Using the MLA guidelines provided by Purdue's OWL lab, please construct a MLA works cited list for the following material:
I've put off reading this book for awhile, since I find it so difficult to talk about. I find Kurzweil's work fascinating and dangerous, stimulating and irresponsible. I know he's coming to come up in my dissertation, opposite and alongside McLuhan and Landow as I discuss the impact of digital technologies on the perception of consciousness, status of knowledge, and appreciation of ethics. Below, you'll find some of Kurzweil's "greatest hits" and notes toward my reading and resistance of his neo-Platonic and Hegelian vision of our future.
I noticed, of course, many parallels among the world's religious traditions, but even the inconsistencies were illuminating. It became clear to me that the basic truths were profound enough to transcend apparent contradictions. (1)
It would be hard to start off any more Modern than that. Just strip the noise away from all these different Christian denominations, synthesize them, and you've discovered a profound truth. Hegel test: check.
I realized that most inventions fail not because the R&D department can't get them to work, but because the timing is wrong. Inventing is a lot like surfing: you have to anticipate and catch the wave at the right moment. (3)
Yay kairos (or is this "stupid kairos," if only people were smarter and could recognize the brilliance of "right" R&D?).
[This book] is predicated on the idea that we have the ability to understand our own intelligence--to access our own source code, if you will--and then revise and expand it. (4)
Did you just shutter a bit? Perhaps a little? I'll explain my fear below, but I want to stress that Kurzweil (and others) demonstrate that the technological ability to manipulate our "code" lies right before us, if it is not, in fact, here already.
Just as a black hole in space dramatically alters the patterns of matter and energy accelerating toward its event horizon, this impending Singularity (sic) in our future is increasingly transforming every institution and aspect of human life, from sexuality to spirituality. (7)
Yup, no argument from me.
This book will argue, however, that within several decades information-based technologies will encompass all human knowledge and proficiency, ultimately including the pattern-recognition powes, problem-solving skills, and emotional and moral intelligence of the human brain itself. (8)
Its that final clause ("emotional and moral intelligence") that is such a dousy. Connecting above, this reeks of a Hegelanism most foul. Although it might sound trite or even wearisome this day and age, we must ask: whose morality will the machine encompass? Will the machine, so culturally and historically determined, provide us with the proper morality? The singular morality (and I know I am mis-using Kurzweil's definition of singular, which I'll detail below; but, as Burke would say, the jingle dog is strong hear...er...here)
The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains. (9)
The material leading up to this quote stresses the ways in which the skin bag (thanks Mr. Clark) limits human cognition. There is a deep Platonic Idealism here--a transcendance beyond the mere material world. It goes nicely with this next quote, which I like to call "Welcome to the Hegelian Food Processor":
The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots. There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality. If you wonder what will remain unequivocally human in such a world, it's simply this: ours is the species that inherently seeks to extend its physical and mental reach beyond current limitations. [...] Although the Singularity has many faces, its most important implication is this: our technology will match and then vastly exceed the refinement and suppleness of what we regard as the best human traits. (9)
Phew. Deep breath. So much for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Is such a search the true goal of Socrates (is this a 21st century call for the Good)? Is this a return to the master narrative of history? These are not facetious questions--they are very real. And, to me, very troubling. Troubling, because I recognize in our technological development a seed of Kurzweil's vision [which echoes Kant's vision for the Enlightenment]. Though I believe it is one that we have to resist.
Whether our civilization infuses the rest of the universe with its creativity and intelligence quickly or slowly depends on its immutability. In any event the "dumb" matter and mechanisms of the universe will be transformed into exquisitely sublime forms of intelligence, which will constitute the sixth epoch in the evolution of patterns of intelligence.
this is the ultimate destiny of the Singularity and of the universe. (21)
I already said it was Hegelian, right?
On the definition of Singularity: "a unique event with, well, singular implications"; "the word was adopted by mathematicians to denote a value that transcends any finite limitation"; "an event capable of rupturing the fabric of human history" (22-23).
it represents the nearly vertical phase of exponential growth that occurs when the rate is so extreme that technology appears to be expanding at infinite speed. [...] But from our currently limited framework, this imminent event appears to be an acute and abrupt break in the continuity of progress. I emphasize the word "currently" because one of the salient implications of the Singularity will be a change in the nature of our ability to understand. We will become vastly smarter as we merge with out technology. (24)
Grounding technology philosophically upon a conceptualization of singularity is, in fact, the direct opposite of founding it upon Otherness. Rather than encouraging the tentativeness and unassurance I associate with Levinas and Derrida (and postmodernism in general), the Singularity encourages confidence and synthesis. Rather than pushing us to accept that there are considerations of consciousness (and thus, ethics, and thus, morality) beyond our capacity to know, the singularity suggests that consciousness, ethics, and morality will be revealed through the machine. Whether true (and this is no small condition!), I am disturbed by the underlying eugenical bend. Disturbed.
