12 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2017
    1. I chose the article "Forty Years Later, the Golden Record Goes Vinyl" by Marina Koren as my supplemental text. The article focuses on the Voyager Golden Record, which is an actual golden record that was launched into space in 1977 with Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts. Voyager 1 is currently the farthest human-made object from Earth. Both spacecrafts have left the solar system.

      The record itself contains "popular songs, sounds from nature, photographs, spoken greetings in dozens of human languages and one whale language" and most importantly directions on how to find planet Earth, and its target audience is an intelligent alien civilization that is capable deciphering the message on the record.

      The content of the record was not intended for public consumption; the copies that remained on Earth were distributed mostly to NASA facilities. However, recently Ozma Records has put the Golden Record on vinyl for the first time. David Pescovitz and Timothy Daly, the co-founders of Ozma Records were surprised by the lack of a vinyl version of the Golden Record in these digital days. The two paired up with Lawrence Azerrad, a graphic designer, to launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the project. Originally, the group planned on raising $200,000 to make 2,000 sets, however, the internet responded with $1.3 million. Due to such a turnout, 10,000 special edition copies were made for those who backed the Kickstarter project. A different edition is now sold on the Ozma Records website.

      Pescovitz and his collaborators did not have much trouble finding the original tape recordings of the Golden Record; all they had to do is contact Sony and visit their studio to listen to the tapes. The hard part was obtaining permission to use copyrighted material. The difficulty was in "tracking down the owners of some of the more obscure content, like melodies by indigenous groups". It came to the point where Pescovitz "was calling Papua New Guinea at 2 o’clock in the morning, and working with amazing ethnomusicologists around the world to try to track down as much information as possible, to find out about who these people were, what the music was, who collected it and when".

      Koren, Marina. “Forty Years Later, the Golden Record Goes Vinyl.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 25 Aug. 2017, www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/voyager-golden-record-vinyl/538035/.

    2. You might be saying to yourself, "Wait, Is a lolcat really a text?" Yes. Text traditionally means written words. But because we want to talk about the visuals, sounds, and movement that make up multi-media, we use the term text to refer to a piece of communication as a whole. A text can be anything from a lolcat to a concert tee shirt to a dictionary to a performance.

      The authors of the textbook establish this idea in the very beginning of the chapter which they will follow throughout the chapter. Personally, I disagree with this idea because for me internet memes are images in the first place and text in the second place. When deciding if a meme is worth looking at, I first look at the image it portrays and only after I pay attention to the text, and if the text is too long, I will most likely not consider reading it. Only if I am looking at a news article or at a book, or other multimodal media that has the purpose of conveying information, I regard it as text first and other modes second.

    3. Writers choose modes of communication for every text they create. ror example, the author of a lolcat chooses the cat photo (usu-ally based on what is happening in the photo and whether that action might make for a good caption) and decides where to place the caption on the photo and what color and typeface to use for the caption. Sometimes these choices arc unconscious, like when an author uses Microsoft Word's default typeface and margins when writing a paper for class. To produce a successful text, writers must be able to consciously use different modes both alone and in combination with each other to communicate their ideas to others.

      While it is true that conscious mode choices can greatly enhance the end result, sometimes conscious effort may hide under the disguise of nonsensical randomness. Let's examine the case of millennial internet humor, which could be classified as neo-Dadaism. To ordinary people, the internet creations of so-called millennials would make absolutely no sense. Even in the analysis of neo-Dadaism in an article posted on Medium, Megan Hoins fails to expose the true core of this seemingly absurdist movement. People who create such absurdist content do their best to exaggerate things out of proportion, which they define as irony. Many pointless internet memes are created out of sheer desire to convey irony; such irony is not your every day irony but instead is something pointless done on purpose just because it is pointless. If you ever had encountered something that was so bad or so poorly-constructed that it made you laugh, then perhaps you are aware of this phenomenon. To conclude, sometimes it may seem like certain multimodal works had very little conscious effort put into them, when in reality every single decision in the making of such a work was carefully planned to yield a specific result.

      retrieved from http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1202553-meme-man

      Hoins, Megan. “Neo-Dadaism.” Medium, 23 Feb. 2016, medium.com/@meganhoins/neo-dadaism-absurdist-humor-and-the-millennial-generation-f27a39bcf321.

