From root Sun Sep 18 12:25:05 1994 Received: from gitvm1.gatech.edu by jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU (5.67a8/1.34) id AA21487; Sun, 18 Sep 1994 12:24:59 -0400 Message-Id: <199409181624.AA21487@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU> Received: from GITVM1.BITNET by GITVM1.GATECH.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3421; Sun, 18 Sep 94 12:24:36 EDT Received: from GITVM1.GATECH.EDU by GITVM1.BITNET (Mailer R2.08) with BSMTP id 1362; Sun, 18 Sep 94 12:24:28 EDT Date: Sun, 18 Sep 1994 12:24:27 -0400 From: BITNET list server at GITVM1 (1.8a) Subject: File: "TNC LOG9409" To: John Unsworth Status: RO ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Sep 1994 14:50:38 CDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Comments: Resent-From: Eric Crump Comments: Originally-From: c509379@showme.missouri.edu (Eric Crump) From: Eric Crump Subject: List inactive? Whatever happened to TNC? I've puzzled about that some, but just haven't taken the time to pose the question. This list had a life for a while; it had personality (several). For the past few months, though, the main traffic (with occasional exceptions) has been messages I've forwarded from other lists. I wonder why that is? Why did the conversation languish? (one answer: your list manager has been a crappy facilitator of conversation!) Gerald Phillips asked the same basic question this week on IPCT-L, another list that once was really hopping. I'm passing this along with his permission. And in fact, he'd be interested in hearing from folks who have ideas about the life of lists, the waxing and waning of network conversations. Whatcha think? --Eric Crump ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >Date: Wed, 31 Aug 1994 09:26:21 -0400 >From: Interpersonal Computing and Technology ><@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu:IPCT@GUVAX.BITNET> >Subject: List inactive? > >From: "Gerald M. Phillips, Ph.D." > >This list has been inactive for some time now. Oddly, so have most of >the lists I am on, even the ones I don't contribute to. I note that in >two years of list surfing, I now have some regular connections, people I >hear from every day, with whom I have running conversations. I have made >some friends, met some people in person, engaged in some projects with >people. It is harder and harder to keep up with the lists. And new >people who repeat old ideas are harder to take. > >Oddly, the lists seem so much like life. The piece in WSJ about people who >lose their Email pals getting clinically depressed is not surprising. >Virtual depression is much like real depression. Will we have virtual >therapy available to us? > >Folks, what is your view of IPCT after a couple of years? Do we still have >anything to say to one another? Have you made your friends? Have we all >gone Panglossian and set out to "tend our own gardens?" > >I'd be interested. Do you want to share your idea publicly or will you >write me privately. I am working on a piece for publication. My >hypothesis is that lists have a life span. People make their contacts >and move on, and then the lists die. Can I defend this hypothesis? > >Gerald M. Phillips, Ph.D. (Ret.) > >You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself, >and how little I deserve it > ---R. Oakapple > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Sep 1994 13:13:13 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Albert Rouzie Subject: Re: List inactive? >Whatever happened to TNC? Eric, I wondered about that also, especially since I joined fairly recently, saw a few messages about computer classroom design and then nothing. Did we ever have an FAQ? I am interested in exploring the notion of technoculture itself and expected some discussion of that. I assume that I had missed the boat on that one. At any rate, "technoculture" is one of those never defined terms. So, at the risk of getting seared for raking up old embers, I'd love to start some conversation on the problem of defining this term. If this has been thrashed through in the past, please let me know how I can get those posts in digest form. Thanks. -Albert Rouzie UT/Austin rouzie@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Sep 1994 20:31:33 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Greg Subject: Re: List inactive? In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 4 Sep 1994 13:13:13 -0500 from Perhaps one way to begin defining the term might be to compare notes on how whatever it is is being introduced into the curriculum in schools and universities. I am in the media studies part of an English Department. Our curriculum is evolving to include (a few years ago) low-tech video production and now, with the addition of an IBM computer writing lab, courses involving internet, Mosaic, MOO design, what-all. I expect soon we will be advertising for a new Assistant Professor position to help us do interactive multimedia internet paperless hyperlinked whatsis. We almost did opt for such a position for next year (but decided to postpone one more year). but let's say we had wanted to hire somebody in a Humanities Department