9 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2018
    1. The word multimoda/ is a mash-up of multiple and mode. A mode is a way of communicating, such as the words we're using to explain our Ideas in this paragraph or the images we use throughout this book to illustrate various concepts. Multimodal describes how we combine multiple different ways of communicating in everyday life

      Ball introduces the term multimodal. Multimodal is defined here by Ball. I draw a direct comparison to the Rheingold reading. As the concept of multimodal is introduced by ball, Rheingold illustrates the internet as a multimodal platform. Rheingold says to "take the Web site's design into account, but don't count on it" as a a way of showing that while the interweb is filled with pictures, resources, and multimodal factors in general, that a researcher must be careful when using sources that communicate a message but in a way that is broad.

    1. “It was absolutely sublime,” Pescovitz said. “The quality was like nothing we’d ever heard.” Sound engineers then transferred the audio on the tapes to digital files.Here’s an excerpt of the remastered audio:

      After listening to the remastered audio I was moved by all of the different languages and modes that we humans have to communicate. Through music and different instruments, to different languages, and to using animals to portray who we are. The sample also included an aural introduction as to what this tape was doing which gave it a spatial mode and recognition to the organized contents of the work.

    2. ound engineers first stuck the tapes into an oven and literally baked them, which prevents them from deteriorating, then put them on a vintage reel-to-reel player. Everyone in the room sat back and listened.

      First, I did not know that baking a tape prevented them from deteriorating. The science behind that blows my mind. The second part of this passage must be so powerful if I was in the room. I can imagine all the hard work and you finally get to listen to the original tapes. The room must have been deathly quiet and everyone just closed their eyes and listened and got chills. In this situation an aural mode of communication was the best option and would have the biggest impact.

    3. Pescovitz and his collaborators called Sony about them, and an archivist eventually found the tapes sitting in an underground, climate-controlled warehouse in western Pennsylvania.

      This relates to what we have been doing in class and using research and the help of archivists to find materials. This was also mentioned in the linguistic metadata in the subtitle of the page and provides more information. The original tapes were not touched for over 40 years and sat in a warehouse. Seems to be a little selfish to me.

    4. CD-ROM in 1992, and about two years ago NASA uploaded the nature sounds and greetings on SoundCloud, without the music. The lack of a vinyl version, even in the days of digital, seemed like a missed opportunity.

      This passage shows an example of multiple mediums of aural communication. This record was actually already released on CD and then partially released onto a website and app called Soundcloud 2 years ago. It is just now being released onto vinyl. These are 3 different mediums of aural communication that are targeted for different audiences. Vinyls are more for the baby boomer generation and modern hipsters like me, Soundcloud is for the millennials and CD-ROM are for the generation before them. This would mean that each generation wanted to hear this record and the producers wanted everyone to hear it as well.

    5. “When you’re seven years old and you hear that there’s a group of people who are creating a phonograph record that’s actually a message to extraterrestrials and attaching it to two space probes and launching it into the solar system and beyond—it sparks the imagination,” Pescovitz said. “That stuck with me.”

      Today this idea is not as big as it was back in 1977, we have countless movies and horror films and documentaries about interacting with aliens. In 1977 however, this was only 8 years after the moon landing. People began to believe that space travel was possible and that alien interaction was imminent. This is why when a group of people created an aural mode of communication to be launched into space it was and still is such a big deal.

    6. The target audience for the contents—popular songs, sounds from nature, photographs, spoken greetings in dozens of human languages and one whale language—was, and still is, an alien civilization capable of deciphering the instructions on the cover to learn about one small world in the universe.

      This passage is a great example of using multiple modes of communication and it should be if we are trying to give a message to aliens who may or may not understand us. The Voyager Golden Record incorporates four of the five modes of communication. Aural in the sounds from nature, popular songs. and the greeting in dozens of human language and the one whale language. Visual in the form of photographs, Linguistic in the writing on the instructions and overall descriptions. Last but not least spatial on the title on the record. This passage also helped me to understand what the golden record was and why it carries such a weight. It was made for any aliens to understand Earth.

    7. The Voyager Golden Record was never really intended for human consumption.

      At first this sentence did not make sense to me due to the word choice consumption. When I hear this word I think about eating and I thought the golden record was one of those fancy dishes made out of thin gold and then somehow got turned into audio. This was not a very good use of linguistic modality in the form of "word choice" and the "development and coherence of individual words and ideas"

    8. Forty Years Later, the Golden Record Goes Vinyl The audio comes from the original tapes that sat untouched in an underground warehouse since the Voyager launched in 1977.

      This title and subtitle gives linguistic metadata about what this article is about. I did not know what the "Golden Record" was before the subtitle helped to clear things up a little. Based on the metadata it seems as if "The Golden Record" is well known and that this is a big deal. Maybe it just isn't to me because I have never head of it.