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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
UMBC'S Conservative Newspaper: "The Retriever's Right Eye" · UMBC'S University Newspaper: "The Retriever Weekly" · Introduction to Journalism · Feature Writing · Science Writing Papers
Communicative Objective #2 (CO2): Recontextualizing Authorless Text · Presentation/Gaming Activity: "Shopping Happens"
The History of "this" Space: UMBC Food · Blackboard Weekly Posts (A Bulletin Board Community)
Explanation of How to Read "This" Objective · Explanation of the URCAD Edition of the Re-patent · Parameters for Re-patenting an Artifact from the U.S. Patent Office
Photos of the Re-patent "Cyberpeople" Artifacts · An Artificial Intelligent's Theory on God: The URCAD Edition · The Serio-Ludic/Narrative-Sketch Genre of the U.S. Re-patent Office
The Test Subject Simulation of the "Cyberpeople Jack Implant" Artifact: The URCAD Edition · Promotional News Article for the Re-patent of the "Cyberpeople" Artifact
Disaster News Article for the Re-patent of the "Cyberpeople" Artifact · "Cyberpeople" Re-patent Goals and Choices · The Re-patent Rolling Credits: Who Contributed to "This" Objective
The Re-patent Workshops One and Two: Brainstorming Ideas Within a Social Context · A List of Artifacts Considered for Re-patent that were Researched, Tested, and Abandoned
The Re-patent Blackboard Community Post #1 ·
The Re-patent Blackboard Community Post #2 ·
The Re-patent Blackboard Community Post #3 ·
The Re-patent Blackboard Community Post #4 ·
The Re-patent Blackboard Community Post #6
What’s your process?
(This is the most fun part of the project.)
This is the part that now has caused me to re-examine everything I have been told is the writing process and the educational process demonstrating what is wrong with how the educational system let us down in destroying our imaginative processes and tells us to "think out of the box," when it is the educational system that designs the box for us. The project itself creates its own boundaries because we live in a physical world. This permits me to demonstrate how the writing process extends beyond the paper, the computer, the place the computer is in, the classroom and the academy. In essence, what I am saying is the writing process is carried in the author's brain and is carried everywhere the physical body is carried. Everything and everyone outside one's self plays a part in the writing process. Even artifacts and people I do not encounter in the process play a part because they would be responsible for possibilities not considered.
The process begins with the first exercise in determining how we personally define technology and observing how we interact with technology especially technology that has become invisible because we no longer think about the technology because it has been around for so long. Our first Blackboard post gets the class talking about the observations we made. So this is where the writing process for ENGL 324 and thinking about technology begins.
A week later we are required to pick a one technology off our list, do a Google search and discuss what we would like to share with others. The ice is beginning to break, slowly but surely. Little do we realize that we will end up on a little piece of ice clinging to each other negotiating a vast ocean of possibilities in the writing process. We are venturing off on an exciting exploration in many realms: technology, education, socialization, writing processes, among a host of other things all which contribute to the writing process.
The first frame (fig. 1) begins the writing process in Fine Arts Room 018 the day that Shipka hands out the Re-patent Communicative Objective. I have indicated who I know by name within the room after working together in the Writing Center and having endured the rigorous process of being trained as a Writing Tutor. Everyone else so far is unknown. As the writing process continues I will be forced to learn my peer’s names, communicate, and negotiate what this piece of paper means and what it does not mean.
The next frame (fig. 2) shows my satori. I find myself in a huge black box with a black blindfold looking for a black cat and I know the cat is here because it just meowed. The cat holds the clues to everything I need to know about this space, ENGL 324.
I begin to talk to other students and realize I am not alone in “this” black box space (fig. 3). There are 18 others just like me and not like me. We all have different backgrounds; different levels of education, different majors, different living conditions, economic backgrounds and the other old tiresome words such as race, ethnicity, and so on. The project now becomes the second objective. The first objective becomes to communicate with everyone else to negotiate within “this” black box of the writing process.
