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'Twas the Night Before Christmas Podcast

Podcast: 

https://anchor.fm/shayna-gonzalez/episodes/Twas-the-Night-Before-Christmas-e2ivn8

Script: 

file:///home/chronos/u-23fec51ad31b39f6d0d8a0fb5accd3e42fd859bf/Downloads/ENGL%201101%20Podcast%20Script.pdf

Reflection: 

A spoken project was something that I had yet to delve into and get involved with. I occasionally listened to a few podcasts just to pass the time while commuting to school every day, so I felt that I was pretty familiar with the idea. However, I was very nervous to embark on something that I felt made me feel pretty exposed. I felt like writing things would be so much easier and was not nearly as hesitant to write the script. In fact, I had a lot of fun writing my script and rewriting the original poem. I gathered a lot of inspiration from the idea of intermingling Halloween/horror with the jolly image of Santa relating to Christmas, similar to one of my favorite movies, The Nightmare Before Christmas. I drew on narration and description as rhetorical conventions to communicate my idea through my podcast. My idea was to shock the audience by setting the scene for them with the anticipation of a happy Christmas story and then switch it to something a bit more ominous. It was important for me in my particular podcast to set the scene for a description of what my protagonist, evil Santa, looked like to make it evident for the readers the plot twist in the story. I used a lot of description words that brought the character to life but not as detailed as I would have if it was intended to be read. It just seemed like it was not entirely necessary in this particular circumstances coupled with the audio which set the tone as well. The narration aspect, I felt was also key to the success of my podcast as it keeps the same element as the original poem intact which was one of my goals. I wanted to keep the original integrity and structure of the original poem using rhyming with the same rhyme pattern as well. The narration aspect made it seemed more of a story than a taping of a show or a narrative like some of my classmates chose to do with their pieces. For the vocal aspect of the podcast, I did not particularly enjoy the idea of using my own voice as I felt like I couldn’t make it give off the eerie feeling I desired. I personally felt like I could not give off the right feeling with my voice that I intended to. I thought about asking a peer but at the end of it all I decided to use a robotic voice instead which would make it seem impersonal and give off the right feeling I wanted coupled with the ominous music and sound effects. The piece would differ from being read rather than heard and be more of a shock that the poem was twisted into something darker instead simply because there is no music or voice to set the tone right from the beginning. It also, as previously stated, required less descriptors than a read piece would simply because there are other external factors, sounds and music, that help the audience to gather what they need from the text. There was less to tell and more to show to the audience which was an entirely new experience for me. My idea was to make something humorous using the ideas I gathered from Baron using the Internet as a medium to share something that would bring people together and serve as entertainment for my audience.

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Blog #15

The dark side of the web gives the same free platform that the rest of the web does to any sort of malicious activity ranging from blatant lies on Wikipedia to the Ku Klux Klan to the black market. This wonderful world of resources and information could hold a darker tone than people originally thought this resource could be used for. Even something like pornography, which is legal when of age, may fall into the hands of minors or be used to exploit other individuals. When authorship is taken into effect, what truly happens to these individuals that post their works anonymously? Will they ever reap the consequences of their actions? Technologies such as tracking IP addresses and such only go so far when we literally train hackers and such to block their location and identity and bounce off of multiple signals for other more important government warranted jobs. But these very same skills might fall into the hands of predators and terrorists, both external and homegrown. 

With the growing rate of the Internet and access in mind, we tend to think of both pros and cons, both in miniscule and larger scales. Something that may seem small such a social media hurting and or harming others may be something small in comparison to illegal activities such as the black market where people sell anything from organs to weapons to people, but they all play a role. The truth is, no matter how many safety precautions are taken, there is always a way things could go wrong. I personally feel like that’s just human error and the fact that we are always prone to sin. However, safety precautions, rules, and laws are vital for setting the overall tone of a platform. Our evolution, from pencil to pixel, isn’t quite as black and white as it seems.

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Blog #14

Authorship, otherwise known to me by a person’s ability and authority to control their text and manipulate the way in which their word is taken into consideration, has a very open to interpret definition now. Nowadays it is difficult to decipher who the true author may be and what type of reputation they have to uphold. This all changes how an author is respected and seen in society. Are they just a random nobody giving their opinion or a reputable reporter? Labeling someone as an author gives them credit for the things they write and report. 

