Though I am extremely familiar with using internet sites, creating my WordPress blog has still introduced things I did not know how to do. I have had to edit my blog multiple times to make the layout more efficient, and easier to navigate based on my menus and categories.

I cannot imagine, however, creating some of the first internet sites where there was no standard for organization. As the website further emerges and more technology like our phones are able to access websites, things like "mobile mode" and "desktop mode" have emerged, which requires a reformatting and changing of the mode used to convey this information. Technology today is continuing to put pressure on current formats, and must continue to be updated to meet consumer expectations.

In Julie Compton's article regarding the "pussy hat" they discuss that the color pink has been deemed as weak and frilly, but it is not the color. It is the fact that pink has become symbolic for women, who are looked down upon. The issue with the hat's design is not the color, but the name. I found it interesting that in the article there is a tweet embedded that contains a picture of a hat that someone knitted with pink, blue, and white yarn. These colors make up the trans-flag, and are there to show support.

At the end of the article the tone shifts and goes on to acknowledge that not everyone sees the hat as influential at all, and some people are really unconcerned with the disagreements behind it. Rather than regarding the hat as so important, it is important to remember it is the actions of the people that will make change. I think this shows the limitations of text, as it can speak to inspire but cannot actually act on a situation.

This is something that we have discussed in class, regarding our primary source descriptions. When creating work that is intended to reach a large audience, you have to consider all the walks of life people may be from, and potential disabilities they may have. To reduce exclusivity, the creator should consider the ways in which different modes may enhance the quality of the text. Often this is the case without making "accommodations," as in television where we have both audio and video present, and subtitles can be turned on.

However there are exceptions, and often times disabilities are not accommodated in our society. Braille and sign language interpreter being present can help to make up for the short comings of some texts that are not structured in a way that allows everyone to experience them.

With our primary source descriptions, we are attempting to appeal to all senses to that those who may not have all five may experience the quilt through our words.

Speeches that are delivered across any media should be very thoroughly examined before the public ever hears them. Typically in speeches and advertisements alike there is a tag line for the audience to take away that is memorable and catchy.

If this were an advertisement in the form of an appealing commercial, "BP cares about the small people" seems like a great phrase to bring in customers who like the idea of a family oriented, personal business. In this case, it is not the word choice of the speech that create controversy, but rather the words in context. It is hard to make a corporation who just had a major accident that will seriously affect natural life feel like a company with good intentions and a familial atmosphere. You also have to consider the attitude of the audience to determine how open they are to accepting your statements. A consumer watching TV or reading an online ad may be neutral or accepting of your product without much convincing. In this case, however, the audience was not open-minded consumers.

This speech serves not only to assuage the current audience, but also will be for reference in the future. When someone looks into BP, they will not only judge their products but their track record as a company. If they handled the issue well, it could potentially change the minds of customers who have bad first impressions of what they stand for. Additionally, if the spill has any sort of lasting impact as an ecological issue, it is likely that their statements will follow in the story, therefore they had to choose carefully to please multiple audiences.

Through the Honors College, I have a University Assistantship in the Aphasia and Motor Speech Disorders Laboratory at GSU. My job is to measure spectrograms, which are another form of a visual wave. Licensed Speech-Language Pathologists use spectrograms to analyze where the speech disorder is occurring in the mouth. They are then able to diagnose and treat the issue. In this case, a sound is converted to a visual which gives the therapist a plethora of information.

The Voyager Golden record was limited to 2 copies when it was first created, but since has been expanded to be sold. While this is a massive change from the original intent, what's more surprising to me is the digital excerpt which is multimodal in and of itself. When you open the page, there is a header image that is a galaxy. Additionally, the album artwork is present as you look at the file. There is even a visual of the wave of the soundfile.

The reason that this is particularly exceptional to me is not because of any of these things, which pale in comparison to the fact that the file has been digitized at all. This is a prime example of the update of a text, and it has entirely switched from one media to another. This changed accessibility and allowed for more modes to be inserted to enhance listening, but it exists at he same time that you can purchase a vinyl which preserves its original format. The two may provide different listening experiences, but contain the same music, which I think is incredible.

This essay goes on to analyze, in the format of what appears to be a textbook, the ins-and-outs of multimodality, its uses, and its impact. Throughout this informational text, I have used multiple supplemental readings to analyze more than just the information presented and rather make it a discussion on a deeper level. Throughout the text, I have used my supplemental readings to focus on two key points:

1. How can modes be interpreted or misinterpreted by the audience?
2. How does the time in which a text was created affect the modes used, and how should we update them to make sure they stay relevant?

The articles I most often used are here and here.

"Pink ‘Pussyhat’ Creator Addresses Criticism Over Name" addresses the way in which a seemingly harmless (and even forward thinking) design of the pussyhat was interpreted as derogatory and exclusive of all people. The knitted cap became a symbol of feminism, regardless of the fact that it was nothing but yarn.

