Blog #2: Writing "at home"
Writing at Case takes many different forms, and gives insight into the society at the school...
I find that most of the writing here at Case defines more of who students are as individuals rather than student life at Case. Besides the occasional announcement for an event, most of the writing I have seen in my dorm (Sherman), is personalized to the students who post it. Nathan implies that the typical male student does not post very much on his room door. However, I have found that almost every door on my floor has something posted on it besides the standard RA nametag.
These postings range from a simple whiteboard with a marker to a complex series of comics that spans the halls. Beginning with a single posting, a series of related images have spawned as part of a oneup competition. This started with the posting of a screenshot from the original StarWars movies with the quote "It's a trap!". Soon, someone else posted the variation "It's a tarp!" with a suitably Photoshoped image. This continued with "It's a tetris!", "It's a nap!", and a host of others. I believe that the choice of these images expresses the so called "nerd" culture at Case.
Even the whiteboards are humorous. Instead of conveying useful information, they are typically covered in badly drawn cartoons. These range from rude references to the person in the room, often engaged in some sexual behavior; to the killer fan, a tribute to the massive new fan one guy bought. The one slightly informative whiteboard is even formatted as a takeoff on Wikipedia, called Boardpedia.
Much of the information found on my floor is presented in the form of randomly taped up printouts. These are not even collated on a bulletin board. Thus, it is very hard to be aware of all of the information that may be necessary to college life. However, there is another form of writing that has almost taken the place of the physical poster, and that is the Email.
Much of the important communication about events and groups is communicated through Email. Current technology has vastly improved the efficiency of communication. With distribution lists, information can be sent to only the people who need to know it. This eliminates the possible hassle of having to read every page tacked to a bulletin board to find a single piece of information. However, this has also limited the knowledge of the general student body about different offerings. Students whose interests change cannot easily find out about other groups that they may want to now join, or events that they may be interested in. For example, Sy Liebergot was speaking today (Friday) about his experience as mission controller for Apollo 13. Because I was on the AIAA mailing list, I heard about this event, while some of my friends who weren't on the list but were interested in hearing the talk didn't know about it.
Comments
Posted by: David Kotsonis
Posted on: September 15, 2007 09:05 PM
http://iatiat.ytmnd.com/
I love memetics.