Neil's Blog

Presentation Responses 4

2010-04-29T17:09:00.000-07:00

Dan:

Good points about the other entertainment features that have been added to Xbox Live that help expand the community. I think having this info in here helps you keep the topic on online gaming communities and not just in the games themselves.

Mike:

It seems like your paper is a report and you're letting us know what can happen and how to avoid it. You might want to make it more argumentative and focus more on how virtual crimes are worse and why. keep the entire paper emphasizing this, including where you are listing the different crimes.

Lee:

You need to focus your argument more rather than just pointing out examples. Focus on the use of YouTube as a medium for this as compared to previous mediums of activism like print or protest. What does this say about our society that we have come to take this activism into the digital realm?

Angel:

Good examples about how teaching kids to use computers aids in closing the digital divide, and aiding in education. I think you have a good topic and argument!

Derek:

Phones good, affect digital divide! Talk about the drastically lower cost of an Internet enabled phone as well versus other ways to access the Internet such as computers, this helps close the divide by granting cheaper access. You can also mention the importance or effect of the mobility of phones versus these other options.

Kristin:

Very good point about how the anonymity of the Internet is often behind cyberbullying, many of the cyber bullies would not do the same things in the physical world that they do online. This is a very viable program, nice work!

Brent:

You mentioned how social networking sites are transparent, causing us to show more of our personal info to the world, but just after that you argued that it's causing people to not be themselves, this is a contradiction you might want to address. Yes the technology is changing us, but is it all for the worse? All you mentioned were bad examples, think about your possible opposition.

Cynthia:

In regards to these groups using the Internet to meet with others like them since there is nothing holding them back, do you think that these groups do or might take advantage of this?

Josh:

Sounds like a very good argument, well focused on how the Internet drives modern activism, both positive and negative. If you wanted another example after the earthquake in Haiti a bunch of musicians and bands got together on Musicforrelief.org where they all took a previously unreleased song and combined them to create an album which they put up for sale for 10 dollars, and 100% of proceeds were donated to Haiti.

Presentation Responses 3

2010-04-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

Mark M.:

I like how you used the Love Canal incident to show what environmental activism (or lack of it) was like pre-Internet. I think you could look more into specific websites or more phone and other mobile-based apps that allow average people to make a difference. There is an issue where many people think that the problem is too big for them to impact on their own, and you could try to address that.

Sarah:

Asking different people how they present themselves online is a good source of data given your topic. I personally talk online as if I was talking to a friend, so it's much more casual, where in person I might be a little more professional or use different vocabulary if I'm in person. Maybe looking into how other people talk online versus real life could be something worth looking into.

Cassie:

You could possibly look into the comparison between learning on a social networking site versus previous offline teaching methods. You mentioned how a social networking site can bring out kids that don't normally talk in class, this could be a good focus for the paper. If you wanted to elaborate on this big point you could see how being online can remove the anxiety of talking in public or in a classroom and see how it affects different kids.

Dena:

There is a lot of legalese in your argument, and you might need to focus it down a little. Maurice suggested picking a specific law and focusing on that, going more in depth to the implications of it. Or I think Julie brought up a very good idea and focus on how due to these laws you mentioned, social networking sites are leaving you on your own. There is nothing you can really do about online bullying on these sites because the hosts cannot be held accountable, you can then bring in the law information to show why you're left on your own, which is the main argument.

Michelle:

Good job using an argument that is very focused on a specific use of digital interfaces to bridge the gap between physical and digital space. It's like a different form of the digital divide, making computer interaction easier for new users because they can relate it to the physical world.

Brittany:

Your paper sounds a little too much like a report right now. You had a lot of great facts and info on the topic, but you might want to make it more argumentative. Perhaps talk about what the use of mobile marketing says about our society and where we might go. Then you could use the great example of Minority Report, which funny enough I wrote down only about 15 seconds before you talked about it and showed it. You are then open to talk about the positive or negative aspects of direction we are heading.

Mark B.:

Rather than focusing on how Blizzard is changing WoW, you could use the changes as examples for the main argument of social interaction in online games. You can also mention how more serious players sometimes go out of their way to accomplish something tough, like soloing an instance like you said. What does this say about gamers as well? We want to accomplish something that is a challenge, yet the game is being oversimplified. At what point will it become too easy and watered down that Blizzard starts losing a large portion of their serious players?

Chris:

Very interesting topic, I never really thought about the different divides we create for ourselves online in our communities. You could compare how we categorize and form groups with other people of similar interests and backgrounds in real life and how we continue it online.

Presentation Responses 2

2010-04-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

Katie S.:

I agree with your point that public libraries are underrated, it would be good to encourage students to go and use them more, as it's the cheapest way for them to access the Internet because they don't have to buy their own computer. If you have a chart showing computer usage before and after the training and schooling it would help hit home to those you are proposing to that the program is working and that they should continue it. You might also want to look into how computers and games will enhance learning over conventional non-digital teaching methods.

