435 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
435 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
From LISTSERV@uacsc2.albany.edu Tue Jan 5 16:00:02 1993
|
|
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 15:58:21 -0500
|
|
From: Revised List Processor (1.7e) <LISTSERV@uacsc2.albany.edu>
|
|
Subject: File: "EJRNL V1N2-1"
|
|
To: David Pirmann <pirmann@cs.rutgers.edu>
|
|
|
|
_______ _________ __
|
|
/ _____/ /___ ___/ / /
|
|
/ /__ / / ______ __ __ __ ___ __ ___ _____ / /
|
|
/ ___/ __ / / / __ / / / / / / //__/ / //__ \ / ___ \ / /
|
|
/ /____ / /__/ / / /_/ / / /_/ / / / / / / / / /__/ / / /
|
|
/______/ /______/ /_____/ /_____/ /_/ /_/ /_/ \___/_/ /_/
|
|
|
|
October 1991 _EJournal_ Volume 1 Issue 2-1 ISSN 1054-1055
|
|
|
|
An Electronic Journal concerned with the implications
|
|
of electronic networks and texts.
|
|
|
|
University at Albany, State University of New York
|
|
ejournal@albnyvms.bitnet
|
|
|
|
There are 426 lines in this issue.
|
|
|
|
CONTENTS:
|
|
|
|
Editorial 31 lines.
|
|
by Ted Jennings
|
|
|
|
The Brent-Amato Exchange 216 lines.
|
|
by Doug Brent
|
|
College of General Studies
|
|
University of Calgary
|
|
|
|
and Joe Amato
|
|
Department of English
|
|
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
|
|
|
|
DEPARTMENTS:
|
|
|
|
Letters (policy) 11 lines.
|
|
Reviews (policy) 11 lines.
|
|
Supplements to previous texts (policy) 12 lines.
|
|
|
|
Information about _EJournal_ (subscribing, etc.) 45 lines.
|
|
|
|
PEOPLE:
|
|
Board of Advisors
|
|
Consulting Editors
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
This electronic publication and its contents are (c) copyright 1991 by
|
|
_EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give away the journal and its
|
|
contents, but no one may "own" it. Any and all financial interest is hereby
|
|
assigned to the acknowledged authors of individual texts. This notification
|
|
must accompany all distribution of _EJournal_.
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
E D I T O R I A L [line 1]
|
|
|
|
Charter subscribers may have noticed that this issue is enumerated, somewhat
|
|
unconventionally, "Volume 1 Issue 2-1 ." We are still experimenting with the
|
|
format and distribution patterns that networks permit; this episode involves
|
|
picking up on the "thread" concept familiar to users of other lists and
|
|
bulletin boards.
|
|
|
|
This present "mailing" contains *only* an exchange of views about the "Re/View"
|
|
that constituted Issue 2. If there are subsequent comments about this exchange
|
|
between Doug Brent and Joe Amato, or about the original review, or about the
|
|
book by Jay Bolter that Joe reviewed, we could extend the discussion into issue
|
|
2-3 and beyond -- while concurrently e-mailing Issues 3 and 4, devoted to
|
|
different subjects.
|
|
|
|
Meanwhile, recent subscribers in particular will find Joe Amato's original
|
|
Re/View of Jay Bolter's book useful --perhaps necessary-- for appreciating the
|
|
exchange in this issue.
|
|
|
|
You will receive that issue, _EJournal_ Vol 1 #2, if you send the following
|
|
message [ addressed to LISTSERV@ALBNYVM1 ]: GET EJRNL V1N2
|
|
|
|
We are experimenting with ways to arrange our Bitnet Fileserver so that readers
|
|
won't be stymied by its antediluvian restrictions. The message INDEX EJRNL
|
|
sent to LISTSERV@ALBNYVM1 will trigger an up-to-date readout of what is
|
|
available -- including the file EJRNL INDEX.
|
|
|
|
Suggestions about smoothing the relationships among readers, the journal, the
|
|
medium (and libraries) are always welcome.
|
|
|
|
Ted Jennings [l.31]
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The Brent-Amato Exchange [line 1]
|
|
by Doug Brent
|
|
College of General Studies
|
|
University of Calgary
|
|
|
|
and Joe Amato
|
|
Department of English
|
|
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
|
|
|
|
|
|
[Doug Brent sent this response in July; I forwarded it (anonymously) to Joe;
|
|
Joe's reply came back almost overnight. The delay in publishing the exchange
|
|
is _EJournal_'s fault, not theirs. Ted Jennings]
|
|
|
|
* * * * *
|
|
|
|
Joe Amato's review of _Writing Space_ is a useful and provocative document.
