Posted 9:21 AM by Anonymous
Okay, hopefully third time's the charm. Blogger messed up the first time I tried--it refused to post and publish, but the second time was simply my optical mouse coming unplugged so I had o reboot. Enough whining though.:)

Joel, I believe that Web (World Wide Web) is capitalized as a proper noun. Ann Blakeslee told us last semester that the trend is toward not capitalizing it, and soon the standard may shift. But right now 'Web' is proper per the current AP stylebook. (But I ignore that anyway--it's such a common word now.)

I must say that I agree with Joel. Grammar and punctuation and syntax are quite secondary to expression and argumentative strength. But that belief is why I am not going into technical writing. In that field, where the audience is broad and the message must be clear to all, grammar and spellling and punctuation are crucial as they should be. But I was an English major, so it offends my sensibilities that Shakespeare and Twain and many other great writers in history would not have been allowed by their English teachers to make up the fabulous words, spellings, and phrases that they did, the things in a lot of cases that make a work truly great.

This issue applies directly to cyber communication. In the English 621 class that Joel and I are in on Monday nights, one of the teachers is fascinated by the fact that her students do not care at all about decent spelling and grammar, and a lot of that she hypothesizes comes from heavy use of IM conversation, when the goal is to get he messages out as fast as possible. And often the other person becomes impatient if you don't. I held out for about six months and really impressed people that I did my best to spell and capitalize, but I have given in some. Sometimes it's atrocious. A writer friend and I have even had conversations about this--how when you want to look casual in e-mail, you write it like an instant message, an entire new genre perhaps.

But how should we feel about this? Should we combat it, or accept that poor grammar and spelling will become as acceptable and mainstream as slang and Elvis have? I think we need some standards at least, to prevent miscommunication.

Of the several issues that Joel's posting brought up, another is pop-up ads. It makes a company seem even less valid to me if they have a pop-up ad, and I have never even looked at a single product that has come across my screen that way. And the scary thing is, they woldn't bother with it if people were not responding.

And just a note, I've been keeping track of all of the things I've done in cyberspace simply while writing this posting. I remembered that I wanted to order two copies of The Medium is the Massage, and went to Amazon.com and did so with one-click ordering, which is so darn wonderful. While on the Amazon I checked on my other 2 orders and saw that today they are advertising Nora Jones' "Come Away With Me" which jogged the song into my brain, and I had to listen to it. So then I opened Winamp and began playing it, because I'd downloaded the song several months ago from KaZaa, because I'd loved "I Don't Know Why" so much. And then I felt guilty for cheating poor Nora out of her money. And of course I've checked my e-mail every time Outlook Express has dinged that there's a new message. It's entwined in our lives now, for many of us.

Posted 7:23 AM by Dee Tremens
let's turn to pokerface powell's speeches. as i blog this as blog leader (which i will put on my resume) was surprised first, that i just turned it off, and second that powell was talking about getting computers and internet for "our" diplomats. what? we can tap phones or "intercept" radio conversions about not using the words nerve gas (in farsi?) but our diplomats do not have access to the Internet?? another thought is why the web is supposed to be capitalized?? is it the postmodern Bible? why is the internet called the internet and not gorenet or the intercourse? i dont mean to be getting salacious....watch out "jencam" just popped up on my interface screen....sure jen, you just get a cam for your birthday...why dont you stuff envelopes from home if you want to work from Home???? more later, le che blogg.

Posted 7:15 AM by Dee Tremens
well, blog. masters: a few words about spelling and "sentence level concerns: forget about it. after 131/2 years as a high school english teacher and probably the grammarian of my high school--i was an expect on Warriner's Grammar books and helped old Warriner retire to the bahamas: i ask you now: is it not more important what you say and the threads of your arguments than spelling and grammar??? even professor phil, who has a comma fetish, agrees in theory that as long as sentence level problems do not interfere with meaning, they are not important. i am not offended by your errors, after 13 years of bathing my students' essays in warriner's blood!

Posted 8:50 AM by Dee Tremens
where is our true cyborg-blogger-leader, lisa???? aren't we missing someone else??

Posted 8:43 AM by Dee Tremens
techies, help: how do we recreate paragraphs??mine also had generous paragraphs...

