Blog Analysis

As I was looking Cobus' blog, I saw a progression in the way he posted from his first entries to his last. From the start, he seemed to be very comfortable with blogging. He used it as a way to communicate with his followers and, like any good entrepreneur, advertise his merch. Even though I didn't much care for his sales pitches, the insight that he provides towards his life and his personal entries that go towards his fans are very sincere and give me a lot of perspective to a traveling drummer's life. Like I've been saying, I definitely think that his audience here is his fans. Sure, his mom or his agent might follow the blog but the material he puts out is aimed towards the people that love his drumming and follow him because of it. He posts pictures and stories from his life, mostly from when he travels and plays at different venues. His interests just seem to be keeping everyone up to date on his life (a recent post involved him going to the supermarket in America to buy groceries). He is very sincere and has posted many times that he hates asking people to buy his merchandise, because he's in it for the passion of drumming. I think that's one of the main reasons it's so appealing to me, and a lot of his fans.

My Blog

http://www.cobuspotgieter.com/blog/

I chose to follow this blog because i am passionate about the drums and Cobus is one of my favorite drummers. I thought it would be cool to gain some insight to his experiences as a drummer.

Me and the Press Sphere

Through Jarvis' model, I can see how the press sphere is affecting the way I get the news every day. News doesn't come straight through the source, it's transformed through the eyes of writers, editors, spectators, and commenters. Even on the NY Times web page, you can see how the press sphere is entering our lives. Pictures for stories show me courageous feats and tragic lives, already introducing a bias to the stories through tugging at the strings of my emotions. Then in the actual article there are quotes from various sources, offering new insight into the news. There is no doubt that there are tons of sources that go into the publishing of news that we now see, but like I mentioned in my last post, I don't see how this is a bad thing. New insight offers new opinions, and through these new opinions you can form your own, which make for interesting insights to all stories and they make for good debate. And where the NY Times might be considered direct from the press, our blogs may seem like the other outlets of news that we receive. They're more opinionated, and more raw than the manufactured goods of the press. Jarvis' model mentioned the outside sources of witnesses, peers, and links. I have seen all of these sources spawned from my peers blog posts. It's a great example for Jarvis' model, showing the strengthening relationship that the press has with the public and outside sources.

The Press Sphere

When I was reading Jarvis' article, I found myself thinking about the evolution of the way we obtain our news. Jarvis mentioned how now our news comes from multiple sources, and not from the direct source of the press like in his "how it was" diagram. I began questioning his diagram, as it didn't seem likely that it was true. Sure, a big portion of news came from the press, but did people not stand by the water cooler and gossip back then? Did no one exchange facts that they heard with each other? did none of the elements he losted for this new ecology apply to the days of his reference? I'm not trashing on Jarvis, but it seems unlikely that the news was as unfiltered as he claims it was. I wasn't able to get a firm grasp on what Jarvis' actual opinion was, as I feel like he made some points against this new "press sphere" and some points towards it. But here's my take: why does this new press-sphere have to be bad? these different outlets that allow us to acces different view points on the news enable us more perspectives towards the news, and allow us to form our own opinions about it. And if your worried about the actual news being skewed, I don't think you have to be. Even through bias the facts seem so find it's way through every story, and as Jarvis mentioned, there's always the actual source of the news that we can rely on thanks to technology. With my own experience, almost all my news still comes through the press. I go online and look at articles on CNN and the NY Times. But I do hear plenty of gossip through Facebook and other new venues. But I don't think it's a problem.

News Habits

When I go onto nytimes.com, I have to fight the urge to go directly to the sports or used car section. I think since those two things are very important to me, I always want to know what's going on. But then I realize my real objective of actually going on the site so I backtrack and think about what I really want to be looking for. When looking for articles to read, I generally to try and find ones that would relate to me personally or big topics that would seem important to know in case someone started talking about it. One thing I have been keeping up with lately is the presidential race. This is important to me because now that I am able to vote I want to be informed in order to make a smart decision. It is also important because I have always felt that being able to have a smart, back and forth debate with someone about politics is an important skill to have. I find that when I'm looking for any article on nytimes.com, I become interested in the ones about are about influential current events, or one's in general that I think would spark a good discussion. This strategy generally lands me on a pretty solid foundation of information about the current world, however I've found that neglecting the smaller articles can deprive me of really controversial or neat stories. From reading the New York Times I've felt a little more informed about the world, and it's given me more confidence in talking about current events with my friends and family. The style of writing that is associated with articles has also rubbed off on me a little bit, and I've found myself wording things in such a way that it's comparable to an article that I read that day. I think reading about the news is a great habit to upkeep, and I will definitely be following up on the news every day from now on.

