More than our culture is at stake.
Author Richard Schickel laments that we are loosing the practice of criticism.
we have to find in the work of reviewers something more than idle opinion-mongering. We need to see something other than flash, egotism and self-importance. We need to see their credentials. And they need to prove, not merely assert, their right to an opinion …
blogging is a form of speech, not of writing … The act of writing for print, with its implication of permanence, concentrates the mind most wonderfully. It imposes on writer and reader a sense of responsibility that mere yammering does not. It is the difference between cocktail-party chat and logically reasoned discourse that sits still on a page, inviting serious engagement …
Blogging is yammering, not writing, and the “democratic literary landscape” it creates is a wasteland, without standards, maps, or oases of intelligence and delight.
Josh Getlin reports on how major newspapers are shrinking their book review sections in spite of what publisher James Atlas believes is “a very robust period for publishing,” which effectively cedes critical clout to bloggers.
Literary critic Adam Kirsch observes “hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned. And the scorn is reciprocated: Professional writers usually assume that those who can, do, while those who can’t, blog.” Although his discussion focuses on literary blogs, the problem of amateurism extends to blogs of any subject.
The only useful part of most book blogs, in fact, are the links to long-form essays and articles by professional writers, usually from print journals.
Still, it is important to distinguish between the blog as a genre and the Internet as a medium. It is not just possible but likely that, one day, serious criticism will find its primary home on the Web. The advantages — ease of access, low cost, potential audience — are too great to ignore, even if our habits and technology still make it hard to read long essays on the computer screen. Already there are some web publications — like Contemporary Poetry Review (cprw.com), to which I occasionally contribute — that match anything in print for seriousness of purpose. But there’s no chance that literary culture will thrive on the Internet until we recognize that the ethical and intellectual crotchets of the bloggers represent a dead end.
Thus, blogs seem appropriate as a form of speech or a repository of links. Unfortunately, blogspeech rarely becomes conversation. Rather than a global community for debate and discourse, we have the rabble of a virtual Tower of Babel. Most discussion on blogs raises the question: How Many Ways Can You Spell V1@gra?
Rob Cockerham calculates at least 600,426,974,379,824,381,952 ways.
The internet is not the utopia of knowledge we wish it to be. Tom McCarthy, a teacher, believes that “the art of thinking is being lost because people can type in a word and find a source and think that’s the be all end all.”
Winni Hu reports that of the thousands of schools with programs providing laptops to students, many are beginning to phase out these technology initiatives. Educators have found “no evidence [laptops] had any impact on student achievement … there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.” Rather than academic growth, students “have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses.”
Such disappointments are the latest example of how technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums. Last month, the United States Department of Education released a study showing no difference in academic achievement between students who used educational software programs for math and reading and those who did not.
Even worse, art, music, physical education, and field trips are often cut to pay for computers, support staff, and constant repairs. Todd Oppenheimer highlighted the dangerous emphasis on computers in education for the Atlantic in 1997. No doubt the danger is more severe today as every classroom is becoming a ‘computer lab.’
high-tech hopes for America’s schoolchildren … are joined to philanthropic commitments to helping schools make curriculum changes. This sometimes gets businesspeople involved in schools, where they’ve begun to understand and work with the many daunting problems that are unrelated to technology. But if business gains too much influence over the curriculum, the schools can become a kind of corporate training center — largely at taxpayer expense.
The Telegraph held a contest. “The idea was to come up with a paragraph or two, no longer than 150 words, packed with as many infuriating words and phrases as possible.” R.G. Banks’ entry exaggerates typical blog fare (slightly). As new generations of students increasingly rely on the internet for gathering knowledge, we have a growing responsibility to improve the quality of online texts. Without editorial standards, accountability of sources, and clear distinctions between online manifestations of authorship and speech, the art of thinking in future generations will achieve this:
Let’s stop obsessing and get down to the nitty gritty of fleshing out the gender issues. John. I’m wanting to hear inclusiveness and ethnicity here. A raft of blue sky thinking to challenge accepted orthodoxies. The bottom line is about empowerment and at the end of the day getting up to speed working 24/7 towards a coalition of understanding through best practice. This can only be fully achieved if the glass ceiling, in inverted commas, is transformed into a level playing field where the goal posts cannot be moved without leaving a substantial carbon footprint which inevitably would consign us all to the expediency of existing between a rock and a hard place. We must pick up the ball and run because we can no longer wait for the smoking gun of the next denial of service attack to consign us all to the wheely bin of history.
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sorry for the unexplained absence
lots of work and exams before i can go home
to add insult to injury,
my beloved ibook stopped starting up
i think the power button is screwy
ironically, i had turned it off so i wouldnt
get distracted before finishing a paper
luckily i keep my schoolwork backed up
on a flash drive in my pocket
i suggest you do the same
sucks for you since i was preparing a
christmas mp3 post (even though i hate christmas music as a general rule):
christmas on death row ’santa claus goes straight to the ghetto’ by snoop and nate doggs
star wars christmas album ‘what do you get a wookie for christmas (who already owns a comb)’ sung by cp30 and r2d2
jackson5 christmas ‘up on the rooftop’ (mad funky version)
and beatles holiday shenanigans ‘1968 record’ (christmas fun on acid)
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http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/2211534.shtml
If you’re partying at Colby, watch out for the slightly older girl or guy hitting on you and asking if they can score some “dope”… they might be 5O.
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my lovely roommate tauwan and i will be dj-ing at the pub tonight after the david bowie impersonator stops faking.
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woooo. best holiday of the year.. if you are around, halloween gathering around ten in tower 14a.. and it will magically become my birthday at midnight. costumes required!