teaching computer writing as part of a cultural studies program dealing with film, television, popular culture-- where would we find such a person? I assume no one really has degrees in *this* (the way none of the folks who founded comparative literature had degrees in comp lit). I know there are a few programs out there (like the one at Georgia Tech, the folks who started this list as I recall). Also at UTexas where Albert Rouzie hails from, no? Anyway, I would be interested in hearing not only about programs that already exist, but about what sort of programs should exist, if we were going to design a humanities/arts curriculum for the emerging version of technoculture we are experiencing. Greg Ulmer University of Florida ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 11:20:06 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art" Subject: (1) what happened to TNC? (2) definitions TECHNOCULTURE I, too, am delighted that someone raised the issue of what happened (and why) to TNC. As one of those around from the beginning, I have observed the way we had several ongoing passionate discussions, one of the most interesting, exciting, and productive between Kali Tal and Abby Hughes, but as TNC continued its existence -- I don't think one can say "progressed" -- more and more people became onlookers and overhearers. Part of the reason, I suspect, is that a few passionate, energetic, and amazingly prolific voices took charge and others either found the discussions not to their interest, or they had other things to do. Several of our most important early contributors have changed jobs and geopgraphical locations, at least two people moving between continents. The most important reason for the drop off in participation may have something basic to do with the life of such discussion groups in e-space: they seem to form around an issue, much heat and light becomes generated, sometimes the group arrives at a consensus, and then its members, many of whom engage in several BBs or e-conferences, turn their attention elsewhere. Sometimes newcomers arrive bringing energy and enthusiasm, but they also raise questions that have been discussed for months and the earlier discussants don't feel like going over the ground yet again. One point never resolved was what does Technoculture mean or imply? Obviously, the term came from the Penley and Ross collection with that title. As I see it, TNC should concern itself with (1) the culture of technology, (2) the effect on culture of technology, (3) the culture, in particular, of the newest and therefore most visible tecnhologies. One thing that became clear early on was that some pure techies found the discussion of little interest and left to the deteriment of the list. It also seemed that many contributors were primarily interested in popculture and video. Many, to my surprise, had little experience of hypertext, hypermedia, interactive graohics -- ie purely digital, rather than analogue, infotech (like video). In the past I've had my students in hypertext and literary theory join the conference, and the first year three of them made major contributions, and some, like Tom Meyer, have continued to contribute. Last year, however, not much happened and the students therefore had little to which to respond. So let's raise an issue: why do so many pseudo-luddites and others who raise opposition to Technoculture introduce matters of determinism? What, in other words, is the (causal) relation between technology and culture? And is any causal connection deterministic? Anti-humanistic? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 09:22:13 -0700 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: { brad brace } Subject: Re: (1) what happened to TNC? (2) definitions TECHNOCULTURE In-Reply-To: <199409051544.IAA07797@mail3.netcom.com> Perhaps there is still a lingering tendency to adopt a loose progression of applications in attempting to define the relation between technology and culture; ie., (Vivace:) technology begins as a vehicle for communication, then begrudgingly attains the status of cultural-medium, then is relegated to the fixated gaze of institutional specialists. There may be interest in the essays from an Art and Technology course that I taught last year in Victoria: ART IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL DISSEMINATION CLASS ESSAYS from a Fine Arts Course taught at the University of Victoria, B.C., Canada by Brad Brace, 1993 >>>ftp.netcom.com/pub/bbrace Contact: lgammon@nero.uvic.ca or, Brad Brace, 503-230-1197 (bbrace@netcom.com) ----------- This Fine Arts course was the first "art & technology" course taught at the University of Victoria. The students involved were from a variety of disciplines (although, primarily visual arts students) and had for the most part, little or no previous exposure to computers. The Computer Lab at the University has, an array of imperious nerds intent on empire-building, 10 networked Sun workstations, a few slow Macintoshes, two flatbed scanners, one PC and some basic pagelayout and photo manipulation software primarily for the Macintoshes, basic sound/midi equipment, and a grumpy