Hello class:
Paul Levinson’s book New New media is truly a pleasure to read!
I find his idea of new new media’s ability to grow continuously very interesting. Particularly, his comments about the easiness of “perfecting” one’s writing, from online posts to print books, are eye-opening.
New new media provide writers the opportunity to brainstorm freely while also go through a very elaborate and continuous process of considering carefully various stages of revision. The easiness of correcting one’s own work has two very important benefits:
1. Each writer is able to express his original thoughts without attempting to edit while typing. Thus each idea represents a close account of one’s thought process. The freedom of simply expressing a raw response in writing is priceless.
2. The stage of revision is given a new meaning. Each word written using an electronic medium is subject to change; therefore, the easier it is to apply any sort of modification to a written material, the better the end result will be (at least in theory).
Such dramatic change in writing is meant to take the reader into a flawless and “transparent” world in which each letter stands for a specific and clear idea. It is interesting to see from our own experience how many times we actually think of this “perfectibility” and how often we apply it to our work (?).
Margaret Maria Roidi
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Margaret,
ReplyDeleteI do agree with the "perfectibility" of the medium in terms of writing, and it has definitely allowed writers to able to express thoughts more clearly, and freely. But at the same time, in terms of revision, I feel that the technology also cheapens the art of writing because it is so easy to correct our own work with technological tools to the point that we might not even know what we are fixing, but know it is wrong. I admit I have relied on spell check so much in a word processing program that when I am handwriting an assignment, or even a note I find myself question the spelling of some basic words for a split second.
I feel for the truly educated individual who is well versed in writing that technology is beneficial to their craft, but for some individuals it is cheapening the process.
-Jessica Vanacore
great point about brainstorming, and the process is aided by digital software such as Mind Mapping programs. I download one of the free applications, FreeMind http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page, but I think I'm too linear a thinker to take good advantage of it.
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