Beau:

I think your main argument should definitely be how playing games prepares us for future technologies, as you have some very good examples to back it up. Like Julie said, the point about technology feeding off the gaming community is a very good thesis option to focus your paper on.

James:

You might want to focus as well on how the attitude towards teaching with and learning from games changes as the gamers of today become the parents of tomorrow's students. Our generation looks at games in a much more positive light because we grew up playing them, as opposed to our parents who don't see the benefit of today's games.

Hans:

You could try focusing more on the interaction between virtual and physical spaces that we meet in rather than the digital divide. You had a lot of information that showed how we commute to social networking sites to talk to our friends more than physical places to talk with them. If you do this then you won't have to worry about the access issue of the digital divide that Julie mentioned was a problem. If you want to continue to focus on the digital divide then you'll have to address the issue like she said.

Spencer:

A very good example that I was going to mention that James also alluded to was talking about the game America's Army. It's the game the U.S. Army made to try to emphasize realism and combat tactics in an effort to educate gamers towards military combat. When it was originally made there were a lot of games which were very unrealistic so the Army wanted to put out a game more true to real life and maybe bring in some new recruits at the same time. They even released it for free download so that they could get a lot of people to play it. You could use this as a great example of how even trying to make a realistic game doesn't prepare someone for the reality of combat, even if it is made by the Army.

Presentation Responses 1

2010-04-09T09:41:00.001-07:00

Lorena:

I liked your fact about the 40,000 internet police in China searching for banned terms and keywords, acting as Internet police, it definately shows how serious the Chinese government is about controlling information. You also mentioned how China blocks all social networking sites, which brings up an internesting topic to look into, whether you want to or not in your paper. How do people develop differently in China without the use of social networking sites compared to us?

Sheila:

I agree with Julie that focusing on Club Penguin and the way kids made a gendered space out of a gender neutral one would be very interesting. Since you are still focusing on gender representation on the internet you can then show how kids move on from Club Penguin to Facebook and other networking sites as they grow up and how they then further identify with their gender.

Maurice:

Using Benedikt as a source is very on topic, as many of the definitions talk about how Cyberspace is equally accessed from anywhere in the world. You might want to focus a little more on how you can monitor your crops in real time and show how that can effect your production as well as focusing on the ability to monitor weather.

Corrinda:

You could possibly talk about games versus books since you mentioned how many teachers think reading is the most important. There is a lot of reading in games, not as much now that there is voice acting in them but I remember growing up on old Final Fantasy games on consoles and having to read enough text to fill a book, and that same text is playing out a story just like a book does. How can games like this coupled with the interactivity of a game enhance the learning rate compared to just reading a book that is static and unchangable?

Kat:

I think it would be good to also focus on the differences between candidates that used the Internet and those that didn't, compare their poll numbers. It might also help to look at how by using websites like Youtube to get his points across, Obama was able to bring a record number of young voters out on election day, and historically, those younger voters are usually completely ignored by candidates because of their low voter turnout.

Internet Activism and the Iranian Elections

2010-04-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm probably not the only one that is going to be doing this topic as it seems to fit the blog question very well. The 2009 Iranian elections in which sitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won re-election even after all the national polls showed his rival the clear favorite. When the results came in, Ahmadinejad won a landslide 62% of the votes to Mir-Hossein Mousavi's 37%.

After these results, there were protests in the streets, where many citizens used their mobile phones to take photos and video of the police attacking protesters and shooting tear gas into the crowds.

Although there is a public display of democracy with Iran, it is widely seen as a dictatorship due to the amount of control that the government has over it's citizen's lives. The Iranian government controls Internet access and censors the traffic coming in and out of the country. However, the protesting citizens were able to get around this by using Twitter to post information to the web, detailing the violence and government brutality towards it's people. Iranians were able to upload photos and video which were the only sources of information out of the country which were picked up on by the global media.

Large news networks used this Twitter-based reporting and mobile phone video to show the world what was happening and how the Iranian government is oppressing it's people. This is a great example of how the Government can't control everything, and that they weren't able to keep up with new media and technology. With the rapid evolution of mobile technology, everyone now has the ability to be their own news reporter, taking mobile video and photos and uploading them on the spot.

Final Paper: Cell Phones Bridging the Digital Divide

2010-03-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

As I said in my previous post, I plan to cover in my final paper how cell phones are helping to bridge the digital divide. After looking through some sources I have found that I can focus on the topic at a global scale rather than just in the United States. Below are each of my five sources I have chosen and a brief explanation as to how I want to use them.

I will start off with Adriana de Souza e Silva's article, "From Cyber to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies as Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces." I plan to use some of her examples about the blur between the digital and physical world to show that the digital divide has been bridged so much that the digital and physical worlds are now the same thing, they overlap.

