https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/14QpkIvvTQd6k4Z3RCl0xV1gE6HxEwmQF5Nq-HASq-_o/edit?usp=sharing

I feel a little ashamed admitting this, but it never occurred to me before reading this week that the term “podcast” came from downloading the audio files to an iPod. Maybe it’s because I never owned an iPod though, and because I don’t regularly listen to podcasts on any mobile device (or frequently, for that matter). More than anything, these readings made me think about different learning styles and choice of medium. I cannot learn effectively by listening to just an audio recording. Being in a room, seeing a presenter face-to-face, I can easily pay attention. But removed from that context, my attention wanders after roughly 5 minutes of pure audio. As an example, before Thanksgiving break, I downloaded an hour-long interview with Ann Hamilton on why she considers herself a “maker” rather than artist. I tried listening to it on my laptop over the weekend, but couldn’t concentrate. Wanting to hear the interview, I burned a CD and listened in the car while driving back to Lafayette, and easily absorbed the full podcast. Examples such as this cause me to question the line in Levy where he quotes Steve Jobs talking about iPods being something to listen to while driving instead of watching videos. Part of me wonders if this only happens because driving relies so heavily on visual attention. At the same time, when I was a kid and my mom would travel, she would record herself reading book chapters (she read to me nightly), and I could pay attention to those recordings by following along visually in the book. Perhaps this is the case for me because I struggle to think of a context where I’ve been conditioned to listen without some other sensory experience involved (visual, vocal, tactile, kinetic, etc.).

Secondarily, reading Gitelman and Levy, it seems that one of the overarching themes of this semester is how media emerge within particular social contexts, are predicted to be revolutionary across widespread contexts, and ultimately find a much smaller niche than predicted (word processing instruction, MOOs and MUDs, Second Life, etc.). That is, borrowing Gitelman’s phrase, any new media are “always already new.” So, I wonder if there’s any historical evidence regarding the attentiveness, or the ability of individuals to learn via telegraph, audio recording, etc.?

I didn’t get to post a response to the readings for Tuesday before class, but I think writing through my thoughts on two virtual ethnographies here, in relation to Leonard’s article, will be helpful. While reading the Gray piece for Thursday, I was glad to see far more attention devoted to methodology than Delwiche provided. As pretty much everyone pointed out on Tuesday, Delwiche had some major issues with framing “safety,” but I also thought it was problematic to consider observing two semester-long classes ethnographic work, and I ultimately wasn’t convinced by student self-reflections as the primary form of evidence to support Delwiche’s claims. In addition to that, I wondered about issues of transfer from video games to other contexts. That is, there’s work to support that video games are educational and can be used effectively as instructional technologies. What I’ve encountered less of (which is not to say it doesn’t exist, rather that I’ve not seen it yet) is scholarship that addresses issues of transfer. For example, students might learn how to conduct ethnographic research effectively within a game, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they can identify or successfully carry out ethnographic research in a different context. Delwiche addresses this question to some extent on pages 162 and 163, writing, “The next step is to link student engagement in the game world to engagement in an overlapping knowledge community that is connected to the theoretical concerns of the course in which the MMO is being used. Once students are highly engaged in the process of role-playing and information seeking, it is relatively easy to convince them to role-play as apprentice participants within a higher-level theoretical community. The students can also be encouraged to make the critical leap into meta-reflection about the similar learning processes embedded in both domains.” I’m curious to see what this looks like, or how Delwiche conceptualizes that next step.

Gray, by comparison, takes a methodologically stronger approach, although her results are a little disappointing/unsurprising. At first, I thought, “This is going to be really interesting! I didn’t even know clans like Conscious Daughters or PuertoReekanKillaz exist.” But, I say the results weren’t surprising in that the clans’ methods weren’t successful. When I regularly played COD, I muted all other players at the beginning of every match out of habit, because it was inevitably distracting or irritating to hear people swearing, slurring, and generally making annoying sounds with their mics. Even as a white male, I assumed that whenever I played using a mic (usually only when I was in a match with a friend), every other player muted me (except the friend). Anyone teamkilling, AFK, or generally disrupting the game was undoubtedly reported or blocked. And while this is problematic, in that far fewer players were reported (or blocked) for having racist screennames or generally being assholes, the failure to get people to listen in this context seems to have more to do with how games are defined than people not caring about the experience of other players. To clarify, if someone streaks on a football field, there’s a pretty rehearsed and expected response. Streaker runs around, eventually gets tackled, is ejected, and the game resumes. But if players shout racial slurs at each other on the field, the game doesn’t stop. Which is not to say that this is right, or justified, but it’s generally disruptive for an individual player, and doesn’t procedurally jeapordize the operation of the game (although it does discourage/exclude players and has a broader impact) in the same way that streaking or teamkilling does. I would be curious to see how an approach that played within the rules of the game, while still bringing attention to an issue, would work (I’m guessing not any better, unfortunately), or what that would look like. At the same time though, this circles back to the issue that Leonard, quoting Collins, so eloquently brings up:

“Beyond the fact that ‘the largely white male elite owners…derive wealth from the circulation’ of racist and sexist imagery, virtual reality and its inscription of controlling images ‘makes racism, sexism and poverty appear to be natural, normal and inevitable part of everyday life’ (Collins, 2000, p. 68). As argued by Mark Anthony Neal (2005), ‘The fact that these images are then used to inform public policy around domestic images that adversely affect and [sic] black and brown people’–the war on terror, policing the border, welfare reform, the military industrial complex, global imperialism, the existence of the welfare state, the prison industrial complex, unemployment, and so on–‘further complicates what is at stake’ for game studies (p. 51)” (87).