Posted 8:40 AM by Dee Tremens
Let me clarify a bit about "salacious things on the net." Then I want to discuss gender in the use of DBs or blogs (since i am the blog.master). One other topic is the ghost in the machine thing, a common theme for me; i hope i do not cheapen the columbia thing by using the "tragedy" as an example.

first, i did not mean porn; besides the real thing is so much better. imeant making comments to women i knew in person first--not people i met on the Net. (why do we capitalize net and web and internet?). i will say that a couple of these women made salacious comments to me first. so much for thinking women never sexually harass; maybe it's just that men don't complain. let me clarify. i lived on the mexican border for 12 years; there sexual harassment means something else. and women do it to men as well. it is normal for the girls at school to whistle at male teachers, if only to try to get their attention or embarrass them. this to say: i have different ideas about sexual harassment but i have to remember i am in michigan and not mexico....i want to make a distinction between seriously insulting comments and more playful ones. whistling? when i was in my twenties (now almost 40, but life doesn't begin until....) women in france and mexico whistled at me, and as long as they were women i did not mind at all....is this communication?

I took a class on women's rhetoric last semester. great class. one student did a project on how men and women act differently in postings to DBs. men tend to post harsher sounding opinions. "this is the truth about this article; this article sucks because...." in trying to be analytical or rational whereas women tend to ask other classmates questions or write short notes back and forth....in truth i admit being a bit self centered in my postings last semester but now as an addicted blogger i promise to read all the comments from my group.i do want to print out all my postings from last semester and analyze them....

let me try it out: hey shellie are you a teacher or techie person?? what do you do ? where did you go undergrad?? (see, i am trying to interact this semester).if you guys are techie geeks, i am a wannabe.
just to finish my thought about the porn thing on the net: i think (and hope) that the web will gradually attract more attention and participation to discussions and interaction instead of being known as the porn net. should i check out that site that Karen suggested?

last, a few comments about the ghost in the machine. i have taken three writing and computers classes and each time so far, at least once the technology did not work....first the challenger and now the columbia: and some early reports suggest the panels are at fault just as in 1986....and if these incidents are tragedies in the classical sense, we have a flaw that causes our downfall, who is responsible? the big question: how does this react to cyber comm? who's noticing?

one last thought: i rented "simone" this weekend (as well as "azucar amarga" (bitter sugar))...and since i am politically obsessed, what if a president who died was then presented digitally? who ever sees the president close up? at the state of theonion, i thought dubya looked like a cyborg--crossed eyed imitation of alfred e neumann....? and saddam? what if he is a mummy and only appears digitially to the public? in the old days, like in that cheesy movie moon over parador, the dead pres. gets a stand in....now we dont need the extras; we can recreate the person digitially,no??

Posted 8:57 PM by Anonymous
I fear this is becoming a monologue. But I found this today and had to post it. It's from www.virtual-addiction.com/cybersex.htm. Makes me look even lamer, but makes some points I hadn't thought of before.

"Many individuals have stated that cybersex and on-line flirting is always harmful. Whether or not this is true, there are clearly some unique factors that make cyberflirting different than real-time flirting and therefore are worth noting. In normal human flirtation, there is typically an implicit, and sometimes explicit, implied boundary. The boundary states that this flirtatious behavior is pleasant but that it has a clear limit. There is an implicit distinction made that we may engage in casual flirtatious language, share a glance, make a sexual joke, or tease each other in a provocative manner, but that this is as far as it will go. Most of these cues are a complex combination of verbal and non-verbal communications, however many of which are not available on the Internet. Innuendo, exclamation, verbal punctuation, facial gestures, intonation are all absent on the Net. Combine these factors with the ease of availability, anonymity and the disinhibition that occurs on the net, and you have fertile ground for an intensely flirtatious experience without the boundaries found in real-time interaction. All this occurs outside of the normal social cues that promote reasonable boundaries. People easily become carried away very quickly. There have been numerous cases of which I am aware in which people started out on the Net only for the purposes of engaging in casual conversation, which ended up being highly sexual in nature, even without intending to. In addition, because of the accelerated intimacy that they experience they became more involved, more rapidly, then they intended. In some cases they may be experiencing levels of intimacy and self-disclosure that is unparalleled in their real-life relationships! Needless to say, this can be highly problematic to your marriage or relationship. Because of accelerated intimacy and disinhibition people will share information with their Net-mate that they would not ordinarily share in their real-time relationship and can represent a potential significant threat to any primary relationship or marriage. The ease of conversation, combined with the sexual themes that often appear in Internet communication, offer serious competition to sometimes-mundane real-life. After all how can everyday life compete with the intense, uninhibited excitement of relationships on-line? There is no way to compare the two types of relationships, a fair comparison could only be achieved by discontinuing the on-line relationship, if that relationship has becomes a significant one. After this occurred then perhaps a more equitable comparison could be made which is no different than what occurs in actual affairs when addressing the issues of the marriage versus the affair. To some extent however, you will always be comparing a fantasy to real life, which is tough comparison."

But if you want to laugh at us silly folks, this humor conversation cracked me up. I'm not sure who wrote it, but it makes a point, so it doesn't matter. It's purposely not too explicit.