My second article I chose is "Bridging the Digital Divide: New Route to Development or New Form of Dependency?" by Robert Hunter Wade. This article will be my source of opposition arguments to mine. I will use Wade's arguments for the downsides of bringing digital technology to everyone and then combat it with my own arguments.

The third article is titled "Flood, Famine and Mobile Phones." It was posted in The Economist and it will be a source of examples for how cell phones are used in disaster relief areas in third world countries. There are some good examples here of how cellphones are used in areas we thought didn't have the technology, proof that the divide is slowly closing.

For my fourth article I chose an article published on Red Herring titled "Mobile Phones Narrow Digital Divide." This article will be the main source of statistics for me. Even though it is a short article it has a lot of useful facts about the spread of digital technology around the world to both rich and poor nations.

My final article is "Mobile Phone Use in a Developing Country: A Malaysian Empirical Study" by Paul Yeow, Yee Yen Yuen, and Regina Connolly. This article covers both positive and negative aspects to the use of mobile phone technology in Asia and more specifically Malaysia. This will be a good source for the use of digital technology in underdeveloped areas.

Works Cited

de Souza e Silva, Adriana. "From Cyber to Hybrid: Mobile Technologies as Interfaces of Hybrid Spaces." The Cybercultures Reader. Ed. David Bell and Barbara Kennedy. New York: Routledge. 757-769.

"Flood, Famine, and Mobile Phones." Economist 384.8539 (2007): 61-62. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 26 Mar 2010. < http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2063/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=25952105&site=ehost-live >.

"Mobile Phones Narrow Digital Divide." Red Herring (2008): 5. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 26 Mar 2010. < http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2063/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=36876096&site=ehost-live >.

Wade, Robert Hunter. "Bridging the Digital Divide: New Route to Development or New Form of Dependency?." Global Governance 8.4 (2002): 443-466. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 26 Mar 2010. < http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2063/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=8735617&site=ehost-live >.

Yeow, Paul H.P., Yee Yen Yuen and Regina Connolly. "Mobile Phone Use in a Developing Country: A Malaysian Empirical Study." Journal of Urban Technology 15:1 (2008): 85-116. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 26 Mar 2010. < http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2063/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=32744030&site=ehost-live >.

Topic for the Final Paper

2010-03-12T10:32:00.000-08:00

For my final paper I plan to discuss how mobile phones are bridging the digital divide. I will argue how the wide spreading use of mobile phones which now have internet access is closing the gap in the digital divide. I will provide information showing how mobile phones are now more widely used than computers. I also want to look into how many phones are very cheap now which is allowing even lower income families to have access to an internet-ready phone since income is one of the greatest factors in the digital divide.

I came onto this topic because I enjoyed reading Adriana de Souza e Silva's article on mobile phones changing the world around us. I would like to work this article into my argument so I might look into how the evolution of mobile phones into mobile computers allows for people to bridge the digital divide even if they don't have a phone, because so many other people they interact with are connected to the internet at all times. I find how powerful cell phones have become with the introduction of smart phones is extremely interesting so that's why I chose this topic ultimately.

A Blog in Cyberspace

2010-02-26T13:33:00.000-08:00

I have chosen to cover Julian Dibbell's article, "A Rape in Cyberspace" this week. This article starts off by discussing Mr. Bungle, an online user of LambdaMOO who entered a room with many other people and used character emotes to virtually rape many of the other users. He used many different vulgar and explicit emotes on different people that left many of them feeling violated in real life due to their connection to their virtual persona.

After that night, the users that were violated or that witnessed the event banded together to attempt to get Mr. Bungle deleted from the LambdaMOO server so that he could never do anything to them again. However by this time the administrators to the server had stopped actively participating in it and had changed their stance on unruly users. To get someone deleted, instead of an admin just doing it themselves, the community now had to have a general consensus to do it, which meant community itself had to be defined in an online medium, which was still very new. The users had to get together and form their own judicial system, setting up rules and parameters for using the LambdaMOO system and what punishments were reserved for people that broke them.

I found it very interesting reading this article and seeing how this online community had to grow and govern itself after a traumatic event happened. Being a gamer myself I have had my share of run ins with immature people. I find that for the most part I have become deaf to the types of attacks that Mr. Bungle and other people attempt online. I have ran into a lot of people that have said the same things in games that I don't take anything seriously or personally anymore. I can only imagine what it was actually like to the people of LambdaMOO because these types of virtual attacks were really unprecedented at the time, and those people probably felt a much greater connection to their online persona than gamers nowadays do.

Today gamers have to govern themselves similarly to what the LambdaMOO community did. Gamers can often rent game servers and allow people to play on them so that they can have administrative access and control what maps people play on, and to have the ability to kick or ban people that are unruly.

It is amazing to see how people react in an online environment where anonymity allows for them to get away with just about anything without repercussions. I'm sure 99% of the immature people online that say these things would never say them in person because they might get beat up or shunned. Perhaps society just has to learn to live with these type of people and try not to give them the attention they crave, because there is always going to be people that feel they are invincible online and that they can say whatever they want.