During my reading I wondered:

- Why has reading always been held higher than writing in terms of standing in the American education system? Should they not be held to the same standard as they do go hand in hand?

Both texts by Baron as well as Boyd served to delve deeper into all of his previous points on how interpersonal relationships have changed by social media. Our company on these platforms is usually directly connected to our interests and expectations no different than in person relationships in terms of public displays of connection. However, now, no matter how time and space separate us we are able to find and explore these relationships. 

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Blog #13

Through both chapters of Baron with the given context of the history of computers, I was able to conclude that, as most of Baron’s writing pieces from this book, he values computers. After all, we have come a long way from human computers, to computers only for values, to the more popular WordStar and everything in between. Acknowledging all of the changes that have been made, that usually took a lot of people time to get used to, we have prevailed. In fact, the development of computers themselves did not necessarily change too much in our language or interpersonal relationships to weaken them. Computers, in a way, helped to strengthen our interpersonal connections. 

Most people tend to ask if tools like instant messaging services have soiled the English language or had a detrimental impact on our social skills, when in fact it has had little to no impact. In fact, there are as many rules and manners on-screen as there are off-screen. This on-screen text has developed its own genre and this is something I personally agree with. Most, if not all of us, have a code switching skill we use in our day to day between situations, but especially between the online and offline worlds. We tend to change the way we “speak” (or type) although our overall tone usually remains the same. Its quite fascinating to really think about. We have developed little rules online as well, that I kind of touched on like, ALL CAPS means one is yelling, or remembering that messages that are posted always remain and can be saved. An important note that Baron noted was that if you wouldn’t want it broadcasted in the newspaper or on the television then it does not belong posted online.

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Blog #11

The term technophobe has always been sort of bizarre to me given I have been born and raised into an era where not having technology is pretty much unheard of. There are of course still societies which keep modern technology in place; but what does a technophobe’s life truly look like? Are they completely opposed and to what extent? What does their life look like in modern times?

From Baron’s piece on “Tecknofear” I have gathered that many technophobes fear to recognize that writing itself is a technology. Their fears seem more irrational than rational. However, one case in particular they brought up was the Unabomber which I distinctly remember watching an episode of Criminal Minds on. At the time, they compared his actions to a fictional book called Empty Planet in which bombs were placed around the city in major points of technology and media to protest modern technology. The real life Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, was deeply concerned with the Internet being regulated by the government and claiming it would be a form of mind control and scientists and computer engineers would in turn become modern day elitists. To a certain degree, I do not entirely disagree with his statements, though I am not saying it was appropriate for him to make his message known through bombings. In some ways, technology does make darker parts of humanity accessible to young, innocent minds at the touch of a screen. I don’t believe it will entirely block our endangered species or corrupt writers; but it is still a force to make sure we don’t let control us or spin wildly out of proportion.

(pictured above Theodore Kaczynski)

Ong simply referred to Plato’s condemnation of writing in the Phaedrus and the Seventh Letter and saying it can be compared to the way writing is being prosecuted today. His main point was that writing was interfering with human life. Now, that exact same argument is being spun on computers, when now writing is a socially acceptable form of connecting with other forms of human life. I feel that Plato’s entire argument at the time is outdated and can in no way be applied to our modern technology as it could not have even been applied to writing at the time.

Ben Henderson himself is a technophobe, although nowhere near Kaczynski, like most technophobes he fears them breaking down but acknowledges them for what they do. Henry David Thoreau on the other hand seems like a relative extremist to his fear of technology, going on to write about how he does not accept these “silly toys” with a pencil he made himself.

People have always questioned the validity of texts since the technology of writing came on the scene. All new writing technologies were said to have heightened the potential for fraud compared to previous technologies. This seemed true to me because it was probably way harder to replicate things that weren’t necessarily uniform and typed rather than written and at risk for natural human error.

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Blog #12

Growing up listening to Freakonomics podcasts I always thought that it was something I could do. However, I never tried or knew exactly what to talk about. They were always so knowledgeable about their topics and the slight pauses seemed awkward to reproduce for me. As a person, I often find myself feeling awkward in silence, and wanting to fill in the gaps. I feel like this will be something I’d stress during the process because it is kind of a conversation. You’re not just necessarily reading off of a script because that sounds too robotic and not genuine. That in mind, I would love to do a sort of interview type project just because I feel like that’s something that would be less awkward and something I feel like I could construct better which would be modeled after Freakonomics. The idea of conducting my thoughts and feelings through spoken word without a source of visual context sounds weird and foreign to me as it is something I have not officially done.