Obtaining the News

After reading a lot of my classmates blogs, I came to the overwhelming realization that the Internet plays a major part in the way we receive our news nowadays. Every blog I went to mentioned something about the internet and the use of sites like the New York Times and CNN to obtain their every day news. This is yet another example of how big of an influence the Internet has started playing in our lives. I realized that what seemed to be happening in my life was also occurring in others. I read multiple times of the use of Google to confirm a fact that was heard outside of a reliable source, and the relative ease people have been finding by using the internet to obtain their news rather than using traditional methods such as watching the news on t.v or reading a newspaper. As I was reflecting on all this I began to think about how someone like Hedges would react to the vast amount of reading that was being done on the internet due to news sites, demonstrated by me and my classmates. Certainly he cannot think that a traditional way of obtaining news, like reading a newspaper, would require significantly more literary knowledge than it would take to read the same article online. It is not the paper in our hands that makes us more literate, it is the way we are able to interpret and comprehend things. And could that really be affected via the vessel by which we view the news?

Extended Essay (Final Draft)

The Age of Literacy

In Chris Hedges’ “America the Illiterate”, he states that America’s populace is rapidly degenerating into a state of illiteracy, shrinking away from written texts and sinking deeper and deeper into an image-based culture where it’s less about understanding and more about settling for the wittiest slogan or the brightest pictures. He says this almost as a superior, someone who has stood above the rest and not succumbed to the magnetism of the Internet or media drawls. But I have to disagree with Mr. Hedges. What if, through the constant advancements in technology and culture, we have moved forward into an era where reading and writing has taken a new form, one of constant growth and contribution? What if this new form molds the ideas of millions into one, multicultural web of information that is accessible to anyone on earth at any time, and any place? It’s true, maybe the common public isn’t writing some of the great masterpieces of yesteryear, but what we are doing is evolving and moving forward, redefining the way we read and write in today’s society.

But what does that mean, “redefining”? The way people read and write has been changing ever since the first pictures were scrawled on a wall with a stick, and the first drop of ink was set on parchment by candlelight. In our generation, a lot of the reading and writing people do centers around their computer, and more namely the Internet. According to Andrea Lunsford, a professor of writing and rhetoric, our generation writes vastly more than any generation before us. This is due to the constant communication via text that everyone relies on to talk to people that aren’t right next to them. I know from my own experience the amount of text-based communication that the common teenager has to deal with daily. It is becoming more and more common to write a lengthy e-mail or message to someone in lieu of calling or meeting in person, which adds to the constant flow of reading and writing experienced everyday by the typical American. Sure, we may not be writing developed essays that enhance our understanding of rhetoric and structure everyday, but the constant practice we get from text-based communication gives us a chance to write something everyday, and, according to Lundsford, has made us especially adept to kairos, or the ability to asses the audience and adapt to that setting accordingly. Kairos may be one of most important abilities to possess in modern writing. When constructing a resume or even sitting through an interviewing, knowing whom your audience is and adjusting accordingly is one of the most important skills you could ever have. Any politician or public speaker knows the importance of this ability, and the immediate feedback that someone can now get from their Facebook post or a YouTube comment has made our generation incredibly good at it. In this sense, writing in the current era has taken a turn for the better, improving the way we communicate in general and giving us constant exposure to writing.

With that being said, I do not believe that we are becoming more advanced writers through this kind of exposure alone. With only a fraction of my own time on the web spent typing, I’ve realized the style of writing, whether it be a Facebook post or a blog entry, is not as organized and polished as a finished essay. The structure that makes a passage flow is missing, and the polished, reviewed work of a real piece is not something you normally see on an average stroll through the interwebs. However, it doesn’t worry me. In my experience, when writing a blog I let the thoughts flow out, not stopping to think of a certain structure to mold my words to. This style, as I’ve seen, is common on the Internet. But is this a bad thing? Not in my opinion. Most polished works have a sense of linearity and mechanical thought. Through the spontaneity of a blog, the emotions of that moment are captured in the words of the author, showing us a deeper, more meaningful side of the piece. This emotional perspective is another thing about writing that has evolved through the Internet, and I think that its importance is often overlooked. Compassionate writing has made strides in the past, and with this new age of writing whenever the mood strikes us, I believe many of the great works of our time will come from bursts of emotion and passion.

In Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” he says that we as a populace have turned to “skimming” through long pieces of reading, a tendency that has been brought about by the incredibly fast access to all forms of information provided by Google and the Internet in general. It’s caused us to become impatient and tuned to skip through the fatty trimmings of a reading until we get to the meat of the subject. And I would have to agree. Throughout this winter quarter I’ve found myself skimming through the articles that I’ve been assigned to read, only looking for facts or lines that could help me reach my ultimate goal of a blog post faster. This tendency has robbed me of the deeper understanding of the articles that would have come by reading the whole thing. And I think that this is an ailment that has affected a lot of people. The Internet has provided us fast access to anything we could ever want, so when we have to sit down and read an article it seems slow, even painful sometimes. Without evaluating the passages and critically thinking about them, we turn to our skimming ways to find what we really need out of the reading. And with this said, I force myself to find common ground with Hedges. In his article he stated the overwhelming tendency of Americans to vote for a representative based on their skin level motives, and not go any deeper into their true campaign motives or intentions once they’re elected. I have to agree with this point, and I must say that’s it’s frankly quite frightening. This sort of approach to matters like the election of a president could land us as a country in big trouble. All it would take is a smooth talker to land us with an extremist president, ready to take over the world. Now this is obviously a borderline ludicrous example, but it is a good point to make that not critically thinking about something could have some detrimental affects. And I must admit that the Internet and Google have made it incredibly easy to do this.

In this respect, reading has taken a hit. It has become more of a chore than a comprehensive process, and has been replaced by something much faster and more accessible. But that technology also counters its downfall by providing something of extreme usefulness that I’ve mentioned before. Access. In our very first article by Andrew Sullivan, he stated that, “Every writer since the printing press has longed for a means to publish himself and reach—instantly—any reader on Earth” (Sullivan). The Internet gives anyone and everyone the ability to do this. Blogging is probably the most ideal example imaginable. The ability to create your own web page for free and publish your writing for anyone to read has revolutionized reading. Maybe the Internet has made us stingy readers, but it’s giving us more avenues to explore practically any text we could ever want. When looking at the Internet logs of my fellow classmates, I was surprised to see a constant theme of checking news sites and reading the most interesting articles. Not only did this give me hope for our generation as a whole, but also it again furthered the point that reading has been made extremely accessible via the Internet. Skip a couple of decades back, and you would have to go out to a vendor or street side to grab a newspaper. Now, it’s as simple as typing in a website to your URL bar and you’re reading the most current events. With the development of things like the Kindle and the iPad, hundreds of books can be stored into one useful device that can be packed away in a small bag and taken anywhere. So even though some people argue that the Internet has turned us away from reading, the fact is technology has given us the means necessary to read more than ever was available in earlier generations.

As Lundsford stated, “technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it…” (Lundsford). Today’s technology has presented us with ways to read and write that have never been possible before. From reading any novel ever conceived to writing to millions upon millions of people, the Internet has taken the world of literacy to new heights, and keeps on evolving. And although the standard definition of literacy from 200 years ago may not be the best mold for today’s world, I believe we have moved forward into a new era of literacy, one that could not be possible without present technology.

Alternative Introduction Paragraph

In this paper, I’m writing to the old, the wise, and the stubborn. I believe that since the Internet has so rapidly taken over our lives, the older generation feels pushed out by the constant advancements in technology in replacement of their quiet, newspaper reading abodes. I believe that with the right reasons, these stubborn pessimists will reflect on their soon-to-be old ways and be assured that the Internet is not taking over the world of literacy. It is simply enhancing and evolving it for the better.

Works Cited

Thompson, Clive. “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy”. Wired Magazine. 24 August 2009.

Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic July-Aug. 2008. The Atlantic. Web. 27 Jan 2012.

Scribner, Sylvia. "Literacy in Three Metaphors." American Journal of Education 93 (1984): 6-21. Print.