creative-writing professor who regularly shuffles down the hall to the faculty-lounge to wash out his teapot. This was enough equipment to provide glimpses of creative possibilities; I suspect that enough enthusiasm has been generated to warrant the purchase of additional equipment and software, and to have this course offered on a regular basis. A printing press would also be a nice adjunct to the existing traditional visual art departments. I have also offered to design and build a virtual text-based reality (MOO) for the Fine Arts Department. Although characterized as a "studio course" I felt it more appropriate to discuss the larger issues involving technology and contemporary culture and minimize the importance of a through "knowledge" of specific software. This was accomplished with handouts and discussions of pertinent articles, screenings of appropriate films, and contemporary music. Particular attention was given to networks and interconnectivity in general and of course, the Internet. Although this was an introductory course, the exposure to the various resources available through the Internet encouraged a phenomenally rapid grasp of both digital dissemination and the (Unix) operating system. ----------- Course Description: "A flirtatious romp lightly over the glittering periphery of digital technology. Has art and the avant garde disappeared from view, gradually leaking into an all-pervasive generalized aestheticism? Could it be that something that might have once been called art is alive and flourishing between connected networkers... unbeknownst to implausible and incestuous art institutions? Are there really still artists around who think they're making art? Are computer systems virtually enacting the penultimate hierarchy, enforcing oppressive political privilege; or are they the new democratic, means of representation? Has the critical art press stood still under a deluge of new cultural publications? Have we *all* become artist? These questions and more...! "An introduction and collaborative overview and analysis of fairly recent, mid-range, cultural tools and their implied functions. "Students are encouraged to attend all classes and optimize their uses of the equipment while exploring various venues throughout the reserved studio time following the class each morning. Other facilities on and off-campus will also be utilized. "A reminder that an informal essay of three to four thousand words is required for this course. It should be "brimming with original insight and speculation on contemporary culture and technology." It may be informal in that it employs creative writing techniques (contemporary structures, verse, quotations, dialogue, illustrations, etc.). It may make reference to contemporary media, including the materials/sources shown in class. "Also required, is an electronic-portfolio of visual and audio art projects. This should demonstrate some degree of familiarity of software and resources covered in the lab. It need not be an extensive or necessarily cohesive body of work. It should be strongly suggestive of a developing approach to technological media." Brad Brace finger for pgp bbrace@netcom.com [...] ftp.netcom.com /pub/bbrace -- -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 11:37:05 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Sandy Stone's listserv inbox Subject: Re: List inactive? In-Reply-To: <9409050050.AA17544@actlab.rtf.utexas.edu> On Sun, 4 Sep 1994, Greg wrote: > Perhaps one way to begin defining the term might > be to compare notes on how whatever it is is being introduced into > the curriculum in schools and universities. I am in the media studies > part of an English Department. Our curriculum is evolving to include > (a few years ago) low-tech video production and now, with the > addition of an IBM computer writing lab, courses involving internet, > Mosaic, MOO design, what-all. I expect soon we will be advertising > for a new Assistant Professor position to help us do interactive > multimedia internet paperless hyperlinked whatsis. We almost did > opt for such a position for next year (but decided to postpone one > more year). but let's say we had wanted to hire somebody in a > Humanities Department teaching computer writing as part of a cultural > studies program dealing with film, television, popular culture-- > where would we find such a person? I assume no one really has > degrees in *this* (the way none of the folks who founded comparative > literature had degrees in comp lit). I know there are a few programs > out there (like the one at Georgia Tech, the folks who started this > list as I recall). Also at UTexas where Albert Rouzie hails from, > no? > Anyway, I would be interested in hearing not only about programs > that already exist, but about what sort of programs should exist, > if we were going to design a humanities/arts curriculum for the > emerging version of technoculture we are experiencing. > > Greg Ulmer > University of Florida UTexas where Sandy Stone also hails from. Here in the Radio, TV and Film department my mandate has been to create such a program and the environment within which it can