I have attached an example of something I want to model my work off of:

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/freakonomics-goes-to-college-part-1-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ 

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Field Trip #2

Our Mission: Attend the Paper Museum on Campus, find certain statues, and answer questions accordingly. 

Link: danielelkin1101.blogspot.com

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Blog #10

The Baron reading “Writing on Clay” was very easy to relate to as we had conducted the clay tablet lab in class. I was able to understand and relate to how the students reacted by treating the tablet as an art project by working for aesthetics and making it look pretty. I remember at first wanting to make it perfect and resemble paper as much as possible. Early print sort of “changed” the world by allowing scribes to share their work. There were some scribes that had their own personal tablets that were not necessarily for sharing because as Baron mentioned it was not as simple as just writing but making sure the light reflects correctly to reveal what needed to be displayed. I thought it was interesting how Pettegree made the connection that the growth of sharing news and creating interpersonal connections was not due to technological advancements and was doing just fine without them. I definitely feel like these advancements were very similar in the way that they conducted news and was more driven by business. It kind of connects to the concept of free markets and how companies were trying to outdo one another by being the more innovative and accessible to do better than competitors. 

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Visual Essay

Link: file:///home/chronos/u-23fec51ad31b39f6d0d8a0fb5accd3e42fd859bf/Downloads/Visual%20Essay%20ENGL%201101%20(2).pdf

Reflection: 

A visual essay can be described as a set of pictures that group together to tell its own story. These stand alone pieces come together to communicate the creator’s ideas and visions without much use of text as a medium. This, as most can imagine, requires a lot of planning to properly be executed and is not as simple as just slapping pictures together in a document to turn in. This type of piece caters to a wide variety of audiences with their own backgrounds and beliefs which could lead to many interpretations. The goal is to make sure that the piece is not only clear for the creator to “read,” but for the audience to read as well and get a similar, if not the same, ideas from the group of images. 

It is always important for people to have a plan of attack when writing an essay and knowing exactly what they need to communicate to the reader. Words, for the most part, come pretty easily to most. The standard writing process includes: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and then publishing. This is where most students may start to freak out and overthink. It is so customary to talk around a topic with words but to find a picture that speaks the specific ideas and can be interpreted as such is no easy feat. Pictures in their own respect have millions of interpretations and are, clichés aside, worth a million words. It was difficult to go without the first two to start without words so instead of just diving in aimlessly, it was necessary to have a sort of written out plan with an idea of what each image would communicate, how the essay would be formatted and how it should be interpreted. 

The original vision was actually a sort of collage but it was quickly evident that this would be hard to communicate a central argument as there would not be much flow to the actual piece as with a written piece. The argument was that AOL messenger has been a part of the evolution of the way in which many millennials and older adults alike learned to communicate. Communication is constantly changing and developing so AOL messenger was not exactly revolutionizing and paving the way for something that did not already exist in one form or another. It was instead part of the evolution of communication which is portrayed in one of images of the visual essay. The format had to be something that had some sort of chronology to it in the same way that stories or other essays are written which was ultimately success in the first half trickling down to the downfall and replacement of AOL messenger by applications such as Facebook and Twitter then Snapchat and Instagram. 

With thoughts, ideas, and criticisms from viewers, the piece was able to be subtly revised to communicate ideas as would be done with any other written piece at this stage. It is amazing as something so simple as changing the order of one image can really add so much to the actual piece itself. For example, the picture of communication’s evolution was out of place originally as it was on the bottom with the platform’s downfall as it was grouped. The whole idea with grouping was to create the evident distinction between the order of the images was key to allowing the reader to read my piece the way that was intended, left to right and then left to right again. For aesthetic purposes and remaining true to the image by not downsizing it too much, it was important to simply switch around some images and make another distinction by adding another image or two. In this revision process, a broken chain was added to signify that AOL’s success was going well until it was broken which serves as a transition into its downfall rather than just relying on the line and messing with the actual size of the images which would make them lost their integrity in the overall essay.

