Twine can be put on many different and linked pages. Depending on the reader, they can choose what links to click on and what text to read depending on their own interest. If used to develop a “choose your own adventure” story, which I have developed here, it allows reader to actively make decisions based on what they read and how they feel. The text is not fixed and the reader is not forced to read all the text or from start to finish. The developer can also add different text formats, colors, images, sounds, and video, etc., which all bring a very different dynamic to the reader’s experience. When developing my story, I initially didn’t include sound effects but I think it really makes a huge difference for the reader. The sounds effect how the reader feels and perhaps the sound even effects how the reader chooses their path.

Although this task took me a long time to complete, being my my first Twine experience, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I actually wanted to spend more time trying to perfect my story and learn how to add new features like video, etc. Before this module, I never really took notice but hypertext was a huge revolution in how literature and text is experienced by the reader. It gives readers the freedom to choose what they want to read and connects everything they read together. On the other hand, this freedom can lead consequences as well, depending on what path the reader chooses. This makes me think about all of the information that is on web and how you can really go down ‘a rabbit hole’ when clicking on links. Hyperlink technology has provided a great way to read and interpret an abundance of information but their are risks when clicking on links too. Readers must be cautious too as the paths and networks that hyperlinking provides might lead the reader to unwanted places where there is false information or malware/viruses. It seems like with all technology (hyperlinks included), when it is initially developed there are always good intentions in mind but there also are always people who will try to use it to take advantage of others. As educators, it is therefore important to make sure our students are aware the risks involved with using technology and how to avoid the risks so that they can use it in a good and safe manner.

References

Bolter, J. (2001). Writing space: computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. New York, NY: Routledge.

Option 2 – Potato Printing

Reflection

Task 4 involved choosing a 5 letter word and making a stamp to print that word on a piece of paper. The word that I chose was the word “OCEAN” as you can see in the image of the finished product above. Before I got started I watched the short video that was provided on how to make a stamp using a potato. On initial thought, it looked fairly simple and I guessed that it would only take me a couple of minutes to make. Oh, how I was wrong. I used one potato to make two stamps and decided to carve out three letters (OCE) on one half and two letters (AN) on the other. This was fairly easy and took only about 10 minutes to complete. However, after painting the letters and then going to press the stamps on the paper, I realized that some of my letters would be backwards. I should have known. In order to print the word so that it was legible, I had to re-think how I was going to carve the letters into the potato. Luckily, I made the stamps using capital letters so for the “OCE” stamp I just flipped it and stamped it on the paper so the letter “O” came first. For the “AN” stamp I had to re-carve the letters so that letter “N” came first and letter “A” second. I also had to carve the letter “N” so that it was backwards. All of this work took me an extra 20-30 minutes to complete the task. This was actually challenging and a bit frustrating so I can only imagine how frustrating it was for early writers who had to use tools like styluses, chisels, or stamps.

On the episodes of the podcast, Stuff To Blow Your Mind, entitled “From the Vault: Invention of the Book”, Part 1 and 2, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick discussed how early forms of text technology have adapted over time. As part of their discussion they talked about the difficulties of pre-mechanized writing, how time consuming and how much effort was required just to inscribe simple text. For example, they mention early forms of pre-mechanized books such as Mesopotamian clay tablets that were hand written cuneiform scripts that were inscribed using reeds and then baked in a fire. They also mentioned Egyptian papyrus rolls that were made of strips of the papyrus plant that were overlapped, held together with pith, and then dried.  To inscribe their text they used a brush and ink (Lamb & McCormick, 2020, 28:00). These are just two examples of laborious writing techniques that must have been frustratingly time consuming similar to the potato stamp.

Looking at it from another point of view, these early writing tools were all what was known at the time so people might have thought these frustrating mistakes were just part of the writing process. Like in the video “Medieval Helpdesk in English”, what seems simple to use now, like understanding how to navigate a book, printing with stamps would have been difficult for the inexperienced. However, once they practiced and became more experienced with stamps it would have been much easier.  So for myself, if I practiced more potato printing it would surely be much simpler. Looking back on this task, I think the mechanization of writing is no question one of the greatest inventions of all time. Writing a book with a printing press would definitely be easier and less frustrating than writing a book with handmade potato stamps. The mechanization of writing not only eased the pain and frustrations for people but also opened the doors to transferring knowledge quicker and to a wider audience.

