Internet Invention

The MyStory is based on Internet Invention by Gregory L. Ulmer. Rather than reading essays in order to formulate arguments about issues, Internet Invention asks students to read fragments of theory and produce Web pages that chart and explore their relationships to various discourses and institutions. Then, if all goes well, students will use this 'screened' information to re-think internal/intellectual conflicts ("Do I want to be a professor?") as a preamble to rethinking the interest-based conflicts in the world (e.g., how do we get more people to recycle).

This re/vision—seeing again—is, I think, what Ulmer calls a "wide image." A wide image is the pattern that emerges after students assemble the four installments of the Mystory using various hermeneutics to foreground and then decipher the "figures in the carpet" of their own reactions to, or memories of, Career, Family, etc.

Each installment consists of pictorial and verbal images relating to what Ulmer calls the "popcyle": the discourses/institutions (Career, Family, Entertainment, Community) that shape identities and imprint on people ways of identifying and solving problems.