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dopefulhopefiend.com will now forward you to our future location instead of dopefulhopefiend.blogspot.com
costa of vdov.net rocks and is going to host some new dope hope with new dope features
content will continue to be posted at blogspot until further notice as we work on the new site. we’ll let you know when we know when stuff might be ready. you know? also, please comment about anything you’d hope to see on the new fiend..
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for all the problems with it, flock makes blogging infinitely easier with built in feed aggregators, blogging, and del.icio.us bookmarking globally and locally. i think flock will change dopefulhopefiend. short posts per topic seem to be easiest at this point. so ive been thinking about opening dopefulhopefiend to like-minded web-junkies that might specialize in contributions related to a music genre, art, design, technology, or anything really.. this is not a paragraph based operation. currently just links, a slightly meaningful description, and tags.. do you prefer quoted sections from linked pages or just link and byline? i hope to redesign and move also. so, if you’d like to contribute a couple dopeful-appropriate posts occasionally or more, let me know… i’m also recruiting for help with an art project i hope to begin soon. i found six reels of a film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105099/) this summer in brooklyn and i want to chop it up and make a new movie from the footage. probably do some experimenting with tinting and painting frames.. i think it would also be appropriate to chop up early nineties songs for the soundtrack. i have drafted three folks to help with the film, but could use more. so if you are interested in working with either film or music for this project, let me know. i still havent watched it yet so its wide open
Technorati Tags: dope, hope, blogging, poop, team building exercise, tagging, conquest
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aahhh. i just got a prerelease version of Flock, the firefox based drag-and-drop bloggin browser. seems pretty awesome so far. besides all the bugs and frequent unresponsiveness.. oh man. and you can add del.icio.us bookmarks that are saved locally too. guess i’ll actually start using del.icio.us .. but i have a crisis. do i tag and bookmark all the shit i blog or not?
i have decided that i hate color (with the exception of a few) and silly fonts. courier 4 life boooyyyyyy
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new wbor podcast is up. if you subscribed it should download.
this ones got:
The Fruit Bats
Broadcast
Dangerdoom
Devendra Banhart
My Morning Jacket
ted roxx. karina roxxx tooo
fall breaks been great so far. its freaky how many bowdoin kids can randomly run into each other in this city.. hopefully i can make it back to brooklyn before five am at least once. thats not too much to ask.. .i survived a birthday dinner with over twenty of my friend’s extended family.. terrifying, but the aunts that i was told to watch out for were pretty tame.
ive also received word that my wonderful parents have become readers here at dopefulhopefiend.com and i’d like to personally welcome them to the blogosphere. and dont worry. i’ll still post whatever i damn well please. deal with it mom.
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ok ok. i know ive been slacking. lots of work and a damaging bout of depression and insomnia (which you would think would allow lots of bloggin). ive got two papers to write today then an exam tomorrow and then off to nyc for fall break to bust a fat chill with a friend from the dash (thats winston-salem for yall non-cackalakeys) and an extremely special someone’s twenty first birthday..
https://www.subpop.com/scripts/main/download.php?url=/downloads/free/Lives_of_Crime326.mp3&mid=326
http://www.subpop.com/scripts/main/download.php?url=/downloads/free/A_Bit_of_Wind218.mp3&mid=218
http://www.subpop.com/scripts/main/download.php?url=/downloads/free/Slipping_through_the_Sensors219.mp3&mid=219
check out the fruit bats. they are superlative. get their new album spelled in bones. or stream it below if you dont trust me (unlikely i hope). get mouthfuls too. its grand.
http://stream.subpop.com:9000/listen.pls
oh and i’ll make these links hot later. maybe. firefox and i are not speaking. he never listens and does terrible things for no reason. dont tell him but i’m considering a fling with opera..
i’m also considering some big changes for dopefulhopefiend. more on that in the future. and please dont hesitate to give me your two cents.. the more change the better. ..get it. .cents. .change. god i’m losing it. now i must write about lobsters having sex.
look for another wbor podcast in the next few days.. and scroll down for a post of some links saved a few days ago.
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back from cmj.. lots and lots and lots of work to catch up on. then i’ll catch up on the information superhighway..
heres who i saw: de novo dahl, eiffel tower, r.u. o.k., john vanderslice, tim fife, new pornographers, john vanderslice, goblin cock, wrens, dios (malos), cribs, brian jonestown massacre, holopaw, fruit bats, kinski, rogue wave, and wolf parade.. and there were maybe two whose names i dont remember because they werent very good.
ted, karina, and i are going to write an account of our trip complete with pictures (and a great story involving japanese food, nick zimmer from yeah yeah yeahs, and a cab ride to hoboken with anton from brian jonestown massacre)..
also there is a shitload of fab music out this week. we went through mail last night at bor from eight thirty until midnight.. we are going to start a ‘best of new’ weekly bor podcast. hopefully we’ll have the first one by wednesday.. i’ll link it when it exists.
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i’m heading to nyc for cmj in less than an hour. still need to pack and shower and turn in my add/drop card. i ought to print out some reading but i doubt i’ll have time. probably wont shower either. anyway i’ll be back on sunday and put up a post of pictures and reflections from cmj.
here are a couple things i have open from yesterday
http://www.turbotap.com/TurboTapTechnology/
http://www.confabulators.com/2005/illin-noise-remix-of-sufjan-stevens-album-by-mc-dj-2005
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hello. sorry for the lack of posts.. packed tonight, bye bye brooklyn tomorrow, moving in for who knows how long.. updates will come whenever i have time.
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