Harris does not have a clear definition for reading and writing as two separate parts. The reader must understand and be able to “rewrite” the author’s points to fully understand them. With this, reading is not just reading, but writing to understand; reading and writing are not separate. The “rewriting” done by the reader not only helps him understand, but allows him to interpret it in his own way through rewriting it. Through rewriting, ideas, in a given piece of writing, can be continually expanded upon, pushing the ideas of the original piece to its limits. This goes likewise for a writer. One cannot just write a novel without rereading it, commenting on it, and revising it to further clarify their point. Similarly to Sullivan, Harris hopes to accomplish an almost conversation through writing. Sullivan likes blogs because he can get a personal response from views on their opinions of his writings. Harris also hopes to make writing more conversational by having the reader think and rewrite what he read, hoping to provide a better understanding for the reader and other people looking for an interpretation. Harris’s means of conversation provides a more formal setting than Sullivan’s blogging, but they both hope to achieve the same goal. Reading cannot simply be reading and mindlessly taking in facts, one must ask questions about the meaning of something or question why something was said. By making writing more conversational, reading becomes more interactive, sparking questions to be asked.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Comparing the class Internet usage
I saw my Internet usage as very similar to many of my classmates. A lot of my time on the web consisted or either social media, a random Google search for something interesting or using stumble upon. Another common point with a majority of us was that we mostly used the Internet for short periods of time. Every so often, we all needed our fix to see new updates on Facebook, or to stumble upon one more article as a break from whatever we were doing. Besides social media, one of the next top common occurrences was blackboard or other school related Google searches. Social media and school accounted for a majority of time of everyone’s Internet usage. I saw very few differences between the class and my use of the Internet. Though my log may not show that many similarities, though out a weeks use of the Internet, I feel I could find a day that would have very similar searches to almost any classmate. I was surprised though, that not as many people as I expected read or looked at some form of current events daily, or bi-daily. I try to read some new article every day, or at least skim the headlines to know what is happening in the US and around the world. With this information so readily available to us, and everyone spending so much time on the Internet already, I find it hard not to spend even just five minutes reading some news. We are an Internet dependent age and this is clearly shown through the amount of time and visits we all logged on the Internet.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Internet Usage
Monday: 8:30 Facebook 15 minutes
6:10 Facebook 10 minutes
11:00 Stumble Upon 30 minutes – Read news and tech articles
11:00 Facebook Chat 45 minutes
Tuesday: 10:30 Facebook 15 minutes
3:30 Facebook 15 minutes
6:00 Blackboard/blogs 25 minutes
8:30 Facebook 10 minutes
8:50 Follow Blogs/Read 15 minutes
The past two days have been busy days for me so I have kept my Internet usage to a very minimal amount; this is an anomaly.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Sullivan's "Why I Blog"
Sullivan blogs for the freedom of writing it provides. He does not have to look to anyone for approval for the blogs he posts and he can post a piece about something he hasn’t checked all his sources on because there is no authority watching over his articles. He can post anything he finds interesting immediately so that his readers can see exactly what he is doing at any point in the day. His blogs have no deadlines, but if he does not post stuff regularly his readers will become bored with his blog and may chose to no longer follow his blog. He also says he can make his posts more interesting by providing links to his sources or articles he is talking about. This allows the reader to not just blindly trust the author, who commented on the article about its contents, but to read the same thing the author did in its original form and then look at author’s comments about the article. Sullivan’s blogs are not limited by any constraints either, they do not need to be any specific length or on any specific topic, both of those are under his control, and not a larger company like he previously worked for. He blogs for the freedom of writing it provides and the ability to see first hand his readers’ response to his blogs neither of which he had while working for a newspaper or magazine.
Creating My Blog
Creating and Setting up a blog was much easier than I anticipated. Google walks you through the very few steps here are until its set up. If I had to pick a “most” difficult part I would say it was picking an available name for the URL link, but even that was not very hard. Blogging is like main events or posts on Facebook. It is more for things other people may want to see and read rather than who you have recently become friends with on Facebook. Your blogs can also be for specific friends to follow or open to the world, similar to the choice you have with Facebook. Blogging is a lot of writing if one wants it to be. Blogging can be writing about an experience, trip or something interesting one saw that day, but blogs do not have to have a lot of writing. A blog could be simple one sentence updates, like a Facebook status about yourself or a simple comment with a link to an interesting article or video. The amount of writing a blog needs is all up to the blogger. My opinion of blogs has changed in that I see them as more useful than I previously thought. It provides a simpler means of following a person because all of the useless clutter that Facebook provides is not in a blog and a blogger does not post meaningless post.
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