Title: Can You See the Oncoming Train?

Summary: This presentation will explore new media and the cognitive impacts they may have in the academic, business and private domains. Drawing from the work of Sapir and Whorf, Edward T Hall, Walter J Ong, David Reisman and others, the presentation will identify how various media formats or “channels” appeal to those who are either “inner” or “other” directed, monochronic or polychronic, and driven by the cultural values of literacy and secondary orality. The presentation will also explore how new media have dislocated or enhanced efforts to communicate in a variety of contexts. Specific examples and findings regarding inattention blindness will be used to illustrate the challenges of using multiple modes or communication channels simultaneously, and will provide a theme for the presentation.

Intended Audience: Academic. This project will explore the intersection of rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy by addressing the impacts of new media on communication practice.

Format: The presentation will take the form of a streaming video, which uses original footage, video clips from available sources, original narration and text.

Length: Target duration for the video will be seven minutes.

Category: Topoi

Sources:

Inattention Blindness Video Clip: <a href=’http://www.5min.com/Video/Cell-Phones-and-Inattention-Blindness-165233201′ target=’_blank’>Cell Phones and Inattention Blindness</a>

Inattention Blindness Research: http://www.forcesciencenews.com/visuals/strayer.pdf

Gen-Y and Non-Verbal Cues <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574348493483201>

The Lonely Crowd by David Reisman

Beyond Culture and The Silent Language by Edward T Hall

Orality and Literacy by Walter J Ong

Draft Outline

Opening Sequence: Describe phenomenon of inattention blindness over clips of distracted drivers using cell phones. Use portion of oncoming train clip (1 minute).

Language and Thought: Describe and illustrate Sapir-Whorf thesis conflating language and thought over images drawn from archives (photographs, book covers, quotes). Describe and illustrate how Sapir’s work leads to McLuhan, Ong and Hall.

American Voices: Describe and illustrate Reisman’s work in sociology, defining “inner” and “other” directed personalities. Draw links for audience: other-directed personalities favor verbal-aural technologies (phone, cell phone, teleconference, web cams) while the inner-directed favor asynchronous text oriented media (books, magazines, email, web pages).

Time and Space: Describe and illustrate Hall’s thesis regarding how time is used by members of a culture (monochronic, one thing at a time, or polychronic, many things happening at the same time). Establish U.S. as leaning toward monochronic end of scale and offer thesis that this may account for part of the inattention blindness phenomenon. Explore Hall’s insights about non-verbal communication and cues (we are accustomed to multi-modal communication in a face-to-face setting, but are overwhelmed when media enters the equation).

Literacy and Secondary Orality: Describe and illustrate how Ong’s definition of primary orality, secondary orality and literacy may be used to characterize individuals, cultures and how communication is shaped by the oral tradition. Pose the open-ended question: can we internalize the tools of secondary orality and how might they shape our efforts to interact with each other and the external world.

Closing Sequence: Reinforce content and links from Sapir to Resiman, Hall and Ong over additional clips of inattentive drivers using cell phones. Show images of students using laptops during classroom lectures, business people in meeting or conference settings using cell phones and laptops, children tugging at Mom when she is on the phone.

Can You See the Oncoming Train: New Media and Inattention Blindness

Recent news reports have highlighted an issue with how we process information: people who are talking on cell phones while driving may literally fail to see oncoming trains, and, as a result, have died behind the wheel. In the business world, people have started banning the use of laptops, cell phones and other devices to battle something they call “continuous partial attention.” In these and other contexts, we are struggling to manage how we use new media, and, more importantly, how we can interact with each other more effectively.

To explore the issue, we can begin with a review of communication studies to create a foundation for a hypothesis on the likely impacts of new media in the academic, business and private domains. Drawing from the work of Sapir and Whorf, Edward Hall, Walter Ong, David Reisman and others, we can illustrate how various media forms appeal to those who are “inner” or “other” directed, monochronic or polychronic, functioning at the level of primary or secondary orality, and discuss how the accelerating rate of technical change has dislocated those from previous and current generations as they attempt to communicate in a variety of contexts. Specific findings regarding inattention blindness may be used to illustrate the challenges of using multiple modes or communication channels simultaneously.

