The Home Page ·  The Integral Worm ·  My Resume ·  My Show Car ·  My White Papers ·  Organizations I Belong To

Contact Me ·  FAQ ·  Useful Links

My Professional Writing Papers

Technical Writing ·  Exposition & Argumentation ·  Non-fiction Creative Essays ·  Grammar and Usage of Standard English ·  The Structure of English ·  Analysis of Shakespeare

Analysis of Literary Language ·  Advanced Professional Papers ·  The History of the English Language ·  First Internship: Tutoring in a Writing Workshop ·  Second Internship: Advanced Instruction: Tutoring Writing

Visual Literacy Seminar (A First Course in Methodology) ·  Language in Society (A Third Course in Methodology) ·  The Writer's Guild

Journalism

UMBC'S Conservative Newspaper: "The Retriever's Right Eye" ·  UMBC'S University Newspaper: "The Retriever Weekly" ·  Introduction to Journalism ·  Feature Writing ·  Science Writing Papers

The Shipka Spaces: Theories of Communication and Technology

Communicative Objective #1 (CO1): The Re-patent

Communicative Objective #2 (CO2): Recontextualizing Authorless Text

Presentation/Gaming Activity: "Shopping Happens"

Blackboard Weekly Posts (A Bulletin Board Community)

A History of "This" Space: UMBC Food

Parameters for A History of "This" Space ·  The Narrative/Argument A History of "This" Space: UMBC Food

Goals & Choices, Process Narrative-Sketch, and Rolling Credits of A History of "This" Space

Famous Famiglia Pizzeria

Jow Jing & Ola Sushi

An Explanation of How To Read
A History of "This" Space: UMBC Food

Reading A History of “This” Space: UMBC Food will be straight forward unlike the other muti-modal communications you may have looked at here. You just click on the link “The Argument/Narrative of A History of “This” Space: UMBC Food,” that’s it.

Well not really. First as with all of the multi-modal communications within “Communications and Technology” and “Language in Society,” the powerhouse, the work being done is NOT in the end product but within the description of Goals and Choices, and the Process Narrative. These sections explain everything about the communication: intention, decisions made, decisions discarded, and how the end-product came into existence. Goals and Choices lay out my processes and methodologies as a multi-modal communication designer.

Second, unfortunately the end-product that you will view here will not be the original that was used, presented, and passed forward. The end-product of A History of “This” Space: UMBC Food and the history created in Language in Society, “Welcome to the Anti-Apathy Club: UMBC Student Culture” were both donated to Shipka and the “Shipka Archives.” My purpose of the donation was this: Shipka will break out these donations each semester and a new student has been given full rights by me, the donor, to do the following with my work:

1. The new historian may chose to carry on the legacy and build upon my work and produce a new ethnography, adding or building upon my work. I.E. noting changes and recording those changes producing a second volume of the history, a continuation.
2. The new historian may choose to interpret my data, add new data, and draw new conclusions form the accumulated data.
3. The new historian may have a completely different view and can decide to completely recontextualise my work, dropping parts from the history, adding new parts, essentially designing something I never intended in my design bringing their own interpretation and re-purposing of the entire history.

Third, I am reconstructing the end-product eight years after its original submission. I no longer have the original photographs but I do have copious notes that will aid me with the re-construction and Goals and Choices that will describe a great deal of what the end-product consisted of and the digital files that composed the end-product. The digital re-construction may not be true to the time, the actual history or freezing a moment in time. It is now eight years later, and although the dining fixtures at UMBC probably have not changed, from viewing the UMBC website, the food vendors have substantially changed and none of the vendors I originally recorded are probably no longer there. This should make it clear as to why the subject of “Food” was an excellent choice for a “history” because the food vendors and the food will not remain the same. I will try to remain as true as possible but I will not know how much things have changed until I begin re-creating the argument end-product.

Fourth, if you already read Goals and Choices, you already understand the argument. If not, here is the argument in a nutshell. We read advertising signs and menus and see pictures of food deliberately designed with the intention of making our mouths water for the particular food the vendor/restaurant is serving. My argument is simple. Do these methods actually sell food? Is this how we buy food? Is this how we choose what we want to eat? I argue that these communications give us a general idea about the food but do not really tell us anything about the food itself. As far as food the only thing that communicates with us is the food itself. We need to see its textures, smell the food and most of all, we REALLY need to taste it. Nothing communicates better when it comes to food than the food itself.

Douglas Adams, author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Argues that, "The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'” otherwise known as The Three Phases Theory of the Evolution of Civilization. Fortunately for us were are finally at the third phase. Sadly though, through experimentation I discovered that my parrots were at the same stage of evolution. They already know “How to eat,” they don’t care “why we eat,” they just want to know, “What’s for lunch today?” My experiments indicated that they eat for taste and the sheer pleasure of eating.

Last, in all communications when one is switching between various modes and modalities there are always gains and losses in the communication. This communication end-product will be no different. The last two pages in the communication were simple. The second to last page of the communication was a group of arrows pointing right. Next to the arrows was “the lunch special of the day, the actual food, and the last page said, “How am I communicating now?” Obviously, I cannot reproduce the end-product with its complete intention; hence the losses in modes and modalities.

Once again, enjoy the read.