Italics

this is an italicized phrase

And this is me using my test-in-class page as a springboard for another post. First of all, I am going to use my "invoked" audience of 17 Multimedia Media students for the first part of this post--so, you guys should feel superspecial. I am pretty impressed with the blogging so far (yours, not mine)--the voice, the style, the originality of ideas. Fantastic and entertaining stuff that I actually want to read and that, judging by the comments that are starting to emerge in response to your ideas, others actually want to read too. Whodathunk it? But how is all of this adaptation fo different discourses helpful to an English student? For one thing, being, as we are, in the "late age of print," we may not see certain beloved technologies "die" outright, but we will become more responsible for quickly adapting to engaging in multimedia discourses, the constraints and freedoms of which will be, as they always are, socially constructed. Am I trying to plug some kind of futuristic "All writing will be multimedia writing in five years! Bwahahahaha!" agenda? Not really, but from my observations of what kinds of writing are gaining popularity in the mainstream and in the classroom, blogs, wikis, and web texts are gaining currency in academe and elsewhere--these genres are becoming the norm, right along with their print ancestors. Oh, and just wait until you get into Donna Haraway! If you think Bolter's radical, you'd better fasten your seatbelts :).

Ok, end of message solely intended for 4347/5347 students.

Here's what I really wanted to talk about. If anyone has not yet seen the film Koyannisqatsi (1982), it's a pretty fascinating flick. In a nutshell (from the site that gives credible info about the film and the trilogy):

"KOYAANISQATSI, Reggio's debut as a film director and producer, is the first film of the QATSI trilogy. The title is a Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance." Created between 1975 and 1982, the film is an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the environment. The musical score was composed by Philip Glass." (http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/films/koyaanisqatsi.php)

The interesting thing about this film, to me, is that, although there is not one word spoken in it (it is all a montage of themed scenes of nature, man's impact on nature, and technology), most people have accepted the interpretation that this movie is presenting humanity as a negative force pushing nature to its limits (and I'm not going to deny that there are a few scenes that suggest this idea). True, Koyaanisqatsi means "life out of balance," but is that all bad? Really? I'm too rushed right now to get out my Kate Hayles "Posthuman," but I think some of her theory on chaos would help to rectify the film from the facile view that it is simply saying "Nature=Good, People=Bad, Technology=Worse." I'm just sayin'...

Anyway, see a clip for yourself, if you wish...