Midterm 1: Results

For my midterm paper, I did a mix of what I wrote in my midterm posts (here and here), what I'd written in earlier posts (mainly this one, this one), and new stuff that came up as I worked through these ideas. The final result can be seen here (on Skydrive--feel free to comment on it over there--I've never used Skydrive like this before! It could be fun!).

Then, of course, it all just got more complicated when I went to see Dr. Burton and Dr. Wickman. Dr. Wickman pointed out that many of the claims I made are based on assumptions about the theoretical underpinnings of media and "new" media that are actually hot debates currently in the academic world. For example, I say in my paper, "When new mediums arrive, however, no culture exists to prepare their audience to unpack the meaning the creator intended." Dr. Wickman pointed out that this isn't necessarily true, and pointed me to some scholars and books that complicate this idea and argue that even in "new" or "emerging" media, there may be an existing culture impacting it.

After that, the conversation turned to another topic that the shifts in digital culture and digital media makes more complicated and difficult: graduate school. They asked me what what my plans were after graduation, and we discussed the pros and cons of going a more traditionally scholarly route and becoming a professor working with the kinds of ideas I've been developing about video games over the past year or so, or jumping straight into the video game industry and returning to academics later (Dr. Burton pointed out that for this industry, it might be like the business school--you have to work in the field a while to really be an authority on it).

I've already been looking at the University of Utah's top-rated game design program, but since talking to Dr. Burton and Dr. Wickman, I did more research and found out that MIT actually has a Comparative Media Studies/Writing (why the slash? I don't know.) master's degree, which seems like a Digital Culture class on steroids. But programs like that are extremely limited, and majorly untried. What jobs do they lead to? None specifically, but of course the program is extremely relevant to the world today and would lead to all kinds of opportunities. The question of grad school and which school or program to go to is just yet another aspect of life made more complicated by the new digital media and culture.

Identity Crisis: Prewriting -- Midterm 1

Thanks to the wonderful comments from my last midterm post (thanks guys!), I have decided to stick with the theme of identity while writing my paper. Now, I know what you're thinking: That's a really general topic. Yes, but this is the beauty of a prewrite; it helps me to narrow it down further.

I want to head in the direction of identity crisis. We as people "wear different hats" when it comes to aspects of our lives, like Amber pointed out in the comments of my last post, with the different roles we play as people: students, parents, employees, etc. Our identities online are no different. I, for example, am more professional on my LinkedIn profile than I am on my Facebook profile.

Sometimes because we are trying to juggle so many different roles, we can forget which role we are supposed to be playing, sometimes for a moment or sometimes even longer.

The most obvious example in Moby Dick was Ahab, who forgot about his other roles altogether and made revenge his only focus. But I want to look at other characters like Ishmael, Stubb, and Pip when they mixed up their roles with other personal roles and how that affected them and/or the crew.

Then I want to tie that back into digital identity and how in some cases people get so involved with their digital identities that these become the dominate identities rather than their physical selves.

What do you think? I would appreciate any insights or comments that you might have!

Midterm 1: I'll Do This

In the non-narrative chapters of Moby Dick, Melville's essentially pulling in the reader further into the world of whaling, building connections that will increase the power of the plot in the reader's heart and mind. By relating everyday objects to large philosophical questions and symbols, Melville builds a collage of meaning over the final scenes of man versus whale in the novel. Through Melville's connective efforts, by the end of the novel we're not just watching a one-legged man chase a white whale, we're watching Satan tempt Jesus, and the world turn more secular, and Peter deny Christ, and America be forged, and several other metaphorical and allegorical applications Melville has built into the story--and infinitely more that he did not build in, but which we can build over the structure he has laid before us.

I want to study in my paper how meaning is established in Moby Dick, and in what ways these techniques can be used to create meaning in the new digital form of video games. I also want to explore how video games can't follow Moby Dick's example, and what video games can do to create meaning that a book could not.

We're very good at finding meaning in books, and pretty good at finding it in movies, because these forms have been around awhile and we have learned how to "read" them for meaning. We don't know how to "read" video games for meaning. Many would argue that this is because video games simply don't have meaning, but I don't believe that for a second. Every English major can attest to having defended a novel as meaningful when someone told them it really "didn't mean anything." I believe this is the same situation. It is true that games have only recently had the economic stability to consider more traditionally artistic themes and tropes--but at the same time, early games might be even more meaningful because they were made despite all the economic difficulty, meaning the creators really had something they wanted to accomplish with it enough to make it happen despite the difficulty.

So, here's a go at a working thesis statement:

Moby Dick is an excellent case study in how novels can create meaning through connecting with readers personally and with larger human themes and ideas. Using this case study, I argue that video games can create meaning in many of the same ways as novels (and in many ways unique to the medium). The only reason we do not find as much meaning in video games as we do in novels is because we have not learned how to find and understanding the meanings games could produce.

Please comment below if you have any questions or insights you think I should consider. Also, if you are on reddit, you can join a similar discussion I started over there.

Thanks!

Midterm 1: I Did This

So far, I've made the following posts in our Digital Culture class:

• I'm Paul Bills
• I See Why English Professors Love This
• The Democratization of Information Case Study: Reddit
• Give Us Ahab: An Open Letter to Ubisoft
• Crowdsourcing Games: The Fun Way to Change the World
• Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish
• Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish 2: Digital Fish Edition
• Moby Addicted: Is it All Ahab's Fault?
• Spinning Into Control
• The Internet: The End of "The End"?

