Well sorry I’ve been away folks. I travelled a bit on Spring Break and got to go skydiving! And bungee cord jumping (or dropping)! Ad underwater spelunking! And then I came home and slipped on a banana peel and broke my leg. So I’ve been kind of out of it for a while and now I’m stuck at home in a crazy cast watching old movies.
At any rate its been tough to keep up with digi-stuff on campus. Feel I’m trying to see what’s happening through a sort of electronic window instead of being there. Kinda bummed that there was never another video posted of a job applicant for the Digital Studies spot. I know some else applied and came to campus and gave a talk, but no vid! Oh well.
I’m hoping to be on my feet and back in time for the New Approaches to the Text Conference. The deadline passed to submit proposals. I wonder who got in???? If you conference people are out there, let me know! I’ll post your program here!
Hope to see you back in class again soon, Rebecca. Take care.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing to be missed by not being at that so called "conference." English was once a respectable discipline where a text was a text and you knew it and we liked it that way! You picked it up, you read it, and when you were done with it you put it down. End of story. Literally.
ReplyDeleteNow the English grad students want to study “new approaches to the text”? What does this mean--reading books backwards!? Some sort of non-linear storytelling? Reductio ad absurdum!
Seriously, Dr. Stone? I happen to be providing tech-sultation for that Conference. It's cutting edge, wave-of-the future, boldly go where no text has gone before stuff! Digi-tastic to the whamth degree. And I hate to say it but old school page turners like yourself are soon to be obsolete. If you're not up with the digi then you're not up with the 21st century. Your old fashioned books are as welcome as salt in a paper cut. Text is getting tech'd, and it's pixel-tastic!
DeleteMore stuff and nonsense! Your position is as insubstantial as the virtual pixels you so revere, yet it is far less common! I know from the work my colleagues and I do in the Department of Papyrus, Antiquity, and Scribbulous Textification that you and your electrified ilk are far from ubiquitous! What's more, we shall make stand to prevent your digital tomfoolery from darkening the doors of academia and sullying the good name of this venerable institution anymore! I know I am not alone in opposing the presence of electricity in print! I hereby vow, we shall thwart once and for all the digital colonization of text!
DeleteWhit, your point of view is as withered and frail as the paper it is written on, and your language just as dry. (And you've just been Dr. Zap'd!)
DeleteWe in the Department of Web Epistolary and Electro Business simply know better. Those who know a bit from a byte will soon be the only ones capable of communication in the coming electro-academy and digital nation. Like it not, paper's passe'. Rant in the wilderness spewing spitballs if you must, but you will find our citadel unassailable...because it is virtual.
Virtually unassailable! Digi-Zap!
I got in! .... April Fools !
ReplyDeleteKa-zow! You're the Twitter guy! You COULD get in! You're work is zap-a-riffic: the news on a twitter feed! All you need to know in 140 characters! I think it's great!
DeleteDude thanks !! Maybe I'll write up a proposal next year .. via twitter
DeleteDrs. Stone and Zap, may I remind you once again, Rebecca is simply a student doing a project. No need to come to blows in the midst of her academic and journalistic endeavors. Might I suggest a meeting offline rather than battling out your differences here?
ReplyDeleteAnd Kevin, thank you for your input. Enlightening as always...
You know, Dr. Middling, I think that is a fine idea. I and all who oppose the over digitization of practically everything will meet on campus and discuss the most efficacious ways of ensuring the preservation of traditional literacy and the prevention of so-called "new literacies." (It's all just reading people!)
DeleteAll who are reading here and agree are welcome--nay, encouraged!--to attend. My colleague "Zap" and those of his electrified persuasion are most decidedly not!
Therefore, I will not be able to disclose here the location, date, and time of our meeting. But I know I have supporters out there and I must get this information to you. Hmmm. I shall do so covertly, and you will understand for we are as like minded as Odysseus and Penelope and we share secret signs between us! I shall contrive clues by which you will know our meeting place and pass them on to you here.
Just allow me some time to think of them...
OK, first of all it's Dr. Zap!
DeleteSecond, this is crazy.
Third, sounds fine by me! I call upon the digital generation out there reading this to meet with me to discuss how to stop the stone age from coming back! And Dr. Whitten Stoney Lonesome is not invited! So I'll have to do, you know, what he said: secret clues and stuff so you can all come to MY meeting and plot HIS downfall! Ka-zap-pow!
And too will need some time to think of said clues. Stay tooned.
:)
Delete