A few weeks ago I posted some thoughts about the rhetoric of the hyperlink, which I was working on with my Textual Media course. I've complicated my students thinking (I hope) by suggesting that we can use Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud's wonderfully insightful dissection of comics (itself in comics form) to understand new media. Among… Continue reading Using Understanding Comics to Understand New Media
Tag: New Media
Rhetoric of the Link
Rhetorics of the Web (by Nicholas Burbules at Wesleyan University) is an often-cited overview of various kinds of hyperlinks and the rhetorical strategies that they employ. In the course of teaching a new media class this fall, I've begun to wonder whether Burbules' examples are too general, ahistorical, or even naive about the possibilities of… Continue reading Rhetoric of the Link
GMU Course Blogs
I've been fed up with the standard issue university courseware options--namely Blackboard and WebCT--so I decided this semester to wing it with my own version of courseware (what I'm calling "of-courseware") powered by WordPress. Although Sample Reality runs on Movable Type, I've been hearing good things about WordPress, and I thought I'd give it a… Continue reading GMU Course Blogs
They Rule: Mapping the Power
Lately I've been exploring They Rule, an interactive database of the largest American corporations and their interwoven boards of directors. The site is an example of what creator Josh On (from the Futurefarmers collective) calls "database visualization." They Rule opens with these words: They sit on boards of the largest companies in America Many sit… Continue reading They Rule: Mapping the Power
Story-Space-Surveillance Triangle
My posting the other day about DARPA's now-defunct Total Information Awareness project inspired me to rethink a New Media course I've been designing, using the concept of TIA as one of the three themes for the course. The technology that DARPA proposed in its Total Information Awareness program is an example of what Laura Marks… Continue reading Story-Space-Surveillance Triangle