Race in the Movies

2010-02-12T12:42:00.001-08:00

I enjoyed Thursday's discussion a lot because I'm a big fan of the Matrix movies. The reason I like them (the original Matrix more than the sequels) is not for the action in them but more the philosophical undertones to the story. Before this week however, I never really paid much attention to the use of race in the films and whether it was planned the way Nakamura talks about. I noticed the contrast between the dark and dingy real world compared to the clean and "ideal" world of The Matrix, but to throw in race into that and how white people are seen as "the man" that the predominantly minority community of Zion has to rise up against seemed like a bit of a stretch to me.

I'll run with it though, and the argument that I chose to use of Nakamura's is one she made on the bottom of page 100. She describes the use of agents in The Matrix to represent the power of "white male privilege" and that they "embody the uniformity of white male culture." This contrasts the large minority population of Zion, and Nakamura sums it up by saying the agents represent a machine culture that is "viral, oppressive, and assimilative"; while "Blackness retains its identity in the face of technological change, white power, and privilege, and racism" (100).

When I was reading this chapter I couldn't help but think of the use of storm troopers in Star Wars and how they are all white and faceless, in a way representing "the man" similar to the role of agents. Like with Agent Smith, all storm troopers in the films look alike and seem to be in endless supply. In contrast the Rebel Alliance doesn't wear full body suits, and every person has their own identity like the people of Zion do. As Nakamura put it "Afro-futurist mojo and black identity are generally depicted as singular, 'natural,' and, as Ebert puts it, unassimilable and 'authentic'" (100). And like the quote I used earlier, the Rebels retain their identity much like "blackness" does as Nakamura says.

Just like in The Matrix, The Empire is a machine similar to the matrix itself while the Rebel Alliance is the Zion resistance. The Rebels have minorities serving with them while at all times the storm troopers are anonymous.

I really don't know whether the movie makers really planned all of this out when making their films to inject these racial undertones or if it's something that people just picked up on. It still leads to some interesting thought provoking conversations. Looking forward to see the other films people make connections with for this assignment.

Works Cited

Nakamura, Lisa. Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet. University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

"Primate Vision" by Donna Haraway

2010-02-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

I'll start off by saying I wasn't able to follow completely what this entire book was about. The author is explaining in it how the field of science is being used like a fiction book at times to give us information. She uses examples of how books and movies that involve primates give us a false knowledge about them, and how that is affecting how we view different primates and treat them.

Examples were given about how this has led to our choice to send chimpanzees into space, or to demonize gorillas if a human goes into their controlled habitat in a zoo and ends up getting attacked.

Haraway explains one of the points of her book when she says the main argument is "about an Order, a taxonomic and therefore political order that works by the negotiation of boundaries achieved through ordering differences (12). She was referencing also how humans want to use racial and gender differences to create separations amongst people and other species. It is as if we strive to set ourselves apart from other primates because we don't want to face that we have evolved from them. Haraway also tackles this view with respect to religion, and how creationism has factored into it.

I see how we view visual differences amongst other humans and species as an immediate way to classify them in the hierarchy we create as Haraway discussed. But what happens when this visual identification is not available? Online we are not always able to see the person we are talking to, and most of the time all we see what they have typed out on the screen. I can't help but wonder how much this really effects our ability to identify with the other person. If you take out our ability to judge them at first glance we then get to know them for who they really are, by their thoughts and attitude. By doing this we are bypassing our habit of classifying immediately and I think we're better off because of it.

Haraway may be talking about this in reference to primate species and how we can learn more about them if we take them for who we are, but I believe we can say the exact same thing in respect for other people. The internet and the anonymous interactivity it provides allows us to evolve even further and treat humans equally regardless of their physical traits.

Works Cited

Haraway, Donna. "Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science." American Historical Review 96.3 (1991): 1-15. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 3 Feb 2010 http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2060/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2056/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9110140255&site=ehost-live

Haraway Blog Post

2010-02-02T14:19:00.001-08:00

Just letting everyone in my group know I'm going to cover Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science for my blog post this week. I plan to hopefully tie the writing into the race and gender discussions we are having in the technology field.

The Hybrid Space We Live In

2010-01-29T14:12:00.000-08:00

The passage that I chose was from Adriana de Souza e Silva's article, "From Cyber to Hybrid." It is the second complete paragraph on page 758. This passage, as well as the article, are talking about how mobile devices which have internet access are creating mobile spaces out of the areas we live in. This passage more specifically mentions how hybrid spaces are different than mixed reality, virtual reality, etc.

I couldn't help but think of many different examples when I read this paragraph, and how many different things mobile phones can do now. One of the first that popped in my head is how iPhones can use their GPS to "geo-tag" a photograph when one is taken. Essentially what this means is that the photograph carries with it the exact location the picture was taken from and even the direction the camera was pointing. There are other applications that take use of this, allowing people to take pictures and upload them, where there friends can see them and even see where the person is that took the photo.