Individually we know very little. As a whole we know more. This is not a matter of just bleeding other people dry for information; it becomes a dance in negotiating the writing space and sharing one’s thoughts on the project with others. As we talk with each other outside of the class space, more light bulbs go off showing us it’s actually a “white box,” and a large one at that. The conversations begin to expand beyond the confines of the classroom and our individual writing spaces. It expands into the university itself and amongst fellow peers not even taking the course. The writing process is incubating.
“Fun with Patents" becomes our next Blackboard posting assignment pushing us into exploring the U.S. Government Patent web site and exploring the language of patents in general. I prefer working on the 6th floor of the AOK library at UMBC for several reasons. I live like a Ph.D. candidate and a poor student. My own workspace at home is overly cramped. I have a brutally slow, unreliable computer at home and only a modem to dial into the UMBC Internet Service Provider (ISP). There are thousands of books in my room because I cannot afford a storage space to keep them in. I had a storage space that was broken into and six 96" bookshelves were stolen with my entire library of books in Automotive, Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Chemistry, History, and other topics: twenty years of accumulated information gone in a day. I also have a pet parrot and parrot's require social interaction daily, only an hour or two a day, but I do not even have time to negotiate with a pet for the time I need for this writing process. I also live with three of "blue collar" workers who have no idea what I do. I am not them and they are not me. All we are is an annoyance to each other. I am surrounded by people who would like nothing better than for me not to succeed in getting out of here so they have someone lower on the food chain than they are. This also includes my landlord and this is something I have to deal with every waking moment. This forces me into a position of having to spend most of my time outside somewhere other than my roach coach room.
I use "this" space shown in fig. 4 because it is a wide-open uncluttered space providing me the opportunity to spread out (companion images fig. 4 and fig. 4a: School Work Space versus Home Work Space). The computer is faster than at home and when web research is necessary, which it always is, I have T1 access speeds so I can accomplish more work in a shorter period of time. The 6th floor is an "Absolutely Quiet Floor." I need the space of silence to hear my own thoughts and ponder all the stimulation that has been coming in all day long from the outside world, whether that stimulation is everyday transactions, attending classes, professors, peers, Writing Center peers, tutees, basically everything and everyone in the outside world stimulates me and drains me at the same time. I know who I am and all too well. People drain my emotional energy and I need solitary space in order to re-group and energize myself daily. I am introverted but have moved on the scale with maturity and age to somewhere in the middle, (a 5), to maybe a 6 on the scale towards extrovert. Some people, like my ex-wife, are energized by people and need people around them constantly. I cannot live that way, as I said people drain me. On the other hand, I am not anti-social as I once thought, I am actually a social creature and actively seek out people and artifacts for stimulation for my thinking processes. I need this because my view is not the only view and intelligent people cause me to reconsider my views. Many times one or two words of what they say act as "seeds" for creativity.