References

Medieval helpdesk in English. (2008, February 23). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUQRbqc2qtY&feature=emb_imp_woyt

Lamb, R., & McCormick, J. (Hosts). (2020, May 26). From the Vault: Invention of the Book. [Audio podcast episode]. In Stuff to Blow Your Mind. iHeartRadio. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-to-blow-your-mind-21123915/episode/from-the-vault-invention-of-the-82316952/?keyid%5B0%5D=Stuff%20To%20Blow%20Your%20Mind&keyid%5B1%5D=From%20the%20Vault%3A%20Invention%20of%20the%20Book%2C%20Part%201&sc=podcast_widget

For task # 3, I was challenged with coming up with an anecdote, speaking it into a microphone to convert it from voice-to-text, and then analyzing the written text. To complete this task I used the microphone from my Logitech headset and the software application called Speechnotes, to convert the speech to text. The anecdote that I came up with was a little story about the first time my best friend met my 1 year old daughter.  See the text results below in italics and the analysis that follows.

Text

This is story about my friends first encounter with my daughter so few weeks ago my best friend growing up came to visit me from Ontario and it’s been a long time since I seen him because of the whole pandemic and him not being able to travel home due to the restrictions and everything it was great to have him come is actually the first time he got to meet my daughter who is just over a year-and-a-half he was play excited to meet her and we even prepped her for his visit so that she wouldn’t be shocked to see a stranger in her house she is shy with new people and can be a little direct when telling us that she doesn’t like or want something my body is at all funny extroverted and sometimes loud individual unlike my wife and I so we were a bit concerned how she would take him when he came to visit so for a couple weeks leading up to his visit we should have pictures and told her that he would be coming to stay with us for a few days and it seems like she was okay with everything she actually seemed happy and was saying his name every day even though she didn’t have a lot of vocabulary yet however the day before we came we took a video of her and again told her that he was coming guess who’s coming tomorrow while eating strawberries she smiled and said Joel my wife responded and said to her that’s right Joel need to visit us tomorrow and you’re going to say hi. That is when she smiled back to her and the camera and said by Joel anyway today I pick up my friend from the airport and took him home to my house on the drive I told him that my daughter was a bit shy and that she might not take him take him so quickly he understood so when we arrived at home we went into the house and went downstairs to where my daughter was playing with my wife and I said look who’s here my friend Joel my friend waved said hi nice to meet you what are you up to she was actually playing with their basketball and shooting it into her toy poop she didn’t respond my friend who is a huge basketball guy seemed excited and picked up the ball to play gaster can I play she looked at him but again didn’t now my buddy and I played basketball together high school and he actually played and University so basketball was his thing and he was very good at it he was also very prideful and knew that he was going to do so while everyone is watching chill takes the ball and shoots it up a small toy basketball hoop hits the back of the rim and misses been my daughter ball and says Joel Shoot Miss we all started falling over laughing this was a hilarious way for my friend to meet her

Analysis

How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

This text deviates from the conventions of written English by barely having any punctuation; using poor sentence structure and poor grammar; and using improper capitalization. For example, the whole text is like an enormous run-on sentence where there are no periods, quotations, question marks, exclamation marks, etc. Written English has specific rules and standards but this translation doesn’t follow the rules as it seems to just try to translate the words that were spoken. This leaves the reader confused and  a lot to be desired.

What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

Surprisingly, there is less “wrong” in this text than I would have thought. Yes, there are some misspelled/incorrect words (replaced hoop with “poop”) and there is no punctuation at all but it was able to capture most of what I had to say in terms of capturing most of my spoken words. When I was first introduced to voice-to-text technology a number of years ago the applications seemed to produce a lot of misspelled words but this application from Speechnotes was fairly good with spelling. Most of the spoken words were picked up but without punctuation and proper sentence structure it is difficult to truly understand the story. So what is “right” is the correct spelling of most of the spoken words and the order that the words were written.

What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?

The most common mistakes are the lack of punctuation. Without the punctuation it is really difficult for the reader to interpret what the speaker/writer was trying to say. Punctuation is used to help tell the reader when there are pauses in the story and it also helps the writer put meaning into a story. It leaves the written text without emotion. For example, I laughed a couple of times when I was speaking my story but none of that was converted into text.

What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?

If I had scripted the story the resulting text would have been more accurate with the spelling of words and use of descriptive words. The text result from the conversion still probably would lack punctuation but with the correct spelling of all the words it would have been easier for the reader to understand. Scripted writing would have probably given the text more structure but would have been more constrained and less spontaneous. 

In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling? 

