Reflections of the final week, 15.

As the last course reflection, I'd like to talk about two concepts, Extension & Deep Thinking.

(Extension)
Personally, during the last 7 years, I've lived a life, which can be called, "distraction".

7 Years ago, I had to come back to Korea because of my husband's serving the army and had two boys (4 and 7 years old). And from the working, oh, there was always unexpected situation popped up almost every day. ( I'm working for the English institute and there were always calls from parents, asking their kids' performance or complaining of not enough homework.. Now, this summer, I came back to NY with my whole family. It means that I had to consider like dozens of factors to consider when I had to decide the area to live in.

Yes, we are being globalized and extended physically and mentally. But, at the same time, it seems that the importance of 'density' (I don't know exact word for this expression) is getting more attention, also.

For example, moving from one country to another country is a huge agenda because we have to set up whole things from the beginning. When I came back to NY, I had to make every paper document from the beginning, like new driver liscence or new bank account, new PSE&G bill address, new cable & internet account...

But, I think one of the biggest power sources I could handle all of these new challenges is the "FAMILY". I can be encouraged more than enough by my son's laughing or by husband's joke or by family call from Korea. Especially, I think after we move into US which is a foreign courntry to our family, we came to be united stronger. Like when we are out of our country, we feel more patriatic feeling of my country.

I could reach more people through facebook or by hundreds of lists from our mobile phones. But at the same time, I am more filtering out the people with more density from our networks.

(Deep Reading and Deep Thinking)

Yes, I believe deep thinking helps a person to build up the person's identity, vision, personality, or religion. What I believe that 'reflection' makes us objectify our selves or our situations and move on another step of life.

During this semester, this course kept me reading and thinking, which helped a lot for me to understand the whole picture of communication and it confirmed me that I have to continue my academic life in my life career. Especially, 'the allegory of cave' was very meaningful for me to reflect myself and to be confirmed about my vision as an English educator. I've written about this on my final reflection paper.

But, the thing is that I never used computer screen for my deep reading about weekly reading assignment. I always print them out and marked or underlined the important sentences and try to think deeeply. Personally, I enjoy the physical interaction between the reading material and me.Just occupied in a physical space, desk in my room, I can enjoy the touching the papers and breathe with books, sometimes the content or sometimes the author, and had an invisible communication with them or with myself.

I don't know just because I'm not familiar with the computer that much or maybe because this new media doesn't follow the density as much as the 'density' or 'proximity' of books.

More thoughts are left finishing this course, but I love to participate in 'thinking'.

12/17/09
Joohee Son

Response to Reading #14. McLuhan

When McLuhan says that "Media is the Message", I don't think he totally ignores the concept of 'content'. Just he seems to give a spotlight to the 'changes which the media brought into the society', I think.

When the people face advanced version of media, like telegraph, TV, or even internet, they already had tools to communicate each other. But the scale and the speed which they brought seems huge enough to change our daily lives with more extended ourselves.

There is a movie, "Iron Man" which is about that the main character wears a 'special tool' like a semi-robot stuff and he can fly even into outside of the Earth. When I look at what is happening currently, that movie reminds me of my current life.

I could extend my academic career by taking online courses even in Korea and can reach the people I want to contact anytime and anyplace by using Blackberry. It's so convenient to check out my e-mail even during the commute.

And the media is getting 'cooler' than before by McLuhan's definition because it's providing more options for us to participate in. We can make more customized our communication tool, for example, we can select more TV channels depending on our preferences or we can make our computer or cell phone screen with our kid's photo.

Yes, we are getting extended. But what about the density? I'm not sure...

Joohee

Response to reading # 13, Beniger

Kind of long period time of silence between 'printing press' and '19 century' was bothered by 'industrialization'. The scale and speed of development seem to have experienced big step of upgrades by industrial revolution.

The power of technology started to affect our daily lives as Beniger took an example of 'Henry Crowell's creating concept of 'breakfast'. This example helped me understand easily the concept of 'Control of Revolution'.

Beniger said that before this guy, Henry Crowell, there was not exact concept of 'Breakfast'. Just people ate some food when they feel hungry after getting up in the morning. But, Crowell had a mill and could make mass production of 'oatmeal' and could use 'railroad' to distribute his product to the people. Also, he could use the method of 'advertising' or 'getting feedback' by controling consumption.

How perfectly he used all the power of controlling 'production, distribution, and consumption' with the help of industrialization! I can tell he is so lucky and smart, which seem two prerequisite factors for a success even today. Really I have to agree with this because our family start a day with creal as our breakfast.

What caught my attention was that Beniger's use of word, 'crisis' about the control. So I've thought about when we use the word, 'crisis'. I think we use the word, crisis, especially when we didn't expect the situation and even after we face it, when we have a hard time controlling them.

The speed and scale of controlling power of production, distribution, and consumption became so huge beyond the level of individuals and seems to have brought another identity which seems to have own life from birth, growing up, even to death with another generation. That is 'information'!

Like the movie, 'Transformer', wearing a huge body of robot, industrialization, the information became the huge real entity in the society which everybody has to admit the existence of it. But, personally what I believe is that we, human beings, can be stronger and control them because we do have our emotions.

Expecting more connection to the effect of our communication and existence as human beings..

Response to Reading #12, Carey

If the basic concept of 'wings' is to make living things 'fly', not limited by the space, I think 'the telegraph' gave wings to the communication. Isn't it wonderful to fly, free from the transportation and heading to the place with messages? Like all other generations, people had savior, Morse in 1838, helping them escape from the cave and experience 'global village', linking them with people everywhere.

