Knowledge is Power

Sorry for this being late. . .internet was out in our entire apartment complex for a couple hours this morning.

Knowledge is Power

Throughout history, there have been several knowledge institutions that have served to transmit knowledge between individuals and among groups of people.  Some of these knowledge institutions include: Folk Knowledge; Oral Knowledge; Written Knowledge and Printed Knowledge.  As one institution shifts to another, there are apparent remnants of each previous institution within the current institution.  The studying of such paradigm shifts allows us to discover how our current forms of knowledge institutions came to be.  While some may argue that when one knowledge institution shifts to another the previous institution is largely forgotten, it is actually the previous institution that has a notable impact on the design and limits of the new institution.

Final Exam: Salon

   Well, it has been great fun. Really. Knowledge is amazing and powerful. Thank you so much for all off your input. Bittersweet. Anyway, here is my essay. Enjoy:

Final Blog Post.... (insert mixed feelings)

Knowledge institutions have a profound impact on knowledge itself. Knowledge, in turn, has a profound effect on civilizations and plays a major role in shaping history. Several learning institutions have been analyzed by our class this semester, all of which have certain strengths and weaknesses, and all of which have had different effects on history. Despite major advancements and paradigm shifts accompanying all transitions from one learning institution to the next, writing systems and written knowledge represent the greatest reinvention of knowledge in history because of the economizing effects and additive qualities this shift had on knowledge.

Flashbulbs and Fires

Oral tradition goes back a loooooong way, most likely to the beginnings of interpersonal communication. (Possibly even before that, with all the controversy that invites [wikipedia].) Its impacts have been broad, and are seen most poignantly in the religious traditions of the world; however, it alone has never had the power to bring religion onto the world stage. Only with the advent of writing was any religion able to spread across (or with) great empires such as Rome, and only with the advent of printing has any religion been able to become global.

Prep for the salon... saloon would be cooler.

So I figured the best way to show my preparation for the final would be to post my notes I’ve taken as I paroused the blogs trying to find themes. So here you go…

Salon notes.

Here are my notes:

Final Exam Review Table

For the Final Exam "Salon" review, I compiled in this chart the blogs for each of the units, and some places put links to other blogs.  The other chart I made on my computer has a bit more information, but this is a good summary, I think.

Note: Post Labels

Howdy,

I've gone through and tagged each post with two things:

• the unit I thought it came from or fit into
• the name of the author

Many other labels exist, but I thought his might be helpful in preparing for the final.

If you get a moment, please check to see that your posts got labelled correctly. :)

Good luck next week!!!

Final Review: Serialized

Good morning,

It seems that for our final exam we will do well to fill out the suggested chart. Blogger isn't particularly good at doing non-linear work, so I figured I'd do an outline. (My internal nerd won't move on without mentioning that this is a classic scenario requiring the serialization of a non-linear body of information--in this case, turning a chart into a written flow of information due to the blog's limitations.) Here goes!

Censorship Rough Draft

Ok, so after thinking and researching some more about censorship, I found a pretty good thesis:

"While many believe that the outpouring of revolutionary thought in the Enlightenment era in England and Europe gained momentum through the use of the printed word, it was also a catalyst for Royal and Ecclesiastical censorship, which resulted in the impediment of the printing industry."

Writing a Paper on Censorship

As I've been writing my paper on censorship before 1700, I have run across some interesting things I would like to share here.

Finding a Thesis

When we were first assigned an annotated bibliography I was reminded of other research papers I had done. Most notably, my high school senior paper, which was on ambient noise imaging. When I started that research project, I had this bright idea and no clue as to who might have already researched and tried it. Many dead-end search queries on online databases taught me the hard way that getting the right word or phrase was vital, so I began to keep a journal of what I found and how. Some absolutely brilliant work surfaced while I was hunting for the 'right' query, so, in spite of it not being quite what I wanted, I kept it. It was a fun, exploratory game. After about 8 pages of notes, I was ready to start my 10-page paper.

At the same time, I was looking into casting rather than sintering advanced ceramics. Naturally, this meant I had two running journals of what I had found.

The point? The idea of "keeping an annotated bibliography" might be new to me, but the practice certainly is not--complete with glib storytelling.

Problem is, I generally have to have some point, interest, or question I'm trying to answer, and I don't.

Research Paper Update

As I have been working on my essay it has been kind of difficult to find an arguable claim considering dictionaries, as outlined in Dr. Burtons thesis powerpoint. I was although, able to connect it quite easily to the learning outcomes. In looking through the outcomes for a connection, the third one, communicating knowledge, basically popped out at me. The words preserved, communicated, and experienced seemed to help define my stance on the dictionary and the different things I have learned historically and personally.

