Philosophy: January 2004 Archive Page

I have been enrolled in courses in which my professors used a powerpoint presentation every single day. When required to do a presentation in front of my peers, I also made use of Microsoft Powerpoint in order to present my information. I felt that using such a visual aid was a valuable tool to add multimedia zing to the classroom. Last week, I gave a Chaucer presentation to my Media Aesthetics class. Originally, I wanted to do a powerpoint presentation. However, after I was advised against it by Dr. Jerz, I read "Powerpoint is Evil." When I first read this article, I completely disagreed. However, once I thought about it more, it began to make sense. I'm not saying that powerpoint can never be useful, but it is more appropriate for "corporate sales pitches" (in the words of Dr. Jerz) instead of Chaucer presentations. --Jamee Rice --Learn how to 'learn something new everyday' (Jamee Rice)

Jamee's presentation very cleverly used the Pittsburgh regionalism 'yinz' (for "you") as a way of introducing Chaucer's language. See: Chaucer could have actually related to "Yinzers!"

"Let me see if I can state what is bothering you. I could tell you before the test what to study, what material you should memorize to do well, but I'm not doing that." She smiles a little and says, "Yes." I continue, "I could do that, I could tell you, exactly, all that you need to know. I could tell you what to memorize. But I don't. And you can't understand why I don't." She smiles more broadly. "Yes. Yes! That's it. Why don't you tell us?"

This illustrates what I believe is an underappreciated and growing problem in higher education: a large number of undergraduates, as well as even some graduate students, believe that the instructor's main function is to tell the students what to memorize. And if the students duly so memorize, they believe they deserve A's. --Craig M. Newmark --No Surprises? (The Irascible Professor)

Thanks Josh (who suggests this in a comment attached to "A Student's Plea: Give Me Something Known").

I just had an hour-long conversation with a high school senior who has been accepted to Seton Hill University in the fall, but is still considering his options. He's being recruited for a sports team, and is also interested in broadcast journalism. SHU doesn't have a broadcast program; there is no TV or radio station, so at first I thought the interview would be pretty short. But this student also seemed attracted to the entrepreneurial focus of our school. The fact that men's athletics are expanding so rapidly here (SHU was only recently converted to an officially coeducational institution) means greater access to leadership positions.

I told him that a big school with an established journalism program would be able to prepare him more efficiently to step into the profession, but a specialized broadcast journalism professor teaches a class of thirty freshmen exactly how to do broadcast journalism would be something of an assembly line education. Of course the large school will have access to more resources, but being a big fish in a small pond has its own benefits.

I hope I was able to tap into this bright young man's entrepreneurial instincts and a love for learning. I told him that multimedia projects involving streaming online video would fit very nicely into the new media journalism program (but that he might think in terms of a series of related documentaries rather than a weekly TV show), and he floated the idea of setting up a live webcast of home sports games. Sounds technologically feasible, but I told him he wouldn't just be able to walk into a studio and flip a switch -- we'd have to talk with the tech guys and create a plan from scratch. Somebody who is willing to do that -- to think beyond the parameters of a pre-packaged lesson plan -- is a student who is ready to learn.

And if they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honours and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,

"Better to be the poor servant of a poor master,"

and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner? -- Plato --The Allegory of the Cave (Exploring Plato's Dialogues)

I've been reading Plato's Allegory of the Cave once again. Plato recognizes that art is powerful and therefore dangerous, and that it should be strictly controlled in order to serve the state. While we're linguistically conditioned to think of the arts as "illuminating" and good artists as "bright," Plato sees art as the shadows on the wall -- shadows cast by puppeteers who are stumbling towards an imperfect representation of reality. While this is hardly a laudable way to interpret artists, Dr. Clowney of Rowan University suggests, "Think 'media', 'propaganda', and Entertainment Tonight, rather than 'fine art', and it is easier to gain some sympathy for Plato's views."

As if Plato needed further confirmation, if you glance at Michael Jackson's trial coverage, you'll see plenty of shadows dancing on Plato's cave walls. In a 1992 article in ANQ, Lance Olson calls Jackson "a pale media-packaged Xerox of a Xerox of the Real Thing." He is so multiply mediated, by plastic, make-up, by masks and umbrellas, by the directions he gives to his own personal videographer (who accompanied his triumphant entry to the courthouse where he entered his plea of not guilty) that he almost ceases to exist. While Olson notes that half a billion people apparently watched the premiere of Jackson's "Black or White" video on MTV, a scant 12 years later, outside of Cali-phoney-a, there wasn't exactly a groundswell of support for Jackson. Steve Gutterman reports that "plans to mount a major show of international support for the pop star failed to hit a high note on their first day Friday, as tiny crowds gathered in a handful of European cities" in gatherings timed to coincide with his arraignment.

Art is powerful and dangerous; at this point, the amount of time, effort, and intellectual energy that the world is investing in contemplating the significance of Michael Jackson's latest antics is enough to make a philosopher weep.

The very premise of an online game is that it is uncontrollable - indeed, even the banned players have found ways to sneak back in various disguises. | That, in turn, presents a thorny set of philosophical problems. How do you seek to curb the baser instincts of a community of autonomous players? Is repression the answer? Or do you have to give people incentives to behave better all by themselves? --Andrew Gumbel --Blood on the Virtual Carpet (Independent)

I filed this under "Journalism" because it features a virtual newspaper reporting on the unsavory activities of the virtual residents of a in The Sims.