In connection to in class assignments, to serve as some sort of an outline to understand what exactly needed to be executed, it was helpful to look back on the poem, “The Ruin.” In this poem’s response blog in particular, it served as a small means of communicating a story or response through images. At the time, this was not given much thought as pictures were simply just pictures. But with the use of pictures to conduct feelings and emotions in response to the piece, it was very evident that the pictures alone began to come together and tell their own story. When looking back at the blog post that was created at the time, it is recognized that there was a lack of planning and organization that originally went into it, but it definitely was preparation for the visual essay. It definitely did not communicate the message that was intended and honestly there was no real message as a visual essay should have. The imagery that comes into a reader’s mind when reading a writing piece is the imagery that should be portrayed to the reader; instead of them creating the images, they create the words. 

Another related reading was finding an image that spoke to offer inspiration for this piece was David Birdsell and Leo Groarke’s “Toward a Theory of Visual Argument” that paved the way for understanding the purpose of images as a way of communication. Interestingly, those same criticisms that arose within this piece as did with their arguments. Could images truly be strong enough to conduct the ideas that the author wants to convey? If so, how? The important thing was to not only find images that conducted the main idea, but to find images that added to the main one. They acted as evidence in an argument to support and/or refute the shown argument. Contrary to Birdsell’s image of the fish on the hook, it was not important to get all the ideas down in one stand alone image because it was key to show progression in the story instead of one idea. 

From a young age many are told that picture books are for babies it is more “grown up” to just read text. However, this limits youth’s minds to just believing that communication is spoken or written language when in fact, communication is so broad that something as simple as a shrug or a yawn. It is important to recognize the subtle social cues and how society’s ideas of what makes an argument has been obscured by close minded individuals. This truly made the visual essay difficult, more than planning itself, it was stepping out of the comfort zone that was once shielded by fancy vocabulary words but now was stripped down to its bare bones. 

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Blog #9

For my visual essay I was thinking about focusing on how interpersonal connections have been affected by the Internet, specifically by messenger application that have made it easier than it’s ever been before to communicate with loved ones in real time. I supposed I’m still old fashioned in the sense where I feel like handwritten letters with pen and paper are honestly my favorite form of writing and writing technology; I personally feel like it could never go out of style. 

I have been interested of learning more about the printing press as it is something I have actually physically used before in a previous art class. I also really fell in love with the medieval manuscript workshop and took my time actually trying to do it correctly. I understand why we picked convenience over the sheer effort that went into this style yet we still, to this day, use the same general idea of ink to a surface to communicate our ideologies. 

I wonder what prompted the change between quill in ink to the modern pen, was it simply out of convenience or what? Also, what other forms of “paper” did we have besides the animal hides we had during medieval times?

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Blog 8

Authorship can be identified as the person who has the main role in producing the piece of work in which they are getting the credit for. The author is a person creates and produces their own ideas. To label someone as an author implies that they get the credit for the work(s) that they create. While reading the Glenn piece in particular I questioned why he was so caught up with Kempe writing and referring to herself in the third person. I feel like this is so normalized now as a way in which people present themselves in writing as well as first and second person but maybe it wasn’t so much back then. I also wondered, before trying to read Kempe’s piece, how she redefined rhetorical tradition. Her piece was difficult to understand as is because of the writing style being so different from modern English. But, reading Glenn’s piece first, and reading how he analyzed her being such a purposeful and persuasive woman, it made me want to read her piece more carefully to understand what she was saying the way he did.

Glenn’s argument was clearly stated as “despite her lack of formal training, Kempe wrote a skillful and powerful rhetorician because she located herself to create her biography and record spiritual development.” Honestly I just question why it was so revolutional that Kempe was able to articulate herself this way. I wonder why it was such a big deal that she dictated her ideas to a scribe the same way anyone else at the time could. I don’t feel like it would have been hard for her to be able to give ideas to another person. Was it the way in which she did it? Was it all simply because she was a woman who wasn’t allowed to even have ideas? A ton of men at the time dictated their messages to scribes, was her single outstanding difference the fact that she was a woman? I just don’t see why her piece was such a big deal in a time where people weren’t even literate to portray their own ideas and, as far as I’m concerned, claim true authorship.