There is a lot that is different between oral storytelling and written storytelling. Oral storytelling requires a lot of memorization skill and performance to actually keep the reader’s attention. Good oral storytelling utilizes facial expressions and body gestures to aid in the delivery of a story. These aids really help the listener understand the emotion and thoughts that the storyteller has. Another unique part of oral storytelling is that speaker can actually change their story in the moment depending on how the listener is receiving the story. For example: if an oral story starts out with a lack of expression, the speaker can adjust their story and add in more expression to keep the listener’s attention. 

Written storytelling lacks these visuals and gestures so there has to be more words that are used to bring meaning and understanding to a story. “Although writing is secondary to language, it often enjoys higher prestige. Writing is generally done more deliberately than speaking, so finished written pieces are much more carefully crafted than a typical spoken sentence. Written texts can thus convey their message more precisely, adding to the sense that writing is worth more than speech” (Gnanadesikan, 2011, pg. 5). For example, if an oral storyteller “shouts” in their story, the way they shout (how loud and with certain tones) then the listener has a better understanding of the “shout”. Whereas in writing, if the writer says “the boy shouts”, well the reader doesn’t really know how the boy shouted. In this case, writers would use adverbs to give more meaning to the actions that they are writing about. So instead of saying “the boy shouts”, a good writer would say “the boy shouts wildly!”

Written storytelling also requires the reader to interpret more of the thoughts, ideas, and emotions that the writer is trying to convey. Different readers could read written stories differently. In Ong’s reading he discusses the inability to study oral storytelling unlike with written storytelling which can be studied due the the symbols of punctuation the use of descriptive words that are present in the written text. Ong says “Written words are residue. Oral tradition has no such residue or deposit.” (Ong, 2002, p.11) This shows that written stories leave a mark allowing each reader to decode and interpret the story on their own. Oral stories differ in that they rely on the speaker to guide the listener through the story.

References

Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011). “The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons. (pp. 1-10).

Ong, Walter, J. Taylor & Francis eBooks – CRKN, & CRKN MiL Collection. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. New York; London: Routledge.

Hello everyone, my name is Grant MacLeod and I am a Canadian East Coaster having grown up and lived in the province of Nova Scotia most of my life. I have fallen into an interesting job where I am predominantly a technician (oceans technologist!) but I also train and educate individuals on the use of technology used in the field of fisheries/oceanology. My job is unique and my tasks are actually very broad as my team’s main responsibility is to help improve the efficiency of our fishing practices as well as our company’s understanding of and the sustainability of our targeted species populations (clams, scallops, lobster, shrimp, etc.). This is not an easy job and requires that we are versatile to achieve our team goals. This also means that we need a lot of tools and gear to complete our work.

This post is a response to the Task #1 assignment for my ETEC 540 -Text and Technologies course. For reference, this task was completed on 9/17/2021.

For this task I am sharing with you my work bag which I commonly carry. Its contents are usually consistent but can change depending on what is needed for a specific job. My work environment also changes from the company’s office, to my home office, to onboard fishing vessels, to the workshop, or to other company, university, or organization’s facilities. In the image that you see above, are the contents that were most recently inside my work bag (Surprisingly, there is less in my bag than usual). See the list below:

• 1 backpack (N)
• 1 water bottle (N)
• 1 laptop PC (N)
• 1 power cable (N)
• 1 wireless keyboard (W)
• 1 wireless mouse (W)
• 1 headset (W)
• 1 earbuds (W)
• 4 coins (2 toonies, 2 quarters) (W)
• 1 bag of Cough Drops (lemon and honey) (W)
• 1 pack of gum (W)
• 3 coffee rewards cards (W)
• 1 exacta knife (N)
• 1 green highlighter (W)
• 1 black pen (W)
• 1 precision screwdriver set (N)
• 2 SSD external hard drives (N)
• 1 ethernet patch cable (N)
• 1 phone charger cable (N)
• 1 pair of Steel Toe boots (N)
• 1 hardhat (N)
  

Note: My cellphone is missing from the photo because I used it to take the picture.

Need = N

Want = W

What is your daily need for the items in your bag?

These items that I contain in my bag are some out of necessity but some are just out of pure desire or want. For example I need my laptop PC and my power cable to complete most of my daily work tasks yet I want to have juicy fruit gum because I like the taste, it reminds me of childhood, and it helps me focus. Above I have coded the items by letter which items I feel are a Need (N) or a Want (W).