From all strong impacts of telegraph, I'd like to talk about its effects on 'language' and 'power of controlling group'.

* Effect on Language
By the impact of printing press, people already experienced reading newspapers of same date edition in the morning simultaneously, enjoying their vernacular languages, not bothered by understanding Latin. But the characteristics of telegraph communication tools, dots & dashes, gave more objectivity and standardization to the language when people deliver the message. I think it may have possessed strong effect on giving the message to large number of people, especially in urgent situations.

* Effect on Power of Controlling group
There is a game, which is relaying the message person to person from the first to the last, and we always laugh, realizing the fact how much different between the first and the last message.
Telegraph made it possible to transmit the message 100 % correctly without misunderstanding to the receiver from far away area.

Surely common people could use the telegraph, though, I think especially power group must have felt thrilled by the fact they can use this technology to control the group, taking advantage of it. The power of control frequently comes from the power of communication, I think.

But, if we watch what's happening currently, like so many leaders or important people in public collapse by the power of communication, isn't it irony?

Joohee

Response to Reading #11,Anderson

Passing through the invention of printing press, people in Western Europe came to face more indivualized society and now I want to 'imagine those communities'.

Personally, strong impressions from this imagined communities are 'more uses of vernacular languages' caused by gradual decrease of sacred language, Latin or Arabic and 'simultaneous factors' caused by newspapers and books.

There must've been very difficult to learn sacred languages, so it made limitation of making classical communities, but as there were more uses of vernacular languages, taking time a lot though, people could've had a concept of closer concept of national identity. If we think about the impact of language for national identity, thoses situations make a sense a lot.

Language seems to be a invisible rope to connect the people in a concept of 'nation'. I think , using the language, we can communicate about what/ why/ who/ when/ where/ and how. From the history of what language did for establishing a contry or maintaining it, the power of it seems very huge in the society.

Currently, language doesn't seem to be limited by the geographical boundary of nation. For example, English even make new concept of language community, which is beyond nations.
How many language learning communities are there through both off-line and on-line!
And the power of English moves onto making national identity stronger , not directly connected to every nation using English, though.

Also, 'spontaneous factors by printed media', as Anderson mentioned, gave a strong identity to the nations. Talking about the events which happened in our country today seems to provide strong national identity to the people. Yes, we're getting globalized currently, but at the same time, it's interpretation and experiences are happening with a pretty much national point of view, I think.

joohee

Response to Reading #10, Eisenstein

As a following impact of printing press, I think, Eisenstein covered very broad areas affected by it. Especillay, she mentioned of the standardization of reading material, which is the format and content of it brought strong impact to the readers, and it's very interesting to me.

I think if we think about the educational role of it, it is very meaningful in that they can more easily and effectively educate many people of Christian doctrine or moral concepts of what to do or not to do. Young readers must have absorbed the standardized rules of how to behave. If we think about learning how to behave currently, there is a lot of educational difference between learning from parents and from the book, which seems to provide more objective and professional knowledge to the learners.

Also, personally, I was very interested in her mentioning, 'people read the books silently, which is quite different from before'. I think it has a profound meaning of it because when there was not prevalent printed materials, a few people who possessed the book must've read it loudly to transfer the content of it, but after inventing printing press, people could read individually.
Especially, by reading silently, they could have more chances of thinking or meditating the material individually. Isn't it wonderful progress for helping people stand on their own?

joohee

Reflections of week # 9, Hugo & Yates

Victor's hugo's mentioning, "The one will kill the other." gave me a basic insight of understanding the impact of printing press, diminishing role of architecture as a tool of expression, and Hugo's interpretations of this historical event by dealing with church of Notre Dame.

As we can see from the picture of cathedral of Notre Dame, it has the facade of divided into three, which means 'holy father, holy son, and holy spirit' and has many statues, sculptures, and drawings which represents the stories of the bible. It's such a paradime shift to me, from the paper or screen book to the building as a book.

Definitely, the people must have been overwhelmed by the huge scale and sacred envrionment of building and made them absorb the content of the building, the story of God. When they walked inside of the church, they received the knowledge of the God and tried to remember what they saw, connecting the parts of the building into the story. ( When we think about mnemonic devices for remembering, using building, order, and image, it really makes sense to me in a way. Like by the image in a certain place, people can remember some contents. - My mother is visiting here from Korea and doesn't know English almost at all, but she can remember all the places , reminded by some landmark buildings, and can drive and go anyplace, not reading English signs.)

As there came out a lot of things to remember more specific Christian doctrines, or things to do or not to do, the building was not enough to hold and convey all those things to remember. Then, here comes Gutenberg, inventor of printing press. It is such a cost saving product, which could save time, money, and space, comparing to the expense of constructing a building.

People must've felt thrilled by experiencing their own individual reading, holding the book and meditating some contents and kept reading, and even transferring the content to somebody else just as a book.

If we think about ' the damage of religious unity or degrading status of church of Notre dame, I can understand why Hugo mentions, "The one will kill the other". He may have felt some negative emotion of what was happening at that time, but did he expect by his literature, 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame', there was huge revival movement of Gothic architecture? Also, did he expect as the tool of communication was changed, printing press brought us a totally unexpected new world?

Currently, many people are worried about the negative impact of new technology as a way of communication, like the people in the cave blame all tough process to the outside of the cave, but I think there have always been frontiers who can see the future and has led most people into new world. The important thing is that how much the frontier can persuade or educate common people to follow them and we should be alert about the side effect of new technology and try to improve it to better world.

Joohee