March 8 - Chapter 7: History (School)

This chapter opens with the idea of the Donor in literature, who is a character who in some way assists the protagonist by giving them what they need (be it information, magic, or what have you) in order to solve their problems. Various examples of this include Virgil, in Dante's Inferno, Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, and Ulmer's example, Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.

The donor represents the institution of The Street - outside of the school, an unusual figure gives you help and assistance. As such, it falls in line with the community discourse. The community is one of the first places that a protagonist goes in search of adventure, and these first adventures are critical in the development of the character and his discourses.

March 3 - Ch 6: CyberPidgin

This chapter focuses on the uniqueness of the emergent world of the internet, and that it is far removed from previous institutions (especially the School). The nature of the internet brings hundreds of cultures (at the local, regional, and national levels) into direct and regular interaction with each other, and as such each culture's language and communication fall short of what is needed. This means that a pidgin must be developed.

Ulmer takes the idea of the cyberpidgin from the linguistic phenomenon that occurs when two different languages encounter each other, with neither group knowing the other's language. Both groups, as a result, pick up bits and pieces of the other's language, in order to facilitate a basic exchange of goods and ideas.

Eventually, a transition will be made from cyberpidgin to cybercreole, which is a more fuly formed hybrid language, with examples such as the French Creole in Louisiana. Creoles are seperate from pidgins because while a pidgin is constructed for trade and there are no native speakers, creoles occur when two cultures do not just trade, but intermingle, and children are born into the hybrid culture and learn the pidgin as part of natural language acquisition. Over time, memory of the pregenitor languages may be forgotten, entirely superceded with the creole. (This has notably happened with English, which could be considered a creole of Germanic and Gaulish languages.)

The cybercreole is already being formed. The strata of language development is easily visible in the strata of age - grandmothers unfailingly afraid of computers, parents at least competent, and children are always whizzes. The children have grown up surrounded by technology, and as such have developed natural pattern recognition in regards to computer and software design. This leads to children who are quickly able to figure out any new computer system, parents who are hesitant, and grandparents who abstain.

March 1 - Ch 5 Interface Impressions

This chapter opens with the gap between the discourse of home and the discourse of entertainment. Ulmer summarizes it by pointing out that the departure from home is motivated by the insufficiency of home - there is something incomplete about the experiences gain from the home, and this incompleteness bear repair from outside. Entertainment is the first forays into the magical outside in order to discover these needed experiences.

Ulmer then goes on to talk about how impressions of famous people are generally boiled down to a few standout traits - Elvis's snarl and hair is enough to summon's people's memory of the man. The website "Cats that look like Hitler" is a testament to this - two general markings (his moustahce and side-part) are enough to fill the role.

Feb 22 - Ch4: Cosmogram

Mapping the diegesis

the diegesis refers here to the imaginary space and time in which fictions exists. Xanadu is Ulmer's example, made up of 4 different places:

The original Xanadu of legend, which is home of Kubla Khan's stately pleasure dome

A place of holy ice caves in the Himalayas

Mt Abora, about which the Abyssian maid sang in the poem

Gainesville, Florida, which Coleridge had read about in a travel guide published in his time, telling of sinkholes, underground rivers, and a semitropical climate.

Chora-

A Platonic invention, it refers to a sacred nature of specific places. It was associated with the four elements by the Greeks, which is most directly related to the music of the spheres. In modern terms, it could possibly be refering to the "mood" of a thing or place, letting us know that we are safe, or in danger, or to be happy, tired, or what have you.

Finding the chora or sacred space in oneself is key to the mystory. To do this, one must look back to childhood, where "it was easier to understand the sacred at a personal level.(102)" In childhood, one feels a more intimate connection to places and things, which fades with age and exposure. The only such feeling that I can easily recall, with great vividness, is the universal dream-terror - the absolute and assured knowledge that whatever is about to happen to you is so inconcievably dangerous that is the hallmark of nightmares.

The cosmogram is a map of these places - the distance involved, being derived from childhood, is usually small - the size of a city, perhaps.

Feb 15 - Internet Invention Ch 1

Opens by introducing the Emeragency - "A consultancy without portfolio.(1)" It is a framework to motivate website-based projects, and a tool to address Wittgenstein's human question, utilizing perspectives on humanities studies.

The idea of the Emeragency came about as part of Ulmer's effort to show the contributions that art and humanities make to the "practical world.(2)" He tries to do this by drawing a connection between aesthetics and technology. He begins with the story of his study of English, on the aesthetic side of things.

Ulmer approached creative writing, especialliy poetry, in a sidelong manner, passing "straight from anaesthetic insensitivity to the sublime without passing through beauty." Ulmer's concern, with beauty, Grammatology, and all things, is that if they are not useful, he isn't interested. Stemming from this is Ulmer's heuretics, approaching electracy by trying to invent it.

Diegesis - the part of a narrative that persists across all media, all adaptations, translations, remakes.

Internet Invention is laid out as follows:

1. The motivating hypothesis of the project (5-6)

In as much as English is focused around the study of literature, and architecture the study

of buildings, this book (and this course) is to be built around the internet.

2. Make a mystory (6-7)

There are five parts to this book, each relating to the creation of a part of the mystory. The

creation of these is outline theoretically in the chapter, but practically in the assignment.

3. He then proceeds to discuss his justification for use of a textbook (reader interpretation, et al),

and other errata re: chapter layout.

The rest of the chapter is composed of the mystories of some of his students.

Ch1 - Career discourse

Chapter 1 focuses on the theory of the mystory/widesite. Underlaying the whole idea is the implication of Nietzchian observations of life, which is that everyone's life manifests some continuous emblem, which is actually based on a set of four or five interrelated subemblems. These are all in place by age 18.

Popcycle - the ensemble of discourses into which members of a society are psychologically constructed. (24)

The core discourses are these: Family, Community (History), and Entertainment.

Chapter 10: The Ideal of Value

Ulmer starts this chapter out talking about emblems presented in advertising - the Marlboro Cowboy being a prime example. The image of the cowboy as a sign of rugged masculinity called out a unified desire in many American men, and they attempted to emulate his hypermasculinity in the most obvious way - smoking filtered Marlboros.

The Marlboro Cowboy is an emblem, though a slightly different type than what we seek. He represents the desire to feel masculine, uniting people who have that need. The emblem we are looking for is something to represent us and our stronger memories, in a more abstract way.

The idea of the road back is to return to our original place with the new knowledge and experience we have gained in discovering our emblem. Ulmer words this as "extending the insights of the emblem as a fuller examination of our ouwn state of mind, the mood of our life, and the possible correspondence or conflict with the mood of the wide image. (279)"

Ulmer also makes note of the idea of an imported state of mind - again, the Marlboro cowboy is brought up. The mere possibility that any state of mind can be imported indicates that there is a native state of mind, a default mood. The default mood is difficult to pinpoint, as its manifestations vary depending on what situation you are reacting to. Your mood in class, whether default or imported, is going to appear different from your mood when camping, or playing frisbee, or listening to music. It is through the comparison of many different scenarios that trends are uncovered and the default made known (this is notably similar to finding the thread connecting important memories and how that is used to discover the emblem).

My Thin Blue Line

My thin blue line stretches from my hometown of Mobile, AL, to my Grandmother's home in Fort Lauderdale, FL, my family's vacations in Door County, WI, and then in New Orleans, LA.

This path ended up forming a shape reminiscent of a major feature near my home, that of Mobile Bay: