Let’s think about this.

David Blakesley and Collin Brooke’s article “Visual Rhetoric” struck a nerve in me. The article made me think not only about the concepts that they were talking about what but what my mind thought about when I was reading the article. My immediate interpretation was that the visual means in which something is organized provides a necessary assessment of what the reader is reading and provides the momentum for the reader to actively participate in the mechanics of reading and distinguishing the important parts of the segment.

For example, the way that a specific website is set up. If you go to the social networking website, Facebook , the organization is easy to navigate. On the top of the homepage, tabs indicate the each sections of your personalized area of Facebook. In addition, the homepage is set up like a newspaper listing all the headlines so you know immediately what your friends are up to. In the right corner, where visually your eyes go to first is your status and your friend’s status which is what you want to see first. However, Facebook does make an error by putting advertisements on the left hand side. CNN proves their marketing genius and understands the idea of Visual Rhetoric when they place ads on the right side where the viewers look first. CNN’s website makes it easy for the reader to interpret the information easily and efficiently.

Organization is the most important means of visual identity and without divisions into the must read and the what we can wait to read later browsing the Internet becomes increasingly difficult and takes more effort.

Thinking

Thinking conjures up a whole load of emotions that were never previously thought about. Today was raining and overall gloomy, so I spent most of the day by myself in my room. This gave me time to think and reflect upon discussions that I have been having in most of my classes. The same ideas have been overlapping and I have had similar conversations.

However, today in my Writing Arts class was a conversation that put a lot of thought into me. I haven’t thought about the exact areas we covered, but what the areas mean. For a social networking site like Facebook or Myspace, why do we do what we do? Why is it that we put so much of ourselves in the open? There is an incredible difference between our online lives and our real lives. Facebook “stalking” takes up a large part of people’s lives and we read everything–status changes, new comments, notes, wall posts, and look at pictures that have been tagged. Why? What is our obsession with other people’s information?

What if people took the same amount of time that they used on Facebook and went to CNN or the New York Times and read the news.

Why has the idea of news changed? Suddenly, news feeds are more important than the actual news. Who slapped who with Superpoke or who is now in a relationship? What made me go to my brother’s Facebook homepage when I saw his status said something odd? Why do people care so much about Facebook, but don’t take the time to learn about the real world around them?