#eng 400

[spowelleng400]

...we crowded together in the three rooms of a traditional thatched farmstead and lived a kind of den-life which was more or less emotionally and intellectually proofed against the outside world. It was an intimate, physical, creaturely existence in which the night sounds of the horse in the stable beyond one bedroom wall mingled with the sounds of adult conversation from the kitchen beyond the other. We took in everything that was going on, of course - rain in the trees, mice on the ceiling, a steam train rumbling along the railway line one field back from the house - but we took it in as if we were in the doze of hibernation... But it was not only the earth that shook for us: the air around and above us was alive and signalling too. When a wind stirred in the beeches, it also stirred an aerial wire attached to the topmost branch of the chestnut tree. Down it swept, in through a hole bored in the corner of the kitchen window, right on into the innards of our wireless set where a little pandemonium of burbles and squeaks would suddenly give way to the voice of a BBC newsreader speaking out of the unexpected like a deus ex machina. And that voice too we could hear in our bedroom, transmitting from beyond and behind the voices of the adults in the kitchen; just as we could often hear, behind and beyond every voice, the frantic, piercing signalling of morse code.

-Nobel Lecture 1995-Seamus Heaney

I thought his description of the railroad, the telegraph, and the radio is very impressive.  It obviously made an impression on him as a child that he could still recall years later as a poet.  Luckily for my paper, he talks about these inventions and the impact they had on his childhood in depth.  While I wasn't expecting to find so much from him personally on the subject, I am very happy that I did find something.  Hopefully it will be helpful when I actually start the writing process. Just thought I would share this breif part of his speech because it seems very fitting.  

[cpassons]

Big-Picture Question: Orwell's 1984

“How can propaganda in Orwell’s 1984 be relevant with today’s social media?”

The more I am researching Orwell, the further I am getting away from algorithms. There may be some grammatical sequencing in public discourse, either written or oral, but I find Orwell is more interested in the tricks of propaganda. The 2+2=5 represents the 'dumbing down' of language of the city Oceania to make the citizens more blinded to the actual truths. Having read one of his essays that I find quite fascinating, I would be hard-pressed to believe Orwell would have a different view on the usage of the English language in today's technological society. That is where my essay is at for now, in a nutshell. It's nothing much, but maybe enough to get me on the right track.

[cpassons]

Mineral is the storage place of memory, the principle of creativity, resources, stories, and symbolism. It is the elemental energy that allows us to remember, to communicate with one another, to express our feelings. In Dagara physiology, our bones, not the brain, are the storage place of memory. To the indigenous person, mineral is also equivalent to stone. As they say, the bones of the earth are the stones and rocks we see. To know the true story of our earth, including the story of ourselves, is to listen to the rocks. They are conduits through which earth passes information on to us.

-- Malidoma Patrice Somé, The Healing Wisdom of Africa (p. 177)

This excerpt was taken from Chapter 8 entitled "Dagara Cosmology and Ritual." As stated in class before, I noticed a lot of connections between with this text that would help compliment my understanding on reading Pauline Hopkins' Of One Blood. I was deeply surprised and fascinated on how some of content in Somé's work can also allude to previous discussions we have had on the body and nature being a medium for information. To think of our bones as a receptor of information makes incredible sense. I remember my grandmother telling me, when I was much younger, of a bike accident she had when she was a young kid, and what triggered her memory of the incident was a shock of pain in her leg. She mentioned how older people feel all of the major injuries they have had when they were younger. That even when we get old to the point that our minds go, our bodies will gladly remind us of some pasts through the aches and pains we may be feeling that have otherwise been engraved. What message I got was that our minds may forget things, but our bodies (more specifically our bones) won't. It's kind of like the bones are a moving slate that holds memory of the past through the impressions it collects and stores, much like how rocks provide a recorded timeline on the shifts of Earth. If that is the case, then maybe our skin and muscle may very well be the Freudian "Mystical Writing Pad" and the bones the slate that contain the underlying impressions.

[cpassons]

Where are we now? Where are heading?