In the second article, "Forty Years Later, the Golden Record Goes Vinyl" the Voyager Golden Record is the topic of discussion. Forty years ago, Carl Sagan led the production of two records which were to be sent off into space. The record featured a collection of works that, if encountered by extraterrestrials would serve to speak and describe the culture of earth at the time. Though at first the record was not ever distributed, it has since been reproduced and is being sold.

When reading the article "Forty Years Later, the Golden Record Goes Vinyl" I was considering the fact that even if best case scenario the records traveled to another planet and found another intelligent life form, there is no denying that there is a HUGE change this life form would not know how to play the record and therefore would miss out on all the work put into it. Because it was 40 years ago, a record was pretty much the only compact mode of media though, so there weren't many options. Today if we were to do the exact same thing, the media would probably be sent on an iPhone, so no supplemental technology was used to play it.

Since this text was published, the layout of twitter has changed even more. Instead of square profile pictures, the layout has changed to circle photos. Additionally, the header image now spans the entire width of the profile with the profile picture being on the left hand side, rather than in the middle. Also instead of the directory menu being at the top left it is now below the picture on the bottom left. The whole layout is organized very efficiently, and I have linked my profile here for a visual of my description. The article says the designers of twitter "chose" but I think a better way of phrasing this would be that the creators continue to analyse how efficient their methods are. This poses a new idea that modes of text must be updated with social and cultural change.

In Julie Compton's article "Pink 'Pussyhat' Creator Addresses Criticism Over Name," she addresses that femininity is seen as inherently bad in many aspects of our life. After creating a knitted hat that was widely worn to women's marches and began to be used as a symbol of femininity, people began speaking out that the hat was transphobic and didn't do a good job standing for the ideals that feminism stands for. Krista Suh, the creator, responded that he word "pussy" is often used in a derogatory way to describe anyone who shows signs of femininity. The idea that things that seem female are often criticized is backed up by the story of Katie Couric, who tried to appear more approachable but was criticized because she seemed more feminine than male news anchors. This poses the question for me: How can people criticize her for something that is in her nature? As a woman, it is relatively explainable that she is going to behave more "like a woman" than a man would, and that seems pretty straight forward to me. More than that though, the fact that Couric's gestural communication was perceived as more important than the words she was speaking proves just how influential multimodal texts can be. In this same way, regardless of how much of an activist Krista Suh was, her creation of the pussy hat led to people discrediting her as a feminist.

When meeting at the AIDS Quilt gallery, we were informed that early quilt panels were significantly lighter than those that came in later years. This was because the makers of early panels were angry, and bitter at the crisis occurring. The purpose of panels over the years changed. At first, the sole purpose was to make a stance and put a name in front of the government, who was often ignoring the crisis at hand. People hastily made panels with simply a name on them. As years passed and people were able to better handle their grief, the general population moved past the anger stage of grief, and the purpose of panels changed. In later years, they were made to memorialize lives lost, and personal artifacts were often attached to the quilt. In this case, the original maker's attitude is tangible in the quilt's construction. For this reason, we can analyze the panel or block of the quilt as a whole, or we can decide to analyze the attachments such as teddy bears or shirts individually. Knowing the time period the panels were in allows futher analysis. The context of an object can be more than time period, but is still important to know as it will change perception of the writer. Prownian analysis includes making guesses at the use ob objects, as is described in John Cline's "What is a Machete, Anyways?" due to the fact the machete serves so many purposes. The difference between the panels and the machete is that the maker of the panels influences the attitudes it reflects, while the maker of the machete is a completely unbiased source and it is actually the wielder of the machete that makes the difference.

This sentence agrees with Orwell's explanation (as discussed in Maguire's essay) of involving concrete objects. Orwell states that you should start with an object and find the words to fit. "When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit." This hunting is the generating of the carefully selected words to describe the object that we started with. Maguire used Orwell's quote to expand on the Fowler quote he included, which said "A writer uses abstract words because his thoughts are cloudy; the habit of using them clouds his thoughts still further; he may end by concealing his meaning not only from his readers but also from himself." Together, these quotes both emphasize the idea that analysis much extend far enough to formulate intentional language. Vagueness in description, be it by students or historians, weakens writing and is easily avoidable through genuine analysis of the object at hand.

