new cultures of writing

A class at Valparaiso University examining the way technology shapes our reading and writing practices. We like to talk about whether we're cyborgs, too.

[newculturesofwriting]

Extra! Extra! Get your hypertext here!

What happens when students from New Literacies, Technologies and Cultures of Writing plug their imaginations into digital mediums? Original hypertexts!

Hot off the press... 

Haley's Orientation Handbook to Forever

Kristian's Slouching Toward Androgyny: A Manifesto

Kyra's Welcome to Werewolf

Marc's My Puzzle Box

Eli's I Am Persephone

Katie's The Playlist

Anthony's A New Beginning (Trigger warning -- contains violence and sexual assault.)

[newculturesofwriting]

test the queue

[newculturesofwriting]

This is an example of an image with a hyperlink embedded in it. Additionally, I can link from the caption.

[newculturesofwriting]

etc.

[newculturesofwriting]

And a third new lexia.

[newculturesofwriting]

This is another new lexia.

[newculturesofwriting]

This is a new lexia in my hypertext. There might be several links from this page, too.

[newculturesofwriting]

this is the title of my hypertext

This is the launch page for my hypertext. I have written powerful and interesting and beautiful prose. My readers will get to choose which way they leave this page and enter into my hypertext. I might need to make sure that they have a way to return to this launch page to keep reading in new directions. But that all depends on how I want them to read and how many options I want to give them.

[professionalseniors]

some good news

ever heard of clay shirky? you should. he’s a writer and teacher particularly interested in internet technologies, and he has some good news. according to shirky’s tedtalk, the internet has created a space for collaborative projects that can benefit society, and there are over a trillion hours a year (yes you read that right) “up for grabs” that allow people to be creative with these internet technologies. shirky coined the term cognitive surplus to describe the free time we have that allows us to do creative things in the first place, and the number is only increasing. as long as there are generous organizations, we can take advantage of cognitive surplus. 

so this is great news for people, but especially for you and i, the blooming members of society that still have the ability to impact the world.

shirky’s overall thesis is that cognitive surplus will change the world, if we use it as a force for good. in his book “cognitive surplus,” he provides social, political, economic, and even historical examples of it in use. one of the more remarkable examples comes from the south korean protests of 2008, when thousands of teenage girls took to the streets to protest south korea’s renewed trade policy over beef imports from the US. many of the girls protested because they received news from “the rising gods of the east.” a bloody boy band. they made the post on their popular website, and the teenage girls were concerned enough about public health that they took action. 

what’s amazing about this example is that the boy band did not even try to spark a movement. the protests, which were peaceful and family friendly, all occurred over a simple post. 

cognitive surplus isn’t always going to work that way. but the point here is that our content can reach wide enough audiences to make a difference either in our lives, or for society. hell, journey found their replacement because some philippino dude posted his covers on youtube. 

so, my advice here is that for those of us who are creative, take advantage of these trillions of hours, either by making a blog, or youtube channel, or by connecting with people online to take part in social changes and so on. the world is yours to take on. 

[wearewildwithwonder]

What does technology want?

I have absolutely no idea. The only thing I could think of while reading Kevin Kelly’s “What Technology Wants” was WALL-E, my favorite little curious, sentient robot who spends his days collecting his “treasures”, his whos-its and whats-its galore when he’s not performing his trash compactor duties and then brings them home to examine, categorize, and display. He just wants to compact trash, collect trinkets, and go home and watch Hello, Dolly on his iPod for the zillionth time with his cockroach pal named Hal. Pure, wholesome, adorable. Gorgeous animation to boot. So simple.

Kelly’s essay wasn’t as simple (or cute) to read and consider. To me, it was very philosophical and had far too many technical and scientific - albeit beautifully written - terms and phrases for my creative/artistic brain to fully comprehend. In the essay, Kelly proposes that we start to ask ourselves and each other if we believe technology can want things, and if so, how do we begin to understand these wants and needs? 

Kelly offers several “long-term trajectories” (aka the “wants”) that tech could have, and then at the end says, “In general the long-term bias of technology is to increase the diversity of artifacts, methods, techniques. More ways, more choices. … We don’t always have to do what technology wants, but I think we need to begin with what it wants so that we can work with these forces instead of against them.” 

It… makes sense… but also my brain is still mushy and I’m not all too sure how to take it. Maybe you guys can help me out?  If you’re anything like me, you may have to go back and reread certain sections. Multiple times. It’s okay if it mushes your brain, or even better, enlightens your understanding and gets your mind racing; I’d love to hear your thoughts - creative or technical - on whether or not you believe technology can ‘want’ things. (I hope it wants to explore its curiosity and collect “treasures” or “trash” like WALL-E, but that’s just me.)

