For my project I was really interested in the quote by a youtuber Tyler Oakley: “Just because I make videos doesn’t mean that I have to make the same kind of video every time…people that make videos are not just one dimensional who produce one thing for one type of person every single time.” (Tyler Oakley, Save the Drama Fo’ Yo’ Mama). For my project, I wanted to experience representing myself on youtube.

So, I'm not writing a paper this week. Here's my post!

I asked the question in class this week about what we consider reality to be. I posed this to the Arab revolutionaries, the 'nerdfighers', the Female gamers and the Facebookers. The Arab revolutionaries made the distinction of having started this virtual, online place of discussion and then, meeting up in 'real life'. I do not think that this is particularly clear. When asked about this, I was given an answer along the lines of well, it isn't real because they didn't know each other online. But how do we 'know' each other?

In Anne Dalke’s discussion section, we talked about the last paragraph of The Plague in relation to what we’ve read so far. Many people in the class saw the last sentence as challenging our agency. People seemed troubled by the idea that, no matter what we do, the rats will rise up again – randomly, unpredictably, and inevitably. So what do we do? How do we create things and feel good if we think that no matter what we do, bad things are going to keep happening?

Class Notes for March 30, 2011

Panel 1:

Last week, Professor Grobstein posed the question of whether "Generosity" represented the future of literature, something most of the class seemed to disagree with. Most people seemed to dislike "Generosity" because it was not a novel one could easily immerse oneself in, given the flatness of the characters, the fragmented narrative, and the intrusive metaliterary narrator, in other words any trait which rendered the novel anything other than stimulating entertainment to be passively consumed. I would argue that novels such as "Generosity" represent not the future but the past of the novel, a past in which literature was an art form that celebrated individual expression rather than a trade to be plied for the entertainment of the masses.

Still experimenting w/ our shared desire to have fewer "stand-alone" posts and "more conversation" in this on-line space--as well as w/ our stated intention to share conversation with Kim Surkan's Gender and Technology class @ MIT this semester. So: below you'll find three postings from the MIT class discussion on Shelley's novel Frankenstein. If possible, chose one of them to respond to this week. (But! if you really need to follow another idea, please feel free to do that instead!)