As I read the rest of the book, I will be focusing on the character of "smarter" as quoted in the final sentence above. I do believe that digital technologies increase our collective intelligence, allowing us to network our brainpower in ways previously unimaginable. And, like Kurzweil, I hope that these technologies will change the way we come to understand each other--but I particularly hope these technologies will suggest that it is impossible to ever truly understand anOther person (or even to have an absolute understanding of oneself--an I can never think enough to substantiate self-knowledge). In other words, I'm looking to foster a respect for difference through an appreciation of differance as a metaphysical first principle. Although its only a hunch, I have a feeling that the Platonic, Hegelian, and Kantian undertones of the passages cited above are moving Kurzweil in another direction.
I like to frame academic research by looking at Kenneth Burke's famous passage on the unending conversation of humankind.
I also want to discuss three terms from classical rhetoric: ethos, pathos, and logos.
Unlike your blog writing, which is a mix of argument, exposition, analysis, and entertainment, academic writing is more strictly argumentative and analytical in nature.
You might present a theoretical lens for a discourse community (from our readings, for instance) and then analyze how your community does (or does not) meet those criteria. This will help create a sense of purpose and necessity for your paper (which will help you write your introduction... speaking of which...)
Write your introduction last. For those of you (like me) who need to write temporary introductions, fine. End it with a "training wheels" sentence such as "this paper examines (argues, explains, explores, details, compares, assesses, etc)." I still use these kinds of crutches while writing drafts. But delete and rewrite this introduction when you are done. We'll talk more about academic introductions next week.
I am asking you to provide evidence for your claims and characterizations. You'll want to point at specific blog posts, but you want your passages to be of a reasonable size. In other words, quote what is necessary-nothing more, nothing less.
Plagiarism is the highest academic crime. Err on the side of caution. If you borrow a term from a blog or reading, make sure it is clear that the term is not your own. For instance:
Stephen Doheny-Farina calls upon the research of Robert Bellah to clearly distinguish discourse communities from lifestyle enclaves. According to Farina, the former involve a measure of "interdependence" between community members; the latter are merely collections of hobbyists and enthusiasts (50).
Make sure you provide a context for your quotes, you need to transition into them. Don't expect a reader will be familiar with the material you are quoting from. Think of Burke's metaphor of the parlor--you are taking your reader for a guided tour.
Although it might seem obvious to you, make sure you offer some kind of content summary after a quote. Don't assume your reader will read the quote in the same way you do--you want to direct their attention / offer them a specific gloss of the passage.
Your paper will be accompanied by an MLA works cited list. MLA works cited lists follow a million obscure formatting rules. It makes no sense for me to try to explain all these rules up front. I will simply direct you to Purdue's OWL lab's materials on MLA formatting. The OWL will provide guidelines for both citing sources in your paper and formatting a works cited list.
One of the hardest things for first-year students to get a handle on is the proper voice for academic papers. You don't need to be overly stuffy, but your writing should be more formal and less conversational than the writing you do on your blog. Try to avoid sarcasm. Try not to be overly enthusiastic. Your goal is to present a credible and confident (but not arrogant) speaker who is talking with (rather than "to" or even worse "down to") your audience. Don't beg, don't demand. Reason with your audience. Try to anticipate objections and offer counter-arguments.
Its hard to describe who your audience is: but think of it this way. You are writing to a sophomore at another University. They have never taken a course at Purdue. They have never met you. They are educated, and willing to read your paper. They may or may not agree with your arguments, but they are certainly not hostile.
I picked up the quizercise from Karl Stolley (who, I am pretty sure, just adapted Janice Lauer's "writing opportunity"): every Monday, before we begin discussing the week's readings, I ask students some kind of question that calls on them to connect the reading to the larger goals of the class. This week, I opened with a discussion of the importance of MLA citation (since I had caught a few students liberally borrowing material without proper citation). We had read from Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs for class that day, and I asked them the following: focusing on a specific passage or idea from Smart Mobs, explain why an English teacher might discuss the importance of MLA citation before discussing Smart Mobs. Circular? You betcha! But I like giving them these kinds of meta-questions, just to see how well they are beginning to understand my underlying aspirations for the course.
Often, I write answers to my own quiz questions--though I give myself some liberties to stray off-topic (I give my students the same liberties, essentially they have ten minutes to prove to me that they have done the reading!). Here's what I wrote in response to my own question:
In Smart Mobs, author Howard Rheingold suggests that the most productive social networks develop "bottom-up" measures for establishing authority and filtering out free riders. He writes:
Self-monitoring is part of successful grassroots collaboration, a kind of many-to-many surveillance by mutual consent. If governance is to be democratic rather than Hobbesian, maintenance of social order requires technologies of mutual control."
