In “The Language of New Media,” Lev Manovich discusses “cinematic perception” and “unconventional points of view” possible because of the advent of movable film and cameras.

It occurs to my that this movement made possible by new media and tools also applies to the act of writing in new media.

Donna posted the other day that blogging is generative and she linked to Collin’s post on rhythm. This was a good reminder on how the movement or circulation of ideas may change with the advent of new media.

Further, Donna writes:

Don’t we need to be teaching something about the circulation of texts, something about what Jenny calls rhetorical ecologies?

So now I want to play connect the dots, but I’m not quite sure how to articulte it yet. If the digitally literate practice of keeping a weblog requires a new rhythm and that new rhythm calls for ideas to circulate differently. If we were being filmed, it’s not just that someone is able to walk around and film us from all different angles and points of view, but that the what that is being filmed is also moving and producing in the network. It’s as Collin wrote on the page linked above:

the traditional elements of graduate coursework will be diminished substantially, in favor of more ongoing, exploratory, and inventive types of inquiry [...] Ask any academic blogger, and you will likely find that experience writing according to a much different rhythm than the typical academic, binge-and-purge cycle that characterizes many semesters.

I find myself falling into and out of that rhythm as I try and find a sustainable rhythm. I’m trying to listen to my body and it is still expecting the stressful ‘binge-and-purge’ cycle, but intellectually I want the more sustained practice.

But, as I try and define digitally literate practices, I’m seeing more movement and media in the ‘ongoing, exploratory, and inventive types of inquiry’ that new media enables/demands/requires.

There are more ideas being exchanged openly that are in process and I am affected more by them than by many ideas I read in traditional literature. I think it’s because they’re really, right now, in circulation. I can feel the flow and that is exciting. They’re not fixed; they’re in flex. Ok, step back here, Marcia. Ideas flow in traditional texts too. I can still get excited by some things I read in print. But, one of the things is, they take more effort to share. I can’t just link to them openly. I have to copy down…digitize…the important bits in order to put them in circulation in the network to see what others might make of them in addition to what I make of them.

One of the things I realized is that the majority of the texts that I’m using in the paper I’m writing to define digital literacies is that I’m reading them in isolation and it feels wrong. I haven’t been reading them with others. I haven’t been sharing. The only circulation of ideas has been between me and the page. Even though, I’m just basically writing a literature review of digital literacies and trying to capture what others’ have said and put those ideas in coversation with each other, the how I’ve been going about it just feels wrong because I haven’t put any movement to it, but trying to incorporate the movement feels like trying to nail jello to the wall because it really is in the active circulation where things happen/matter. Ok that was a run-on sentence. But, what I’m getting at is what others have said about trying to teach or talk about blogs intelligentally can’t be done well if you’re not in the thick of things keeping your own blog.

ok, so trying to be more succinct about it:

Digital media includes/affords? not only the movement and new points of view that Manovich notes, but also a turn inward/outward (insert Collin’s centripedal/centrifugal explanation) upon itself because the object/subject of new media may also be an active producer in the network/movement as well. So what would we teach? the affective exchange/active circulation of ideas in an ongoing sustainable practice of investigation, the making knowledge visible (who said that first?), the…

ok, I could ramble on and on. I have to let this perk a little while longer and move on to something else.