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08/30/2005 Archived Entry: "Media World"

Media World
This is the time - just prior to the semester - when we start edging on instructors (TAs or adjuncts or even, at times, colleagues) to get on the technology bandwagon, to start thinking of writing in terms of media, to become "oriented" to technology, to . . .

The responses are always interesting. There is definite interest. Curiosity. Feeling of being compelled ("yes yes I do need that to be more competitive on the job market..."). Surprised. Plenty of "hows" (how do we do this) if not whys (why should we do this). Among the students or younger adjuncts, the "whys" don't really come up that much. But the "hows"....

Yet shouldn't we feel/anticipate/know the "hows" already? If we are so media involved (collide-oscope culture is us) why is it so difficult to figure out the how part? I like Kelly's comment in Wired that we live in a time period so important that it will be remembered in ways the Industrial Revolution or other such periods today are. But, of course, if we are in that period, that time of transition, than we cannot be completely aware nor yet interpellated into its logics or ways, right? We cannot yet know the hows because we are still learning, still inventing them.

Maybe. But we feel the pull of media, like it or not, we feel the hows in ways we don't yet realize. That allusion to The Sopranos you always use, that memory mixed with a song from the year you graduated high school, those images of street signs you pass and photograph, that collage you imagined and then made, the celebrities you imagine playing you, those virtual maps you play with, the news you swallow, these links I lay out for you and which you click on. . .this is the world of media. We do live it, online or off. So why is the "how" part so difficult to imagine or employ? And those of us who are here online, who have become media beings in many different ways (the minute you took to your blog, were you not also being/becoming the Net, in a Gibson-Case sort of way?), are you still unsure of the "how" part of teaching writing? Are you media here, non-media in the classroom? Why? Within your links, and photos, and blogrolls, and references, and allusions, and mixes, and remixes, and juxtapositions and alter egos....aren't you creating a how of teaching writing digitally?

Aren't we already in the pedagogy of the mix? Not practically yet (or I wouldn't be writing this, eh?). But rather logically?

Posted by John @ 09/03/2005 12:11 PM EST