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Literary Narrative

Frequently caught between being too Americanized or not cultured enough is the ultimate dilemma of being a non-white American. We are expected to have these cool cultural backstories to teach our peers but I never knew what to say. I always assumed maybe I just was not as interesting or something. As a second or third generation, depending on which side of the family I look at, I was pretty much deemed American with everyone else. The eternal struggle from there on has always been trying to fit in to American standards which started with my great grandfather. He ventured from the Philippines to America in about the 1940s to get away from his poor country and seek a better life for himself and his future family. However, the sting of what I always interpreted as shame, limited his wanting to pass on his culture and language to his children and grandchildren. Tagalog, one of the main languages in the Philippines was something he spoke around his family but never to his lineage, and he took it with him to his grave. In 2010 my grandmother got in contact with his last living brother and met our family Facebook for the first time ever.

(my great grandfather)

Every single day after that my grandma and I would try to practice the language but without a native speaker within arm’s reach, it was incredibly difficult and seemed impossible. We constantly wished he had passed down the culture and language to us. Without that, we felt out of place learning, and incompetent when trying to use basic words and phrases without sounding ignorant. I, on the other hand, being only an eighth Filipino was consistently downgraded and made to feel as if I was not “Filipino enough,” I “did not look Asian enough,” or maybe I was just lying to sound more interesting. All of this let me to not want to acquire the language as much as I probably should have wanted to. As a child, this truly broke my heart and I had yet to realize that this was just one door being closed by my inability to stand up for my culture and take my discovery into my own hands.

On both sides of my family I am Puerto Rican but the culture is far more embraced on my maternal side of the family. Everyone is always obsessing over the fact that they are 100% Puerto Rican, which, quite frankly, means nothing because we as Hispanics are the definitions of cultural mutts. We are Spaniard, African, and mixed with native tribes such as the Tainos. It used to make me feel left out in a way. But the icing on the cake was never being taught Spanish. In Hispanic households, children are meant to be seen, not heard. They are always meant to stay out of adult conversations and only speak when spoken to in that context as a sign of respect. I subconsciously always thought this is why I was never taught Spanish but my mom always says it was because my dad did not understand it as well so it was hard to speak to me in Spanish then in English. As one of the more Americanized Hispanic countries, being commonwealth and not even needing a passport to go over there, I was mocked tremendously by my Spanish speaking peers.

I grew up in a neighborhood where the population is mostly Hispanic and Black and was teased because of my lack of culture. I distinctly remember going to my godmother’s house for weeks at a time where she would only speak to me in Spanish with no translations. She would ask me if I wanted to go to the playa o piscina (beach or pool) and remark Dios mío (oh my God) at my inability to respond back in Spanish because I would translate it in my mind and respond in English. The thing that truly held me back from learning the language was my perfectionist ways and the fact that I was so unconfident speaking up in general. Even as a baby, I did not speak until I could speak a full sentence, and rarely “baby talked.” So in turn, in Spanish, I refused to speak it unless I knew how to pronounce it perfectly and did not sound like a gringa which is usually has a negative connotation for people who are not native speakers and more often than not sound “white” or Americanized. My godmother would consistently remark that I was supposed to immerse myself in the language and sometimes that is the only way a person can truly learn. Shayna then probably would have cried and told you that it was not working at all, but now looking back, I do realize that some of the basics do stay with you over time. Then, those words are coupled together and I find myself able to understand more than I can speak. Every day is a work in progress to acquire the language I was not given, but I continue to take on the challenge.

(Our Lady of Refuge, Bronx, NY)

Interestingly a big milestone in my life for me was one completely in Spanish. My godmother, who was not my godmother at the time, was always talking about taking me to church as it was a family tradition we did with my great grandmother. Most of my family is not super religious as in they go to masses and such; they mainly have their own relationships outside the church. But I grew up not knowing how to pray and being ignorant to the ways of having a relationship with God because I thought it was something people just knew and maybe I just was not “good enough” but one day I would get it.  In middle school however, this changed. I was taken to a mass, completely in Spanish, which I still to this day cannot fully understand, and I was immersed in the service. I even started picking up on the priest’s hand gestures, facial expressions and the overall tone despite not knowing the exact words being spoken. This is a key factor of language I had not yet come to realize makes such a difference on comprehension and the listener’s interpretations of your message and arguments. To me, it convinced me to fall deeper into my own faith discovery and further connect me with my religious and cultural background that I had so desperately been yearning for. I still continue to seek language and find ways to get more involved with my cultural roots that have been stripped away in some way or another but every day is a stepping stone.

