Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Reflections of reading week # 5

What I understood from the articles about three different people, Homer, Heraclitus, and Protagoras is here;

1. Viewpoint of 'soul'
Homer - There seems no soul, means no genuine reflection, just there is interference from God.
So human being doesn't have dialogue of the soul and there's no self-awareness.
Heraclitus - Human being has 'reasoning', which is born from divine logos, means principle.
Soul could be compared to 'fire' which has both meaning, equilibrium and constant change.

Protagoras - human being has already intellectual ability and basics of education should be available to all individual with this ability.

2. Senses
Homer - language and visual art can not grasp body as a unit.
Heraclitus - divine logos, principle, is for those with senses, but he had a view of scepticism of senses.
Protagoras - rhetorical skill, speech, was a key factor for successful political career.
It means words were used for object of thought. But he says there are contradictory argument about everything.

3. Role of communication

I think the technology of defining abstract concepts were developed by the development of ways of communication. Also, I believe from the history that human beings had part of inborn cognitive endowment. ( I want to say from God!) And it interacted with cultural invention, not depended on it. It's good to be proved from the history, which seems more objective, not only from the Bible.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Reflections and questions of reading week #4

I think this week was a great experience for me to meet Three genius, Homer, Plato and Havelock.

Of Homer's Iliad, when we think of historic period, BC 800, when there was not prevalent reading culture, it' s so amazing work. Its main themes seem to be focused on human's basic instincts, like putting the priority to the woman's beauty (the standard would be different from now, though), power game between men, hardship of making a decision at a certain moment.
I could understand more about that period of time's background, like established independent many 'police', or identifying themselves as descendents from God, Helen.

With using drawing or symbols, we could communicate each other, but it must be very simple message. The length and depth of story in Iliad makes me reminds of like the Bible at that time.

After about 400 years later, Plato attacks the role of poets in Homer's period, like " There were not sufficient in conveying the truth. It just shows the content by means of directly represented action by poets, which is just a 'Mimesis'.

And currently, Havelock, who says 'medium afftecs society' and suggests 'the importance of oral culture', gives a negative look to educational role of the poets during Homer's period. When the poets perform, means convey the message of epic, the audience must have been engaged too much and totally identified with the roles of characters or messages. It's more difficult than just passive learning. The people on that time period may have reacted as they heard, without thinking.

But, considering several factors of those period of time, like poet's directly delivering message only with spoken language, limited by time and space, people's way of thinking must have been very simple and could be absorbed a lot without learner's constructing knowledge, which is not good from current point of view. But isn't it true also that Homer's Iliad upgraded, means more possible abstract and complicated thinking of people and let them know how to do in a certain situation, it's a mono way, though, they could have learned about more strong identity as a Greek people or could have talked about it as a new agenda with their friends and families. Just I've thought about that.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Summary and Reflection on Globalization, week #3

Summary and reflection

“Globalization: A Very Short Introduction” by Manfred B. Steger

At first, I was wondering why he put the title, like “Very Short Introduction” because it doesn’t look short at all from the length of the article, but I came to realize that the amount Globalization covers through time and space is so huge, so he seems to focus on the tremendous scale of the topic, I think.

As he mentions, “Globalization refers to expansion and intensification of social relations and
consciousness across world time and world space.”, Globalization is not a new phenomenon at all, but started even since the prehistoric period. Especially, the invention of writing and wheel and role of Chinese Empire as a geographical bridge in Premodern Period (3500 BC – 1500BC), and spread of ‘liberal’ ideas of individualism, rise of the power of European metropolitan center and merchants, and religious warfare in Early Modern Period ( 1500 – 1750) were the main factors for globalization in the period.

And, what appealed to me most as global factors in Modern Period (1750-1970) were more significant involvement of Australia and Pacific islands into European-dominated network, popular use of public transportation (railways, shipping, or air transport) possible by communication technology, like telegraph, telephone, wireless radio, film, etc. Also population growth provided USA, Canada, Australia with a lot of benefit, caused by their immigration and a lot of global companies, like Coca-Cola, Campbell soup, Remington type writer came to the markets over the world.

Also, of ideologies of globalization, Steger provided three criteria, which are market globalism, justice globalism, and jihadist globalism. Market globalism reminds me of ‘Capitalism’, representing concept of ‘Free market’ and Justice globalism makes me think of ‘Against market globalism’, with similar concepts to ‘Communism’, not exactly same though, which represents global redistribution of wealth and power. But also, justice globalism insists a lot of ‘our responsibility’ for worldly issues.

