Proseminar Blog – B. Cicirello

I chose to do a photo essay for the writing with new media project. I have worked in all three of the selected mediums, but I think that the most challenging to get your message across is through pictures alone.

I did not add any text or words to my essay. Instead I included music that I picked specifically because it matched the mood of the piece. The music has no words and the only vocals are musical, not lyrical. The whole movement of the piece is done through sound/music and the switching of the pictures in a slideshow. 

I used a series of pictures that were taken as the photographer climbed the back path to the castle Neuschwanstein in Bavaria, Germany. The pictures themselves do not belie the intentions of the photographer until late in the slideshow. The path could be in many places all over the world, and in fact the photos look like the photographer is heading for a bridge. But the bridge is actually the place where the final photos will be taken, and while it is the goal of the photographer to get there, it is not the goal of the trip. Instead the goal of the trip is to use the bridge to take a picture of the castle. 

When choosing the photos, I made sure to place them in the correct order, so it seems like as they go by, you feel like you are making progress. The music was also added as it works itself into a crescendo. This also helps the viewer get the feeling of climbing. 

The editing process when using images is a little different than using text. Each photo is edited visually and then placed in a sequence. It would be like getting a list of sentences from someone and editing them and sequencing them so they make a story.  

You also I think have to have a balance between obvious and subtle when you use photos to tell a story. The story needs to be a bit obvious for the first time watcher so they remain interested and “get it.” Too many obscure photos in a row may make people shrug and turn it off. You can still inject some subtlety though by adding room for interpretation. This gets people thinking about your piece and interacting with it rather than just viewing it.

Here is a great article. It argues that Obama’s key to success was his push through new media.

New logo from best buy… that’s a lot of new signs.

So do “economic interests determine major features of technical design”? I think we can safely assume that this is the case. Technology research would be nowhere without funding, and research and development are the gamble that most corporations will take in order to come up with new projects and products that can make them money. Many times in our past the best technology hasn’t won the fight against other lesser technologies.

Remember Beta?

So in this case an economic interest determined technological design. Money can also be a determining factor in removing workers from the workplace and replacing them with machines or more inexperienced workers. “Technology was gradually redesigned… to replace skilled workers with more malleable unskilled ones.” 

In contrast though there are economic forces that can instead reward those highly skilled workers that produce hand made products. There are many products that permeate our market that are strictly hand made or are made by highly trained workers.

But is this economically influenced lack of technology proving the same point?

Design is certainly intriguing. I have no formal background in design and really everything that I have designed is just making something look as if it we designed properly. It’s like learning how to speak a language from watching TV. You understand it, but not in an academic way at all. 

When you are a novice, you understand that white space is important. Not because you were told, but intuitively. You understand that legibility and readability are also important, but you may not understand why. The author clearly spells it out: “Good design reduces the effort of reading as much as possible, thereby encouraging readership and understanding.”   (more…)

You do not need an engineering degree to figure most things out. Seriously. I admit that there are some poorly designed products. The slide projector he mentions in his book is clearly something that needs a little explanation, and possibly another button. But the idea that most things are poorly designed is complete nonsense.

When I think of this guy writing this I can’t help but think of a guy with a 15 inch black and white TV hooked up to a VCR with the light still blinking 12:00. He is someone so angry that technology isn’t completely transparent that they actually despise it. Does he really rant about digital watches? DIGITAL WATCHES? N00b.

Admittedly I agree with the idea that a piece of technology should be easy to use. I like things that are easy to use too. But I think our definitions of easy are very, very different. I don’t mind looking at the quick start instructions for a device until I memorize what the buttons do. I don’t freak out when I need to look at the transfer numbers for the phone system, or the other controls for the voice mail system. Not everything CAN be intuitive. I don’t want a phone with 65 buttons on it all labeled. It’s just as inconvenient as have only 15 buttons, probably more so because now I have to memorize the position of every function button too. 

An example of something that really doesn’t follow his two fundamental principles of design and is still ridiculously easy to use is the IPOD (not the Ipod touch which is even easier to use).