John Maguire's article on The Atlantic, titled "The Secret to Good Writing" puts material culture in terms students can understand and apply to their writing. Maguire is a college writing instructor who often sees students with underdeveloped writing skills. Maguire knows and stresses the importance of "object based writing" to his students. Maguire's greatest emphasis is on the idea that abstract concepts can be contextualized through concrete nouns, but discusses two different ways to approach this in writing. He begins the article with the approach that you should take an abstract concept and turn it into concrete nouns in order to avoid abstractness. He uses Henry Fowler's "abstracticis" to describe why vagueness leads to abstract papers. He then follows Fowler's quote with a quote by Orwell, who further expands on the idea by saying you should start wordless, then use the visualization of an object to find the words to fit it. Maguire then discusses the opposing way of going about it, which is starting the process with physical objects in mind, then understand that an abstract concept encompasses a variety of physical facts. Haltman also agrees with the "analysis followed by interpretation" mindset that historians use in the field of Material Culture. Both Haltman and Maguire agree that language being used to describe material objects should be intentional, specific, and finding the correct words is a process. While Haltman discusses the ins-and-outs of Prownian analysis in the introduction to a set of essays that share that methodology and Maguire on the other hand is simply trying to put it into terms that students having issues with vagueness can understand, throughout both writings there are sentences and ideas that parallel that are further analyzed in my annotations throughout.

In Maguire's essay, he describes turning the word "market" into a concrete noun. "Show me a wooden roadside stand with corn and green peppers on it, if you want. Show me a supermarket displaying six kinds of oranges under halogen lights. Show me a stock exchange floor where bids are shouted and answered." If the word/concept of a market are not analyzed to this extent, it will remain a lofty economics concept. The word market can only be explained and contextualized as far as it has been comprehended as a concrete object.

definition: a printed document that advertises or describes a school, commercial enterprise, forthcoming book, etc., in order to attract or inform clients, members, buyers, or investors.

The objects' original makers can take on multiple roles in the attitude and belief related to the object. In "What is a Machete, Anyways?" Cline discusses the location that machetes were made in like English colonies. They were made in colonies in order to harvest, which was the conscious purpose of the object. However, the accessibility by oppressed people led to machetes having a pivotal role in revolts. An example given in the article is the Brazilian revolt during the War of Ragamuffins, which is a prime example of people in a tropical environment who have the tool for harvesting using it to express an underlying attitude in the group of people.

In John Cline's article "What Is a Machete, Anyway?" he discusses how a machete acts as both a weapon and a tool which shows the polarity of the object. "It’s possible to conceive of it as a weapon, yes, but it’s also very much a tool — not altogether different from, say, a shovel." The duality of a machete displays just how important the expression of language can be. In this case, I feel like the opposition is creation vs. destruction in the sense that as a tool the machete can be used to construct and harvest whereas it can also take a violent turn.

Interesting enough, the article also explains that the people who use a machete as a tool are also often the most likely to use it as weapon. This interesting to me historically, because it forces you to consider a perspective of history that is not typically presented well. The machete would most often be used by poor people, who typically are not documented well because their history is overridden.

Milieus is the plural form of milieu, which is defined as a person's social environment.

This goes hand in hand with our class discussion today. We said that having a material source can evoke a stronger emotional response because we can identify that someone else made it with their own hands who had an emotional connection to it. We were speaking of this emotional connection in terms of the AIDS quilt that we will be working with firsthand. In terms of the AIDS epidemic, it is sometimes hard to comprehend what a crisis it was in the United States, as the connotations around AIDS and the ability to talk about it publicly have changed since we were born.

When we were talking about the size of the AIDS quilt representing how many people died and were affected, it reminded me of a documentary I watched when I was younger. The movie, titled Paper Clips, follows a class in Tennessee as they attempt to collect a paper clip for every Jewish person killed in the Holocaust. They ultimately filled a German train car with the paperclips, and made an exhibit for the students to try to wrap their minds around the millions of people killed. In this case the ability to see the sheer number of lives taken increased the "degree of intimacy" as discussed in this section of the Introdution.

This massive simplification of "just describe what you see" and the mindset of not wasting words parallels Maguire's pleas to his students to stop using abstract words when they do not have clear ideas and instead to specify what they mean. He describes their papers in which they waste words as "mush."

I can relate to having the issue of getting lost in abstract concepts. When I was in middle school and learning to write, I often spent too much time trying to make my writing sound as complex as possible. I refused to use simple sentences, and would be completely redundant in order to avoid my writing sounding too basic. Eventually, teachers told me that I was talking in circles and getting lost in my own ideas, and when I finally took this critique to heart my writing got significantly clearer.

I believe that this is a relatively common problem among young writers, as there is sometimes a conflict between writing clearly and writing what seems "intelligent." When you are not entirely aware of what you are writing about, vagueness is a very comfortable way of not showing your lack of knowledge. I wish in my adolescence someone had told me earlier to stop getting so lost in my own ideas and make everything more concrete.

Maguire, John. “The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 2 Oct. 2012, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-secret-to-good-writing-its-about-objects-not-ideas/263113/.

In "The Secret to Good Writing: It's About Objects, Not Ideas," John Maguire makes his students make the same connections by making them turn any abstract concept into something they can "drop on their foot." By having his students turn abstract concepts into concrete nouns they make the same linkage into the material world that is described in this section of the text.