23/5/11

• We talked about the importance of being critical readers. Reading texts even when we don't agree with it is beneficial to us. As with McLu
  han, because he came up with new ideas of looking at media.
• the term "Civilized"- used to define technological advancement of a group- as in the use of the alphabet because it can be seen as technology itself.
• Tribes are webs composed of individuals who have mutual dependency and must collaborate for survival, but when the alphabet is learned the individual can survive on their own because they only depend on themselves to find the matters of survival.
• Is this necessarily good or bad? McLuhan compares the alphabet with teeth. When we think of teeth we think danger, tough, brutal, and especially POWER- because it is an abstraction.
• The alphabet poses a danger to oral culture because it does not require one to listen to everything and stay interconnected. With the alphabet we can focus just on one thing. It does not allow us to learn as much as we could about ourselves and one another because you learn more about yourself when you listen to your own reactions and you learn more from another person by their interpretation.

Schizophrenia in connection to the alphabet.

• thought vs action
• dualistic schizophrenia- is it true just because it is written? is more validity added to something when written then when it is said?
• which reality is the "right" reality?
• 5 Dimensions (Villem Flusser) abstraction: we are now in the 1st dimension slipping in the 0 dimension- electronic. need is beyond our senses and we will depend on different mediums.

Advantages vs Disadvantages:

• more saved info (Informationen "länger" speichern)
• send info (Informationen übertragen)
• larger audience (höhere Reichweite)
• new tradition/ more ways to remember (verschiedene Möglichkeiten, Informationen zu speichern)

NEUTRAL: POWER!

• limited/elitest (limitiert / elitär)
• can't argue or converse ("Der Text ist stumm.")
• limited interpretation (limitierte Interpretationen)
• lose ability to physically store info in mind (verringert die Möglichkeit, Informationen im Gedächtnis zu speichern)
• focus is on one sense- the eye (mono sensuality) (Fokus auf einem Sinn - Monosensualität)

DELAYED POST FOR 2/9/2011

OKAY FIRST OFF: SO SORRY THIS IS DELAYED! My post did not go through when I posted it. BUT here it is finally!

On Monday we started the class of with three warm up questions (to practice for the exam):

1). Was hast du am Sonntag gelesen?

2). Welches Buch hast du zuletzt gelesen?

3). Was hast du am Wochenende geschrieben?

After those questions we delved straight into class and started with the question:

"Was ist Schrift?"

- das Alphabet -- willkürlich (arbitrary)

- Worte speichern

- Worte einfangen

- das/die Symbol(e)

----> geteilte Symbole

-phonetisch -1 Zeichen = 1 Laut

-piktographisch--> logographisch (1 Zeichen = 1 Wort)

There was then the example: F I S H = G H O T I

- the "gh" from enough

- the "o" from women

- & the "ti" from nation

We further moved on to this question:

Worauf schreiben wir? (Aufschreibesysteme)

1). der Stift (pen) --> die Tinte (ink) --> das Papier (paper)

2). der Computer --> die Tastatur (keyboard) --> der Bildschirm (screen)

3). die Hand --> der Meißel (chisel) --> der Stein (rock)

4). "-------" --> die Tinte --> das Papyrus

5). "-------" --> "--------" --> das Holz (wood) oder die Rinde (bark)
6). "-------" --> "--------" --> der Sand (sand)

7). "-------" --> "--------" --> das Leder (leather)

8). "-------" --> "--------" --> der Ton (clay)


Was macht die Schrift mit uns? (What is the writing system doing to us?)

McLuhan: "The medium is the massage"; He meant message but there was a typo while being printed. McLuhan means by this that there needs to be a focus on context not the medium. There are two different mediums: ein kaltes Medium und ein heißes Medium.

- kalte Medien: (cold)

ex. Seminar

--use multiple senses

-- diaglogue (ex. )

VERSUS

- heiße Medien: (hot)

--concentrates on ONE sense

-- ex. watching t.v.

--> more passive way because one sense is preferred.

After this point we focused on the readings. All of us had to point out with drawing and words main points from the reading. These are some of the points we came up with: (as a group we referenced the web and the American flag example, and more...)

Masha brought up these points:

-limited number of symbols

--> presented linearly

- another step of analysis (sign to sound and sound to word)

- sound to transcribe many languages

Claudia bought up this point:

- small number of symbols used by many cultures.

Frau Stoppa brought us back to this idea that McLuhan says that there are regrets of lack of multisenses; there is the focus on the eye versus the ear; also it was mentioned in class that T.V. will hopefully get us back to the multisensual life.

McLuhan's Understanding Media

I hate to be so informal but, Oh My Freaken Gosh! Are you serious??

I found this reading to be incredibly western-society bias and filled with bitter elitism. I say this because he uses words to describe tribal people as being "trapped", "uncivilized", "freeing/freedom", "separateness" and "barbarians".

From the second page where he states, "...change, the tribal man experiences when he becomes literate. ...Nearly all the emotional and corporate family feeling is eliminated from his relationship with his social groups " (89). I disagree with that because I am literate and I am still fully emotionally and corporately integrated and connected with my family and social groups. I feel that my ability to read and write using the phonetic alphabet in actually strengthens my bonds with others, instead of them being hindered.