flourish. To date that takes the form of the ACTLab (Advanced Comm. Tech. Lab), the acronym of which foregrounds the implication of dramatic techniques in interactive design (viz. Laurel et.al.). Our program has links, present and in the planning stages, with departments of Architecture (Michael Benedikt and Marcos Novak); Fine and Performing Art (a variety of people); English (John Slatin); and Music. My students study a heavy dose of theory in a variety of disciplines, form teams and hit the machines to create interactive productions of astonishing variety. --p.s. Hi, Greg. When we met at ISEA you were looking glazed. ______________________________________________________________________ Allucquere Rosanne Stone Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) Department of Radio, TV and Film The University of Texas at Austin Vox: 512.471.6499 Fax: 512.471.4077 "God is REAL, unless specifically declared INTEGER" Backups? We doan *NEED* no steenking baX%^~,VbKx NO CARRIER ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 19:16:20 CDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Comments: Resent-From: Eric Crump Comments: Originally-From: From: Eric Crump Subject: Call for Papers: Language, Play and Performance (fwd) FYI --Eric ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 08:35:19 +0300 From: brenda danet To: Multiple recipients of list ORTRAD-L Subject: Call for Papers: Language, Play and Performance This is a Call For Papers for a special issue of the new _Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication_, on LANGUAGE, PLAY, AND PERFORMANCE. There is a surprising return to playful, expressive "orality" in digital writing, especially in synchronous modes like Internet Relay Chat and Muds or MOOs, but even in ordinary email, list discussion groups, Usenet newsgroups, etc. People play with typography and orthography, with their identities (nicknames, role-playing), with language, and with cultural content, from real-world experience to fantasy, folklore, the comics, and films. Aspects of "performance" traditionally associated with genres of face-to-face communication such as storytelling, joke-telling, verbal dueling, etc., are flourishing on the Net. We find not only unscripted improvisational performance, but even instances of scripted performance. This special issue of _JCMC_ will gather papers which engage in ethnographic description and interpretive analysis of playful phenomena. Appropriate topics may include (1) digital playfulness as a postmodern phenomenon; (2) flaming as "performance;" (3) nicknames on IRC, personas on MUDs and MOOs; (4) improvisation in real-world theater vs. the Net; (4) Net culture and the norms and practices of essayist literacy. Papers may focus on a single mode of CMC, or compare two or more. _JCMC_ is a multimedia electronic, peer-reviewed journal, and is edited by Margaret McLaughlin, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, and Sheizaf Rafaeli, School of Business Administration, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and offers exciting new possibilities for scholarly publication. Articles may include color graphics, photographs, video, sound, etc. The deadline for submissions is February 15, 1995. For further information, write to: Brenda Danet, Guest Editor of the special issue Dept. of Communication and Journalism Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mt. Scopus Jerusalem, Israel 91905 Email: msdanet@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Fax: 972-2-827069 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 21:20:22 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "Russell A. Potter" Subject: Re: what happened to TNC? Not sure where all the seemingly empty bandwidth is coming from. I have noticed this on a lot of lists lately, and there seems to be a strange lull in the buzz of discourse. The thinknet nietzsche list, dead for months, flared up and burned out over the summer; the deleuze-guattari list suffered a blow with the death of Michael Current, and seems still only a shadow of its former self; the thinknet bataille list, which I moderate, remains dead despite various attempts I've made to give it CPR. Of course, maybe it was just the summer -- but even then, the spring was relatively quiet, and the fall doesn't (so far) seem to be kicking up much dust .... But I love TNC. Hey, how can the list which brought us "NO MO PO MO MO FO" possibly fade into silence? Maybe part of the cause is that so many people are on multiple lists, but may only have the time to be active on one or two. When a list heats up, they see all the posts, and get involved -- meanwhile just scanning the headers elsewhere. So why not turn up the heat here? Why TechNo for an answer? only time will tell ... ======================================================================== "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" --Friedrich Nietzsche =======Russell A. Potter============================= ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 21:14:47 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr." Subject: Re: what happened to TNC? I've just returned