[professionalseniors]

Everything You Wanted to Know about Cyborgs, but Were Afraid to Ask.

you are a cyborg. ok, so you may not actually look all futuristic and stuff. this is more accurate. makes sense now, doesn’t it? last night you probably used the internet for a research project or submitted homework online, and so on. because it’s what we do. we are all organisms with a strong connection to technology, which doesn’t sound like a big deal since we are so jaded with it that we take everything we have for granted. but some people, cyborg anthropologists, like the eccentric donna haraway and amber case, have made us aware of how different we are as humans compared to who we were just a few decades ago.

as college students in the 21st century, technology has become one of the bedrocks of our education. it is used and required for most of our classes. it is has even become necessary for us to be technologically literate as we look for jobs. but haraway has claimed since the 60’s that we are cyborgs. looks we got ancestors. 

while many people melted their heads with lsd and danced with watermelons in fruit markets, haraway was too busy discovering that medical advancements were connecting us with technology on a biological level. she witnessed the advancements of genetic engineering. and now look all around you. we have become accustomed to the marriage of biology and technology through innovations such as prosthetics, artificial joints, hearing aids, and nikki minaj’s fake ass. not that i care about fake butts. you do you. so, even physically, some of us are technological, biological cyborgs.

case’s tedtalk is more relatable for us. she doesn’t focus on the relationship between biology and technology. her concern is geared toward how we use what is now everyday technology and how its changed us. she believes that we live secondary lives due to our attachment to social media. and since we use all this stuff daily, we are in fact a different species. she likens are daily use of cell phones, for example, as a modern day ritual. before we are out of bed, some of us are already checking our instagram. (guilty as charged. still waiting for pictures of cardi b’s baby BTW).

we’re a new breed of college students. we’ll become a new breed of workers. thanks to technology. this makes life easier, as we all know. but as a college student, remember that technology doesn’t always belong everywhere. like in social settings. or in the delicate hands of your future children. its going to be a challenge that we make sure they live in this real world too. we’re still humans. so let’s act like humans when we can.

[drowninginwordssosweet]

we’re all a little bit of nancy, and also a little bit of john

and no, I’m not talking about Stranger Things (although who am I to say that we’re not all a little bit of Nancy Wheeler and/or Jonathan Byers?)

No, this Nancy and John are fictional people in an example that Tristan Harris uses in his TED Talk, in which he asks us, fellow tech users (and perhaps budding tech designers in the making), to reconsider and have a conversation about how we can create better tech to minimize distractions. Which I know we’re unfortunately all too familiar with; even as I’m writing this, I’m constantly glancing at the little push notifications that Tumblr so conveniently provides, reminding me that there are new posts on my dashboard, begging for my attention. And it’s so tempting to just save this draft and indulge my curiosity or give in to the compulsive need to check my phone in case I miss a group text that I don’t even want to participate in right now because I know I need to disconnect, to focus on writing this and manage to keep to my new, healthy sleep schedule.

So, right now, I’m a Nancy: in Harris’ Talk, she’s working on a document when she’s interrupted by John’s text, asking for that document before he forgets. Nancy’s time and attention are now being spent on either responding to John quickly, so she can close the chat and get back to work or ignore it completely. But she might be worried that she’s missing something now, something important. And I’ve been in John’s position, too, where I need to message a friend while also worrying that I’m not taking the time that they could be spending on something more productive than talking to me. So, how might we fix this?

For once, instead of blaming the tech that “allows” these distractions to occur and insisting we just “turn them off”, I was pleasantly surprised that Harris simply suggested that we need to design and demand better tech that allows us to efficiently spend our time on it. More than that, however, Harris emphasizes that we need to demand this new tech so that we can build a new relationship with tech that measures, builds, and values positive, quality connections – not just measuring “time spent”, but time well spent.

How would you design this new tech? How could you use your talents, as creators, to start up this conversation?

[newculturesofwriting]

Technology’s not neutral, but we can work with that.

[kparque2-blog]

Welcome

My name is Kris. I am 21 years old. I attend school at Valpo. I am a Creative Writing Major, and a Cinema Media Studies Minor. Some things to know about me are that I love writing poetry, reading books, and gardening. I first started using Social Media when I was 14 years old. I got my first Twitter and Instagram then. I don’t use Twitter much anymore, but I use Instagram often to keep up with what’s going on in the world. Also, I use Snapchat. The first time that I used Social Media I used it to follow my favorite childhood band, and talk to other fans. Now I use social media to keep up with what’s going on in my friends lives, as well as, what’s going on in the world around me. I believe Social Media is necessary to help form connections, to keep up with new technology, and serves as an instant news source. Technology is the key to keeping up with the times. 💯

[anthonyanthonyanthonyeet]

Yo

My name is Anthony and I am a Creative Writing major with a minor in Journalism. I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with those degrees, but like the majority of my actions, probably something scandalous, maybe even important.