This type of seemless integration of the digital medium of the internet into our physical lives is leading to many more possibilities both good and bad. While being able to look at an application on your phone and see in real time where all your friends are via their GPS locations it enhances the knowledge we have of our surroundings. We are connected at all times, can get any information we want at the touch of a button. At the same time we are losing a sense of privacy because while we can bring information in, information can also be sent out.

Unlike many of the other forms of reality that Silva talked about in her article, there is no way to turn off hybrid spaces, they are made up by all of the different people around us and their mobile devices. No longer do we feel chained to our computers to get information. Our computers are now with us at all times. As the technology evolves, the line that divides the physical world and the digital world will continue to blur.

Online Communities

2010-01-22T13:45:00.000-08:00

One online community that I am a part of is accessed through a computer program called STEAM. It's an online gaming community that allows you to keep track of friends and join games with them.

Within this community there are hundreds of thousands of players across hundreds of games. For me though, I tend to play with friends that I know in person outside of the STEAM community. When I log onto it I will see if any of my friends are in a game (as of now we usually play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) and if they are I can send them an instant message and let them know I'm on and invite them to join a game together.

Outside of this community I still talk to my friends normally, and just because I'm part of this online gaming community it doesn't mean that I only meet with other community members in the games, I use the community as just another way to meet with friends I know in person.

With regards to the barriers that exist to join the community, users must have a computer and must download the STEAM program. They then must create an account, then purchase and download a game to play. They can still contact other members without having a game to play, but only once you have a game can you join that and play with others. Without a game it's nothing more than an instant messanger system with a digital game store attached to it. Even if someone has a game they can play, they must still know how to play it, and many games now require very quick reactions and memorization of keys on the keyboard as well as excellent eye-hand coordination to play, and it would be very frustrating to play against other people if you were new to computers.

The Definition of Cyperspace

2010-01-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

In Benedikt's article, out of all ten of the definitions he gave, It was the first one that I connected with the most. It seemed like the definitions started with the more literal definitions and then moved towards more and more abstract ones, so while I could see some truth in the later ones, I still connected with the first one the most.

This definition states that Cyberspace is: "A new universe, a parallel universe created and sustained by the world's computers and communication lines. A world in which the global traffic of knowledge, secrets, measurements, indicators, entertainments, and alter-human agency takes on form: sights, sounds, presences never seen on the surface of the earth blossoming in a vast electronic night" (Benedikt 19).

I have always thought of Cyberspace in the more literal sense that it is simply information stored on computers and accessed by other computers via information lines. To consider it a form of electronic space is an attempt to visualize something that consists of 1's and 0's. It is not a limitless expanse like the second definition of Benedikt's says, because it is always limited by the number of computers connected to each other, even though the number is extremely large.

In this virtual space, as the definition above says, information from all around the world travels, and can reach places thousands of miles away in seconds, which tends to make our planet seem much smaller than we used to think of it. In cyberspace we are able to transmit this information and alter it, adding sounds and video together, and turn very basic numerical data into something we can see and hear. As the number of computers connected to the internet increases, so does the size of cyberspace, making it seem like an almost infinite amount of information is available to anyone.

Hello DTC 475

2010-01-13T10:33:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone, this is a continuation of my blog from last semester's class so I'll have some old blog posts on here from that. My name is Neil Fastabend and I'm in my last 2 semesters at WSU and hope to be graduating at the end of summer. I am a DTC major as I'm sure a lot of others in the class are, so I might have been in previous classes with many of you. Hope everyone has a good semester!

Abstract

2009-12-10T21:10:00.000-08:00

My paper is on the effects of religious imperialism in Ireland and Africa, more specifically the stories Cal and Things Fall Apart. In this paper I will cover the background of imperialism in the areas along with some basic background on the two main stories I will be looking at.

I will start by looking at Things Fall Apart, and how the plot revolves around religion and how the story is affected by the sudden appearance of Christianity in their society. Afterwards I will discuss the effects on the main character, Okonkwo, and how his decisions were changed after Christianity took a foothold among his people.

Second I will discuss Cal in the same manner, discussing the plot and how it is affected by the turmoil between Catholicism and Protestantism in Ireland, followed by how Cal's decisions were changed as well by conflict he witnessed.

I will finish up by looking into how the experiences with religious colonialism in the stories are similar, as well as how they are different, bringing up how the stories and characters are altered as the religious conflicts go on for longer periods of time. The main example will be the comparison between how the earliest phase of religious colonialism is experienced in Things Fall Apart, when first contact with the other religion is made, versus the ongoing conflict in Cal's Ireland.

This will all be held together by combining examples in the book with others found in my research, as well as historical background of the two areas covered in the novels.