That is, the fact that griefing is normalized, and the response so mechanical, while issues of race, gender, and sexuality are systematically ignored, are major issues. But they’re not issues local to the game itself. They’re societal/social issues recreated through the games and enforcement of rules. But I’m also not sure it’s this simple, or if there’s any way to draw a line between a game as virtual space and any other constructed space. I don’t think I’ve done a good job of articulating why the tactics Gray discusses weren’t effective, and why that they didn’t succeed seemed obvious to me, but I think it has to do with differences between playing a game disruptively, disrupting a game, and not playing at all.

Thinking about Sherri’s post, as well as the last third of this edited collection, I was curious to know where the authors were writing from, and where they’re situated in the field (or outside the field). Although I normally skim through the author bios for collections like this, I was particularly interested in seeing what areas of study the contributors were writing from given the situation of this text within Composition. In particular, it strikes me as a little funny that Bogost is contributing to a collection like this, despite the fact that Georgia Tech’s Digital Media program doesn’t offer courses in writing or written composition (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing by itself), and it makes me wonder about his intentions. I also attended the CCCCs presentation he refers to in his chapter (I believe Sam was on that panel as well), and from what I remember, the question from the audience was slightly out of place, but it also wasn’t surprising that someone in Composition hadn’t read his work (at that time, and given the broad audience that CCCCs brings together). So in that context, I’m wondering how we fit all these people together (not just with their ideas, but with the situations they’re teaching in, researching in, and who they’re ideally targeting). Furthermore, this collection of authors from different disciplines writing towards a narrower audience makes me consider how I’m currently situating my own work within composition, and what that means for what I take from this class. This book seems different from other edited collections in Composition I’ve encountered, which tend to be a bit more homogenous in their representation of scholarship within the discipline. That is, I wonder how to situate hacking as play, alongside multiple ways of constructing realities and applying principles of digital media to creating tangible media (and whether/how that’s [still?] Composition), or if the fact that I acknowledge writing in the sense of words on a “page” is part of the process is what’s tying things together for me. I’m not sure if that makes any sense, but that’s what these readings lead me to think about.

I’m not quite sure what to say about the reading for today. It’s familiar territory, having read Bogost for every remotely game-related course I’ve taken, and for a few projects as well. That said, I did wonder about some seemingly loose points in Bogost’s argument from the perspective of digital fabrication (i.e. using digitally programmable machines to create physical things from digital files). In particular, thinking along the lines of electromechanical games (precursors to early video games that ran on complex electronic circuits and mechanical parts), they were programmable in a sense, and thus procedural, but pre-digital. Granted, digital systems facilitate certain things much better than systems that are electronic but not digital (displaying video, for example). And I think that’s ultimately Bogost’s argument, that video games perform procedurality differently than other procedural systems. But I’m inclined to believe that discussions toward the uncomfortable (for Bogost) blending of digital and material systems are becoming increasingly important, and I do find it a little surprising that he doesn’t address such issues in his work more frequently given the type of work that happens at Georgia Tech re: digital fabrication and electronics broadly. That said, I also wonder how prepared/interested RhetComp as a field is in pursuing such questions.

In his historical overview of how play has shaped societies, Huizinga covered a lot of ground. Despite getting lost in the avalanche of references to legends, folk tales, riddles, and stories I’ve never encountered, a few parts did stand out and provoked some thoughts relevant to composition. The part that stood out most for me, however, was on page 197. Huizinga said the following about play in modern times:

“Now, with the increasing systematization and regimentation of sport, something of the pure play-quality is inevitably lost. We see this very clearly in the official distinction between amateurs and professionals (or ‘gentlemen [sic] and players’ as used pointedly to be said). It means that the play-group marks out those for whom playing is no longer play, ranking them inferior to the true players in standing but superior in capacity. The spirit of the professional is no longer the true play-spirit; it is lacking in spontaneity and carelessness. This affects the amateur too, who begins to suffer from an inferiority complex. Between them they push sport further and further away from the play-sphere proper until it becomes a thing _sui generis_: neither play nor earnest” (197).

On the one hand, I’m not sure I agree with Huizinga’s critique here. Not exactly anyone would have been able to participate in Medieval tournaments (or even wear armor or ride a horse), and poetry isn’t known for being commonplace among all populations, in much the same way that I won’t be on an NHL team anytime soon.

