Borges, Finally!

Borges' work is delicious, a composite of fragmented dreams, a bold assertion of possible realities, a verdict on human nature, a portmanteau of diverging theories--and often, completely up to interpretation. My burning question is this: Which is better, to understand Borges through strictly one's own lens of interpretation, or to go to other authorities and editorials in one's quest to understand Borges?

Suggestions please?

I am fascinated by my digital culture book, but I am also starting to brainstorm ways in which I can connect and create with regards to my chosen piece of literature, Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.

I have discovered that there is a Borges institute in Pittsburgh, and they had a colloquium in March about his work. One speaker in particular piqued my interest; her name is Evelyn Fishburn. She is a professor emeritus of Latin American Literary Studies at the London Metropolitan University. I want to contact her about her work, but I have no idea if she would respond...has anyone ever had success contacting a "high-up" before? Tips/stories/thoughts would be appreciated :)

The Wisdom of Crowds

Yes, it's a very interesting premise: groups of individuals working independently for a solution will come up, as a whole, with the right answer more often than one expert or even a few experts can. This applies, Surowiecki claims, in very diverse matters--from correctly guessing the outcome of a horse race, for instance, to finding sunken submarines. If you have a group of people who each have a little bit of knowledge, their collective knowledge will be enormous.

But how exactly does this apply to me? What crowds am I a part of? According to Surowiecki in a Q&A session, a crowd is "really any group of people who can act collectively to make decisions and solve problems." (The full Q&A session is here.) Here's my first brainstormed list of "crowds" I belong to:

English 295
My roommates
My ward/FHE
My study groups
The people I work with

This seemed kind of boring, so I waxed creative:

Frisbee-playing groups
Y-hiking groups
Professor-bashing groups in the halls outside of class
My siblings
The crowd at my apartment deciding which movie to watch on a Friday night

And the list goes on...but what does it matter that I belong to these groups? Is it possible, as Surowiecki postulates, that if the group of riled-up young adults in my apartment on Friday night--instead of forming a mobocracy and caving to group pressure when deciding which movie to watch--actually cast private votes of which movie to watch, we might end up watching something halfway interesting like Dead Poets' Society instead of something idiotic like Shrek? Is it possible that wisdom can be found in my crowds? It's an interesting thought.

Rainbows End's End, Continued

3. As we discuss in this class the correlation between form and function, I couldn't help but think about Vinge's own form and how it sometimes distracted from the function of creating a good novel. I can't remember which of my classmates commented on this (help on this?), but the constant talk about "wearables" ended up really distracting me. I am not the most technologically savvy person, and that's with present-day technology, so so much futuristic technology boggled my mind. Also, there was a whole chapter on "no user-serviceable parts within," which I think was supposed to be a metaphor about how disconnected the average human being had become from the actual mechanics of the technology he/she was using, but I'm not really sure I got it 100%...anyway, I think the techno-babble hindered me somewhat from understanding Vinge's messages.

4. The ending was so close to perfect...and then it suddenly wasn't. For a few wonderful pages, Robert Gu has reconciled himself to the loss of his gift of poetry. He was content to be able to communicate well with his family and peers, to successfully "network" on various levels. However, at the very end, he begins to believe that he may yet have his poetic gift restored, and the very last words of the novel are his thought, "What if I can have it all?" I was so disappointed when I read that. The novel had seemed to be a good and accurate depiction of the pros and cons of an increasingly digitized world--I don't think that in reality, we really can have it all, and this seemed to be well-reflected in the novel--but then that redeeming realism sort of dissipated into happily-ever-after un-realism....I mean, I like happily-ever-afters, but I think that novels that reflect truth are more powerful.

Rainbows End's End

1) Good story, as far as futuristic techno-thrillers go.  Rainbows End has basic plotline, character development, interesting setting, etc. Basic story: check, check, check.

2) This genre is not my usual cup of herbal tea, but I think I learned a lot from stretching out onto a new literary limb. For one thing, I have changed my mind about sci-fi's sameness with the fantasy genre. While both have to come up with new and impossible things and names and settings, and while both are unrestricted by the limits of reality, I think that sci-fi is more of a commentary on the way the world is already and may become.

More to follow...

Phenomenology

The way I think of reading text on a page as different from reading text on a screen is this: One is more quantitative (real pages have numbers, and pages have bulk in your hands, and it really feels like I'm making progress when I'm reading them) and the other is more qualitative (on a screen, everything flows together in my head).

Phenomenology: the way in which one perceives and interprets events and one's relationship to them in contrast both to one's objective responses to stimuli and to any inferred unconscious motivation for one's behavior (Dictionary.com)

In other words, the way in which we experience experience. 

 Poetry, Aug., 1994, Vol.164, p.267 -267 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

Fahrenheit 451 in Rainbows End

Page 128 in my hardback edition, Robert Gu is complaining about the shredding machine that is destroying the physical books he wanted so badly to read:

"Will somebody please explain this madness to me? There may be nothing burning, but this does seem like Fahrenheit 451."

First--ironically enough--finding this passage to blog about it would have been a lot faster if I could have pressed Ctrl + F on a computer. That's the first thing that went through my head as I leafed through my book.

Second--What a profound connection. Nothing was burning, but a culture of physical book reading was being destroyed by a faster, cheaper process.

Third--I am inclined to believe that the reading of hardback books will continue in the face of digitization, just as embroidery and crochet have survived in the face of the sewing machine and home-cooked meals have survived in the face of restaurants and fast food. There is something irreplaceable about a book.

And yet, at the same time, it would have been so much easier to press Ctrl + F...