I’m a father to a dope ass two year old, as well as a fiancé to my beautiful partner. I tend to think I’m a good person, but that’s really all about perspective. I care about people. I work hard. I party. I chill. I write. I sometimes eat my daughter’s puff snacks and then feel really bad about it, but she forgets about it in a couple of minutes so it’s all cool. I thought about listing off things that I like and am interested in, but I like a lot of things and my pinky kinda hurts from holding up my phone for so long, so I’ll just skip that. Instead, I’ll talk about the good stuff. The real gradeable material, the real spill.

I started using social media in like 8th grade, which is kind of a late start nowadays. I was, and still kinda am really poor, so we never had any internet in my house until my dad got a government issued cellphone, better known as an “Obama Phone”. It was mad primitive and hilariously designed for old people, but it had internet that would load a webpage in a record speed of two minutes, after I spent at least 10 minutes typing in the url with a dialpad. Instead of trying to make a new Facebook from scratch which would have been really hard to do with that thing, I hijacked my mom’s Facebook and literally changed all her information into mine. It was great. She took it back, though. Whatever. So I went to MySpace through my Aunt’s computer and spent hours designing my page with all types of thugged out Spongebob photos and money symbols (wishful thinking), only to get online and play those weird vampire mafia games all day. That was my experience with social media for a long time until I eventually got my own phone and some WiFi, and now I’m up to speed with everything and all that. I use it pretty often. Insta, FB, snap, all dat. I would say that it definitely effected my writing in the sense that it gave me a platform to not only experiment, but to experiment in front of an audience, one that I would never have to face. I came into contact with a lot of really talented poets and writers on Tumblr, and it really boosted my confidence when people would like my posts. So in that sense, social media allowed me to grow as a writer and also find current and trending writing and writers.

Wellllp that’s all. Like I said, my pinky hurts and I don’t really have much else to say. Thanks for staying tuned, my brothers and sisters. If you wanna check out some of my rough drafts which I’m kinda just hoping nobody steals, check out my other blog hornpoetry.tumblr.com , also follow this one because why not, I like to be followed. Like if a dog just started randomly following me everywhere, that’d be sick af. Woof woof idk

[teaspoon-of-reality-deactivated]

Hello, World!

Welcome to my blog :) it’s for class, but I’m gonna be keeping it real.

A little about me:

I’m an English Major, Spanish Minor

I’m involved in a lot of stuff (aka I have 3-4 jobs on campus and I’m on Eboard for Ballroom and Spanish Club)

I love ballroom dancing ^^

and spontaneous switching to Spanish ^^^

I love adventure/travel

I love baking, and I’m getting into cooking as well (yay adulting!)

I have another tumblr that my friend convinced me to start in high school, and I’m also on Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. Technically, I’m on Twitter, but I don’t really use it except to retweet posts from my current internship.

I feel like technology/social media has helped me branch out into different styles of posts (artsy for insta, casual/funny for snap, life updates for fb, etc.) but it hasn’t helped me write or read more – if anything, it’s taught me to skim better, but that’s about it.

Anyways, thanks for reading my first post, and we’ll see what comes next!

[drowninginwordssosweet]

about little ole’ me

[a.n. i hope it’s alright that i type this all in lowercase for my own personal aesthetic purposes; worry not, the rest of my posts that i write will have correct capitalization and grammar, i promise]

hi y’all, my name’s jessica baxter, but please feel free to call me jess (i’ll respond to either). i’m a senior creative writing major from fort wayne, indiana, about 2 hours from indianapolis and 2.5 from here in valpo. i just turned 22 a few weeks ago, and have had taylor swift stuck in my head every time i think of it. i also tend to ramble, especially in writing, so fair warning. 

as you may have noticed above, that is one of my favorite selfies from spring of 2017 when i studied abroad in cambridge, england. big ben was a lovely photobomb and totally not intentended to be in the photo at all, nope. [it was my first time ever in london (not counting when i landed in london-heathrow airport) let me live] i love to travel and was so, so, so unbelievably grateful to have been accepted and to have been a part of cohort 99 aka c-99. that semester honest to buddha saved my life, both personally and academically. 

anyway, social media~! 

