[ neoblogical ]

“I could be a sick old man in real life, but when I get on Runescape, I’m praised and bowed to.”

… my nine-year-old son.

This is a very interesting commentary on how we construct online identity and how even a nine-year old recognizes this aspect of online life.

Technorati Tags: Digital Culture, Gaming, Identity, Kids, Online Life, Rhetoric

Well, my entry into the blogging world has been less than impressive. Looks like I’m averaging just less than a post per month. But, I really want to get this thing rolling this semester, so I’m going to give it a try. For one thing, I’m going to start entering a lot of my class reading responses as blog entries here as well.This semester I am in a Digital Rhetoric class where we’ll be doing a lot of html and css work and talking/thinking about how to create compelling online communications. One of the main goals I have in this class is to get my blog design and structure finalized and to get serious about posting to it. I’m also in Computers and Writing, which might also have been called Technology and Writing. In this class we’re studying the intersection of technology and writing pedagogy. Our first two classes were very stimulating.Oh, by the way, last semester, my first in the Ph.D. program, I was in a survey of research methodologies and in a User Centered Design class that covered not only design, but also usability per se, including usability testing. It was fascinating. I’ll be sharing some posts that stem from my experience in that class in upcoming days, as well.Oh, and I’m loving my MacBook. I’m buying an iMac for my kids next week. More on that later also.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Mac, MacBook, RhetComp, Rhetoric

I’m typing this post on my new MacBook with Intel Core Duo 2.0 GHz processor, 80 gig HD, super drive, and 1 gig of ram. I’ve been thinking about this purchase for a long time and for a lot of reasons, but two of the main ones are the new ability to dual boot Windows XP and the application DevonThink. I’ve been doing a lot of reading online about varous tools for research for writers and tried a whole bunch of the ones for Windows XP and none were what I was looking for. The tool I need, or least one of the tools I need, from all the reviews and individual testimonies I have read, is DevonThink, and it is only available for the Mac.

Also, I do a good deal of web development and graphics work using mostly Adobe apps. Earlier this year during my teaching internship helping Dr. Ann Richards with her graduate Document Design class, I spent a lot of time in a Mac lab and was amazed at how much smoother and faster the apps worked on the Macs. And those weren’t even the Intel core duo machines. So I made up my mind when I heard about the new machines that my next PC was not going to be a PC after all.

So here I am, a new Mac user trying to find my way into this new world. I brought my MacBook home today from the Apple store, fired it up, and all has been pretty swell since. I have had Firefox crash on me twice and don’t know why, but I’m not worried about it yet, at least not until I get more oriented. I did use Macs a good bit between 1988 and 1992 for various publishing work, like when I helped with an independent newspaper for a while, and I’ve played around on a few since, but basically I’m having to unlearn a lot of ingrained behavior. For instance, I have memorized keystrokes from Windows 2.x that are no longer documented but which still work that allow me to cut and paste with one-handed keystroke combos. I have a LOOONNNGGG way to go to get up to speed as the power Mac user I intend to be. So anyone with suggestions, feel free to post them and help a fella out.

Technorati Tags: Mac, MacBook, Online Life

In other words, a LOT has happened since my initial couple of posts. I finally got that $%&*@ thesis finished. It was a real bear. But it went over pretty well with my committee and I’m pretty happy with it, too. I’m sure it would benefit from additional editing and finishing. That’s been the problem with my academic career thus far… I’m so busy with family and earning a living that I seldom get to write more than a couple or three drafts. Well, I’m not starting off as a very prolific writer, so I’m going to keep it short just to get some meat on the bones of this blog.