    4. The visual mode refers to the use of images and other characteris-tics that readers see. Billboards, flyers, television, Web sites, lighted advertising displays, even grocery store shelves bombard us with visual information in an effort to attract our attention. We can u-;e this mode to communicate representations of how something look~ or how someone is feeling, to instruct, to persuade, and to entertain, among other things.

      Personally, I find the visual mode to be the most important and most powerful modes out of all. According to Worldwide Health Organization, 285 million people worldwide are estimated to be visually impaired, which is only 3.8% of the current world population; out of those 285 million people about 86% have low vision, which sometimes cannot be detrimental to every day activities and can be fixed with glasses. When this is taken into consideration, it becomes evident that the vast majority of world population can interpret visual modes without problems. It is indeed true that pictures are worth a thousand words because more information can be packed into a picture than into a paragraph, for example. Just think of all the advertisements or propaganda posters you have encountered: did any of them not incorporate a visual mode?

      The Golden Records that were sent into space contain a great amount of visual information on them. It is unclear whether the instructions on how to use the record and how to find our solar system are carved into the record, but if they are not, then it would be more difficult for an alien civilization that does not have eyes to make sense of the record and potentially locate our planet.

      image acquired from https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/record-created-for-extraterrestrials-now-available-for-everyone/

      image acquired from https://creativecommons.org/2014/11/08/the-voyager-golden-record/

      “Visual Impairment and Blindness.” World Health Organization, www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/.

    5. And in other situations in which we arc trying to communicate how something should be done, it can be more useful to create an animation or video that demonstrates the steps in a process than to write out instructions.

      In the golden age of internet videos, I find it difficult to follow written instructions whenever I need to learn how to do something because sometimes they tend to be unclear or even wrong. Instead, I find myself watching YouTube videos that teach me how to do the exact same thing. It is easier to see how to do something you don't know and then repeat it than to read how to do something, play it in your head, and then try to repeat it yourself. In the case of the Voyager Golden Record, we had done our best to instruct an alien civilization how to find planet Earth; we just have to hope that if the record will be received by an intelligent life-form, the life-form will be intelligent enough to make sense of a binary code.

    6. Different media use different combinations of modes and arc good at doing different things. We've all heard the expression "a picture is worth a thousand words." Some-times it is much easier and more effective to use an image to show someone how to do something or how you arc feeling. Say, for example, that the reason you wanted a picture of your dog is to show your friend in another state what the dog looks like (see fig. 1.17). A picture will quickly convey more information in this situation than will a written description.

      In this digital age the value of a photo has greatly deteriorated because practically anyone now owns a smartphone that can take high resolution photos, and due to social media where thousands of new photos are uploaded every second, our constant encounter with such media makes us appreciate it less. As someone who was a child in the 2000s, I remember being very excited about picking up different encyclopedias from the library and carefully analyzing all the photos, even imagining myself being in them. Nowadays, however, a child would not even bother to open an encyclopedia and instead would prefer to go online and mindlessly scroll through his or her social media in hopes of a faster passing of time.

    7. Consider, for example, how Katie Courie opened her first CBS news-cast standing alongside her desk, and contrast ii with Hrian Wil-liams's stiff and formal posture behind his desk during his newscast (Figs. 1.13 and 1.14). Couric's body po~ition was an attempt to be more approachable than other anchors, but her more personable gestures translated to more gender-stereotyped ideas of feminin-ity, which worked against Courie, the first female solo anchor on a prime-time broadcast network newscast.

      I was always fascinated by the power of body language since it is an important factor that decides your place in society. The way you sit, stand, or look at people can have a great impact on them. Sometimes it is obvious when people try to have a particular effect on their audience, which in a way diminishes the power of the speaker. One of these people is Mark Zuckerberg; I find it funny watching him converse with other people, because oftentimes it is very obvious that he is trying to look tough. It may be possible that only earthlings are capable of understanding the power of body language, so we should appreciate our ability to understand it.

    8. And although we've ~ listed it first-and though it's the mode you probably have the most practice with-the linguistic mode is not always the most impor-~ tant mode of communication. (Whether it is or not depends on ~ what other modes are at play in a text, what kind of text it is, and ~ many other factors.)

      Not every audience is the same and therefore sometimes one mode may be appropriate for one audience and completely unsuitable for another audience. In the case of the linguistic mode, some people may not speak your language, so your reach would be limited, or it could be possible that your audience is deaf or blind, which would force you to alter your linguistic mode.

      When sending a message to an intelligent alien civilization, we can be one hundred percent certain that they are not speaking our langange, however, we can hope that they have the means of deciphering it. Alien civilizations could also not posses the gift of sight and instead rely on echolocation like bats. It is also possible that an alien civilization is not capable of hearing and instead uses telepathy as a way of communicating with its species. Evolution can create wonders in environments we have not explored yet, so encompassing every single mode we are aware of onto a golden record would substantially increase the chances of an alien civilization being able to make sense of our message.

    9. A Performance Is a Multimodal Text

      Since a mode is a way of communicating, not all multimodal projects have to contain text. A performance can be comprised of aural, gestural, spatial, and linguistic modes and still be considered a multimodal project.

    10. Although each mode plays a role in the overall message, 1t is the combination of modes-the 11111llimodality-that creates the full piece of communication.

      The authors make an excellent point here. Nowadays with all the technology available, it is almost expected of us to incorporate multimodality into all of our works. If you were to make a PowerPoint and present into to your target audience, you would certainly not present a blank page with text on it because it would most likely not grab your target audience's attention; it would be a good decision to add pictures, animations, and perhaps even sound and video if appropriate to make your work as interesting as possible.

      In the case of the Voyager Golden Record, there is surely no better way of describing planet Earth and humanity to an alien civilization other than including every single most important aspect of planet Earth and human achievement, which are naturally multimodal because that is one underlying characteristic of intelligent life.

    11. The designers of Twitter chose how to lay out the basic profile page (with the tweets in the right column and info about the user on the left), and users can choose design templates and profile images-all of which means that lil}'Ollt draws on spatial, visual, and linguistic modes of communication, showing that it's nearly impossible for a text not to use multiple modes at once.

      Personally, I dislike Twitter because of its 144 character limit. My thoughts almost never can be expressed in 144 characters or less, which is the prime reason I do not use Twitter. To circumvent this, it is possible to write out your message, screenshot it and post it as an image, but that undermines the purpose of Twitter, in my opinion.

    12. The documents in Figures 1.19 and 1.20 were created by the US government to communicate information about nationwide economic recovery efforts. In the 1930s, the United States was suffering through a severe economic meltdown, known now as the Great Depression. To help alleviate the situation, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) created the Works Progress Administration

      I do not understand why the authors of this textbook, including millions of other Americans think that FDR's economic policies helped "fix" the Great Depression. The truth is that the economic policies during the Great Depression only prolonged it.

      FDR was knew nothing about economics. The tax rates under FDR's presidency were enormously high, reaching a 94% tax rate on the top bracket in 1945. In fact, in 1942 FDR proposed a 100% top tax rate, which is absolutely ridiculous. The ridiculously high top tax rates took away all the incentive from businesses to produce because in the end they would barely make any profit. What America needed during the Great Depression was lower taxes, not crazily high taxes.

      Creator, Chloris. “FDR's Proposed Marginal Tax Rate Was 100%.” Daily Kos, 23 Feb. 2013, www.dailykos.com/stories/2013/2/24/1189512/-FDR-s-Proposed-Marginal-Tax-Rate-Was-100.

      “Taxation History of the United States.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 30 Sept. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_history_of_the_United_States.