tumblr  →  despite it’s notorious reputation, i have actually been apart of the tumblr community for a good number of years; i believe i signed up with my first blog when i was obsessed with the tv show, glee, circa 2009-10 and then made a new one that i’ve had ever since 2012, i wanna say. [safe to say that i haven’t been this excited and comfortable with an assignment in a long time.

facebook  → i’ve had a facebook since middle school and i cringe at what i used to post, how i used to talk/type, etc. etc. nowadays i use it to stay in touch with close friends and family that i can’t see face to face due to distance + college, and i mostly just share memes and quotes and lyrics and funny pictures for them to make them smile or laugh. most of what i post on there comes from tumblr and twitter, various news sites, websites and other facebook pages that i follow.

twitter  → i made one in middle school as well, and pretty much abandoned it for quite a number of years until… this past year, to be honest. a lot of the people and organizations i follow on there provide more news and information/what’s going on in the world that i otherwise would not have even known or heard about. i use it for sharing important information and spreading awareness, but i also use it to decompress and retweet funny or relatable tweets or pictures of cute animals or places to visit and so on. 

instagram  → i love instagram and i don’t care who hates it, i love sharing pictures of my life, my food, my pets, things i find beautiful or interesting. and i love seeing my friends’ photos and celebrities/authors/idols that i look up to share their life, i love the aesthetics and the photography and the art that you can find featured on there.

snapchat  → this counts as social media, right? who’s to say. one of my best friends got one when it was first released and convinced our group of friends to make one so we could more easily chat as a group in a more fun way. nowadays it helps us keep track of each other, check in with each other, all that good stuff, which is great now that we’re not always able to even be in the same place. the filters keep getting weirder and yet better and it’s a fun way to communicate with friends. 

wow for such a shy, introverted person i sure have a lot of social media platforms. (not even including myspace. but damn i miss having music on my profile.) 

to wrap this up: one way that i’ve noticed technology changing my reading habits is that… well ever since i got my first ipod touch with access to the internet via wifi, i’ve noticed a decline in my reading actual, physical books. not to say that it has completely put me off from reading books for pleasure, it’s just as i grew up and got a smartphone with even better access to the internet and apps at my fingertips, i’ve been reading a lot of fanfiction and online works of fiction and nonfiction from published or unpublished authors. i still have a heavy need to carry at least one book, usually one i’ve been stuck reading for months now, with me just in case i find the time or place to sit back and read it. 

the technology that we have now and continue to improve upon or innovate is beautiful and worriesome and all-consuming, especially in this digital age, and i love it, i really do. but my generation, and the way i grew up, i was right in the middle of when said technology [i.e. the internet, cell phones, dvds, computers, etc.] started to really come about, and still having had the knowledge and access to pre-technological resources like vhs, print books, dial-up internet, newspapers and magazines in print-form only. so it’s definitely changed my reading habits as well as my routine and way of life. it comes with its own pros and cons, but i’m glad that i’ve had a foot in both worlds and still can and do advocate for physical hard-or-paper-back copies of books. it’s just not the same reading novels, short stories, biographies, memoirs, etc. on my phone or computer, y’know.

okay i’ve rambled enough. this was supposed to be brief but hey. i gave fair warning. i’m excited for the rest of this semester with y’all and hope we can have fun and learn things that we may not have known before. :)

xoxo - jess  ☼

[newculturesofwriting]

Getting to know you...

[iamanobviousbicycle]

Oh Hi There!

My name, is not important, but you can call me Adrian. I have just started my Senior year in college, where I have a major in Digital Media and minors in Creative Writing and Innovation Technologies. I have many (MANY!) interest (I’m not so good at making choices) but just to name a few, I like: Art (a lot of it), Drawing, Movies, Mythology, Traveling, Learning new things, Conversations, Culture, and Comics.

For social media I have used Facebook for the longest time, because it connects me with friends all over the world. However, in recent years I have also joined Snapchat and Instagram, and I find myself most active on Instagram these days. I did create a Twitter one day, but that was the first and last day I used it.

I’ve been on tumblr for a few years now, but I’ve mostly been a very passive user. I feel like technology has enabled me to find inspiration for art and writing much more easily, but at the same time today’s technology has made us lazy consumers. I will be more active on this new account, in part because I will be co-hosting a blog for one of my classes this semesters. I look forward to seeing where that takes me.

-Adrian

Ps. The image is a work by William Eggleston, a photographer I love. I picked it for the combined reason that I think it’s a stunning image and because traveling is a large part of my life these days, being an International Student and all. 

[newculturesofwriting]

Getting to know you...