Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Absolute PowerPoint

            The story about Sarah Wyndham using PowerPoint that Parker begins his article with reflects our society’s move towards being a visual culture, where we understand things better by actually seeing them. Wyndham’s use of bullet points clearly breaks down the main points of the problem so her daughters actually listen. If speakers are to successfully communicate their intended message, they need to convey it in a manner that captures the attention of their audience. Wyndham realized this and used PowerPoint to grab her daughters’ attention to get them to do what she wanted.
Parker uses this story to show that PowerPoint can be a useful visual aid that helps make it easier for audiences to receive, understand, and retain messages. Parker makes a good argument, though, about the downside of PowerPoint. From the beginning of my high school career up to now, I have been using PowerPoint for most of my presentations for my classes. I do find, as Parker argues, that PowerPoint edits my ideas for my presentations. The phrase Bob Gaskins found with Parker about PowerPoint, “‘Allows the content-originator to control the presentation,’” is interesting (Parker 4). While people who make PowerPoint presentations have control over them, at the same time, their PowerPoint presentations control them by editing the ideas they would have used without PowerPoint.
This problem of editing Parker raises also reminds me of the Strand anthology and how a poem’s form can affect the way a poem is written. For example, with iambic pentameter, there can only be a certain number of syllables (ten) in a line, which restricts word choice and can change the ideas contained in the poem. Similarly, with PowerPoint, presenters have to be able to phrase their information in a way that fits with the pre-set slide layouts.
            I like the metaphors Parker suggests that be used for PowerPoint, especially when he says “PowerPoint is more like a suit of clothes” (Parker 1). It shows how, just as audience members judge speakers on the way they dress, they also judge them on their PowerPoint presentations. As the way people dress sends a message about them, what they include in their PowerPoint also communicates something about them. I also like how Parker compares PowerPoint to “a business manual as well as a business suit, with an opinion…about the way we should think” (Parker 1). His personification of the program as someone with an opinion telling you how to do something makes me think of PowerPoint as being like another boss controlling the way you do your work. As PowerPoint “also makes its own case: about how to organize information, how much information to organize, how to look at the world,” it would be frustrating having to “report” to two different people (Parker 1). Despite the limitations of PowerPoint, it is still a useful tool at the disposal of presenters to help persuade their audiences.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Know It All


It’s ironic how, although there is no assurance the information in Wikipedia’s articles are accurate,  Wikipedia “is now the seventeenth-most-popular site on the Internet, generating more traffic daily than MSNBC.com and the online versions of the Times and the Wall Street Journal combined” (Schiff, paragraph 2). What makes it even more interesting is that there had already been a failed attempt by “a devious Frenchman, Pierre Bayle, to conceive of an encyclopedia composed solely of errors” (Schiff, paragraph 6). Although Wikipedia may not be full of errors, it is still not a reliable source to use. As “the facts may [emphasis added] be sturdy,” it can be difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.
Schiff has a good point about traditional encyclopedias only covering a narrow range of topics. Wikipedia is good in that it has articles on nearly every topic that can be written about. However, just because Wikipedia has articles on all of those subjects doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re accurate. Since “anyone with Internet access can create a Wikipedia entry or edit an existing one,” the entries may contain false information (Schiff, paragraph 3). While “there is no question that Wikipedia beats every other source when it comes to breadth, efficiency, and accessibility,” “‘We can get the wrong answer to a question quicker than our fathers and mothers could find a pencil’” (Schiff, paragraph 30). Therefore, it doesn’t do much good for Wikipedia to cover a broad number of topics when the information won’t necessarily be correct.
I also found it interesting what Jimmy Wales, the founder of the Wikimedia Foundation that runs Wikipedia, said about making an entry on Robert Merton and options-pricing theory. “‘They were going to take my essay and send it to two finance professors in the field,’ he recalled. ‘I had been out of academia for several years. It was intimidating; it felt like homework’” (Schiff, paragraph 9). This quote by Wales makes me think about how Wikipedia works and how its articles are posted. While traditional encyclopedias do carry out the research and put in the effort to make sure that their information is correct, some people who create or edit Wikipedia entries don’t necessarily do that. Unfortunately, many people choose to read Wikipedia over traditional encyclopedias, which are more reliable sources of information.
While Wikipedia has taken more measures towards heading off false information, it is hard to imagine that every entry on Wikipedia will get looked over often enough to ensure the information will stay correct. Although “Wikipedia has become a regulatory thicket, complete with an elaborate hierarchy of users and policies about policies,” there are so many entries that, as one entry is corrected, five more will have been changed with incorrect information (Schiff, paragraph 24).

