Week 1
Who Are You?
Confused
(As sung to the tune of "Who Are You")
Con-fused. Con-fused.
What do I do?
Con-fused. Con-fused.
What, what do I do?
Con-fused. Con-fused.
What, what do I do?
I opened up my USF page
Gonna see what I had to do.
Got this class called Rhet and Tech
And it's got me really confused.
I wanted to do my homework
But I noticed something bad
All the work was due yesterday
Gonna get the worse grade I ever had
chorus:
Well, tell me what to do! (Con-fused, con-fused)
I really wanna know (Con-fused, con-fused)
Tell me, who are you? (Con-fused, con-fused)
'Cause I really wanna know (Con-fused, con-fused)
(So no, I am not kidding. I sat down to do my homework for the week and realized that it was all due Sunday. ug. The other reality is that I guess I am behind in terms of getting my stuff together. Last class I didn't even have a Net ID. And navigating can be interesting as well. For example, it too me a while to even find the Nietzche quote we need for the next part!)
Nietzsche quote
"One must have chaos in order to give birth to a dancing star."
While humans assign labels to things in nature like good and bad (or even right and wrong), nature is doing exactly what it needs to do. Humans view chaos as bad and order as good. The reality is that most of what humans see as chaos is really an order that we don't understand.
Isaac Newton first defined laws of nature around 1700. Think of the these laws as order, and nature as chaos. People thought things happened because they happened. It's god's will. Early mathematics did the same thing. Using different input, they could predict the output. Newton applied this to nature: gravity and motion. The impact of this work changed the face of science and religion. This work continues to this day in the field of quantum physics. Not to get too far off topic, chaos can be defined as a system out of balance. This system will then correct itself resulting in order. This can describe everything from hurricanes to fevers. As it relates back to the quote, the dancing star would be seen as the order. The living, functioning organism that has a life of its own. That it until it gets out of balance and then corrects itself by exploding providing the building blocks for the next star to form.
Link Pile
We are supposed to share 10 links that help me make connections. Some will be more pertinent than others:
1. Pandora Radio - How can you possibly get any work done without good music working for you?
2. Wikipedia - I'm almost embarrassed to admit how often I use this page.
3. M-W Dictionary - I'm not embarrassed to admit I use this one. Especially after one of Trey's classes.
4. Grammar Girl - Great site for podcasts on those confusing grammar issues (that we were supposed to have learned years ago).
5. Spark Notes - As an English teacher, it's important to know what your kids are reading. Actually, it's a great resource.
6. Stephen Hawking - We talked about order, chaos, the universe and countless other things, so I thought Stephen Hawking could make sense of it. Maybe?
7. Isaac Newton - Newton first defined natural laws which obviously pre-existed before he defined them. I looked at this as the first attempt at making order out of chaos.
8. Does God Play Dice? - Interesting article on the order versus chaos debate.
9. Kairos - A rhetoric and technology website/publication.
10. Marshall McLuhan - "Enter the medium."
License Arguments
Okay. I created my license at the Creative Commons page. I know I completed it because now my home page has a nice little copyright logo on the bottom. So that part of the assignment is complete, but I'm confused. The remainder of the assignment asks for our rationale for the deed arrived on. I assume this means why did we pick the license that we picked?
There didn't appear to be many choices. We could choose if others were allowed to copy your work, sell our work or share with us. If there are more choices than that I missed them. I will read other student work first. Maybe that will shed some light on this.
Erika's Free Culture Comments
I like Erika's example of the Superfriends as an example of free culture. The creators took existing characters (superheroes) and then worked them into a new show. That explains everything except Gleek. Actually, I think there'd be too much ego among these super friends to actually work. I mean do you really think Aquaman wants to share the spotlight with Batman? Really, how often does Aquaman grab the headlines? Talking to fish is cool and all, but if Superman was on his game, you wouldn't need him.
Free Culture
Free culture means using something that already exists and making it yours. The most obvious example to me is music. People have been playing other people's songs since the beginning of music. Whether you are singing "Happy Birthday" or the latest pop song, you are using other people's work. The lawyers can argue all day that there is a difference between using something for your enjoyment versus for profit. Regardless, you are using it. From sampled riffs in hip-hop songs to people covering other people's music, this is a reality. You can debate the merits or "improvements" that an artist has made to a song, but this idea of borrowing and stealing are inherent to music. Since everyone's musical tastes are so different, I decided to use something from a different genre.
If you are not familiar with the movie "The Shining" you should be. A wickedly haunting story from Stephen King that was adapted for the screen with a memorable performance by Jack Nicholson. Yes, rights were paid and royalties secured, but this is another example of free culture. The movie wouldn't have been made without the novel. In the example below, this horror movie is recut to produce a trailer that appears to be quite different than what the movie is really all about.
The image of Che Guevara is another example of Free Culture. Rage Against the Machine used this image to promote their band putting it on t-shirts and posters. I know they had a point they were trying to make, but this image is so widely known to young Americans because of that band, not because of that person.
Open Source
When I looked up Open Source on Wikipedia. When I said earlier that I was embarrassed to admit how much time I spend on that page, I wasn't kidding. I will say that I was surprised at how robust of a page there is for open source. The links that I followed are:
Free Culture
Open Source Journalism
Elephant's Dream
Open Politics
Open Source Curriculum
Basically, I followed these because I didn't know what they were or because I wanted to learn more. Isn't that what the links in Wikipedia are for? Fascinating stuff. I feel way over my head at this point. This class is way more technologically oriented than I thought. I'm reading about things I only heard about before, so I am excited to learn about it. Right now, I'm overwhelmed with all of this. Not even sure about what I'm supposed to write. Maybe later in the semester after I figure out what is going on, I'll revisit all of this. Maybe after I see what everybody else has done, I'll have a better idea.
Link back to Rich's World
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