|
|
However, I would like to respond to it by picking holes in two specific aspects
|
|
of it: Amato's quarrels with Bolter's format, which I think are misplaced, and
|
|
his ideas on the "darker side" of hypertext, which I would like expanded.
|
|
|
|
First, Amato takes Bolter to task for not pushing his printed document farther
|
|
in the direction of hypertext, a direction in which, Amato argues, it is
|
|
already beginning to drift as it becomes less linear and more aphoristic toward
|
|
the end:
|
|
|
|
I would argue that Bolter, for all his attention to the work of novelists
|
|
such as Joyce (of both varieties), gives relatively short shrift to
|
|
several (late-) print-age techniques that might well have provided his
|
|
final section with a bit more oomph. . . . Specifically, had he
|
|
broken with sentence/paragraph structure -- even within his print-bound
|
|
format -- the resulting *aesthetic* reflexivity could, I think, have
|
|
avoided what must otherwise be read as a sort of tacit irony, the irony
|
|
implicit in having to use print for a discussion of un-printable
|
|
technologies. (l. 205)
|
|
|
|
I think that this quarrel over form misses completely Bolter's point (or else
|
|
Amato simply doesn't *accept* Bolters point, which is fine but he doesn't say
|
|
that). Bolter argues that writers such as Joyce, Tzara and others resorted to
|
|
their disorienting techniques precisely because there was no other way to
|
|
accomplish the fragmentation that they sought. Their only writing tool was
|
|
linear print. In the computer age, he claims, these techniques are unnecessary
|
|
because the electronic writing space is available to do the job. One does not
|
|
have to write against the grain of hypertext to produce a Dada poem; hypertexts
|
|
come pre-deconstructed, their oppositions and tensions exposed rather than
|
|
hidden. [l.46]
|
|
|
|
Thus the print writing space is freed to do what it does most naturally: act as
|
|
a vehicle for relatively linear argument. Since Bolter's book is also
|
|
available as a hypertext, why bother to do badly in print what can be done in
|
|
the alternate medium?
|
|
|
|
This is the most general lesson of the technological perspective on
|
|
communication. Texts, and even thoughts, will automatically flow into the
|
|
shape that is most congenial to the technology in which they are created,
|
|
unless the creator goes to extreme lengths to kick them out of those ruts. In
|
|
the electronic age, there is no longer any need to expend that amount of energy
|
|
to kick print out of its linear rut.
|
|
|
|
Second, his displeasure with Bolter's linear form has, I think distracted Amato
|
|
>from his other task, that of pointing out the "darker side" of Bolter's
|
|
scenario that he alludes to repeatedly throughout his review. I am quite
|
|
convinced, with Amato, that the scenario does indeed have a darker side, and I
|
|
think Bolter is too, although Amato is right that he chooses not to dwell on
|
|
it. But I have difficulty making out from Amato's review exactly what this
|
|
darker side *is*. He states that "it is as yet far from clear that networking
|
|
may not itself merely represent a further trivializing of human experience, a
|
|
way of de-tuning the political consciousness of groups of individuals" (l.
|
|
233). This seems to be the essence of this darker side. But Amato does not
|
|
develop, to my satisfaction at any rate, the details of *why* this should
|
|
represent a further trivializing of human experience.
|
|
|
|
And so I would like to end with an invitation to Amato to expand on these
|
|
ideas. Why would we "find ourselves at some point unable to re/view the
|
|
ideological consequences inherent in such apparent self-authorization" (l.
|
|
248)? What is wrong with a world in which ironic efforts to criticise culture,
|
|
including deconstruction, have ceased to be against the grain and become
|
|
natural to the medium? Is it simply that they will thereby become less
|
|
self-conscious? I find myself unable to answer these questions by examining
|
|
Amato's review. [l.80]
|
|
|
|
In short, even though Amato's dissenting voice cannot be embedded in Bolter's
|
|
text as it could be in hypertext, perhaps he could nonetheless take advantage
|
|
of this non-hyper space to expand on and clarify his comments.
|
|
|
|
Doug Brent
|
|
College of General Studies
|
|
University of Calgary
|
|
|
|
|
|
[Here follows Joe Amato's reply to Doug Brent's response to Joe's Re/View
|
|
of Jay David Bolter's _Writing Space_]:
|
|
|
|
Good, constructive commentary. But let's see if I can't clarify my seemingly
|
|
more tenuous reservations regarding Bolter's work, in accordance with the
|
|
aforementioned "two specific aspects" of my re/view:
|
|
|
|
That texts and thoughts "will automatically flow into the shape that is most
|
|
congenial to the technology in which they are created" suggests that one might
|
|
do well to interrogate such technologies thoroughly to determine with some
|
|
precision the types of aesthetic freedoms and constraints they "automatically"
|
|
present to "creator[s]." True, due to the development of electronic media such
|
|
as hypertext, some may no longer perceive the need to "kick print out of its
|
|
linear rut." For these folk, print is a dead duck, and has been so for some
|
|
time now. It is surely a comment on this "late age of print" that, even among
|
|
this group, ambivalence tends to be a shared sentiment.
