Are you guys lucky it snowed! I was sick as a dog but I would've come to class but add snow to my drive and I bailed...figuratively speaking, of course. Had I come to class, I’m sure most of you would be sick today and you don’t want no part of what I had. Blah! I didn’t feel normal until Sunday morning (yesterday). They say flu comes on suddenly but I had no idea and gastro-intestinal episode trauma is an understatement. I felt like one of those bodies described by Remarque hanging out on the wire. Is it from this suspended position in which I entered the technology- zone. I am technology-literate-ish. The different forms listed on the EnGL 516 – hub page are mostly unknown to my understanding. Some are incomprehensible but some others, I’ve heard tell but sans master ability. Most = no interaction. I like Kevin Kelly’s etymology-esk dance with the origin of the word technology. Techne and logos. Ancient Greek and specifically Aristotle. I’m digging his website. Already sent some passages to a friend. For his edification. Educationally, speaking.
I am investigating essay in my research and creatively trying to construct metadiscourse that immerses the reader in what I’m reading so it both discusses it and "does" it/ demonstrates it as it discusses it. I once created a stream of writing that was about a trip down a river featuring two young protagonists. This ran in our own Eastern Echo [student newspaper, doncha know(?)] and online, posted on FaceBook. Readers could write in via email or post comments on FaceBook, suggesting possible directions for the serial story to proceed. It ran for eleven weeks, about 17,000 words and connected to a handful of readers from universities around the country. This was back (at the tail-end of the period) when you needed a university email address to be on FaceBook. My daughter had to post the episodes for me and send notices each week that the new episode was up. “Up where?,” I’d ask, semi-facetiously. I still want to know, “where?” when I interact online. Today, I went to one of the sites listed on the class “hub” page and up sprang a message, “Our server has detected that you are attempting to view our site with an old flea-bitten mother father of a browser” …or some such thing, (I don’t remember the verbiage verbatim) and I was instructed to download a new browser. I remarked into the ether, “Micosoft Internet-flippin- Explorer came on my first PC, ‘s been in my family for years, inherited from my grandfather, probably kept Civil War data, ol' 486, running 2 Ram, 85 K hard drive. All I had to do was double the ram to 4, the HD to 150, upgrade to Windows 95 and add a 28k dial-up modem and it only cost me $650 and I cruised the internet quick as a wink (though I could brew a cup of tea while each page loaded) and I’m not switching to any newfangled browser.” So, I couldn’t view those pages. But, I’m here! Lookin’ and loadin’! …and raring to go!