The Algorithmic Heartbeat in George Orwell’s 1985, Seen Through a Looking Glass in 1949, and From a Lens in 2013

     Over the past 150 years the world has experienced the largest wave of technological advancements through media, and at the turn of the 20th century sparked a stream of endless literary works that focused on positive Utopian societies. It wasn’t, however, until 1949 when George Orwell turned the table around, and unleashed his last written work 1984, as political commentary/satire that focused on a bleak future for society under a totalitarian rule. I would like to focus on the media venue of mass-communication: telescreens, censorship, and newspapers – for the story’s case, under the influence of Big Brother. It is no wonder why the future would look bleak from the perspective of a writer in 1949, especially seeing how Orwell wrote essays on the impact of the nuclear bomb and other social concerns. I would like to explore the ground-breaking media technologies of 1949 up to 1984, and what had inspired Orwell to put light on these issues. I want to explore how the passage of the past few decades have both complimented, more than contradicted, his viewpoints, and see how a single algorithm has "mushroom-clouded" into such a broad venue for media mass-communication to this day.

     The questions that can circulate 1984 can seem endless. The questions I have regard an infusion of history, technology, and sociology. Some of them I have vague answers for, but I would especially like to delve deeper into what would possess an author to forge a story such as this. How can technology be seen as a plight, when it is normally regarded as a wonder? What social issues inspired Orwell to write this story at the time? How may this story mirror the public’s preconceptions about the future from the perspective of one who is at the end of a decade? Noticing that while 1949 marks the year before the end of a decade, and that the year 1984 marks a year before reaching half a decade, is there such a coincidence? In that case, is that why—prior knowledge of history aside—Orwell chose to write the equation as 2+2=5 (4 for 1984, and 5 digits (half a decade) equals 9)? Or does the algorithmic process of taking one from 5 makes 4 plus 4 plus the removed 1 brings a total of 9, or 8 subtracted from 9 equals 1, or 9 minus 5 equals 1 plus 4 equals 5, mirror the invention of the first algorithmic processing machine, the Z3, released in 1941, 8 years prior to the publication of 1984? [Here is the real mindblower: Karkarmar’s algorithm, a system for solving linear programming problems was later discovered in Orwell's 1984, revolutionizing computer programming, was created by Narendra Karmarkar, who worked where else, but AT&T.] With all of this in mind, did Orwell just write propaganda, or did he somehow see the big picture of where society was heading? What does Orwell expect readers to absorb from the context? What inventions seemed revolutionary for the time? In what ways has "1984" impacted the real world? Are there any implications of these fears present in today’s media? Are algorithms the real heartbeat of society today? As I said, the questions can seem endless.

     I have been browsing for resources to enhance my research, so far I have narrowed it down to a couple of sites. George-Orwell.org, while not a very comprehensive site, provides essays that may help one to get into the mind, or perspective, of George Orwell. Upon browsing, I stumbled across inventor Konrad Zuse, who invented the very first program-controlled computing machines, as documented on the Konrad Zuse Internet Archive (it states here that he invented the Z3, the first successful program-controlled computer in 1941, which may have what helped gear Orwell into the concept of the telescreen—a mixture of a television, telephone, and computer). I also came upon a website on Narendra Karmarkar. Since this would be a meaty topic, I know I will have to limit my scope, so I want to focus on a couple of sections documented in 1984 where Orwell took a glimpse into the future, find what innovations manifested from 1949-1984 that may have corresponded with these episodes, and see how we can still see the implications to this day. My hunt for resources is not yet over. I hope that the endeavor would be a successful, as ideas for more resources come to mind over the course of the next week or so.

[cpassons]

Raymond Loewy: How his designs defined the modern era

The Studebaker Avanti, Shell Oil logo, and Sears Coldspot refrigerator were all the creations of the iconic industrial designer, Raymond Loewy, whose work spanned 70 years and is honored today by a Google Doodle.

It's as if Fate (or the great System or Machine of corporation capitalism through media) that determined we would be discussing Railroads, Telegraphs, and Newspapers on the 120th birthday of Raymond Loewy, "The Father of Industrial Design," about which we still use today: from gas station logos that direct us toward the havens where we fill up or vehicles in order to get to class on time, to Coca-Cola vending machines that have saved us from insanity on the restless nights spent on homework, thus making completing assignments with enough energy a possibility). Or, it could just be an incredible coincide... Of course, I would have never found that out if it hadn't been for the marvelous invention of Google.