|
|
|
|
I simply have trouble in accepting, wholesale, Bolter's contention that the
|
|
general features of progressive twentieth century artistic and intellectual
|
|
achievements have anticipated the non-linear, fragmented nature of electronic
|
|
media -- in effect, that the advent of hypertext has evidently made apparent
|
|
the teleology of these older forms -- a claim that, however much I may agree
|
|
with it in principle, requires perhaps a good deal more practical elaboration
|
|
than even Bolter has managed. There would seem to be a tendency among
|
|
hypertext commentators to put the car [sic] before the horse. Viewed against
|
|
the more traditional scholastic context, what needs to be looked at more
|
|
closely, as I see it, are the assumptions we bring to our engagement with
|
|
electronic media, assumptions rooted in the methods, insights and critical
|
|
conventions of the twentieth century. In order to accommodate this process,
|
|
older print technologies will undoubtedly have to be rethought, for the
|
|
technological ferment that has provided for the emergence of newer technologies
|
|
represents a fundamental departure from the prerogatives of earlier print forms
|
|
(take cybernetics, for example), hence affording the opportunity to view things
|
|
in a new light. And a 'new light' might well entail a fresh approach. [l.124]
|
|
|
|
Specifically, I would ask for a more palpable sense of what is meant by
|
|
electronic "writing space," and, because older print forms -- which are
|
|
presumably at stake in this transition -- have provided the standards against
|
|
which we are currently, and by default, evaluating the newer technologies, it
|
|
is hardly begging such a question to suggest that one attempt something a bit
|
|
more imaginative than conventional reference to the (by now) well-documented
|
|
aesthetic conventions of late twentieth century literary inquiry. (That
|
|
Bolter's text is available as a hypertext still does not address the
|
|
print-based predicament.) Hence, assertions such as "One does not have to
|
|
write against the grain of hypertext to produce a Dada poem" -- which would
|
|
itself seem to imply that writing Dada poetry is aesthetically and, more to the
|
|
point, politically at one with the aims of electronic media -- might be made to
|
|
suffer a more rigorous critical examination.
|
|
|
|
O.K. -- so Bolter is not a poet (at least, not to my knowledge). Yet he is a
|
|
hypertext co-author, a writer. And I believe a bit more legible d-d-discomfort
|
|
on his part might have made me feel a bit more comfortable. Surely print is up
|
|
to the task. It may be a matter of taste, finally, but matters of taste are
|
|
invariably a function of community norms, and the academic community is chock
|
|
full of such norms.
|
|
|
|
Regarding the "darker side" of Bolter's text: this is indeed given relatively
|
|
short shrift in my re/view, largely due to my misgivings as to what I took to
|
|
be its already excessive length. Fortunately, my respondent has provided me
|
|
with a convenient articulation on which I would like to "expand":
|
|
|
|
What is wrong with a world in which ironic efforts to criticize
|
|
culture, including deconstruction, have ceased to be against the
|
|
grain and become natural to the medium? Is it simply that they
|
|
will thereby become less self-conscious?
|
|
|
|
Even assuming that "deconstruction" might be "natural to the medium" -- the
|
|
sort of claim, with its premise of a "natural" deconstructive element, that, as
|
|
I argue above, requires a good deal more elaboration (and perhaps revision) --
|
|
what is meant, precisely, by "ironic efforts to criticize culture"? How on
|
|
earth could electronic media ipso facto guarantee any such thing? Were I to
|
|
assume that everyone had access to electronic media, that a majority utilized
|
|
such media on a regular basis, that such media facilitated a variety of
|
|
cultural criticism, and that such criticism was -- because of non-linearity?
|
|
transience? aphorism? density of reference? fragmentation? abdication of
|
|
authority? -- ironic (and effectively so), would there be any point in
|
|
attempting to substantiate in what ways such "efforts" had "thereby become less
|
|
self-conscious"? Would such a "world" -- one evidently replete with active,
|
|
culturally informed contributors -- trouble itself with such questions?
