ENGL 475: Postmodern Literature (Fall 2004)

i couldnt tell, but are the words part of a story or some cohesive narrative of any kind?

anyway... here's more about that 'im lovin it' phrase spreading itself across the globe:

http://www.mcdonalds.com/

chose any country from the tab on the right and treat yourself to a little image of the golden arches with the equivalent of 'im lovin it' in the countries native tongue underneath (some just have the english anyway).

C'est tout ce que j'aime!

that is too frightening for words.
mcdonald's = ?
mcdonald's = mcdonald's
how does one say mcdonald's in Farsi? Japanese? Greek?
I believe there used to be an honors class offered called 'the Mcdonaldization of the Globe' or something along those lines.
Scary stuff.

"i couldnt tell, but are the words part of a story or some cohesive narrative of any kind?"

No, they don't.

You actually interface with it by riding a bicycle, which is hooked to a video projection system which dispalys the virtual environment on a large screen in front of you. So, you have to pedal to get anywhere. (I had a chance to try it out last spring up in New York.)

but what are the words? are they just random?

I'm at my work right now, but I had a thought that reminded me so much of this class that I'm compelled to stray from my duties for a few seconds to note it.

I work as an editorial intern for a technologically based community development non-profit, which in itself seems like a pretty postmodern way to make social change--there are other elements of postmodernity, too, and the founders of One Economy actually wrote the seminal book on modern non-profit management, called Managing Non Profits Dot Org.

But anyway, I'm an editorial intern for the Beehive, One Economy's online resource for low-income subscribers. My main project from now until at least March is to catalog the contents of every page on the site, and although it is split into sections, four interns will dissect 12,000 pages into Excel database files.

And I was cataloguing the health section, which is simply immense, the biggest on the Beehive, and I was getting lost--almost literally--in the organization of the text, which can be really confusing. There is something almost three-dimensional and city-like about the way each page holds links to more pages, and images and compound assets, and links back to the same page indirectly; it's not only a city, but a labyrinth. (am I a metropolitan minotaur...? har har)

The similarity to a city is really interesting, too, given that One Economy is a national non-profit with local sections for a number of cities across the nation--I remember two years ago writing the content for Chatanooga, for example--a city I have never visited.

I could wax on and on, but almost physically deconstructing the content of the world wide web, especially in the context of what it's trying to convey, is a really, really interesting, thought-provoking exercise. Now back to it for a few more hours...

I'm at my work right now, but I had a thought that reminded me so much of this class that I'm compelled to stray from my duties for a few seconds to note it.

I work as an editorial intern for a technologically based community development non-profit, which in itself seems like a pretty postmodern way to make social change--there are other elements of postmodernity, too, and the founders of One Economy actually wrote the seminal book on modern non-profit management, called Managing Non Profits Dot Org.

But anyway, I'm an editorial intern for the Beehive, One Economy's online resource for low-income subscribers. My main project from now until at least March is to catalog the contents of every page on the site, and although it is split into sections, four interns will dissect 12,000 pages into Excel database files.

And I was cataloguing the health section, which is simply immense, the biggest on the Beehive, and I was getting lost--almost literally--in the organization of the text, which can be really confusing. There is something almost three-dimensional and city-like about the way each page holds links to more pages, and images and compound assets, and links back to the same page indirectly; it's not only a city, but a labyrinth. (am I a metropolitan minotaur...? har har)

The similarity to a city is really interesting, too, given that One Economy is a national non-profit with local sections for a number of cities across the nation--I remember two years ago writing the content for Chatanooga, for example--a city I have never visited.

I could wax on and on, but almost physically deconstructing the content of the world wide web, especially in the context of what it's trying to convey, is a really, really interesting, thought-provoking exercise. Now back to it for a few more hours...