We can think of citation as a kind of surveillance system constructed by the mutual consent of scholars and researchers. Through citation, scholars pay respect to the intellectual work of others, acknowledging contributions even as they criticize oversights. And, although MLA standards might at times come off as Hobbesian, we should remember that these standards change in response to new technologies through grass-roots practice (right?)
The digital world makes it quite easy to bypass such grassroot intellectual systems. As such, many Universities and academic institutions are turning to more top-down, rigid structures to ensure reputation (such Turnitin.com) or outlawing the use of digital environments altogether (such as the movement away from Wikipedia and digital sources).
I strive for a different solution. Rather than ignoring the pitfalls digital technologies engender, I seek to face them heads-on, discussing the epistemological and ethical challenges digital environments place on our intellectual traditions. Specifically, I believe that citation of web sources encourages students to be responsible, reputable net-i-zens.
End response. That's been sitting in a text-edit file on my desktop for a few days now, I figured rather than saving it to a corner of my hard-drive, I'd just shoot it out on the interweb. I've got to write my letter of application for my job market group this weekend, so perhaps I can revisit some of those ideas...(the current draft I have, which is terrible, discusses my dissertation, approach to new media, and approach to teaching in terms of fostering cohabitation and linking classical and contemporary theory to practice).
Argh. Me tired. Baby cry. Dissertation hard. Job market taxing.
I wanted to take some time, gather what brain power I could, and point to an interesting post over at the Long Now Fondation on the New York Times' decision to allow free access to their web publication. Mrxk put up a quick reflection on the Times going free the other day, highlighting something that excites most of us in the Free Culture movement:
Starting on Wednesday, access to the archives will be available for free back to 1987, and as well as stories before 1923, which are in the public domain, Schiller said.
This is fantastic, no doubt about it. What Alexander Rose, author of the Long Foundation article "Is there more cultural value in the New York Times or Mickey Mouse" wonders about those missing 64 years. Perhaps we would like to read those articles too. Perhaps.
Those familiar with Lawrence Lessig's work Free Culture already got the reference from Rose's title. Those missing 64 years are caught up in the current legal and congressional debates over copyright (or copywrong, depending on one's perspective). The Disney corporation's powerful lawyers and lobbyists spends millions, as in hundreds of millions, to protect their intellectual property. And for the past 64 years this has meant preventing the constitutional update of public domain. As Rose points out, given the complexity of copyright law, the Times couldn't give that material away if it wanted to.
Rose ends his essay with an interesting quesiton:
I wonder what people will think about this time far into the future? A dark ages — not created by war, famine, depression, or even technological failure, but a small whistling mouse.
While hyperbolic (hopefully?), Rose raises an interesting question, one which I have been circling for some time now. if our economic and cultural development becomes increasingly dependent upon the free exchange and remixing of information, then how long until our strict intellectual property regulations begin to cripple us? I've been working a lot with Tapscott and Williams' 21st century business primer Wikinomics for my diss. They stress to CEO's and managers that failure to integrate a corporation into the free-flowing open source communities blossoming on the web could lead to stagnation, alienation, and bankruptcy. Hmm... what about the rest of us? How might continuing legal restrictions stagnate other aspects of our culture?
marccsantos.com got a new look today. I wanted something minimalist and clean before I head out on the job market. The design corresponds to the visual design of my other job materials (CV, cover letter, dissertation summary). The face-lift isn't complete, but I had enough done that I figured I would through it up there.
Problem: in taking done the old site, I also took deleted many of the images used for this blogger design. So... this site will have to go broken for a bit. I teach in 33 minutes, lets see how much of this blogger site I can fix in between now and then...
Update: K, ten minutes later and I think I'll found every instance of the ole green design. Sh*t- missed the "about" me box border color. And these boxes look hideous. Headers are an abomination against usability. Back to work.
Update #2: Well, the stupid f#cking Purdue server decided to kick me off-line while in the middle of my revision, but I managed to make some more changes. I have to fix the dotted borders around comments, change the text-color for post headings, and get rid of the border around the "about" box (missed this twice apparently). But its gettin' better.
Update #3: I'll have to check this on a PC tomorrow, but I feel like I'm getting close to my new homepage design. I've got the font-family in place for my headers (font-family: 'Gill Sans', 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, sans-serif; ) and have got the borders pretty well done. The next big project will be to replace the ul li images in the sidebars.
Update #4: I haven't found the time to touch-up the blog. I've been working on the diss (first chapter draft is creeping up to page 60) and have been working on job materials (CV, diss summary, letter of application Oh, My!)