A couple items as of note are:

1. Steel Toe boots and hardhat – Although these items don’t always fit in my bag they are important for my work. I often work on large fishing vessels and it is company policy to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) while on board. If I am at the dock, these two items usually suffice but if I’m at sea more PPE is required. I’m sure you can guess what that is. 
2. Bag of cough drops – I usually carry a bag of lemon and honey cough drops just in case I get a cold. I interact with a lot of people so having cough drops is great to have available, although I noticed that this bag is expired. Looks like I will have to get a new bag.
3. Headset – My need for a headset is so that I can communicate and complete my work without distractions in whatever environment I am in. They help block out background noise. For example, the headset is great when I am at the office and there are noise distractions around me.  
4. Coffee Rewards Card – I am a coffee drinker and I usually make coffee at home or in the office. However, sometimes when I am on the road I like to purchase McDonald’s coffee. I like the taste and it’s usually a good price. I try to collect stamps and use the rewards cards because I find free coffee tastes even better.

How might these items be considered “texts” and what do they say about you, the places you inhabit, the cultures with which you engage, and/or the activities you take up?

Many of these items can be considered texts or mostly have text imprinted on them. Most of the text relates to the branding for the items and were chosen because of a preference that I had for those particular items. For example, I have 1 water bottle with a plastic label with printed ink text. The text indicates the brand of the item and the message that the company wants to display to its customers. I usually choose Big Eight (Sobeys Brand) water because I find it tastes the best and it comes from an aquifer in the area that I grew up in. This shows that I value taste and appreciate where I come from. Perhaps it shows that I can be slightly biased too, haha.

Having a laptop PC and other digital devices shows that I work in a field that requires the use of these technologies and shows that I engage with tech culture. It shows that I must have some ability to use these items as well.

Another interesting note is that although it might not be visible, a lot of these items (like my boots, hardhat, harddrives, etc.) are labelled with my name. This probably shows that I like to be organized and don’t like my things going missing. Labelling is a form of text that helps prove ownership and allows for better organization.

Thinking about the title of the course, what are the “text technologies” in your bag, if any? What do these items say about how you engage with language and communication?

The text technologies that are in my bag are mainly my laptop PC and my cellphone (which I often carry in my bag but mostly in my pocket). These are both digital devices and I use them both for work and personal activities like for this course. I use them to send/receive email, take notes, work on text documents, for research, and send text messages, etc. This shows that I communicate mostly through the use of digital technology. I also have a pen and highlighter in my bag but no writing surface (i.e. notebook) to actually use them on, which is quite funny. Perhaps this shows that note taking by hand or print technology is still present in my work but not as valuable to me compared with digital technology.

Another item(s) that could be considered a “text technology” are the two SSD hard drives that I keep in my bag. These devices contain a lot of text, images, and videos and for my job, I collect and analyze a lot of this type of data. Having these devices shows that storage of data is important to my job and I require lots of it.  

How does the narrative of the (private) contents of your bag compare with the narrative produced by the image you have of yourself or the image you outwardly project?

I think the contents of my bag give an indication of what I need to do for my job but not necessarily what my job is. For example: having a precision screwdriver set indicates that I need this item for work, to remove and insert small fasteners, but it doesn’t give indication that I work in the oceans technology field. Also, by just looking at an image of me I don’t think one would think that I work in this field. None of the items on my bag project this either. Based on these items some might guess that I am an IT technician or a construction worker.

What would this same bag have looked like, say, 15 or 25 years ago? How do you imagine an archeologist aiming to understand this temporal period might view the contents of your bag many years in the future?

The contents of my bag would look very different 25 years ago. 25 years ago, I wouldn’t have a laptop because I wouldn’t be working from home and therefore wouldn’t need to transport a computer in my bag. I would have a desktop computer at my office. I also wouldn’t need (or have) a wireless keyboard and mouse either (I don’t think these weren’t even invented back then). If I had a hard drive, it would be much bigger in size. I might not even have had bottled water because it was less common back then. 

What I would have is a notebook (probably more than 1) and more pens, pencils, and other writing tools. The backpack itself would probably be more of a briefcase style and would contain a lot of papers.

If an archeologist from the future was aiming to understand this bag they would probably say that this is a bag from a general worker who works in an office and at construction sites. Perhaps if I had a PFD or one of my underwater cameras it might help them narrow my job down. These items would also show that this bag was probably from the digital age but more earlier on when there was still a use for print technology. It shows that the owner of this bag probably still had a use for and knew how to use print technology. 

Overview

This task was an interesting one to engage in. Examining the contents of my work bag made me really think about text/literacy and how they play a role in my work life. It really made me think about how text technologies have changed over time and makes me curious about what these text technologies will look like in the future.