On the other hand, I can empathize with Huizinga in that playing games with someone who is far more skilled (or professional) usually isn’t fun. But part of me also wonders if play doesn’t transform, rather than becoming “impure*.” Reading this, I thought of the role of play in writing processes within Composition classrooms, and it seems–at least in my experience–that play tends to take place during the invention process or playtesting. But I’ve encountered it far less during revision, editing, peer review, and proofreading. I wonder if this follows similar lines of reasoning as to why companies often solicit feedback early on in a design cycle, but they’re hesitant to reveal too many secrets once the market is saturated? That is, is there simply too much risk involved at later stages for play to be productive, or am I missing out on playful revision and editing activities?

*This also makes me think of Miguel Sicart’s concept of dark play from Play Matters and how that fits into the idea of professionals playing in different ways than amateurs.

Contrary to what the readings suggest, I’ll keep my post short for today. I think Wolfe and Rickly are interesting in relation to our discussion last week about male vs. female membership in online spaces as well as perceptions of how many men and women participate, and consequently how different spaces are gendered. I immediately wonder how women would perceive participation in a predominantly female space online vs. off, as compared with the results of the two studies here. It might also be interesting to do a quick, summary version of these studies with the logs of our in-class MOOC simulation via Facebook chat. Of course, both articles mention that past studies have relied too much on grad students and professors as participants, rather than undergraduate students (although I’m not convinced that the results would be entirely different given my personal experiences). One question also lingers with me: how do (can?) such studies of participation account for differences in technological literacy and access based on gender/sex, and does/would (how?) that influence the results?

Work in pairs and identify a woman with a Wikipedia (or alternate wiki) page that works in industry or academia. Considering the constraints of writing for Wikipedia, or an alternate wiki space, come up with an outline for a study that would enable you to report how the woman you identified use a particular technology in their work. That is, what types of observations would you carry out, what interview questions would you ask, and what types of texts would you analyze?

Chapman Mode: Try to conduct this activity using only resources available physically through the library.

Once again, I feel like I’ve overlooked articles that articulated significant questions about digital technologies, which I’ve been asking or discussed, that are still ongoing today. In particular, the question of whether to teach students to code HTML, use WYSIWYG, use templates, or some combination of the above, is no less controversial these days (and there are staunch proponents for each option). And as usual, some people still question whether such work should count as “writing” at all, or whether it falls under the domain of Composition, Computer Science, or someplace else. Personally, I think it counts as Composition and writing. But I’m also biased having been an undergrad TA for a web design course that I helped revise. Part of me would have liked to have read these articles 6 years ago, but part of me is also glad to have encountered questions of how to teach web design through experience.

Today, I also wonder how contested issues of teaching HTML or not in a Composition class are. I wonder this because I’ve tried to keep up with front-end web technologies since I was in high school, but I’ve fallen a little behind since HTML 5 and CSS 3 released and mobile devices changed the web. Given the proliferation of social media and the increasing complexity of web development, I wonder how much longer students outside of dedicated web design/UX design programs will feel a need or desire to learn HTML and front-end web technologies. Even with what I know of web design, for most things I would be likely to publish online, it’s faster these days to modify a WordPress site than to code one from scratch, or to just modify a template. Unless I really needed to develop a custom site for a very specific reason, it probably wouldn’t be worth the level of complexity and time it takes to put together a good web site. But, that knowledge of the underlying code comes in handy when things break, or need to be strategically broken. But I might just be getting old and bitter, and a little cynical about people who don’t believe in web writing as important to Composition and writing studies?

An assortment of reactions I noted while reading for class tomorrow:

“*dusts hands* Well, our work here is done. Composition instructors have been dealing with IP issues, virtual play, trolls, etc., for years.”
“How can people still argue that they don’t use ‘technology’ (i.e. digital technologies) in the classroom (if they have access and institutional support/incentive)?”
“How can people still not accept digital scholarship/scholarship on digital things as significant in 2015?(!)”

“How have we not figured out how to stop trolls?…”

On the whole, I felt like the readings for this week could easily replace a few keywords and still probably gather attention at CCCC’s. Identifying individual contributions to collaborative projects is still as much an issue today as it was for Kolko; trolls might even be more of an issue today than they were for Daisley; and text-based interfaces are still challenging to understand. Part of me was left wondering, what’s left? Or more so, why haven’t things changed more? That said, I wish there were more emphasis in current scholarship on digital work to point back to some of these early pieces, as I was frankly unaware that these conversations ever happened (aside from knowing that MOOs were similar to MOOCs, but way earlier).

One point that did stand out as different today however, was on 113 in Daisley. She mentions her students’ preoccupation with “rumors about a race riot” on campus, but it seems likely that today most students would have access to some sort of “eye witness” account, whether it was a video, pictures, or somebody live Tweeting the events. It seems such access would quell similar rumors, or at least challenge dominant narratives (maybe I’m being overly optimistic here). Any thoughts on this?