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Blog #7

Reading: David Birdsell and Leo Groarke “Toward a Theory of Visual Argument”

This image couples both verbal and visual aspects to give the viewer an immediate understanding of what it is trying to convey to its audience. I immediately did start to question, as did Birdsell, whether or not images were strong enough to hold up their own arguments. Interestingly, many theorists actually reject this notion of the argumentation theory. I did however agree with the author’s point of visuals being able to make an argument and we, as the audience, should make more of an effort to consider images in context. I also wondered how strong these arguments could actually be if they were just given to the audience. I did soon learn that the contexts the author mentioned were the basis of those arguments to inform the audience and strengthen the argument given by the imagery with supporting words and messages. I feel that the contexts mentioned by the author, immediate visual context, immediate verbal context and visual culture were all key indicators to show this PSA’s point of cigarette butts contributing to our food by being ingested by fish. I do feel like without the verbal context I would have still been able to come to this conclusion because the verbal context is so strong it its depiction of the fish as a cigarette butt being put out.

The author argues that verbal and visual aspects can create strong arguments which goes against what most theorists actually believe. I was persuaded when finding my own imagery as well and analyzing it for context and an argument. I was inspired by the first image in which it depicts a fish with a displeased look on its face and a hook in its mouth. In simple, but eye catching text, it states “don’t you get hooked.” Immediately, the argument is clear that the audience is being warned about getting stuck on something or addiction is implicated. However when you look more closely, you’ll recognize a familiar item in the fish’s mouth, a cigarette. I do admit with my own image I took some inspiration to pick a PSA. I personally feel like PSAs are the best at doing exactly what the author describes, making an argument with imagery and few verbal clues, because it’s a PSA’s job to hook you in and make its point in simple context to reach a broad audience.

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Blog #6

The images that I chose were the twin towers before their destruction and the ruins of Pompeii and the aftermath of hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. In the beginning everything was calm and they were important buildings which I feel like is important to dwell on just as much as it is to focus on the aftermath like in the other two images.

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Field Trip #1

Our mission: to go on a little scavenger hunt around campus in our groups. We needed to find 3 word/text relationships along with some Georgia Tech locations including: Olympic Flame statue, Rosa Parks statue, Garden on the roof of Clough, Fountain in the Quad, and the message board in the Student Center.

This blog entry was done as a group, therefore it was published on one blog; here’s the link: danielelkin1101.blogspot.com

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Blog 5

When asked to find an image that speaks to me, immediately my mind went blank, but I decided to focus on the city skyline of New York City, my home.

(link: https://www.diyphotography.net/watch-new-york-skyline-play-music-incredible-layered-timelapse/ ) There’s a cool time lapse there as well.

One of the most sought after cities in the world, many aspire to see the sights and hear the sounds of the bustling city. It’s simply so big, bright, and beautiful that one can’t help but want to engage in it. My personal view, having lived there, is far more different than that of the average person because I’ve lived there. This connects to Reynold’s points on location, time, and energy because a person’s own unique perspective on this image may be different than mine. To me it’s just “new york” but to someone else it’s “NEW YORK, THE BIG APPLE, and TIMES SQUARE.” In the reading itself I had a few wonders and concerns: 1. How does exclusion/segregation in our daily lives play a role on our formation of language? 2. How can we strengthen our use of rhetorical analysis in this course? Do we need to? I felt like Reynold’s really focused on the rhetoric of the readings connected with her own personal views of situations and that helped her to examine the texts in different ways. I agree with her because I feel as if being persuasive and involved with your readers can engage them and bring them into the topic if you play into their views, experiences, and morals.

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Blog 3

Questions:

1. Does writing things down truly take away from a person’s ability to retain information?

2. Have writing technologies made any significant physical changes on humans as a species?

The reading was difficult to follow along as it kept repeating itself so it was kind of hard to stay interested in the reading itself. I did grow curious on whether or not the adaptations associated with our technological advancements had helped us more than it hurt us. It seems as if writing now is not simply what it was used for, to convey information, instead it is in a way used as a means of a social platform where we can sort of see it as an art form. In a way, people conveying their experiments, as they did with the Hyde Park example, help others learn how to interact with others and the world around them. In my opinion, whether we like it or not, writing has shaped us for the better and made many advancements to our species.