Monthly Archives: February 2013

Copies vs. Real Life

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There is definitely a difference in looking at rare books online vs. seeing and handling them in person. In viewing copies, there is a lot of the work that is overlooked. Looking at old texts online is a very informative thing to do. However, it should not be substituted in place of looking at such things in person. Although our society is very tech dependent, much is missed in the fast paced world. For example, just from class on Tuesday had we been shown the books online rather than in person we never would have noticed the parchment covers, the hand printed cover pages, the smaller vs larger paged books, or the immensity of the 13-pound book. Although those details may seem small, they are still part of the history that we would have missed by viewing such online.

Going along with the difference between viewing things in person versus looking at copies, what comes to my mind is pictures. Over the summer my family always goes to the beach. Of course I bring along my camera and end up taking a thousand pictures, to which I compile into a slideshow. This year my brother was unable to attend the family vacation due to work, so I showed him the slideshow. (Keep in mind, we always go to the same place, stay in the same house, and do relatively the same type of things when there). To my surprise, although he is extremely familiar with all the places we went, he had so many questions! It was mind blowing how much is lost just viewing the experience through pictures, rather than actually experiencing it first hand.

An example of this is as simple as typing in the words sunset pictures on google, to which a whole stream of pictures appears in front of you. However what are you missing by having not been there when the pictures were taken. All you can do is look at their beauty, but you can not connect with them unless you were actually there.

 

West Wing Reference #2

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Last week we discussed the dynamic between an author’s voice in a literary work and readers bringing their own assumptions to a piece. I think a literary work that epitomizes the controversy and difficulty in determining how to balance the two sides is the Bible. How does or should one read the Bible, which is automatically presuming there is a correct way to read it? In the West Wing clip, Dr. Jacobs believes that the Bible should be read and interpreted strictly–the letter of the law. President Bartlett points out, however, that following that method leads to many modern day scenarios with which she would not agree. Who is the author(s) of the Bible and should it be read with their intentions in mind or should it be adapted to readers’ modern day values?

Print vs. Digital Media

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I have always been supportive of print books over ebooks for many reasons, despite their growing popularity.  Over this past interim, I decided to finally give ebooks a try.  I was going on one of the interim trips and thought it would be more convenient for travel to use an iPad for both textbooks and internet.  Along with the required texts for the class, I downloaded a free book for the (incredibly long) plane ride.  It was a book I had read about six years ago and thought it would be nice to reread it on the iPad.  I soon found that the experience I had reading on the iPad was very different than reading a print book.  The intellectual dimension was the same, but the affective dimension was not.  I often annotate my books when I read to highlight important or meaningful passages, make connections to other texts, or even write in reminders for myself unrelated to the text.  I felt that, while reading on the iPad, I was missing out on re-experiencing the text by not re-reading in the format I originally used.  I’m not sure if this was simply because it was a different format, or if it was because the format was an ebook.  Has anyone else had similar experiences with print and digital media?

internet and books

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I am unsure of whether what I am writing makes sense because my thoughts are currently all jumbled in my head, but one thing I have noticed with our generation is that books seem to get lost in the age of the internet.  With the internet there to provide answers to questions and to provide reading material, at least among many people I know, the library is no longer a place to actually borrow books, but rather one for quiet studying. Granted, I have friends who still frequent the library for its books but that does not account for the majority of the people I know.  In regards to rare books and the questions, where do we find information on them and where do we find images of them, a reasonable answer could be the internet. However, I think many people fail to notice that there are also many libraries that specialize in such books.  After viewing in class the different texts, I think it is most beneficial to see these books in person so that one can fully appreciate their qualities.  Is the internet taking away from the unique qualities rare books posses?

Parodies

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I was watching the latest episode of saturday night live and started to think about what constituted original content. Many of the saturday night skits are made from the parodying of other media and popular culture. In 1994 the Supreme Court justified a parody under fair use because a parody is the “use of some elements of a prior author’s composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author’s works.” Like other forms of comment or criticism, parody can provide social benefit, “by shedding light on an earlier work, and, in the process, creating a new one.” I never really thought about parodies, such as the ones Weird Al creates, in this way before.

Intellectual “Property”

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I hadn’t even thought of this before. The very term intellectual property has property in it. Copyrights, which seek to protect intellectual property, are nothing more than divergent land property laws. In reading this article, I came upon some recent historical roots of this idea. The article deals with the pains of authors by profession in 19th century England, before the Copyright Act of 1842. Seeing literary work as true labor, these authors would argue one should have a right to it as one does to his property. Only reading a bit of the article, it would appear that the desire for copyright laws comes out of the desire to make authorship a profession. To protect one’s own skill, some government assistance would be required. After all, no one can steal the skill of the carpenter, the metal worker, the engineer. It is the poor author, who’s very genius can be reproduced and disseminated unbeknownst to him, who needs the help.

Youtube is terrible

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So, I’m trying to get some study music off of youtube and I really felt like listening to Caparezza, an Italian artist. So youtube kept giving me a “This video has been blocked in your Country” message. Finally out of annoyance I went on the Italian language google page and still same thing.

I thought the whole purpose of Youtube and of the internet in general was to broaden the cultural horizons of the global population, so that as a global community people can share thoughts and ideas across borders. apparently this doesn’t apply to music.

Television and copyright Laws

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Over winter break I interned at Lou Reda productions (located in Easton) they’re the mind behind cable documentaries focusing on Vietnam and WWII. The part of the job that pertains to this class was their film archive, they have an archive of thousands of hours of footage most of which is copyrighted. A large portion of their business comes from selling the rights to fair use footage they own. what I gained from this job was what could and could not be sold to other production companies for them to use. Anything shot by the US government was fair game to be sold, this meant any footage shot of USO shows, combat footage and propaganda films could be sold off to other companies. the majority of my job was going through their large archive fulfilling film requests so I  quickly learned how to tell what was shot by the Government and what had already been edited by someone else (say the History channel) and therefore couldn’t be sold.

what struck me in particular was that they seemed to have a large amount of footage that couldn’t be used due to copyright laws. When I asked one of my coworkers about this he explained that they saved the footage for when the copyrights ran out it would then be usable and therefore worth it to hold on to.

So I just thought I would share with you my hands on experience with copyright laws and hopefully it will help someone with their paper.

When studying historic, rare books

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A quick note: when I write “text” in this post, imagine simultaneously a book, a painting, or a sculpture.

With today’s technology, we can easily admire a beautiful painting through a computer screen, and even analyze it to a great degree; however, it still does not compare to looking at it in person. There is, first, a sense of distance from the subject. When looking online we know of course what we are looking at is no where near us; it could be anywhere in the world. Though this physical distance may afford the critical distance so important in textual analysis, it nonetheless provokes an emotional sense of detachment. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, when one views a text through the internet or computer, the text itself is not there. What we see is an image of the text; a visual copy. Rationally, how can you say you’ve seen something if the actual thing, the original, is not in front of you? Think of a Polaroid.  No one goes around saying “Yes, I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower” after looking at a photograph of it in their hand. However, this causes more serious consequences: without the whole text in front of you, it is impossible to truly analyze it. Though you can see it, and use all the historic and theoretical  context you can, you cannot engage the text with all senses. This information is relegated to a caption: The book is printed on animal skin, it feels like soft paper, it smells rotten. These senses, when actually experienced, enhance learning.

Writing and writing styles

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I am heavily leaning towards using our fountain pens as the basis for how our writing utensils affects writing styles. I know it made a huge difference in my own writing style. Hopefully i can distinguish between the fountain pen and the ball point. Maybe even going into the use of brushes versus pens and how that effects the type of writing styles used by different societies.