One theme I see running through all my posts and that I've found some interest in is how digital culture changes the way we make meaning in our lives, and how digital meaning can best create meaning, specifically video games. We talked a lot in class about the "extra" chapters in Moby Dick, and how they add to the meaning of the overall work. Greg talked about how Moby Dick builds both the whale and Ahab into symbols of God and Satan, respectively, exploring another aspect of how meaning is created. I'm interested in the ways digital media--and especially a variety of digital media together--can create new kinds of meaning and more intense, emotionally connected meaning. This idea gets especially interesting as digital media is often in flux--not entirely finished and often iterated and revised, as Dr. Burton talks about in his post on the spiral. Digital media, then, is an interesting blend of authorial intent and influence and a larger relationship between the author(s) and their initial audience, thus blurring that traditional binary as well. Thus, the future of digital media criticism and studies will have to draw not only on traditional literary criticism, but sociology and organizational behavior theories to truly understand the meaning created by a single digital experience. This makes digital media potentially much more powerful, but at the same time much more difficult to manage and control, such that it makes authorial touches fade in the background or lose their footing in the mass of iteration and outside input. Thus, my research question is how can authorial control be exercised over the new digital media--and even across several media simultaneously--to harness the potential of digital media forms to create more powerful meaning both inside the work and outside the work in the reader and world at large?

Midterm #1 Prewriting: Charting a Path to Connectedness

Here are some quotes and initial thoughts for my investigation of connectedness and isolation through the lens of Melville's Moby Dick:

• "It is a book which could only have been written in America" (vii-viii)
• "Melville wants the whole world in--particularly the human world; hence the slightly improbable spectrum of the crew of the Peqoid" (ix).  --> ship as a microcosm of America
• Sea as the new frontier
• "Ishmael, the whale-writer, knows that the great Sperm-Whale, 'scientific' or poetic, lives not complete in any literature . . . his is an unwritten life'. [sic] . . . We must not expect to find Moby Dick in Moby Dick" (xiii). --> In some sense, maybe digital culture is not intended to show us humanity but is rather meant to lead us back to an appreciation of that which is real and present within our lives.
• "Given the radically orphaned condition of modern man (Ishmael ends as an 'orphan', [sic] which is the last word of his book), a danger that Melville could see was the accelerating drift into disconnectedness of the non-affiliated contemporary individual" (xv).
• "How, therefore, men might move from isolation to connectedness was a matter of great moment to him and it pervades the book" (xv).

Shifting from Physical to Online - Midterm 1

Here are the blog posts I have written so far this semester.

• Things to Know about Aleesha
• Thoughts about How Moby Dick Fits into Digital Culture
• E-books or Printed Books
• Modern Gam = Skype
• QR Codes for Headstones
• Accepting New Technology as Tradition
• Does a Company's Presence Online (or Lack thereof) Affect their Credibility?
• Long Tails, and Machines, and Algorithms, Oh My!
• Peer Reviews through Digital Media

The themes I seem to be the most interested in are the themes that center on how we are shifting traditions from physical to online. Although there are pros and cons to this, the benefits seem to outweigh the problems. A universal culture has developed, but it's all digital. People seem to like it for a myriad of reasons. It's easy and more convenient to access this information. And other times, it's about the kind of information people can access or the types of audiences they can reach.

People can collaborate with one another to make something completely new and different, just like Eric Whitacre's virtual choir. People can get information on any subject they can think of and they don't have to physically go anywhere to get it. People can be self-taught on any subject. People can send messages and connect with friends or family instantly, no matter their locations. The list can go on and on. The point is, we would not be able to do this (at least, not very easily) without the help of the digital culture that is available through the Internet.

We have adapted to this new culture. Kylee, Ariel, and Greg both mentioned that technology has become an extension of ourselves, which can be good and bad, like Derrick discusses in his post. In a way, we are now the product of transmedia; we are adapted and changed for another medium.

The questions I wish to ask are as follows: Are all of these changes necessary? And why do we tend to change when we represent ourselves online?

Midterm 1: Looking Back and Zooming Forward

This is an index of the blog posts that I've completed to date on Team Ahab:

Pleasta Meecha! (An introductory blog post)
The Sea and Solitude (Isolation and connectivity in the Digital Age)

Digital Text, Plato, and Dynamic Expression: A Vlog (XML and static/dynamic forms)

Avatars and Anonymity: Who are We? (Anonymity and online personae)

Bionic Us (Bionic implants and prosthetic technology)

God in the Whale (Melville's use of Moby Dick as a symbol for deity)

Devil in the Man: A "Hell-Bent" Captain (Capt. Ahab as Milton's Satan remade) 

Don Yer Blubber, Land Lubber (The virtue of blubber/thick skin in the Digital Age)

My Research, Your Voice (Exploration of research topics and requests for social proof)

"Another and still stranger world..." (Selection of research topic as "digital worlds unseen" and a brief look at EVE Online)

In class, we've talked about various social platforms that have allowed people to meet others with similar interests and connect in meaningful ways--in many cases, in ways that would be impossible except for the Internet. Whether it's collaborative music sites like Kompoz or expansive, fantastical worlds as in EVE Online and other video games, the Internet is creating digital spaces wherein people are able to share ideas and interact in meaningful ways.