On page 91 his elitist point of view begins shift from bias to elitist. He says, " ...a single generation of alphabetic literacy suffices in Africa today, as in Gaul two thousands year ago to release the individual initially, at least, from the tribal web. ... giving to its user an eye for an ear, and freeing him from the tribal trance of resonating word magic and the web of kinship" then at the start of the next paragraph he states how he believes that, "the phonetic alphabet, alone, is the technology that has been the means of creating " civilized man". He makes it seem as though the those who cannot read are "trapped" in impending doom in their "tribal web". But groups of people have been living in tribes for ages, they have cultural and social norms, cues, and forms of communication that have been successful, hence they still continue to exist today.

He backs up the freeing of man from his "trapped" ways by connecting the importance of the phonetic alphabet with the concept of rationality. On page 93, the whole second paragraph shows how much he believes the "Western literate man" is at an advantage above all others. To him literacy and civilization are part of one and the same, you cannot have civilization without literacy. Obviously he is wrong, his way of thinking is strictly black and white, to him civilized means to be western and therefore that what is not western therefore is not civilized; even though these "uncivilized" societies have been around much longer, have grown and flourished, and have and continue to contribute to a society (and even global society as a whole).

This whole paragraph was just shocking to me. I could go more into what I thought was wrong with this way of thinking of our western phonetic alphabet but I figure we will talk more in class about it. I just wanted to write a bit because I am seriously disgusted by this writing.

See you guys on Monday! :)

2nd class summary

Brain Memory- Why do we communicate? (Warum kommunizieren wir?)

-surviving (überleben)

-die Kooperation

-die Fähigkeit (ability)

-soziale Interaktion -> Bindung (social bonding)

-Vorteil (selective advantage)

-Entwicklung (development)

-Informationen austauschen (exchange)

signal-Signal-- sign=zeichen

Wie kommunizieren wir? (How do we communicate?)
-soziale Zeichen (social cues)

-->Mimik & Gestik

-biologische Zeichen

-Zeichensprache (sign language)

-Braille

-die Schrift

-Piktogramm/Symbole

-Verkehszeichen (Traffic Signs)

-Digitale/elektrische Zeichen/Signale

--->codes

Der Sender--> Zeichen -->der Empfänger ("Bühler")

^--> Kode

^--->Kanal- Medium (Jakobsen)

^--->Kontext

Oral Zeitalter

-primare Oralität? -->ending in 800 v.Chr. (Europe)

sekundäre Oralität (written down but meant to be oral)

-Hesiod- Theogony --> die Musen --> mousika = Gedächtnis (memory)

^--->the mother was Mnemosyne [mneme]- to remember

^--->inspiration

^--->to be remembered-->reason for calling of the muse

What makes this excerpt oral?

Line 2--> a story to be told- heard

-Eigenschaften:

---Rhythmus - inhaltlich (context); sprachlich (language)

-Wiederholungen (repetition)- "voice"

-its about the language & the voice

-Thema (it's the body)

---Körper

-----------------der Tanz; Gesten (gestures); Instrumente; die Stimme--> use more than your eyes. The whole body is used.

to count ~ to tell (Aufzählen ~ Erzählen)

~fairytales (Märchen), fable (Fabel)

~legends (Legenden) & Myths (Mythen)

~Volksliteratur

~Epen, Ellegien

~Poetry Slam

-->What makes them Oral?

-easy to memorize due to how it is constructed.

May 2 — Übergang zur Schriftlichkeit

This week we continued our discussion of what communication is. We discussed the model in which communication consists of the sender (der Sender), the message (die Bodschaft), and the receiver (der Emfänger). The message can further be divided into three parts: medium, code, and context. Today we focused on medium and code, considering primarily the nature of oral communication.

The medium of oral communication is the voice (die Stimme), the body (der Körper), and memory (das Gedächtnis). When we speak of memory, there are two different types: communicative (kommunikative) and collaborative (kollaborative). Communicative memory is the direct experience of an individual, whereas collaborative memory is how we keep the communicative memory once the original experiencer is gone. Memories are kept alive in the collaborative memory through stories and rituals, which are repeated and structured. These are kept by teachers (Lehrer) and Shamens (Schamane) poets and minstrels; the narrators (Überlieferer). Thus, not everyone has to remember — certain people keep track of certain information. There are also momuments and sacred sites, whereby people remember events tied to certain places.

When discussing oral literature, it’s important to remember that there are always versions, but that’s actually what was good and expected. It is only in our era of print media that makes us think that we must have a final, correct version. Versions and variations always include repetitive, structured forms (Formeln). For example: fairy tales in German always start with “Es war einmal,” and the literature of Homer consists of recombined parts (like Legos!).

We transitioned to written memory by listening to das Lautgedicht. This was an example of how seeing something on paper changes our interpretation of it. If we see something written down, if we see a title and an author, and if someone tells us something is a poem, we are much more likely to consider it to be literature. This particular Lautgedicht as well as the poem Karawane were examples from the Dada movement of the early 20th century. These artists doubted everything including the nature of language itself. They were anti-structure and resisted being called a movement at all. They sought to push boundries and to find the source of language itself.

We finished the session by taking a look at the excerpt from Plato, and looking at the arguments for the value of writing/letters (die Schrift). The god claimed that having written language would help the people with memory and wisdom; the medium being an extension of the man. The king, however, replied that having writing would enable man to forget (vergessen), that writing would not really be the truth (nicht die Wahrheit), but reminiscence. In terms of memory, it would be collaborative, not communicative. The medium would be external, not internal knowledge — passive.