Gender, Advertising, and Magazines 6

Adding to Ong's idea that writing divides, Damon-Moore and Kaestle pose that gender has influenced magazines and advertising since their inception. The article contains a history of a magazine that exemplifies how women were the largest target audience in the magazine market, The Ladies Home Journal. The Journal was highly successful for a century because their marketing strategy. Not only was the Journal for women, but also directed its advertising toward women. Damon-Moore and Kaestle state that this is because women were seen and thought of as the major consumers of goods at the time. The article continues with a history of The Saturday Morning Post, a magazine which started out to reach the significantly smaller male magazine market and became a family magazine. Then, the discussion shifts to men's magazines. Although the top grossing magazines tend to be geared towards women, special interest magazines have come to attract male readers. Playboy is mentioned and the article reveals that Hugh Hefner's careful selection of what advertisers he would allow in his magazine accounted for his success. The article briefly discusses the impact television had on major magazines. Advertising on televison became the fad and magazines lost much of their luster for advertisers. Ms exemplifies the modern woman's magazine and also the contradictions that come with it. Ms is a  magazine that was at the mercy of advertisers who they had attacked in the past for stereotyping men and women. In order to remain viable, Ms had to compromise their feminist principles. Ms highlights the fact that the relationship between advertising and magazines is powerful and seemingly infinte. In concluding their article, Damon-Moore and Kaestle talk about how the history of popular reading material reflects a society divided by gender. Magazines tell us what we are and what we should be. They reinforce sterotypes about men and women and impose mainstream gender roles on the masses.

How We Learn 5a Charney-Flower

Charney's article is directed at psychologists, educators, scholars, "designers of hypertext", and "those who learn to read". I feel The Effect of Hypertext on Processes of Reading and Writing  contains a fascinating compilation of research that explores how the modern tool of hypertext can be designed to improve the way we learn through reading. After reading this article I found myself thinking about the sci-fi movie, The Matrix. In the film, human beings are able to learn through a machine in mere seconds. I think Chaney's article, not to the same extreme, evokes ideas about maximizing learning potential. What if we could tap this potential, turn novice into expert and student into scholar with the push of button? The appeal to modern ways of learning such as hypertext is not only effectiveness or that that they cater to the learner, but also the speed and ease with which they teach. As an aspiring teacher I am somewhat frightened by Charney's article because it makes me ask myself will there be a time in which teaching will be a dead occupation. While I don't see a computerized monopoly on learning in  my lifetime, it seems foolish to think that such a thing is not plausible. It is unnerving to see how the roles of teachers are shrinking as we as a society become more dependent on technology, like hypertext, that is designed around improving the ways we learn. I began to understand why some of my past teachers were so insistent when they pronounced to the class that they were not babysitters. The aim to put a computer in every classroom in America highlights how hypertext and similar technologies are rapidly becoming an integral part of learning process.

Writing as a Technology- Weekly Writing 4b Baron

Baron takes Ong's idea that writing is a technology and elaborates. Baron gives a history of the technological innovations that have had a significant impact literacy. He begins by defending technology, the computer in particular, against anti-technological groups. Baron's use of the Lead Pencil Club as an example of how new technologies are often met with fear, skepticism, or outright rejection is especially appropriate given the articles focus on writing technology. It is difficult for some to imagine, but at one time, the pencil was a cutting edge innovation.  Baron shows the sytematic rejection of literacy technologies and writing itself by society.  Baron argues that in the early stages of writing history, writing was percieved as untrustworthy. Writing earned a reputation as dirty trick to steal land. In a world where very few people were literate, it is easy to see how writing could be utilized for sinister purposes . Baron tells us that the acceptance of these new technologies is a key component in determining how they effects us. When we examine the histories of technoligical innovations such as the pencil, telephone, and computer, then we can accuratly determine their impact. A history on the tools writers use such as Baron gives us in this article is fascinating to me.

"The Search For Situated Knowledge" Weekly Writting 4A

The words and phrases we use to illustrate a concept can be quite slippery as Flowers explains in the seventh chapter of her book. The concept of a "police-enforced youth curfew" evokes contradictory ideals on what the phrase actually means. We interpret these phrases differently based on our life experiences. Flowers labels how we make meaning out of a particular concept as "situated knowledge".  This knowledge Flowers calls "silent" because it is not typically shared. Flowers likens the use of this knowledge to making a home movie in the mind. She urges that we should embrace rival interpretations of what a "police-enforced youth curfew" means in order come to transform the understanding of the phrase. Ultimately, it is in the search for the story behind the story, that can make a difference. By examining multiple, even contradictory, interpretations of a "police-enforced youth curfew" we come to a greater understanding of what the phrase means.