doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
internet
‘net neutrality
05 years ago
I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while. I’ve been thinking about the impact it will have on all of us – not least of all bloggers, especially those big bloggers that draw in a lot of traffic, who may have a message different from the one their service providers agree with, and who are willing to speak out about the injustices they see in the world.
I finally decided to write about it when I read the feministing interview with Joan Blades of MoveOn.org.
The time to take action is now. Congress is meeting tomorrow to discuss this issue. Read the feministing article. Then go to save the internet and send your representative a message.
We need to make sure that our representatives know that the Internet needs to be neutral. No one should be treated unfairly.
wikis
05 years ago
They often talk about measuring the accuracy of Wiki articles as though this was a physical process in which they could use a yardstick.
I read the above statement in a classroom and thought about it. I responded:
I think that the problem with Wikipedia is that it became the “go-to” place for anyone doing research on the internet. Everyone started looking to it as an authority, a secondary resource, to the research they were doing on other things.
Instead of carrying on the traditional wiki practice which allows anyone to contribute, the admins then had to consider their audience and purpose more carefully. Who did they really want to reach and why? What was important in this community.
Instead of a worldwide community that is more democratic, they have limited it only to those who are now authorities in the field they write in. If you have a PhD behind your name, in the Wikipedia arena you are given much more credit.
While I understand the need for this, it limits Wikipedia from being a true wiki. There is limited social intereaction and it is quite elitist at this point.
Addendum:
Funny enough, I found this on the Kairosnews blog today:
The Chronical of Education posted a note today describing how Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, says that he wants to get the message out to college students letting them know that they shouldn’t use Wiki either for class projects or for serious research. Speaking at a conference held at the University of Pennsylvania on Friday called “The Hyperlinked Society,†Mr. Wales said that he gets a number of e-mails each week from students who complain that Wikipedia has gotten them into academic trouble. However, he said that he has no sympathy for their misfortune, noting that he thinks to himself: “For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the [Wiki] encyclopedia.â€
Mr. Wales said that leaders of Wikipedia have considered putting together a fact sheet so that professors could pass it out in their classes to explain what Wikipedia is, and that it is not always a definitive academic resource. In an interview, Mr. Wales said that Wikipedia is suitable for many uses. For example, if you are reading a novel that mentions a particular historical event, you could use Wikipedia to get a quick basic overview of that event to understand the context. But students who are actually writing a paper about that event should rely upon the authority of history books.
While it’s interesting that he is stating this, I have a feeling that it will be used by more and more college students because it is written by experts in the field (for the most part) and because it sounds authoritative.
variants
0The variant “be” and the “aks” of a certain dialect are actually the correct way to speak in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). While it is called African American Vernacular English, it is, by no means, limited to African Americans (as areyoustoler showed when she talked about Hawaiian Creole English (HCE) – often called Pidgin).
It is not an informal variant of what most people would call “standard” American English. In fact, most linguists don’t believe there is a “standard” American English. There are many dialects and there are some that are more common than others. Just because the broadcast media tend to speak in one certain dialect does NOT make it a standard.
Getting back to AAVE -
I asked all of you your opinions on those specific areas of speech because there are common misconceptions about how our fellow Americans speak. We tend to think of people as well-educated if they speak what we consider standard or they write in what we consider standard. If they have a different mode of speech or writing from those, our assessment (as a whole society) of them changes.
What is most interesting is that there are people who are absolutely brilliant who speak in AAVE. They are intelligent by all standards. It is the dialect they learned as children and one
that they speak most comfortably.
As cathelin said, many people code-shift. What this means is that we can move in and out of our dialect to others to communicate more effectively in arenas that require us to speak differently. We all have a certain degree in which we can code shift. Some people can do it easily in many different dialects. Others are hard-pressed to do it well in one other dialect.
What I urge is that when you hear AAVE (or any other dialect, for that matter), that you consider it is like a different language. It is English but it is a different English. We wouldn’t look at the British as less intelligent because they speak words differently than we do. We shouldn’t look at speakers of AAVE any differently, either.
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On another note, I have finished my paper. It is on the languages of the internet and how I believe synchronous communication centers on the internet do, in fact, have a dialect all their own. It is not spoken English nor is it written English but it is a dialect of Internet English.
You can find my paper here if you’re interested. It is in Word format. Let me know what you think after you’ve read it. I’m always interested in new points of view.