|
|
Indeed, given the obvious benefits of remaining in the medium -- on-line, as it
|
|
were -- why would *anyone* bother to provide answers? The implication would
|
|
seem to be that active engagement within this newer medium somehow
|
|
*automatically provides for* those critical efforts directed toward a richer
|
|
understanding *of* the medium, and un-self-consciously, to boot. [l.174]
|
|
|
|
My commentator has, in effect, trivialized ideological inquiry by suggesting,
|
|
to use Bolter's formulation, that the new medium will "incorporate criticism
|
|
within itself," an example of the sort of casual hyperbole that I take to be,
|
|
again, symptomatic of much of the debate endemic to these new technologies. Of
|
|
course, if we assume that electronic media are merely the evolutionary outcome
|
|
of a long line of progressive technological innovations, then the "naturalness"
|
|
of such transitions obscures the vast resources, public and private, that have
|
|
had a hand both in the production and commodification of information (to speak
|
|
in broad sweep).
|
|
|
|
In concrete terms, one way of looking at this "darker side" is to consider the
|
|
extent to which this vast network of knowledge workers -- currently
|
|
predominantly white males -- ultimately determines the nodes, or data, of
|
|
hypertext databases. Surely one may cite similar occasions for abuse
|
|
pertaining to the older technologies. And surely hypertext promises to
|
|
circumvent difficulties inherent in print by -- to paraphrase a much-touted
|
|
benefit -- facilitating the forging of links between various knowledges. Yet
|
|
this does not obviate the need to examine the sorts of control constraints and
|
|
technological biases that have been designed and built into the machines --
|
|
software, hardware and all.
|
|
|
|
Even a pragmatist like myself would grant that human experience is trivialized
|
|
whenever experiential options are assumed *exhausted* by a specific material
|
|
reality. Hence I find it difficult not to raise at least an eyebrow at the
|
|
fact that the relationship between electronic media and the users (or
|
|
consumers?) of such media might be defined in terms of a presumed
|
|
correspondence between simulation of mind and mind itself -- as I argue in my
|
|
re/view, a potentially closed loop with little or no provision for negative
|
|
feedback (entirely ironic?). That print was culpable on the count of similar,
|
|
and tacit, delimitations does not warrant the view that the liabilities of
|
|
hypertext should go unchallenged, as I am certain my commentator will agree.
|
|
|
|
There are many reasons to be suspicious of global technological trends, trends
|
|
that literally incorporate (presumably) multinational agenda. Aphoristically
|
|
speaking, one might ask whether the good things in life really *don't* come
|
|
easy.
|
|
|
|
Joe Amato
|
|
Department of English
|
|
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
|
|
[l.216]
|
|
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Letters:
|
|
|
|
_EJournal_ is willing publish letters to the editor. But at this point we make
|
|
no promises about how many, which ones, or what format. Because the "Letters"
|
|
column of a periodical is a habit of the paper environment, we can't predict
|
|
exactly what will happen in pixel space. For instance, _EJournal_ readers can
|
|
send outraged objections to our essays directly to the authors. Also, we can
|
|
publish substantial counterstatements as articles in their own right, or as
|
|
"Supplements." Even so, there will probably be some brief, thoughtful
|
|
statements that appear to be of interest to many subscribers. When there are,
|
|
they will appear as "Letters."
|
|
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Reviews:
|
|
|
|
_EJournal_ is willing to publish reviews of almost anything that seems
|
|
to fit under our broad umbrella: the implications of electronic networks
|
|
and texts. At this point we are still hoping to review a hypertext
|
|
novel, and have no other works-- electronic or printed --under
|
|
consideration. We do not solicit and cannot provide review copies of
|
|
fiction, prophecy, critiques, other texts, programs, hardware, lists or
|
|
bulletin boards. But if you would like to bring any publicly available
|
|
information to our readers' attention, send your review (any length) to
|
|
us, or ask if writing one sounds to us like a good idea.
|
|
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Supplements:
|
|
|
|
_EJournal_ plans to experiment with ways of revising, responding to, re-
|
|
working, or even retracting the texts we publish. Authors who want to address
|
|
a subject already broached --by others or by themselves-- may send texts,
|
|
preferably brief, that we will consider publishing under the "Supplements"
|
|
heading. Proposed "supplements" will not go through full, formal editorial
|
|
review. Whether this "Department" will operate like a delayed-reaction
|
|
bulletin board or like an expanded letters-to-the-editor space, or whether it
|
|
will be withdrawn in favor of a system of appending supplemental material to
|
|
archived texts, or will take on an electronic identity with no direct print-
|
|
oriented analogue, will depend on what readers/writers make of the opportunity.
