I don’t know what I’m doing here, but this assignment said “number one”, so I figured I’d start off with it.
I had several “wow” moments during the talk. The other link didn’t work, btw,
“A Personal Cyberinfrastructure.”
(On Firefox).
There were so many ideas that I hadn’t really framed for myself before, but knew I believed in once heard. The one thing that keeps people from creating is the judgement we know we get when we do create. But it feels good to create and share. It feels good to get that thumbs up or star. You feel as if maybe you’ve reached out across Web 2.0 and made a connection with someone who’s like you.
The idea that the internet is evolving into this massively multiplayer game, is incredible! We all love games. AND we get to build it ourselves the way we want it? All in.
Narrate, Curate, and Share. I get it. I’m going to go back and take out all the extra words and the “Ums”. But to finally have a group of people who understand creativity, and creativity in my age. When I have the tools to use them, and create even newer tools because of the spontaneity and the firing back and forth of comments is incredible!
During the section talking about stodgy faculty, I remember back in college, I had this one professor who for some reason I felt HATED me, and he was constantly trying to trip me up. This was for a Creative Writing class for Christ’s sake! I thought it was going to be fun.
From day 1, our first assignment was to bring in something we’d written creatively, and make copies and share with the class, and do some kind of critical analysis. Well, I brought in this very simple song I had written. I didn’t have any music to go along with it yet, but it was written on a lined notebook paper and copies in black and white, and looked sort of sloppy.
So instead of bringing a short story, or a journal entry, I brought in a song; It didn’t fit in with the stuff the other kids were doing. He wanted to know, “Did you bring your guitar, are you going to sing it for us in front of the class?” At that time in my life I was having major issues with performing in front of people, so fuck no I wasn’t going to bring my guitar and play in front of the new class and a professor who hated me. During our one on one’s he’d always ask me “Who are your favorite authors”, and of course I was into sci fi so JRR Tolkien was what I brought up often, and probably Shakespeare because I was doing Shakespeare plays at the time, and he always thought I was lying for some reason.
I got a C or a low B minus in that class, the one class that in Kindergarten, I got an A in, and I was so excited to bring home my big one sheet short stories with a big kidly drawn picture at the top. And the teacher would go on and on about how creative it was and how creative and imaginative I was. I thought I was a shoe in for an A for Creative Writing 101. Because, all I thought you had to do to write creatively was to let your mind go, and let the story goes where it takes you.
Then I see a class like this where the minds and hearts are open, and I almost cried at a couple of the sections where the talk resonated with me so much. And when he started quoting Lorenzo’s speech in the Merchant of Venice I got chills up and down my spine, because I did that exact monologue in college where I played Lorenzo in Merchant.
So I guess you could say overall there was a lot of stuff shaken loose inside of me watching the no Digital Facelift video. I look forward to growing and being able to tell a story in whatever format I want, be it digital, or a huge piece of crummy paper with a kid’s drawing on the top describing the action. Thanks for this class.