Category: Topoi

Inattention Blindness Video Clip (Wait for the Ad to finish):

 Cell Phones and Inattention Blindness

Inattention Blindness Research

Other Sources:

 Gen-Y and Non-Verbal Cues

 The Lonely Crowd by David Reisman

 Beyond Culture and The Silent Language by Edward T Hall

 Orality and Literacy by Walter J Ong

Alternate Idea:

Social Networking, Facebook and the Letterman’s Jacket

Analysts and pundits have chronicled the rise and, perhaps, imminent decline of social networking sites such as Facebook. One argument states that the interface, intent and subject matter of these sites are well suited to adolescents, who may be using it to learn the ropes of social interaction. As growing numbers of middle-aged people are abandoning the site, we may find that it is similar to a yearbook – something we pass around for all our friends to sign in high school, and then put on a shelf when we progress into the adult world. One sure sign: my niece is part of Facebook “pack” of late adolescents who have all agreed not to let anyone’s parent become a “friend” so they may conspire in relative privacy. Can the days of a virtual PI working the net for worried helicopter parents be in our near future?

The traditional press has allowed committees to short-circuit the review process by allowing the committees to rely on the editorial judgment of publication staff: i.e., if the Cambridge University Press has accepted it, then they don’t really need to read it. In reality, good peer review must come from the people that understand the field, and should come from peers, not just from the editorial board of a trusted publication.

MLA-HASTAC feels that material should not be considered inferior simply because it is presented in a different media. This form of media should be recognized and acknowledged and PhD’s should not have to wait to pursue digital scholarship.

The idea of digital media is not pushing against peer review; only that scholarship does not only come in the form of written reports. Their thoughts are that new digital projects are advancing scholarship and creating teaching tools.

 In An A-Word Production: Authentic Design, Douglas Walls combines imagery with his voice-over to present ideas about the nature of language. His animated entry in Kairos treats “identity and racism with both gravitas and humor at the same time so that uncomfortableness, seriousness, and laughter happen at the same time in the piece.” Like many online or “multi-modal” compositions, the audio component carries most of the cognitive weight, with the imagery (and the voice-over) flashing by at a high rate of speed. I’m not sure if it’s just cultural conditioning, but I find it difficult to manage the imagery and the sound – it seems to fly by awfully fast. But it does have some moments that stick with you – some of the images he uses have an “iconic” value that plants an idea in your head (e.g., pasting the word authentic onto an image of a KFC sign reveals our ethnocentrism in a memorable fashion).

 In a similar vein, Scott Bateman has run a series of web animations on Salon.com over the last year or so. In these animations, he takes an audio track from a news source and combines it with simple animations and text. His purpose is a little different – to satirize or provide social commentary, and his audience is more general. In one memorable example, Bateman mashes together two different audio segments to make a point about the dubious reliability of sources we hear from on our cable news (and it’s not even Fox). The imagery Bateman uses is simple, a loose caricature that I almost ignore trying to keep up with the simultaneous stream of sound and text. It’s fun, but a little snarky.

 Ok, now that I have some idea of how people are using this stuff in a couple of different contexts, I clicked on over to Documenting my Multimodal Creation, a process blog by Jason Dockter, a Lincoln Land instructor, that covers the methods he used to produce a multi-modal composition as an example for his class. He provides a good narrative about the process of collecting assets, editing and compiling material. It’s a little scary, in that I can envision a project like that overtaking my life pretty easily. And that’s if I knew how to use all the software. Also, it occurs to me that in our age, we have a impossibly high standard set by the television industry – I hate to think that I’m aspiring to the level of “amateur porn with a message” and will most likely NOT make it.

 As for topics, I stumbled across an interesting piece on social networking, “Why Gen-Y Johnny Can’t Read Nonverbal Cues” by Mark Bauerlein. In his essay, the author draws on the work of Edward T Hall and others to explore the social and cultural impacts of people embracing “lower context” text-based forms of communication. The multi-modal format could provide an interesting mechanism for illustrating how the “silent language” permeates our lives, and how we ignore it at our own peril. (Note: For a truly mind expanding experience, check out Hall’s Beyond Culture).

research homework for Sept. 2

I am very intimidated by the course as a whole and I am hoping that with the help of my fellow classmates and Dr. Ball I will be able to learn the different dimensions of Multimodal Composition.

The syllabus is straight-forward, pays attention to detail (values, expectations, assignments, grades, etc.) and I do understand what assignments you will be expecting from me, at this time I do not understand how it is I will get there.

My first question is about terminology: in the syllabus, it states that we will draft and revise across “modes, media and genres of texts.” I think it would help to clarify the difference between “modes” and “media.” Genres are pretty obvious, but when I think of media, I think of newspaper, radio, television, all those different forms of human communication Marshall McLuhan details in Understanding Media. 

The term that is throwing me is “modes.”  If you could provide some direction on what we can expect, I would appreciate it.

link to syllabus