One of the interesting views of Steger is the third criteria, jihadist globalism which represents violent fundamentalists in the West who seek to turn the whole world into a ‘Christian empire’. Especially, after 9/11 attack in manhattan from Al caeda, their ideology has been a big issue. But is that a kind of serious ideology which can be considered as a third ideas and beliefs shared by worldly people? Then, Why Christian globalism is missing here? I’m just wondering…

Joohee

Friday, September 11, 2009

Summary and Reflection on article, week #2

Summary and Reflection

1. “Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia”
By Ronald J. Deibert

Early ‘Medium Theory’ – Changes in modes of communication affect on social evolution and values & beliefs of societies regardless of context and messages in the society.
‘Technological Determinism’ – Technology is the sole reason to occurrences in the society. So, if the base or material instrument of technology changes, every factors, like superstructure, ideas, and behaviors will be changed. But, Deibert explains some drawbacks of technological determinism, with social constructivist point of view, which means it needs socially constructed needs and unexpected situations. In other words, changes of mode of communication favors in a certain social forces and work in a unique way in that environment.

With distributional changes, Deibert explains ‘the changes to social epistemology’, which means that changes in communication affects ‘internal’ world of ideas and ways of thinking. So, communication environments select ideas, modes of cognition. For example, the code of communication, like writing, changes, the abstract thinking of people becomes possible because words and ideas can be more manipulated than oral society.

And Deibert connects Ecological Holism and Medium Theory, which means nonreductive, evolutionary medium encompasses on dynamics of human and technological interaction than simple monocausal relationship. Ecological Holism is explained that human existence is evolving and interplaying between environmental and technological conditions, formal and informal institutions, and so on.

Especially for me, this article gave me an impression of the relationship between technology and the society seems similar to the loving relationship between man and woman. If two people fall in love, there can not be only one person’s emotion, but it needs so different factors for building up the relationship. For example, if I meet a man on the street and fall in love with him, is that just because I was walking on that street or only because he loves me so much that’s why I love him? I don’t think so. So many background situations and factors work on the relationship between two people.

Also, the result of technology’s working on the society can take an example of a baby between two people. If man and woman has a baby as a result of their love, can you expect how the baby will grow with a certain character or a certain path which he/she will go through? No. Then why not? Because the baby will have a certain timing, a certain experience in a certain situation. Same as the technology, I think.

Printing can be considered to be a reason to bring ‘Renaissance’ or ‘Modern civilization’. But is it a sole reason? I think all the factors, like educational level of the people at that time, religion, previous experience in that situation, etc. worked on it, I think.

Comment of indian camp by Hemingway

I’d like to share my feedback of reading the article of Indian camp, describing the characters depending on key words or sentences in the story.

1. Nick
: “ Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time.”
“ He felt quite sure that he would never die.”
- I think Nick, as a young boy, experienced much of reality during one night. And his curiosity has gone, observing Indian man’s death, Indian woman’s delivering the baby. It was a huge experience, both Birth and Death. Sometimes our curiosity is being kept till just before the truth, then, it just goes away or it makes us more matured and serious of the truth.
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2. Nick’s father
: “No. I haven’t any anaesthetic,”
“But her screams are not important. I don’t’ hear them because they are not important.”
“He was feeling exalted and talkative as football players are in the dressing room after a game.”
“all his post-operative exhilaration gone.”
-I think he is representative as one of the professionals who has a lot of knowledge and experiences but no heart. Not hearing screams of the patients may be necessary to focus on the work, but Saying that is not important seems to be inhumane. But Indian man’s unexpected death made him realize that bringing his son to the camp was too much for the boy and come back to the identity as a father.

3. Uncle George
: “Uncle George was smoking a cigar in the dark.”
“She bit Uncle George on the arm.”
“the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him.”
“The young Indian smiled reminiscently.”

- He seems as a father of baby by smoking a cigar or Indian lady’s biting him, which could be a scene of delivering baby between husband and wife. Also by young Indian man’s laughing at Uncle George and smiling reminiscently, we can tell there is a story between Uncle George and the Indian woman and young Indian knows the story.
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4. Background
“Uncle George was smoking a cigar in the dark.”
“The sun was coming up over hills.”
“It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.”
-At the beginning of the story, there was darkness in the setting, but at the end of the story, the sun came up and it felts even warm. I think the story gets through the turnel, which could be called, ‘life and death’, and moves forward to the next step of life with positive hope.

This kind of reading literature and reviewing them was a new experience to me and gave me some sense of connecting the ‘words’ or ‘sentences’ and ‘the understanding the whole story’.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Welcome to my vision!

Hi, all

Welcome to my vision!

This is the first time to make my own blog which is an another challenge to me.

Personally, I'm back to TC, Columbia University to finish my study.

This is very challenging decision to me, which I believe to go forward my vision.

Especially, I'm happy about coming here with my family (James, Thomas and my husband, Alex)

I hope this transition will be a wonderful experience to me and my family and happy to share with all of you.