Tuesday, October 30, 2012

October 30

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "Open Secrets" by Rush; "Rumours" by Timex Social Club]

In Hamlet's Denmark the characters appear angst-filled and manipulative. They are more apt to talk about each other than to each other. Are these conditions a matter of individual personality/psychology, or do they reflect the hierarchy of the court and/or the culture of the place/time? How does all this compare with people you know in your social systems (e.g., family, school, place of employment)?

AGENDA:

 [7:30-8:20 Ted Newcomb on PLNs]

1. Journal
2. Hamlet Act V (if you're in zero period please read Act V tonight)
3. Hamlet: performative utterances, manipulation & state secrets

HW:
1. Read "State Secrets in the Age of the Internet" [UPDATE: if the link redirects you to register, skip it, go to google, enter "state secrets in the age of the internet" and click the result at www.ft.com
2. Read "The Performative Utterance in Hamlet"
3. Tomorrow morning at 7:30 we have a very special guest. Familiarize yourself with Cory Doctorow through his site, his curation/commentary on BoingBoing, his many talks on YouTube, or something equally interesting.

12 comments:

  1. link for State Secrets in the Age of the Internet does not work.. Is it only me?

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    1. I can't read it either...it says I have to be a member or have a subscription or something like that.

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    2. After trying to get to it a couple of times, it really made me laugh because I finally got the irony of it.

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    3. Would you care to explain yourself Michelle...??

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    4. Well, Dr. Preston told us to read "State Secrets in the Age of the Internet," but we can't because it keeps directing us to another page almost like that is how people are keeping "State Secrets in the Age of the Internet."

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    5. Wait so is he trying to trick us or is it actually not letting us read it? i keep getting that registration thing too

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    6. Either Dr. Preston is tricking us, or it's just going to be one of those funny coincidences that we end up discussing in class.

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    7. I love the irony but it wasn't intentional. If you didn't see the update in the post, search the title (in quotes) and select the article at www.ft.com

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  2. I actually read one of Cory Doctorow's books, "Little Brother". I highly recommend it, although you need to be technologically savvy to understand some of the content (or at least willing to learn more about technology).

    The novel is about how the government begins to tyrannically control the internet and other communication systems for 'national security'. Marcus is part of this conflict when he stumbles upon a mysterious event; where, coincidentally, he and his friends are playing an ARG (Alternate Reality Game). One thing leads to another, and eventually Marcus' friends are held prisoners by the government itself due to what the government deems as suspicious activity. He eventually finds help from other hackers and organizations that is willing and able to end this madness.

    (the story is fuzzy in my head because I read this two years ago during my sophomore year)

    One thing I'd like to point out is that the novel speaks of a program called TOR, aka The Onion Router, and I have doubts about its usage. If you ever find yourself reading this book (I thoroughly enjoyed it, I definitely would recommend this to someone) TOR is evidently flawed in its functions because your passwords and username can be seen as PLAIN TEXT to anyone that is receiving your signal/ part of the virtual layer.

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    1. TOR is basically a program that will prevent tracking from other groups and third parties, but at the cost of what I mentioned in my previous comment. If you're going to use it, just don't log in to any personal account such as fb or twitter.

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  3. Could some one please explain to me what deBoer means when he talks about Polonious and other characters representing different types of men? (page 15-16 mostly)

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    1. What I got from it is that each character has their role seen by others in the play. DeBoer is saying that Hamlet is seeing that each person in his life are all the products of "conventional social roles," so he's wondering what truly makes a person, the category that they are thrown into or is it already just who they are to begin with. (Sorry, I think I'm finally going to try to answer your question. I'm tired and going around in circles.) Polonius is a "premodern man" who sees society's structures and understands how they give people power (he's a social climber). Whereas Hamlet is "modern man" who still sees those structures, but can also see how they can be manipulated and how those structures were made by people in the first place, they weren't always there. (DeBoer also thought that why Hamlet wanted to be though of as "crazy" was so that he could find himself and not be limited by society's structure for him.) Claudius is said to be caught between them because he understands the structures that limit him, but won't defy them.

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