 You don’t need any prior work with it and most people can pick it up and figure out how to use it in 5 minutes. It has a button and a click wheel. It has 2 instances of text on it, the words “hold” and “menu.” The rest is all symbols. The button isn’t clearly marked, the click wheel is a new device, not a lever or a button, but something not really in the collective consciousness. But you can pick this device up and use it easily. It isn’t a good conceptual model, because there are symbols on it that some people wouldn’t recognize and a click wheel that is not a common control. Things really aren’t visible at first glance either. The Ipod has extensive menus and controls inside, the outside doesn’t have instructions, but still it is a simple device to use.

I do agree that feedback is critical. You ever get into an elevator and press the button and it doesn’t light up? You keep pressing it like an idiot, like there is some secret code that will get you to the level that is obviously not selectable. How about when you are trying to save a file on your computer? If it doesn’t offer some sort of status window you are pressing control-alt-delete to get some sort of feedback from your machine. How odd would it be to dial a phone without tones to let you know you hit the button right, or sent a tone to let you know that the phone is ringing from the other end. Feedback is very important. 

So comment.

In order to get this dream job I would need the following professional training:

1. Proficiency and Certification in the Adobe design suite. Most importantly: Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks. I have some of this but not at the levels to be certified.

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A very interesting dichotomy appears when I read the the two assigned chapters. It is possible that these two points don’t simultaneously exclude one another, but it seems as though they do.

the first stance is that English is declining in on line use. Not just decreasing, but decreasing fast. In the graph below we see that English has declined 20% in five years. The Internet is still a young phenomenon too.

What will happen in five more years? Possibly this is an evening out. The Internet and world wide web were creations of western countries, maybe this is a just setting the scales right after an initial overpowering of the medium by the west.

The other point this book makes is that English is being used by a great deal more people. In addition it is being taught as well as learned by non-native speakers. This is becoming a great trend where entire countries are attempting to learn English in the span of one generation. (We couldn’t even change over to the metric system.) (more…)

I focused mainly on technology classes. These classes would help me communicate and teach others about the technology to utilize new media for instructional purposes.

CMNs 545 Communication and Technology

ENG 409 Writing and Technology

ENG 409 Online Documentation

HCI 560 Information Technology Training and User Support

NMS 509 Special Topics: Digital Divide

T&L 460 Instructional Technology for All Students

This of course combined with the required classes for this program.

It is great to read something that quotes Marx, and the quote is easier to understand than the actual reading. 

I guess the first thing that I have to question is the power of the media. Is the media a powerful entity or does it, “have only a very limited influence.” I think I believe what the article later states, that people “tended to expose themselves to, understand and remember communications selectively, according to prior dispositions. People [they] argue manipulated…the mass media.”

People watch what interests them, and what they like. You can only stomach something you dislike for a short while, it has a novelty to it that might be interesting for a bit, but on the long term, that media will fall to the wayside for media that more closely resembles your belief system. A liberal can only take so much Bill O’Reilly. The key distinction to make is that some factors of media can influence decision making. The media killed Howard Dean’s presidential hopes through repetition.

And they are slowly killing Sarah Palin’s hopes by asking her questions and letting her answer. 

But this could fall into the cognitive dissonance theory, and people will decode the message how they want. If they were going to vote for Palin they will explain the interviews in the best light so they still feel good about voting for her, any excuse will do.

But let’s talk about Marxist theory of communication. As with all Marxist theories it seems too simple. My late father used to say, “Follow the money” and you can see who is manipulating any situation. Let’s look at Fox news. Is it money that motivates the media here? I think it is. Is it because Rupert Murdoch loves his capitol so much that he created a station to help him keep his capitol and helps convince people to vote republicans into office? I don’t think so. I think the answer is much simpler. Republicans needed a station to call their own, where their viewpoints were given. He gave them a forum for it so he could collect the advertising money. While the capitol here is manipulating the situation, it isn’t “locked into the power structure, and consequently…acting largely in tandem with the dominant institutions of society.”