Closing Metacognitive Journal Post

Well, it has been a long semester and honestly a very informative one. I’d like to make this post informal as this is characteristic of the medium of blogs and internet dialogue (thanks David Crystal!)  I think that big picture idea that I learned was the scope of which the internet has changed life as we know it.  It just seemed like something that we did because it was easier.  We shop on Amazon because things come to our house, we buy music on iTunes because it goes on our computer and we can then transfer it to our iPhone(portable computer), we bank online because we don’t like waiting to deposit checks, and we entertain ourselves on YouTube because, we love all of the silly things that animals do.  But I don’t think that I actually realized what it really meant to be networked and digital.  My preconceived idea was that if I became “networked” I thought that I’d be staying in a hole, growing a beard, and peeing in jars (sorry that was gross but it’s something I've seen in movies and television shows). 

What I've come to discover is that it actually does the opposite.  It allows us to become more worldly, more informed about the world around us.  And I mean like allll of us, not just our little town, or city or state.  It allows us, at an instant notice, to see the forest fires in California, see headline news in a small town in Alaska, watch demonstrations in China, then see who is running for office in the neighborhood the next town over.  The world is our oyster, and the internet is the closest thing we have to a perfect machine.  The more information we put in is the more information we can get out of it.  Talk about efficiency! 

So how does this affect my own life?  I've found that the audience I would like to focus on in continuing my studies is theater production students.  It combines my love of building things and creativity with the aggravation of getting students to actively and positively participate.  I've found that my biggest goal is the “how to draw students in to learn and be efficient” and the answer lies in technology.  So there is my problem and my solution.  The real quest is how to make it happen.  I feel like that could be like the game Othello, “a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.”  But I already have a leg up.  They already use it and feel comfortable.  It has the capacity to educate and create motivation. So I’m beginning my journey.  I’m supplementing the real life and physical experiences with augmented reality to move toward my goal of creating productive and motivated students in a theater production program.  I know there are going to be some ups and downs and there will be some stumbles along the way but I’m looking forward to it.  I've already come up with some ideas and when they are perfectly crafted or at least imagined, I look forward to getting your (yes you, global villagers!) input. 

Until next time, stay classy WORLD! 

Language and the Internet-David Crystal Response

It is clear that the invention of the Internet is an immense technological achievement, according to Crystal in his book, Language and the Internet.  It has been a selection that I have enjoyed reading and his perspective as an enciteful linguistic analyst has has solidified some of the ideas that I have had in both the constructs that language has on the internet and vice versa.  Early on in his book though, there are some issues that I thought were interesting and the curiosity of how they materialized kept me interested to read further.  Crystal would probably agree with Spiderman/Peter Parker's famed Uncle Ben when he said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  Sometimes, we are not responsible and “the dangers of the Internet…pornography, intellectual property rights, privacy, security” (Crystal 1) are produced or jeopardized.  But according to Crystal, the most primary issue that critics are worried about is linguistic issues that the internet has on everyday language.  

Crystal then goes into talking about how Internet culture, with its “i” “e” and other prefixes have invaded common language.  With his description of Shawn Wilbur’s day, I have come to the harsh realization that I am not a ‘netizen’ but someone who utilizes the internet for whatever task I have to do.  Wilbur checks the internet when he wakes at night, has it open when he does other work on the computer, and logs on once or twice a day for extended periods of time for demanding real time communication.  A true addict, as Crystal says, does some of this and more.  An addicted internet user is online for multiple days at a time, has the computer close to their refrigerator, and even uses internet language in everyday life!  This almost seemed comedic to me, especially when I heard the terms.  Who says, “Scroll up” when someone asks what you said, or tells someone that they live at http://123.elm.street/house/bluetrim.html?  That is ridiculous!  To be honest, that doesn't even make sense.  The only way that is even halfway intelligible is that people live at an address and that is an internet address, that is it!  I think that while there is an ability for some “Netspeak” to enter into our colloquial language, I do not think that it would convolute the language that these people grew up saying, unless they were in a vacuum of a completely computer based society where the only people that they grew up with were other computer people.  I mean, how would they “It’s my turn to download” meaning I've heard your gossip, now hear mine.  Really?  I’m not saying that people do not make up terms or say things that mean something else, but if you ask a computer person the different meanings of the word ‘download’, I’m sure they would probably not stray too far from its commonly known meaning. 

Something I do agree with Crystal is his thoughts on “@” words infiltrating our lexicon.  The symbol, “now the universal link between recipient and address” was chosen by computer engineer Ray Tomlinson, because it was already on the typewriter and was not used in names (Crystal 21).  So while I will agree that it is being used in business, I posit that it is merely just a function, a short hand of sorts and is something that more people are familiar with.  I believe that the notion of the “@” works more toward an ideal of making something easy to understand that some of the more ethereal and abstract constructs that were discussed earlier that, in my opinion, are the vocabulary not of ‘netizens’ or ‘digital natives’ but of people whose whole existence is consumed not by the internet but computers in general. 

The Medium of Netspeak

I thoroughly enjoyed Crystal's section on Netspeak and how he set up the differences in language used and the idea of the "written speech...'write the way people talk...electronic discourse is writing that often reads as if it were being spoken-that is, as if the sender were writing talking"(Crystal 25).  I have often thought that reading different things on the internet was in fact easier than some literature and it appears that this is the case.  It seems as if the constructs of common internet language would go so far as to combine the traditional sense of speaking and writing and ultimately be a hybridized form of that while creating some of its own properties.  Crystal further states that, "First is a function of the technology-the lack of simultaneous feedback...it does not arrive on that person's screen a keystroke at a time-messages does not leave until we hit send"(Crystal 30).  This expression that Crystal has shows the way that Netspeak, in its standardized form, is uncharacteristic in entirety of both speech and traditional writing as it takes on a third origin in the technology being used.  

Another interesting issue that Crystal raises is the construct that Netspeak utilizes some of the vocal qualities of speech and incorporates that into text.  Being as such, written text traditionally does not have the support of incorporating additional meaning that is present in facial expressions, gestures, and changes in voice.  The conversational, writing as if we were talking ideals present in Netspeak have created different ways to show emotion through the use of capital letters, italics, underlined phrases, spacing, repetition of letters, and punctuation.  

I think, if anything that Netspeak, while it sometimes does not follow the conventional form of writing, is substantially positive as an adaptable medium.  Text on paper writing can change, but only slightly, while Netspeak has a way of changing to suit the user's needs and in a world where the best suited whatever wins, Netspeak is clearly becoming the medium of the majority of users, lauditorially speaking.

Crystal, David. Language and the Internet. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2008. Print.