28 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2018
    1. Social media users were outraged, writing that the bogus interpreter posed a “danger” to society.

      This reaction shows the importance of multimodality. If the county had a backup method of communication with the hearing-impaired, such as closed captioning as mentioned above, this fiasco could have been avoided.

    2. D

      The images on this sidebar are meant to attract as much attention as possible. This detracts from the credibility of the article, as it is generally a feature of "clickbait" websites such as Buzzfeed. However, the successful use of this kind of strategy shows a deep understanding of the visual and spatial modes on the part of the web designer for the New York Post.

    3. a

      What is surprising is why the county did not use closed captioning when there was no qualified interpreter available. Closed captioning is a visual and linguistic mode of communication, and would accomplish the same task as sign language.

    4. Meanwhile, we can see that the official communicating in spoken English is a lot more confident in what she is saying. She is providing none of the body language hints that suggest that the signer is nervous.

    5. News Share this:FacebookTwitterGoogleFacebook MessengerWhatsAppEmailCopy

      This website uses the spatial mode to attract attention to its advertisements and attract clicks.

    6. n

      In the video, we can use the gestural mode to deduce that the interpreter was flustered and recognized that he was unprepared for the task.

    7. 0:35

      The website itself is multimodal. This video is an example of the visual and aural modes.

  2. Feb 2018
    1. forever changing the man-machine interface.

      The CRT heralded a new era for computing technology as well as televisions. They are what allowed the development of the graphical user interfaces used by every operating system today. Without them, computers would have never entered the everyday person's house.

    2. In stuttering fits and starts, the life of CRTs patchily and unevenly colonized new terrain of the home, displacing other things, like pianos, that had once been centerpieces of home life.

      In a way, the CRT indicated a cultural shift away from the traditional entertainment sources, such as musical instruments, to analog or digital screens.

    3. Braun’s tubes became the Kleenex of the CRT age, still known as Braunsche Röhre in German and Buraun-kan in Japanese.

      In recent centuries, the conversion of branded products' names into that for the entire category is a surefire indicator of popularity. It is a good, if subjective, measure of the impact one company or brand has had on society.

    4. And what of the CRT’s death? In the U.S. alone, 400 million televisions will be discarded because of flat screen technology. Add the 197 million computer monitors sold since 1995 and you begin to sense the magnitude of the problem. In North America and Europe, the number of CRTs in the waste stream won’t peak until 2050. Each one of these CRTs has several pounds of lead in the glass screen, not to mention other potentially toxic metals and flame retardants. This explains why many U.S. states banned them from landfills over concerns that potentially toxic material might leach out and poison water and soil. So a CRT’s constituents—its metals, plastics, and glass—can and do keep going as leachates that poison and burden our bodies and the bodies of others. Even after disposal, CRTs will require labor and dollars to manage, mitigate, and remediate their remainders.

      This is the type of conclusion you can only come to if you go beyond what an object physically is and look at its impact on society as a whole. This in itself is reason enough to go deeper.

    5. In 17th-century England the existence or non-existence of the vacuum was at the center of one of the greatest controversies of the modern era.

      At this point, the authors are clearly looking to write a story instead of a description of what the CRT is and does. This falls in line with the type of analysis Haltman describes.

    6. Families would gather just to watch broadcast test patterns.

      People will watch anything new and different, even if in days to come they will become extremely mundane.

    7. Manufacturing millions of CRTs annually required a lot of plastic, glass, and metal—including copper.

      Further impact beyond the direct effects of domestic television...

    8. Through what we now call experimentation, competing claims to knowledge and authority could be judged without recourse to violence.

      Essentially the opposite of the sort of discourse which Haltman promotes. Boyle had to come up with a concrete and complete proof for his ideas.

    9. What does it mean that we think of the CRT as something with a life—something that was born, lived, died? 

      Already personifying the technology in the second paragraph...

    10. The cathode ray tube is dead.

      There are still advantages to the CRT over conventional modern TVs - namely the lack of lag. For this reason, some gamers refuse to move on from the cathode ray tube.

    1. veered off course when he began signing words like “pizza,” “bear,” and “monster,” among others — words that had nothing to do with the press conference.

      Essentially the same as a county briefing speaking in gibberish, a clear demonstration of incompetence. Dissonance in a mode most people don't notice is still unacceptable from the government. Deaf feel (rightfully) that they are being treated as second-class citizens.

    2. communicate using sign language

      Sign language was used to reach the deaf, opening another mode of communication.

    3. preparing to address the public with “crucial” information.

      Spoken word was to be the primary vector of the message. However, because some are hard of hearing, it is necessary to use a second mode of communication.

    4. A

      Video above depicting incident uses the linguistic, visual, aural, and gesticular modes of communication.

    1. Themethodasthusconfiguredworksbecauseitworks

      ????????

      non sequitur

    2. Havingaddressedanobjectintellectually,andexperienceditactuallyorempatheticallywithoursenses,oneturns,generallynotwithoutacertainpleasureandrelief,tomattersmoresubjective.Howdoestheobjectmakeonefeel?Specifically,whatinorabouttheobjectbringsthosefeelingsout?Asthesewillbe,toacertainextentatleast,personalresponses,thechallenge-beyondrecognizingandarticulating-istoaccountforthemmaterially.Thepointistobegintorecognizethewaysinwhichtheobjecthascreateditseffect.Thesemoreemotionaldeductionsserveasabridgetospeculationaboutmeaning

      Empathy with an object from an era past seems a bit overboard. All objects carry cultural significance, but in my own opinion, giving emotional relevance to it is a stage too far. Haltman assumes there is no right answer, but even so, there should be objectively wrong answers - those bordering on the ludicrous. Emotional analysis does little to contribute to a complete report on the cultural significance of an object - is the object's importance to the culture from which it came not greater than its importance to you as an observer?

    3. “fusionofvisualanalysisandverbalexpression.”

      Opposite of the way descriptions are handled in natural sciences, with a heavy emphasis on impersonal and clearly unbiased analysis. Haltman seems to encourage injecting one's own ideas at the potential expense of pure objectivism. This is both positive and negative, as it allows for a more vibrant array of ideas, but also allows for confirmation bias and the assessment of excess meaning to what may have only been a mundane occurrence.

    4. smooth/roughshiny/dullhot/coldsoft/hardlight/darktransparent/opaqueup/downin/outstability/instabilityforward/backwardvertical/horizontalstraight/curvedorcrookedlight/heavythin/thickclean/dirty

      It's quite an extrapolation to move from abstract ideas like life and death to physical, yet subjective measures such as the relative color and shape of an object.

    5. Prowngoesontosuggestthat“themostpersistentobjectmetaphorsexpressiveofbelief”seemembeddedinpolarities,includingbutnotlimitedtothefollowing

      It makes sense that these binary ideas are those which are most clear when observing objects. More nuanced ideas can get lost easily in the space of an artifact, but these polar ideas are universal in any generation.

    6. Allobjectssignify;somesignifymoreexpressivelythanothers

      What aspects make some objects more expressive than others?

  3. Jan 2018
    1. The crayon, or perhaps more accurately “crayon-like object”, is 22-milimetres long and seven-millimetres wide, an elongated structure comprised primarily of haematitite, although with some small hard pieces of other minerals embedded.

      Why refer to it as a crayon? The discovery is significant even if it only reveals that Mesolithic humans were able to effectively grind iron ore into a usable form. It also shows that in this area, ten millennia ago people already had enough stability to dedicate time and resources to art.