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Amazon's Book Bubble

2/1/2020

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by Connor Buckmaster

Go look in your Amazon account (it’s
likely that you have one), and find a book you recently purchased. Seriously. I’ll wait (just don’t close the tab!). Now ask yourself this, “How did I learn about that book?” Maybe a friend recommended it, maybe you found it on a best-seller list, maybe it’s a book you’ve always wanted to read, or maybe Amazon recommended it for you.
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Emojis: Childish Rhetoric or Advancement of Pathos in A Digital Era?

5/1/2019

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by Jenna Burke
Recently there has been a face that is making the internet 🔥 with extensive debate behind its actual meaning. No, it is not one of the Kardashians or Clint Eastwood memes, but rather an emoji that is causing controversy. According to USA Today, the new “Woozy Face Emoji” that is supposed to depict someone who is intoxicated has been creating critical debate in the social media universe. While some people 😂 at this and make tweets such as “this is how every one be when they get their pictures at the DMV,” others find the fact that we are having the discussion not only 😕, but also a complete waste of time.

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And Cut—Minimalism

5/1/2018

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by Rebecca Rodriguez

In high school, we are given our first copy of Diana Hacker’s
Rules for Writers, which we are commanded to worship. It’s not a bad book, by any means, and (if read for anything other than MLA citation instructions) specific information on sentence structure can be found within it. In fact, there is an entire section dedicated to taking wordy sentences and tightening them. ←Example→ There is a section on tightening wordy sentences.

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Although fair warning is given that short sentences aren’t always concise, wordiness is considered ultimately taboo. Not only does it focus on eliminating redundancies, but it encourages us, the writers, to cut inflated phrases (e.g. change “At the present time…” into “Now...” or “Currently...”). We also must take every opportunity to reduce a clause into a phrases, or a phrase into a single word. Though we try not to worry about these rules outside of our research papers, it’s too late. Today’s generation of writers have already been brainwashed.


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Interactive Storytelling: A New Era

8/1/2017

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by John Gross

Throughout time technology has changed how the writer crafts his novel. From pen and paper, to typewriters, to word processing—the tools of the trade are constantly evolving. In today’s world, the writer can craft a sentence and move it around to different places, supplementing paragraphs where he sees fit. This can be a powerful tool, that makes the revision process more fluid and dynamic. An author can be less committed to putting something on a page, where it can be easily reshaped, moved, and removed. While this technology has fundamentally changed how the novelist crafts his work, it hasn’t really changed how the reader consumes it. Sure, we are in a period of time that is showing the rise of e-readers and digital print, but ultimately the novel is being experienced in the same traditional way.

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Play Your Books: Video Games as Electronic Literature

9/1/2016

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By Jessica M. Tuckerman
Here’s a brief description of one of my favorite stories: Desmond Miles just escaped from Abstergo Industries, the modern day face of the Knights Templar, after he was forced to live out the genetic memories of his ancestor who fought in the crusades. He escapes with Lucy Stillman and two others who help him to reach a secluded cave where Desmond relives the memories of Ezio Auditore da Firenze. The story jumps between Ezio’s story in the Italian Renaissance and the cave where Desmond is desperately trying to find an alien device which will destroy the world if it falls into the wrong hands. By reliving Ezio’s memories, Desmond hopes to find where the device is hidden before Abstergo catches up to him. 
​

The story is full of twists and turns. I actually cried when Ezio, the narrator for much of the story, had to watch his family hang in the middle of Firenze. I love the plot, I love the framed narrative, I love seeing Italy during the Renaissance. I was consistently surprised throughout my first reading of the piece and I truly recommend that you pick it up.

The story is from 
Assassin’s Creed II. A video game.  

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Someone Talked: Spoilers in the Modern Age

1/16/2015

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by Andrew Bates

There are certain unspoken rules amongst aficionados of media. One must always have a personal list of at least ten favorite works to call “the best” when called upon by others. When topics such as Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey come up, they must immediately refute them as terrible and trite. Using your cell phone in a dark movie theater is sacrilege. The arguably most important rule, and the one that is most common amongst media absorption, is that one must not reveal important dramatic turn of events.