[cpassons]

Chopin's "Story" of a Time in its Essence, Predating Social Networking

The first paragraph should always serve as a throttle that kick-starts the gears of the mechanism of a great story. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” does just that by effectively providing social commentary on social media at a time when the internet was a rare Dystopiatic fantasy, at the brink of a tragedy, and in the heart of the story. It focuses not on the news that Mrs. Mallard husband has mortally departed, but how she has “received” the startling news. There is a lot of word-of-mouth amidst the social community, conversations with “messages” composed “broken sentences” and containing “veiled hints” at the true source of the otherwise adulterated fact. Her source was from a friend of Mrs. Mallard’s husband who received “intelligence” of the matter where else but at a “newspaper office” (current times Twitter and Facebook, or even Yahoo!News or Associated Press), and did not have the news come to hear in a formal matter and privately (as from law enforcement), but that his death had been publicized. Taken aback, Mrs. Mallard could only find a moment of solace when looking out into the world from within her caged confinement through a “window”; it was outside where she noticed “life” apparent, outside of her cage, where she noticed nothing else but the faint notes of “sparrows twittering.” The deep enrichment in the subtleties is why I have always loved Chopin’s works.

[sumwalker9]

"One of these was that, decidedly, her little home must be not for next month, but for next; the other, which came indeed as she resumed her walk and went her way, was  that it was strange such a matter should be at last settles for her by Mr. Drake."

-In The Cage, p.208

For our telegraph girl, the novel seems to end on some bits of certainty although her head remains full of thoughts. The final conversation with Mrs. Jordan, which revealed Captain Everard's true identity, must have come to a real shock for her. She was not in 'the know' as she had previously thought. Instead, the 'reality' of the whole situation with Captain Everard and Lady Bradeen, came not from her knowledge, but from someone else, who occupied another 'cage'--Mr. Drake.

It is revealed to us that Mr. Drake is a butler, who Lady Bradeen has been hired away from Lord Rye. Confession: I love, love, love Downton Abbey. If I have learned anything from Downton Abbey, it is that the staff knows everything that goes on in the lives of their employers--especially the staff that work both upstairs and downstairs. They are constantly interacting with high class society, while not actually being a part of that society. It is almost as if they are in two worlds at once. As butler, Mr. Drake would be the most involved in the affairs of his employers. Mr. Drake is also in a cage, just like our telegraph girl. Rather than a post office, he is in a house and constantly attends to the business and affairs of the upper class. Just as our telegraph girl has a constant flow of upper class members in and out of her own little cage. Mr. Drake is brought into their lives, just as the telegraph girl is brought into their lives and business through the words they send. I feel that their positions in society are almost identical, with a few differences.

What is interesting is that Mr. Drake seems to have receive a more factual and real account of the inner workings, while the telegraph girl only receives information through the telegrams. To take it a step further, she only sees a quick and abbreviated part of their lives--just like the telegram is a quick and abbreviated form of communication. She must piece together those small selections of information to form her view or opinion of what is actually going on. She imagines the rest of the story, while Mr. Drake seems to be able to live the story along with those people--he does not have to imagine; he is there with them. This is cheesy, but to relate it to the distant reading exercise: The telegraph girl is using Wordle or Voyant and Mr. Drake is actually reading the novel.

--or at least that's how it all seems to me.

[cpassons]

Then it was that, above all, she felt how much she had missed in the gaps and blanks and absent answers--how much she had to dispense with: it was black darkness now, save for this little wild red flare. So much that she saw and possessed. She wanted no detail, no fact--she wanted no nearer vision of discovery or shame (189).

In the Cage, Herman Melville

These two lines stuck out the most in my reading of the last sections of the story. Especially the word 'black darkness'. Is not darkness dark enough? But pitch black, where the most minute is detail is neglected (or deprived) from the sensory of the eyes. Psychologically, however, the blackness could represent the dark abyss of the mysterious realm subconscious. Likewise the slate onto which thoughts and ideas are constructed begins as a void of nothingness. "Gaps and blanks and absent answers" can be seen as preconceptions on which the telegrapher banked her convictions; they had once been justified and validated by her. The preconceptions and ideas are the paint that we brush (or spill) upon the easel, and ignorance is the paint thinner that takes away the factual constructs of the image (ideas). The black darkness can also be conceived as the ink within a telegraph that imprints messages (factual or opinionated) upon the ribbon. In modern times, blackness can be the binary domain, and the red flare be the coding of the binary domain. "She wanted no detail, no fact... shame" is the philosophy of many who dabble with the contents in a binary domain: a webpage editor/designer selects what he/she deems most fit for the audience, while members of a social network try so hard to prove themselves (indicate their strengths more frequently than their weaknesses). There is nothing wrong with pride, as it is a human condition, but facing, acknowledging, and admitting shame is quite a feat that is worth all action.