|
|
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Information about _EJournal_:
|
|
|
|
Users on both Bitnet and the Internet may subscribe to _EJournal_ by sending an
|
|
e-mail message to this address:
|
|
|
|
listserv@albnyvm1.bitnet
|
|
|
|
The following should be the only line in the message:
|
|
|
|
SUB EJRNL Subscriber's Name
|
|
|
|
Please send all other messages and inquiries to the _EJournal_ editors
|
|
at the following address:
|
|
|
|
ejournal@albnyvms.bitnet
|
|
|
|
_EJournal_ is an all-electronic, Bitnet/Internet distributed,
|
|
peer-reviewed, academic periodical. We are particularly interested in theory
|
|
and praxis surrounding the creation, transmission, storage, interpretation,
|
|
alteration and replication of electronic text. We are also interested in the
|
|
broader social, psychological, literary, economic and pedagogical implications
|
|
of computer-mediated networks.
|
|
The journal's essays will be available free to Bitnet/Internet
|
|
addresses. Recipients may make paper copies; _EJournal_ will provide
|
|
authenticated paper copy from our read-only archive for use by academic deans
|
|
or others. Individual essays, reviews, stories-- texts --sent to us will be
|
|
disseminated to subscribers as soon as they have been through the editorial
|
|
process, which will also be "paperless." We expect to offer access through
|
|
libraries to our electronic Contents, Abstracts, and Keywords, and to be
|
|
indexed and abstracted in appropriate places.
|
|
Writers who think their texts might be appreciated by _EJournal_'s
|
|
audience are invited to forward files to ejournal@albnyvms.bitnet . If you are
|
|
wondering about starting to write a piece for to us, feel free to ask if it
|
|
sounds appropriate. There are no "styling" guidelines; we would like to be a
|
|
little more direct and lively than many paper publications, and less hasty and
|
|
ephemeral than most postings to unreviewed electronic spaces.
|
|
This issue's "feature article," and those from other issues of
|
|
_EJournal_, are now available from a Fileserv at Albany. We plan to distribute
|
|
a "table of contents" to a broad population occasionally, along with
|
|
instructions for downloading. A list of available files from the _EJournal_
|
|
Fileserv may be obtained by sending the message INDEX EJRNL to this address:
|
|
LISTSERV@ALBNYVMS.BITNET .
|
|
To "get" one of the files in the EJRNL Listserv, send GET <filename>
|
|
(where <filename> is the name of the file that you wish to have sent to you)
|
|
to LISTSERV@ALBNYVM1.BITNET .
|
|
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Board of Advisors: Dick Lanham, University of California at Los Angeles
|
|
Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries
|
|
Joe Raben, City University of New York
|
|
Bob Scholes, Brown University
|
|
Harry Whitaker, University of Quebec at Montreal
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Consulting Editors - October 1991
|
|
[North American addresses are at Bitnet sites.]
|
|
|
|
ahrens@hartford John Ahrens Hartford
|
|
ap01@liverpool.ac.uk Stephen Clark Liverpool
|
|
crone@cua Tom Crone Catholic University
|
|
dabrent@uncamult Doug Brent Calgary
|
|
djb85@albnyvms Don Byrd Albany
|
|
donaldson@loyvax Randall Donaldson Loyola College
|
|
ds001451@ndsuvm1 Ray Wheeler North Dakota
|
|
eng006@unoma1 Marvin Peterson Nebraska - Omaha
|
|
erdt@pucal Terry Erdt Purdue Calumet
|
|
fac_aska@jmuvax1 Arnie Kahn James Madison
|
|
folger@yktvmv Davis Foulger IBM - Watson Center
|
|
george@gacvax1 G. N. Georgacarakos Gustavus Adolphus
|
|
geurdes@rulfsw. Han Geurdes Leiden
|
|
leidenuniv.nl
|
|
gms@psuvm Gerry Santoro Pennsylvania State University
|
|
nrcgsh@ritvax Norm Coombs Rochester Institute of Technology
|
|
pmsgsl@ritvax Patrick M. Scanlon Rochester Institute of Technology
|
|
r0731@csuohio Nelson Pole Cleveland State
|
|
ryle@urvax Martin Ryle Richmond
|
|
twbatson@gallua Trent Batson Gallaudet
|
|
usercoop@ualtamts Wes Cooper Alberta
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
University at Albany Computing Services Center:
|
|
Isabel Nirenberg, Bob Pfeiffer; Ben Chi, Director
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Editor: Ted Jennings, English, University at Albany
|
|
Managing Editor: Ron Bangel, University at Albany
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
State University of New York University Center at Albany Albany, NY 12222 USA
|
|
|
|
|