New e-Technology? Blimey!

Well...
For a change I actually feel OVERQUALIFIED to write on this week's theme: Confrontations with New Technology.

This happy state affairs is only partly the result of trying out Flickr and its various hangers-on -- or "mash-ups" -- as I think my teachers here call them. While I have had a go at Flickr (and thought about using the puzzle making software to deconstruct images for my students so that they might concentrate on, for example,
the ceremony of the Weighing of the Heart, while rebuilding the puzzle studying their Egyptian mythology), my adventures have taken place even further afield (if indeed it is possible to refer to space in these contexts!).

Since last week, I have spent two and a bit hours at the local Apple Store and been completely dazzled by what is available and how even the most rank amateur can produce amazing everythings -- from podcasts with pictures to dazzling webpages.
However, at least one issue here, I think, is the sense of audience. I don't wish to rehash old ground here in terms of college writing -- either the artificiality of students cranking out essays for instructors who already know the answers or the sense of drudgery that surely accompanies the "This was written because it's worth 100 points" essay.


What I am somewhat perturbed by is the invisibility of the audience and a renewed sense of incredulity that anyone would read at least this sort of blog at all. Here is the basis of my thinking: Because I subscribe to Google Alerts for Caravaggio and Bernini, Google also delivers blogs to me on these subjects, and the blogs are usually stupefyingly puerile. "We had coffee at this little place near the Pantheon -- which is really cool if you like holes -- and then we went to some museum -- I can't remember the name -- but it was in like a garden and there were these like awesome statues by this guy Bernini. They were like totally incredible and then we left and saw this guy sprayed silver in front of St. Peters." Why would anyone find that interesting -- even to write in the first place? And here, in the case of this blog, why would people who don't know me read this -- and if my readers do know me, isn't it just common courtesy to read each other's work, as we are in a class together?

Also, reviewed in several places recently, is Andrew Keen's book, The Cult of the
Amateur"(easily searchable), which excoriates much of the informational side of the web. It appears to be quite a devastating critique, so now I am at least as loath to share my amateurishness as I am qualified to write about it, but here goes:

I have a presentation which I am obligated to make for my college. To prepare, I sent about 200 slides to be digitized. They came back looking wonderful on the CD, but I could not get them into iPhoto. It turns out, according to the Apple Care expert, that first of all the slides should have been saved as TIFFs instead of JPEGs for better quality, and secondly, that the "digitizers" must have used some sort of specialized color profile and saving system, and therefore, when a regular Adobe or generic color profile attempts to intepret the slides, one system cannot talk to the other. For me, that translates into iPhoto constantly crashing and now I have to make another trip to the Apple store to get one of their Geniuses to fix it for me! Phooey -- because I was all psyched up today to start work, but by Wednesday after my appointment, who knows? :)

So, relying not on the kindness of strangers, but on the generosity of my friends to make a comment, I leave you in peace!