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Pygmalion Blog 2


I like the non-traditional way Shaw dramatically ends Pygmalion, moving away from the typical “fairly tale” ending one sees with the original Pygmalion myth. Eliza doesn’t need to follow some literary formula by marrying Higgins. It is an especially poetic ending because of Higgins’s comment that, “You will jolly soon see whether she has an idea that I havnt put into her head or a word that I havnt put into her mouth” (Shaw, act 5, page 93). Eliza shows she is a human being who can make decisions on her own.
I was amused by Higgins and Pickering when they arrived at Mrs. Higgins’s house in a state of bewilderment at the beginning of act 5. Although his mother said there would be problems with his experiment, Higgins just shrugged her warning off and continued on with it. Now, though, he all of a sudden needs her help. Pickering made a humorous comment about the policeman helping in the search for Eliza: “The inspector made a lot of difficulties. I really think he suspected us of some improper purpose” (Shaw, act 5, page 86). Pickering says this comment as if the policeman were nosily interfering with them, when that’s the policeman’s job—to make sure nothing illegal is going on, like them owning Eliza like she is, as Mrs. Higgins says, “a lost umbrella” (Shaw, act 5, page 86).
I was also amused by Higgins’s little rant directed at Eliza at the end of the play about the sort of life she wants to have. The phrase he ended this rant with especially amused me: “If you cant appreciate what youve got, youd better get what you can appreciate” (Shaw, act 5, page 103). It sounds like one of those Yogi Berra-isms, where it seems to make little sense. No matter how much Higgins rambles, though, Eliza is resolute in her judgment of him and does not bend to his will, showing she has finally overcome the power of his words.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Pygmalion Blog 1


Shaw begins Pygmalion with a huge thunderstorm, forcing people of different classes to be huddled together under the protection of a portico. As Shaw was a staunch socialist, this beginning could have served as a message to show his ideological belief in socialism because, just as the people are sharing protection from the thunderstorm, socialism also involves sharing. Shaw subtlely gives his socialist stance a second time with the Freddy character, a little bit after the thunderstorm starts. As Freddy’s mother asks the flower girl how she knows Freddy’s name, she says that was what she would call anyone. This incident brings to our attention that Freddy is just another common name, nothing special, as socialists believe no one is above anyone else.
            It’s funny how the mother and daughter are giving Freddy such a hard time for not being able to find a cab, calling him “helpless” and a “selfish pig” (Shaw 10). After all, it is Freddy who’s doing all the work of trying to find an available cab. While everyone else is safely under protection, he’s out in the storm getting soaked, going to distant places to find a cab for his complaining mother and sister. And when he finally does find one, his mother and sister have already left without him, walking to the bus. Shaw comically reverses the roles of men and women by having the women, the mother and daughter, in control and telling the man, Freddy, what to do, hinting to Shaw’s feminist view.
            After the collision between Freddy and Eliza, Shaw describes Eliza’s physical appearance. This description sets up the reader into wondering how Higgins will ‘work his magic’ and help Eliza pass as a duchess by speaking ‘properly.’ However, Shaw does say that “Her features are no worse than theirs [the ladies]; but their condition leaves something to be desired” (Shaw 11). This explanation gives the reader the notion that there is a definite possibility that Eliza can pass as a duchess, but that she just needs some help, like from Higgins.