In other words, tag your spoilers.
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credit: The Daily Fandom

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Television is Ruining My Relationship With My Parents: I Don't Blame Them

4/28/2014

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by Brian Maloney

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Google Poetry, Authorship, and Copyright

1/20/2014

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Google Poetry, Authorship, and Copyright
Jason Cantrell
In October 2012, a poet named Sampsa Nuotio created a site called “Google Poetics,” which posts submissions by poets from around the world, each of which is created in a nontraditional way. Each submission is derived from Google’s autocomplete suggestions, which appear when any Google user is typing in a search phrase. The suggested searches are predictions about what a user might be searching for, based on common searches performed by other users:
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Screenshot of a Google search suggestion.
The suggested searches can form a unique and sometimes moving series of phrases that read like poetry: they demonstrate poetic repetition, show a particular mood or theme, and evoke an emotional reaction in the reader. A recent example from November 5, 2013 demonstrates how these poems can be very moving. The first line shows what the poet typed, and the following four lines show Google’s suggested searches:
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Screenshot from www.googlepoetics.com.
The result reads like a poem, with the repetition of the phrase “Though I” as a way of contrasting the different lines. It has the tone of a poem, speaking about love and death, which are common themes in poetry. It even makes the reader consider the deeper meaning behind the lines, such as what the poet “disagreed with” and whether the “departure” in the last line might be an implied death. These elements are all common in poetry, but is this really a poem? Three important questions emerge when considering this style of poetry. First, can such a poem be considered a creative or literary work, when it was randomly generated with very little influence from the poet? Second, can the poet truly be considered the author of the poem, when they didn’t write it, but instead discovered it? And third, should such poems be protected under copyright, or instead be considered part of the public domain?

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Texting Harry Potter: The Absence of Digital Media in Popular Fiction

3/3/2013

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Texting Harry Potter:
The Absence of Digital Media in Popular Fiction


Cherita Harrell

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It’s no secret that we’re in the midst of a digital era. Our lives are consumed with technology, and we’re surrounded by digital natives—or what writer Marc Prensky defines in his article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, as a person born during or after the general introduction of digital technologies, and through interaction, has a greater understanding of its concepts. These digital natives spend most of their time fiddling with their iToys as they immerse themselves in forms of instantaneous communication. They are addicted to their gadgets, and are slaves to the conveniences of their smart phones, tablets, and social networking websites. Their devotion to technology is evident in the songs they listen to, and the movies they watch.  It’s difficult to imagine, especially with so many sources encouraging our consumption of digital media, that there is a way for us to escape the pings, beeps and vibrations of our electronic lifelines. However, although digital technology is prevalent in our lives, there are some forms of entertainment that provide us with the opportunity to escape our digital leashes—forms of entertainment such as fantasy fiction.

As technology continues to evolve, it’s peculiar that our addictions have yet to trickle into the popular stories that dominate the shelves of our neighborhood Barnes & Noble. The fact that we turn off our HD televisions, silence our iPhones, and curl up on sofas with our Nooks and Kindles, so that we can read stories about magical realms, post-apocalyptic battle fields, and boys with lightning bolt scars, is intriguing.  It seems it should be the digital immigrants—those born before the existence of digital technologies and have adopted it to some extent later in their life—that would willingly abandon their ties to technology in order to read a decent book. However, it’s peculiar that the digital natives that flock to the Apple store to stand in a four hour line so they can be the “first” to purchase a brand new device are some of the same individuals who gravitate to stories that exclude the types of technology heavily relied upon today.  But why is this? Why are we unwilling to sever our ties with technology in our daily lives, but willing to dive head first into a fictional universe where these items don’t exist? Are we craving a world where we use carrier owls to relay messages? A world where we battle for our lives in an arena similar to the Thunderdome?  A world where the only sources of communication are flashes in the sky, and messages attached to balloons? It’s unlikely that we want our world to mimic those of the popular protagonists that capture our attention through the pages of a well-written novel. So what’s the allure? Are we simply aware that digital media may be exciting in our personal lives, but in a book that is supposed to command our attention and entertain us—it would be downright boring?


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    thoughts on  writing, art, & new media by glassworks editorial staFF

     


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