Plans for the Final Project

2009-12-03T22:35:00.000-08:00

I plan to do the written paper for the final project, and I wanted to use Cal as one of my main sources because it was my favorite book this semester. I was trying to think of a topic that I could argue and after talking with Julie I decided to go with religious colonialism, the effects of other cultures imposing religious beliefs on an existing one. I plan to use both Cal and Things Fall Apart as the sources for this argument, along with the five scholarly sources I have found.

I am still open to a few suggestions but for right now I was thinking about arguing that religious colonization has been a main source of conflict. I know I want to focus on conflicts as it was a central them in Cal and TFA, I'm just not sure if my way is the best way to word it.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. "Things Fall Apart." Things Fall Apart: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Francis Abiola Irele. New York: Norton, 2009. 3-117.

Maclaverty, Bernard. Cal. New York: Norton, 1995.

Mitchell, Claire. "Behind the Ethnic Marker: Religion and Social Identification in Northern Ireland." Sociology of Religion 66.1 (2005): 3-21. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 3 Dec. 2009 http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2055/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2077/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=16803373&site=ehost-live
Mitchell's paper covers religious background specifically in Northern Ireland, which will provide good comparisons to Cal. There are some statistics of how many people are Protestant vs. Catholic as well which I can use.

Murdoch, Norman H. "In Darkest Africa: Martyrdom & Resistance to Colonialism in Rhodesia." Journal of Third World Studies 22.1 (2005): 211-232. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 3 Dec. 2009 http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2055/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2077/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=17240324&site=ehost-live

Nelson, Robert H. "Environmental Colonialism: 'Saving' Africa from Africans." Independant Review 8.1 (2003). EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 3 Dec. 2009 http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2055/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2077/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=10112478&site=ehost-live
I chose to use Nelson's paper as a source because it covers some good historical background to the religious reasons that people colonized Africa for, and how it affected the people there as Christianity was forced on them.

Pappé, Ilan. "Zionism as Colonialism: A comparative View of Diluted Colonialism in Asia and Africa." South Atlantic Quarterly 107.4 (2008): 611-633. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 3 Dec. 2009 http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2055/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2077/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=35301454&site=ehost-live

Singh, Amardeep. "A Pisgah Sight of Ireland: Religious Embodiment and Colonialism in Ulysses." Semeia 88 (1999): 129-147. EBSCOhost. Local University Library Service, Washington State University Lib. 3 Dec. 2009 http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2055/scripts/wsuall.pl?url=http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2077/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=6315342&site=ehost-live
Singh uses some excerpts from Joyce's Ulysses, and while I didn't choose to cover Joyce, there are some very good information in the paper that specifically relates to the religious conflict in Ireland.

Thoughts on Dubliners

2009-11-12T18:07:00.000-08:00

I couldn't quite get into the stories we read in Dubliners. I've always been a fan of stories that have a little more action and I get bogged down when there is paragraphs of description about someone's house. It's nice sometimes to use that description to make the reader really imagine what the place looks like, but I think Dubliners just had too much. By the time I was done reading about what a bookcase looked like I almost forgot what was going on in the plot at the time.

In Araby I was able to get into the story a little more because there was a little more action and plot movement, the story is still very short though so it's hard to get a whole lot out of it.

In A Painful Case the early few pages were very slow due to the amount of description forced upon us, and not until about the bottom of page 91 does the plot start moving forward as Mr. Duffy started meeting the woman.

I am just looking forward to reading Cal and hopefully since it isn't a collection of short stories there will be more plot movement to keep it interesting and not paragraphs upon paragraphs of details that are really more in depth than what is needed for a 10-20 page story.

Lahiri and Lisa's English 110 Class

2009-11-05T21:04:00.000-08:00

So after reading the blogs from the English 110 class it sounds like quite a few people have said that they think nothing really happens in Lahiri's stories. While the stories do seem relatively simple, they do have a lot more depth to them than I first expected, and I must say I really liked them. Short stories in general have to leave information out, and I think Lahiri did a great job of deciding what we could infer ourselves and what needed to be spelled out.

To me, some of the best stories are the ones that make me think and have ideas you have to dig for underneath the fairly straight-forward main plot. Katie mentioned in her blog that Lahiri's stories focus greatly on character development and not as much on plot, and I'd have to agree, but I don't agree with her that it means the reader can't be affected emotionally. I can say just going by the discussion we had in class that some people really got into "A Temporary Matter" when the characters have to deal with the knowledge of Shukumar admitting to holding their child at the end. Given how short the stories are I think Lahiri showed a great amount of character depth which allowed for emotional attachment that couldn't have been done by just forwarding the plot.

Hannah also mentioned her thoughts on how Lahiri's stories analyze how Indian culture views American culture, and I'd agree that the stories take that view. The thing that surprised me was looking at the back of the book and finding out Lahiri never even lived in India, and was born in England and moved to the United States. This raised some questions for me. Can we still look at these stories as if they were from an Indian point of view, or is it what an American thinks an Indian point of view would be? Are these stories accurate representations of Indian culture if the author doesn't know any more about it than what she has possibly studied in other books? This could also be why so many of her stories take place in the United States or involve American characters in them.