The next Blackboard post becomes the "wake up" bell. What are we going to re-invent? What am I going to re-invent? Why am I going to re-invent this? How does "this" technology begin to box in the project? We are not in concrete yet. There are a host of artifacts to think about re-patenting out there as we all determined from our analysis of how we define technology. My writing space in my room is like Ray Bradbury's writing space: cluttered with artifacts and possible clues of inspiration and imagination. Yet I am not interacting with technology. There is not creative stimulation here in my home writing space. I must actively seek stimulation: it is the only thing that will stimulate the writing process. I can free write till doomsday, it will not help. I must interact with technology and other people (figs. 5 & 5a)
I have more resources than others around me do. I have degrees in Automotive and Mechanical Engineering. I explored Computer Science right up to the last few semesters of being short of a degree only to realize the system was pushing me through to assist with the Y2K problem. I explored a degree with UMBC and was offered a two for one deal: A degree in Mathematics and Computer Science only to fall flat on my face to discover I was not an efficient programmer. I had to rescue my studies and earned a degree in Information Systems, IFSM (I Failed Math and Science). I did not do well my first semester in Information Systems because my 15 year old baby parrot I raised as a fledgling died one hour before having to go to my Accounting One final. All the B’s and A’s in the Information Systems program would not pull up my average to enter grad school. I got back into writing and wanted to improve my writing skills to write my thesis and my dissertation. I groped around the last two of my required Math courses only to find I was so rusty in math I would have to put all my time and energy interpreting the symbols. At the same time I was taking writing classes and they were going swimmingly. I love to write and with all that I have seen I like to think I have something worth hearing. I tried one more time to rescue my math background in Statistics. The writing pulled me down and consumed all my time. Courses in Statistics were offered every other year and less because of the few students enrolled in the area of study. Dr. Carpenter’s
One more time around I enrolled in ENGL 324, ENGL 407, ENGL 395, and ENGL 488 and realized from the syllabi that I would not be able to sleep for fifteen weeks trying to do all the work. I knew what Dr. Carpenter’s course would be like and how demanding it would be to the point of being consuming. ENGL 395 looked the same and I was hand selected, recommended and accepted with reservations to be invited into the training program to become a writing tutor. This I decided could be used to become a TA (Teacher's Assistant) in grad school and get me out of lifting boxes for a living. Most part time jobs are the same and because everything in the Technology and Communications track in English is taught during the day a employer in Information Systems is not going to permit me to disappear during core hours.” Shipka’s courses looked even more difficult than Dr. Carpenter’s but there was something the first day that said, “Space is the Place, Baby! This is where you want to be. See me when you can put in the effort.” Weeks later, the chatter began. Those in my ENGL 395 class who chose to stay in Shipka’s class were always talking about something going on in the class. All was positive and nothing negative. Their minds were stimulated they were doing “real thinking” bouncing around ideas, negotiating assignments and tasks. One day, Bill Chewning walked in sat down and said, “Oh shit! I forgot to do something for Shipka!” Chewning turned and said, “Tell the professors I had an emergency and couldn’t be here today,” and darted out of the class knowing we had something to do here that was important. Talk about dedication? I have had only a few professors that have inspired this type of dedication. I come into the room with it but these students were energized. I have to find out what’s going on in there. This is not a free write but a building process of demonstrating my writing process in "this" project. All of these events have in some way contributed to this project. I now had to come up with a technology to focus on.
During a discussion some of the women already mentioned in this paper stimulated me to think about student chairs. There were patents on adjustable student desks but this was not sitting well with me. I could not put my finger on it and things were still quite fluid at this point or more like clay. I was walking around poking and plodding clods of clay to see which piece looked stimulating to play with as a writer, technologist, scientist, and would satisfy my creativity. I went to school on a Saturday to make accomplishments (fig. 6). As I walk, my mind begins to drift through thought processes on the first two CO's (fig. 6a).
Shipka opened the cage of my thinking (fig. 7). I was free but I was constantly reminded, "This isn't a free for all, you have to account for every choice and decision." Oh I knew this all too well. As a scientist with freedom also comes containment and constraints: It's a physical world and we are constrained by it. Now I could see all those little blobs of clay just waiting to be molded into something (fig. 8). I then looked closer. Everything that Shipka said, all of my training in so many different disciplines, and continuing discussions with my peers began to make me realize "this" new space has glass walls. If I'm not careful I'm going to knock myself unconscious when I run into one of the glass walls at the speed of thought. This led to the realization how ignorant the buzzword is "Think outside the box." I see a new world (fig. 9). As I visualized "this" new world and concentrated on forming the wet clay, (fig. 10) I could hear a voice in my head as though I was in Star Wars battling the evil clay. "Luke... Remember, play to your strengths."