By the way, my thesis turned out not to get around to talking about Frontlne Milblogging after all. The problem was that I couldn’t talk about a subgenre of blogging because I came to the conclusion, as I was working out the theory of blogging as genre, that blogging is not a genre after all: blogging is a new medium, combining users, technology, audience, culture, and content in new ways, but it is not a genre. The technology/medium of blogging supports numerous genres, as does the technology/medium of the book. This led me to disagree with prominent rhetoricians Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd. For a graduate student to disagree with academics on the level of Dr. Miller is very risky and intimidating, but I believe that I ended up on firm ground, and I did so through a loophole in Miller and Shepherd’s own paper on blogging as genre. I’ll come back to all that and post some more thoughts, and my thesis itself, soon.

So, I received my M.A. in Professional Writing a few weeks ago from Kennesaw State University. Then, after a two week “break” (ha!), I started my Ph.D. in English with concentration in Rhetoric, Composition, and Professional and Technical Writing at Georgia State University. I’ll be including you all in my new journey as we go, so stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Digital Culture, Doctoral Studies, Genre Studies, Online Life, PhD Studies, RhetComp, Rhetoric

This is Your Brain

This is Your Brain on a Summer Thesis

I am sitting here VERY late on turning in my M.A. thesis for the Master of Arts in Professional Writing at Kennesaw State U in Kennesaw, GA, right outside Atlanta. I have to get this thing done in order to begin my doctoral studies at Georgia State U next month where I’ll be studying Rhetoric, Composition, and Technical and Professional Writing (or where I won’t be starting until next fall if I don’t get this done).

So, you might ask, what the heck are you doing blogging when you are supposed to be writing your thesis? Good question. Not sure I know. I guess I needed a brain break.

Ironically, my thesis is about blogging. It is a rhetorical and genre analysis of the subgenre of Frontline Milblogging (blogging from the front lines by active duty military personnel). Currently my brain is saturated, or should I say marinated, in works by Jay Bolter, Anna Munster, James O’Donnell, Leon Breure, Carolyn Miller, Tim Lindgren,
Christine Hine, Richard Grusin, Susan Herring, Marc Prensky, et al. And the “et al” is a pretty long list. So I guess I needed a moment of distraction.

I look forward to talking about some of the ideas in my thesis soon, and some of the ideas I came across in my research that didn’t make into my thesis.

Back to the writing cave.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, PhD Studies, Doctoral Studies, RhetComp, Rhetoric

I’m finally here in the blogosphere. Well, sort of. I am really in my study typing on my computer. Yet as soon as I click publish, I will somehow “inhabit” the online world of blogging.

As a writer - as a consultant in web design, communications, networking, and computing - as a student of rhetoric and composition with an intense interest in emerging forms of digital media - and as a future college teacher - I have hesitated (procrastinated?) in adding my voice to the increasing online cacophony of noise and voices. Will I simply add to the noise? Will my voice blend into the background, adding incrementally to the oppressive weight of information overload?

I hope not.

I want to offer something new, something useful - thus the name… NeoBlogical.com. “Neology” refers to a new word or phrase, or the act of inventing one. In this sense the word is synonymous with “coinage,” and is linked to ideas of creativity, inventiveness, and willingness to be a pathfinder. (The term has also been used several times in the past few centuries to refer to new theologies in Christian and Jewish tradition, especially a German rationalist approach to Christianity.)

So here begins my offering. We’ll be considering many subjects here: rhetoric, film, fiction, poetry, popular culture, religion, music, art, family, parenting… you name it. If I am interested in it, or living it, I’m going to eventually have something to say about it, and a desire to get my readers to see, as I try to, old things in a new light.

Maybe this will come from finding new ways to say old things, or maybe it will come from finding new things to say. However it happens, we need to always be becoming new. In this sense, each day we should get newer rather than older. We should always live with the realization that we are on our way to infinity, and perhaps beyond. Otherwise we will wake up one morning entangled in our finite, stagnant lives, and we will look around at the greyness of it all, and we will wonder, “How did I get here?” Or we might never wake up wondering anything, never taste the infinite, swallowed by the grayness of ignorance and stagnance.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Digital Culture, Online Life, RhetComp, Rhetoric