Language Matters

2009-10-30T01:59:00.000-07:00

Ha Jin's stories are riddled with themes and examples that deal with communism and oppressive government, relating to his life spent in China. For this reason he was forced to make the decision to write in English as he points out in his article. He is correct that if he wrote in Chinese these stories would have never made it past the censorship to be read by the people.

In his first story, Saboteur, Ha Jin takes on the theme of oppressive government and the abuse of power with the Chinese Police. The story covers the police provoking Mr. Chiu and his wife to give them reason to arrest him. They then abuse their power further by fabricating a whole file of evidence and other problems that they accuse Mr. Chiu of having in the past. The police then proceed to tie up Fenjin out in the scorching heat as punishment for no reason other than speaking his mind to them. Stories like this as well as his others that deal with communism vs. capitalism could never make it past Chinese censorship. The government officials in the Chinese Communist Party get to take their power and essentially mold the people into the perfect citizens that they want, by choosing exactly what the public has access to and how they should behave.

Ha Jin mentions Conrad in his article, and he brings up a good point that Conrad made a tough decision to write in English versus Polish. To write about colonialism to a Polish audience wouldn't make much sense. Poland was not a colonialist nation, so many of the readers there would not have understood the depth of the story and many of the themes of Heart of Darkness. By moving to England and writing the story in English he was able to establish himself as the go-to writer for post-colonialism, a position he never would have imagined if he wrote in Polish. Without Conrad as a base for post-colonial writing, the genre would have drastically changed, and authors like Achebe wouldn't have likely written anything.

Eyeballing Imperialism

2009-10-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

I couldn't help but think about the words at the beginning of Spivak's essay. I never really thought about how novels of the same time period as Jane Eyre could have been influenced by imperialism and allowed it to affect the story. As Spivak says, "the role of literature in the production of cultural representation should not be ignored" (WSS, 240).

How does society affect how people are portrayed in stories like Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre. Spivak's argument seems to be that you must take into account where a novel is written before you can really analyze it. A novel written in England for readers there is going to portray England in a good light, and often could end up leaving out the ugly details of what really might have happened.

If we look at novels more closely like this we could see how a story like Jane Eyre could leave out enough that Jean Rhys could create an entire story based on the Bertha character. Wide Sargasso Sea shows the racial struggles that occurred on the island of Dominica and how many whites were discriminated against after the abolishment of slavery. You would most likely not have read about the events of the burning of Antoinette's house and the acting out of the blacks on the island if it were a novel written by someone who was born and lived in England. I can understand why British readers would not want to see whites put down by other races, they are used to novels that show the positive aspects of imperialism and colonialism, that Europeans are superior and are going to Caribbean islands to bring prosperity and salvation to the natives. After all, authors want to sell their novels, so they want to appeal to their audience.

I know now that I will really look at the perspective given by a novel and who wrote it before I read it. You cannot take one story as an entire account as to what happened in an area at the time, you must look at both sides before you can truly understand.

Wait, who is that person related to again!?

2009-10-01T22:08:00.001-07:00

So thanks to the explanations in class today I think I finally got it straight on who is who in Wide Sargasso Sea. I must admit I was a little confused when the author introduces almost a dozen characters in the stretch of 25 pages.

I took a history class last year that covered Central and South America so I have already learned about Creoles and some of the racial tensions in the area, so to read this short novel was a quick refresher on the area and what happened in the 1800's. Ultimately I was surprised to see how the whites are being portrayed as the lower class now unlike in other novels. I'm so used to seeing racism go from whites to blacks in these novels of the time period that to see it go the other way caught me offguard. If you think about it, it just proves that racism tends to go towards minorities, no matter what race they are. The race that is in the majority almost always is the one that tries to push their superiority on the other races.

I look forward to reading the rest of Wide Sargasso Sea to see how these situations pan out with race in the storyline. I think I will like some of these novels in the Carribean since I have some knowledge of the area from my history class I took.

"Things Fall Apart" and the Misconceptions About the Native African People

2009-09-17T21:22:00.000-07:00

After reading "Things Fall Apart" after "Heart of Darkness" I can understand why they are so often tought together in many college classes around the world. In many ways they are two sides to the same story. You can imagine some of the nameless African slaves from "Heart of Darkness" having lived in a village from "Things Fall Apart" but never being able to have their story heard.

Up until "Things Fall Apart" was written, almost all of the novels that involved Africa were much like Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," portraying natives as savages or animals and not even human. There was never a story that portrayed African's as people just like Europeans, they were always slaves to be used and were never given a voice or a backstory. European novels would talk about the exploration and colonization of Africa and all the riches that were being found there. Then came "Things Fall Apart," and finally native Africans were given a much more accurate depiction of their lives, and people around the world could really start to analyze past works such as those from Conrad and other authors.