I had to call work from the bus stop. I dialed the wrong number so I had to hang up the receiver and redial. Wait a moment… the telephone needs a backspace key (fig. 11). When I got to UMBC I began doing research on the U.S. Government Patent website on telephones. Shipka began kicking around wacky ideas about different objects to demonstrate that the re-patent can be completely useless, but in using wacky ideas and thinking outside the box, what is the shape of the new box? All the thoughts were now cascading for me. My self-motivated exploration of semiotics during the winter session was paying off. I went beyond thinking about just a backspace key. If Shipka was throwing out wacky ideas it was to stimulate our imaginations, and it was working. What about a disposable candy cell phone? When the minutes are up on the phone you would at least have a snack. This was playing off an old joke about flavored beepers. But how much could I write about? We were now proceeding into the next workshop and I could feel the pressure of having to ground myself in a concept (fig. 12).
It was still not solidifying. “Luke, play to your strengths.” My strengths are science, mathematics, computers, technology… all the hard, real, grounded, boring stuff. How do I get out of “this” box? My cage is open and I’ve forgotten all of my training as an art student protege I gave up at age twelve (fig. 7). My wings had been clipped by technology.
I love watching Anime and begin a serious exploration into Hentai Art. The research indicated Japan and Japanese society is saturated in semiotics. Therefore, Anime is saturated in semiotics and the Japanese seem to love technology more than we do. I read an academic paper analyzing the anime series Ghost in the Shell while performing my research to write about Japanese women reading Hentai. I have seen the first part of the series twice and now Adult Swim is showing the second part. I don’t like "Stand Alone Complex" because it's just more shoot em’ up crap. When the Tachikomas (AI’s--Artificial Intelligence) come on I always perk up. Tachikomas talk in high-pitched energized, little 5-year-old voices but their conversations are always of a high philosophical nature. Tachikomas are constantly contemplating the difference between man and machine and discussing how they (the Tachikomas) wish they had a ghost. “Humans are so lucky, they die and they have ghosts. what's it like to have a ghost?” The humans on the other hand, were adding more artificial parts to their bodies becoming more like machines. The lead of the squad was entirely cyber except her mind. The academic paper reveals becoming has limitations. The commander couldn’t swim because of the weight of her artificial body. The commander would jump off skyscrapers, survive the landing, but would leave an indentation in the concrete due to her massive weight. There are many aspects that are not explored about the gains and losses of being cyber within the anime and I care not to discuss them here because “this” becomes a tangential argument.
I went to a lecture Monday night and it stimulated thought for both of my Shipka communicative objectives. The lecture was called, Magic, Math and Masonry, and the lecturer spent 25 years working with the NSA (National Security Agency, formally known as No Such Agency), a position and organization I have been dying to get into since I divorced my wife when I was thirty. Somehow I thought he would connect the dots for us as an audience between magic, math, and masonry and he did. One thing he said during the lecture kick started this communicative objective and it was a joke but also true. “There are three types of mathematicians: those who can count and those who can’t.” What he meant by count (arithmetic is not included) is being able to think in the field of number theory. I am not going to elaborate on this further because it does not add anything to this re-patent process and now shall turn to what he said about the mathematicians who can’t count. “These mathematicians think visually and spatially.” I knew that, that’s another reason why I left mathematics (fig. 13). Some of these guys can look at equations and see the three, four and beyond dimensional objects the equations create. With computers and advanced software programs this is becoming less necessary. Mathematicians program the computer to create the image and they manipulate the image on the computer. Two days before we were in tutor training and we were informed 70% of the population learns visually (fig. 14). Does that mean 70% of the population “thinks” visually but because we are not all artists and the only thing we have been formally trained in as a means to communicate what is in our heads is through speech and writing. We know all too well how “these” (oral and written communication) quickly break down and only a few people are gifted in speech and/or writing.
