Essay 2

Here is a link to a very very rough draft of my second essay. The conclusion is not exactly finished but I'll get back to it later.

Taking an Approach

I found this chapter, Taking an Approach, in Joseph Harris’ book to be the most confusing so far. I’m not going to lie, I don’t exactly know what Harris means by taking an approach but I think I get it enough to get through this post. Taking an approach, to me, is very similar to the other chapters of the book in the sense that it talks about using other people’s writings in your own. The only thing that changes in Taking an Approach is that you are now using the other writer’s style along with their words.

So I’m not positive if I have the full understanding of what Taking an Approach really means, but I will attempt to give examples from the New York Times and the blogs I am reading. First of all, one blog I am following pretty much only posts links to other blogs so I don’t think Taking an Approach applies to this blog. The sports blog I am following though uses a more straight forward style by just telling the story how it is but I have also noticed a little bit of sarcasm in some of the posts. Then, The New York Times’ style is more professional than the blogs. It doesn’t have the freedom of the blogs having no editors, so the New York Time’s style is more of the facts compared to the blogs which use more opinion.

What can be gained by Taking an Approach is that it is another way to use another writers writing in your own. What can be lost, and probably the part that confuses me in this chapter, is when writing in the style of another author, you lose your own style. And there is always the chance that someone may misinterpret the style of another author and when they try to somewhat mimic it, they can get it all wrong.

Post Revision

Towards the beginning of the year, we were to do a reading on Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” In this article, after reading and doing my blog post, I answered yes it is making us stupid. I’m not sure why I said that. I don’t know if I was in a hurry and just wanted to get that post done or what, but I remember after doing a few more readings about the subject I went back and looked at the first two paragraphs of that particular post and I thought to myself, “Wow, don’t agree with what I wrote hardly at all.” But it’s mostly only the first two paragraphs I disagree with. In those paragraphs, I was a negative about the whole idea, while in the rest of it; I contradicted myself by being positive, which is the way I really feel about his article.

In the post, I said that the internet has become the substitute for everything and that this is a problem. I would like to counter myself by saying yes it has become a substitute for a lot of things but this is definitely not a problem. Why not take advantage of having something that we can use for almost everything we need in our lives? It is so convenient to us and there is nothing wrong with having convenience in our lives. Also I said it is a problem that everything we need to know is located right at the end of our fingertips. Well that definitely isn’t a problem. If you don’t know something, you should look it up or else you will never learn it. Now, what is a better way to look something up; by going through books and encyclopedias or just searching for it on Google? So I’m not sure what I was thinking when we first did the post on Carr’s article but I am sure glad we got to do this post where I got a chance to redeem myself and fix my mistake.

Countering

Countering is almost the exact opposite of forwarding. In forwarding, the work is used by another person to prove their own point and they kind of send it back out into the public. And the new writing usually isn’t directed back towards the original writer. But countering is when someone reads some sort of writing, and then writes something back towards the original writer, pointing out some things that maybe are controversial to them, or just something that they find unclear. In forwarding, it keeps the story alive and keeps it going. In countering it also continues the story but in a different way. Forwarding usually keeps the story how it is. It implies that the story is right and its ready to be distributed to the world. Countering implies that the story still has problems that need to be fixed, so the story stays alive but in a discussion kind of way. A reader may counter a story that holds a different position than they believe, so they may write something to show their view on the subject, and this can continue as a conversation because the original writer can respond back to continue defending their position.

In my sports blog, an example of countering can be found in a story about the NBA star Lebron James. James plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers but for a few years now there have been rumors about him going to play for the New York Knicks when he becomes a free agent in 2010. Recently, Cleveland played in New York, so the media did all these stories about James playing for the Knicks. The blog I have been following did a post sort of countering that, saying how chances are; he will continue to play for the Cavaliers. The author of the blog brought up points about how he will have better teammates in Cleveland and how they have made a run at the championship while the Knicks have not been close. It also brings up some quotes of James himself saying that he has not made any sort of commitment towards going to play for New York. This is a good example countering because they take a story from the media and call it out on some things that they overlooked.

Forwarding

Harris’s idea of forwarding is taking someone else’s work, and sort of adding to it; making it more of your own, but still giving the original writer their credit for it, and then letting it back out for the public to view. From what I understand after the reading, forwarding is when someone takes another person’s writing, comments upon it and shows more or less the positive parts of it, then that person puts the writing back out there for the public to do the same thing, and this process can be done over and over again. Harris says that he got the term forwarding from the language of email. In email there is the reply button and then there is the forward button. The reply means you comment directly back to the original writer. Forwarding means to take that writing and push it out further into the public. So he is taking the idea of forwarding emails and connecting it to writing.

One of the blogs I am following is a perfect example of that. The political/news blog that I am following basically takes stories that interest him, and he puts a link to it, then he usually puts a few comments that go along with it too. So what he is doing is taking work that may not get as much traffic or readers throughout the day; he then posts a link to that article or blog and adds a little of his own opinion. Then he “forwards” it so that all the people that normally view his blog can check it out. It can also be like a chain. Maybe there is another blog who gets a lot more hits than the one I am using; that blog can post a link to this blog, “forwarding” its information to more people than before. And this can go on until it reaches many of the highly viewed sites and a lot of the world can be exposed to it. When linking to the whole article, nothing really changes. The only thing that differs is that the author of the blog has added his input with the comments he puts on his own blog.