One of the greatest examples that Chinua Achebe gave of the portrayal of native African's in previous European novels was the last paragraph of "Things Fall Apart." When the District Commisioner thought about the book he was going to write and how he could include the story of Okonkwo killing a messanger and then hanging himself, he figured:

"One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter, but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger" (117).

This one paragraph really sums up Achebe's thoughts on previous novels involving Africa and it's people. The European colonists show up thinking they know everything, that they can sum up a person's entire life story in a couple sentences, and then title the work to show that they are superior because they were able to pacify these primitive people. Looking back on the novel, "Things Fall Apart" seems to have the ultimate goal of getting the reader to really consider previous novels such as "Heart of Darkness" and think about how they portray the natives. Achebe is trying to break the common views of these African people being primative and animal-like, and if we hope to move on as a species, we must continue to analyze these past novels and realize they only cover one side of a story, while the other side might be equally as important.

Should We Read "Heart of Darkness?"

2009-09-16T00:39:00.000-07:00

Racist views, derogatory terms, oppression, and slavery are all present in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." To question whether we should read it is a worthy thought to follow, but to truely analyze it you have to think of it from both the point of view of a present day reader and that of a reader back near the turn of the 20th century when the book was origionally released.

Living in the present day we can consider ourselves far more enlightened compared to how we know people were treated throughout history. The civil rights era has past and for the most part racism has been conquered with the exception of a few bad peas in the pod that is society. We can look at people of all race, gender, and beliefs equally, whether we agree with them or not, while in the 1800's these thoughts were far from reality. We may read "Heart of Darkness" now and consider it a racist view of how white colonialists are superior to anyone with a different color skin.

Back in the time Conrad wrote his most famous work, these racist beliefs were commonplace, and as people grew up they were pressured into these thoughts by others in society as well as by their parents teaching them. To read "Heart of Darkness" in the 1890's you would have seen nothing wrong with it.

Today we read the short novel and are given the chance to analyze it much more thoroughly based on the knowledge we have gained on the issues of race and equality. We have the opportunity to read a popular text and reflect on how things were a little over a century ago and see how far we have come. That analysis is why we should continue to read "Heart of Darkness" if for no other reason than to prevent history from repeating itself.

Darwin and "The Darkness"

2009-09-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

If all nineteenth century racists believed what Darwin believes, that we are all the same species, and all the races are equal, would they have hated themselves just as much as they hated black people back then?

So many questions come up when I read Heart of Darkness and Charles Darwin's "On the Races of Man" about race and if we all are the same, with such minor differences that it's pretty much only cosmetic, why all the hate? I guess it's because I'm alive in the 21st century and was brought up to view everyone equally. I am able to read articles such as Darwin's objectively and decide for myself whether I agree with the ideas. Other questions arise as to what house parties must have been like at the Darwin household, and what was discussed, or whether people wanted to punch Darwin because his views contradicted their racist ones.

Darwin specifically points out in his article the similarities between races across the world, and that ideas of evolution being based on geographical location are most likely false. He states examples of people living in two completely different climates looking exactly the same, giving the example of the Esquimaux people who "live exclusively on animal food; they are clothed in thick fur, and are exposed to intense cold and to prolonged darkness; yet they do not differ in any extreme degree from the inhabitants of southern China, who live entirely on vegetable food, and are exposed almost naked to a hot, glaring climate" (216).

Darwin also goes on to explain the similarities of races across the world, saying "the spreading of man to regions widely separated by the sea, no doubt, preceded any great amount of divergence of character in the several races; for otherwise we should sometimes meet with the same race in distinct continents; and this is never the case" (215). This theory states that we must have come from the same beginning race and split up around the world before becoming more diverse.

In Heart of Darkness, the opression and enslavement of blacks in Africa paints a graphic picture of how misled views of one race being superior, or viewing whites as a stronger species leads to unneeded violence. Many times in the short novel, African people were called savages or referred to as animals, as if they were completely different from the Europeans that ventured into their homelands. These ideas Darwin brings up about us all coming from the same race in early stages of human evolution makes you have to think about the past and wonder how people could believe these things, or if they ever tried thinking through these beliefs of racial superiority. If people believed that we were all the same except for a few cosmetic differences, would any of these past events have happened?

Introduction

2009-08-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, my name is Neil Fastabend. I am a super-senior at WSU since I switched my major from computer science to DTC and set myself back a couple years. I switched majors mainly because I just couldn't take the computer programming any more, it wasn't fun and I knew I didn't want to do that for a living.

I enjoy working on and with computers, and have built so many that I lost count. I am the go-to guy in my extended family for anyone that has computer problems, and since I have over 20 relatives from my father's side of the family in the Tri-Cities, it keeps me pretty busy.

I am a pretty laid back and easy-going guy, and enjoy just conversing in general. Hoping to have a good time in ENGL 373 this semester.