September 7th, 2017

Response to Gitelman, McLuhan & Fiore, and Hayles

I honestly do not know what to make of McLuhan and Fiore’s piece other than it was trying to strike a point about media and society. It was random and odd and confusing and I didn’t enjoy reading it. Hopefully someone can shed some light on this piece during discussion. Gitelman’s piece, however, was a more standard read and got its point across without being strange. Gitelman discusses how media, even new media, are experienced and studied as historical subjects. She does make sure to mention that not all historical subjects are alike. For example, the histories of science and art are different, and both contain a history unique to their subjects. Gitelman says, “The difference between the two is less about the way different kinds of history get written than it is about a deeply held mental map that people share.” I think she means that it isn’t about how the histories of different subjects are obtained and documented, but more so how each individual person remembers them. This reminds me a lot of the “experience genre” that Yood had discussed in her own piece. It seems to me that the different histories are created by the way people remember them, not by how they are written down. I found this idea kind of interesting. Gitelman also discusses how media interrupt these histories that have been experienced, or in her words, “muddies the map.” Media makes these histories less meaningful and more like “throwbacks,” rather than important milestones in history. She also stresses how new technology bears weight on this problem as well. Similarly, to McLuhan and Fiore’s piece, Hayles piece was also difficult to follow. Hypertexts and cyborgs—who knew that would be found in an article about English studies and literature. I’m guessing that Hayles was trying to draw a connection between or maybe even merge the idea of technology advances and their effect on the human brain and how that affects their writing and reading. Hopefully we will discuss this article more in depth during discussion as well.