Better Late Than Never..... ?

so i realize i still haven't finished my post about the rosetta project!! i was going to do it over thanksgiving, then forgot untill class thursday (i know - worst student ever!)

so i was involved in the making of the artifacts in a kinda weird way. i never actually saw the artifact our group made until the day of class - i was put in charge of 2 things... 1) find something to translate. this i did by visiting with Dr. Stratford - an expert on ancient Mesopotamian. he informed me that BYU has a mesopotamian nail (like the kind you build buildings with) that had an inscription written on it, and had the translation. so i sent that off to my group and got to work on the real difficult part of my job - making the stylus with which to write in cuneiform. i picked out a hard wood dowel, assuming that a softer wood would soak up the moisture from the clay and make it harder to use, then there was the decision of what would be easier -a triangle tool and a line tool, or a two in one tool? i decided on the second, thinking i would be annoyed by having to continuously switch between two sticks.

So then it came ot actually carving the stylus. the hard wood i chose made the carving process difficult, but not impossible. as i carved, i wondered - who did this in mesopotamia? did everyone make their own stylus to fit their personal prefrences? or was there a stulus maker? what materials were they made of? the clay tablets i have seen have writing that is MUCH smaller than that on our artefact, so their styluses would have had to be made of either an extremely hard wood that would keep its rigidity when carved down to such a small size, or made of metal or stone. there are problems with both of these, however, in that stone is very brittle, and metal is difficult and time consuming to shape. in the end, i had an image of ollivander's wand store in Harry Potter, but rather than wands, there would be styluses in little boxes on the shelves, where you could come and try out a limestone size six stylus, then a copper size eight, then an oak size five.

so maybe that's taking it a bit too far, but the INDUSTRY of writing is a very interesting thing - whether it be clay and a stylus, or vellum and parchment, or paper and leather, or ink and bamboo leaves, or stone and chisels, or loose-leaf college ruled paper and Bic pens, there seems to have been an industry of writing as long as there has been writing. this also begs the question - how is the paper industry (and others involved) going to survive the digitization of society, when the rules of the writing business are rewritten?

FINAL part A

today's lecture was pretty interesting - i have some thoughts on the final paper, but I'm still in the brainstorming stages -
when Dr. Petersen mentioned the guy who coined the phrase "the dark ages" as opposed to the "light ages" that proceeded it (ancient Greece) the gears started turning, and i wondered - how does humankind go from the wealth of knowledge and freedom that was seen in ancient Greece and Rome to the "darkness" of the middle ages?? what was the difference between the two societies? i believe a large part of it had to do with the availability and the communication of knowledge - it seems that the dark ages were wso dark because there was a VERY low rate of literacy (used as an indication of % of the population that is educated) as opposed to Greece or Rome, where it definitely wasn't 100% literacy, but the information and education was much more widespread. so does the amount of education determine how "good "a society is? can that be shown by examining literacy? i guess i'll find out!

Ye Oulde Bookes

After the Special Collections experience, I wandered through the King James Bible Exhibit in the library.

It was cool.

The oldest books had a style of script called fractura, which we had just learned about. The vertical strokes are very thick, while horizontal connections are thin and even ephemeral at times. This makes it rather hard to read, Bro. Skousen, and boy was he right! Contrasting this with the Roman fonts--even with the old long 's' characters--was very informative. I finally have a handle on why I dislike old script so much, and the oddly-named "Times New Roman" now makes sense!

For the record, I'm excited now any time I see various fonts and title pages, as I'm reminded of that lecture and the lecture reminds me of the large quantities of information quietly sitting in the text and design of a book.

Seeing the extremely find handiwork that went into some of the less typographically-oriented texts reminds me of something we have today: coffee table books, often from National Geographic or the World Wildlife Foundation. These massive tomes contain a moderate amount of information nestled between massive swaths of gorgeous photography all layered on thick, glossy paper. (Ink chemistry--why such paper is used--is a set of books unto itself.)

Just for Fun

In doing research for my bibliography on dictionaries I was able to come upon some "low" and "cant" words, or in other words, slang or jargon words. They were recorded by Samuel Johnson and help to show his personality and writing style, which can prove to be difficult when writing a dictionary.
Here are some interesting words:
Dandiprat: a little fellow; a urchin; a word used sometimes in fondness, sometimes in contempt.
To conjobble: to settle, to discuss. A low cant word.
Clodplate: a stupid fellow; a dolt; a thickscull.
Kicksey-wicksey: a made word in disdain or ridicule of a wife.
To phog: to rob; to steal; a low word.