Speech, writing, communication, visual mathematicians, people who want to become machines, machines who want to become people, technology, science, “Luke, play to your strengths… My God! It’s full of boxes… I want a ghost… I want a memory dump… wacky ideas… It’s not a freakin’ free for all…” patents... re-invent… all the chatter was guiding me down a new path (fig. 15). I went in and found three patents on human computer interfaces but none of them are doing what I am thinking (fig. 16). This is way out there in left field and may not be grounded. I had better check with Shipka to be sure I haven’t stepped into the designated area described as “Free for All.” The thoughts have come to a head. I think I have an idea worth pursuing that I feel passionate enough about but I have to be sure.
I walk in Tuesday and we begin work-shopping. Skipka’s enthusiasm is contagious and the idea is bubbling over in my mind. Shipka’s throwing out all kinds of wacky ideas, which makes me feel less inhibited. I feel like it’s the old days when I was surrounded by artists and musicians stimulating each other’s imaginations by throwing out raw meat as ideas and seeing what we can collectively form out of them. “Ooh, Ooh!” Completely out of character and unexpected for my age, but I can’t keep it in anymore and I’m caught up in the excitement. I feel like I’m in a safe place and if the idea is stupid everyone will begin to chatter letting me know I’m on the edge. “Cyberpeople!” Now I can hear crickets (fig. 17). In the room there was deafening silence. I expected people to laugh, to tear it apart like raw meat or something. Silence I didn’t expect. In an Eastern society silence is a time of reflection. Sometimes it means the same in Western society, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it signals fear, sometimes it signals “You have gone mad you know.” I thought quickly, the cat is out of the bag, you can get a cat into a bag once, but the cat won’t fall for that old trick twice. This is frightening because not even Shipka is speaking. I’m not that brilliant, I haven’t gone mad, and I’m not that innovative. What does “this” silence mean (fig. 18)? Well, just spill your guts now. I explain the invention and receive blank stares. I’ve gone mad and no one is telling me, I’ve gone mad. Let it lie like a sleeping dog. We move on to other ideas. Over the course of the next days, I think I have hit upon something and I am also working on ideas for the OED communicative objective. My mind is becoming consumed with the projects and Shipka. She’s starting to grow on me like a well-worn pair of denims that are always conformable. You can’t wait to get in them. All of this is coming together for me. I see and hear it is not coming together for my peers. They are still trapped back in the early stages: in the black room with blindfolds, searching for the black cat.
In the Writing Center my peers are chattering. They don't get any of this. I explain. They don't listen. Bowen, Norfolk, Barsky, and Masters still don't understand what is being said in "this" space (fig. 19). I go to class once again but not Shipka's class. In front of ACIV (fig. 20), I meet Bauhaus talking to a friend? A classmate? I'm not sure but definitely not a Shipka-ite. She's a virgin. None of what Bauhaus is saying makes sense, but listening to the conversation “this” is beginning to come together for her. Bauhaus has found the black cat. Shipka has achieved one definite goal: to make us communicate with our peers, to become a collective intelligence like "cyborgs," to be peer mentors for each other, and to perform reality checks to each other. "Is it good? Does "this” make sense? What meaning-making to you get from "this?'" We, in some cases, are beginning to develop friendships outside of class. While I am on campus my creative process is carried with me to the buildings I frequent and with the people I meet (fig. 21). I am not usually a talkative person nor do I usually seek company. My thoughts are wildly alive and I'm sharing with everyone. The excitement is spreading like wildfire. "So what did you see today that you didn't see yesterday?"
The writing process goes everywhere I go (fig. 22) except my work at Pep Boys. The process carries on while I travel back and forth between home, UMBC, all the bus stops, the main street of the small town of Catonsville, the Giant Supermarket, the Wal-Mart, but mysteriously the process dies at Pep Boys. Why? I have to reduce my mind to the level of the people around me. I have learned nothing I say there makes any sense. As far as they are concerned I am speaking Greek. The atmosphere is almost as dead as my rented room. This is my writing process in designing the re-patent communicative objective.
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