from a year in the south of Hungary, close to the border with Serb-occupied Croatia. I resubscribed to TNC and encouraged my English-speaking compulit Hungarian colleagues to do the same. It was slightly embarrassing, after all that, to see this once so proud list humming black and blue screen consistently. But my time in the newly Third World seems to have changed my perspective. I don't get any pleasure from seeing Greg Ulmer identify Technoculture with academic facilities and courses. Sandy Stone does it, too, though I know that she has a more real world notion of it, too. Many of my young Hungarian students, and some of my colleagues too, were fascinated with the idea of technoculture -- they saw it as the great tidal wave coming down on them to both dislodge them from archaic political cultures and to wipe away the poetry and music they loved. We spoke about it a lot, but we never invoked Penley and Ross or Georgia Tech. Re: Penley and Ross, it would be a mistake to take their territory seriously, since it doesn't deal with the aspect of technoculture that dominates the world, namely the culture of technology itself. They try to wrest control of the terri- tory by making a{culture of contestation, which is only a small part of the story. I am not on a lot of lists, so I can't comment on the general exhaustion of hyper-chat.{Some years ago I decided that Technocult had the voices I had time to listen to. I can't begin to analyze why the list has gone dormant, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was because a lot of folks got lost in the tangle of theoretical/philosophical discussions about the ins and outs of hyper-media without much reference to the "real world." Techno- culture is a brutally real interest to people all over the world. Cyberpunk is the tip of the iceberg of postmodern inundations of traditional cultures by telemedia. Cyborg theory is the tip of the iceberg of the transformations by telemedia. Cyborg theory is the tip of the iceberg of the transformationstio of traditional societies into electro-industrial economies. Believe me, there are millions of people in the world who would like a little serious discussion about the ins and outs of technoculture beyond (but including) considerations of particular new technologies. It was a given in Hungary that postmodernism is an American phenomenon. As Gertrude Stein wrote, "America is the oldest country in the world. It was the first into the 20th century." A lot of people expect some guidance about all this. So let's come back with some of old the verve and some wider horizons, beyond the Clipper Chip, hypertext and the Information Sewer System. There are people all over the world observing the Technocult screen. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Sep 1994 11:50:30 U Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: m williams Subject: DREAMS Reply to: DREAMS I keep a dream journal and interpret dreams using Jung's insights. I also teach in computing information systems in a Business Faculty. In our Critical-Systems Research Group we have been talking about *holistic systems approaches* which start from the grass roots interest in *mind/body wholeness* and percolate out to the ecology of business, community, society, environment. This is related to *soft systems* managment approaches. I am also finishing off a three year research project in 'Educating for Wholeness in University Business Computing: an Interpretive Action-Research Study". Two abstracts from working papers follow - can anyone help or advise me in my quest for wholeness in an instrumentally rationalist and technocratic milieu? 1. How is it possible to educate for wholeness in university business computing education? I have been researching this question since 1992 using critical social theory (especially Habermas's theory of communicative action), critical social constructivist perspectives, Jungian psychological approaches and the educational thinking of C. A. Bowers. Students and teachers have been encouraged to work together in a dialogical way using open discourse to reflect on aspects of information systems beyond mere hardware and software. The teaching/learning process has included group personal introductions; the writing of personal learning journals; encouraging group work; encouraging dialogue in lectures an laboratories; highlights of humour; times of values clarification and goal setting; deciding on motivational metaphors; clarifying world-view; drawing rich pictures of the unit; the telling of stories and alternative myths; relaxation exercises with guided visualisations. My general assertion is that this has, for some, resulted in a balancing of technicism with open discourse. When this happens I see it as an expression of wholeness. I understand this as hints of human splendour within an otherwise instrumentally rational and technocratic milieu. 2. Is it possible to include unconscious knowledge in interpretive participant educational research? More specifically, can Jungian approaches be useful? As part of a series reflecting on a three year research project examining ways of promoting wholeness in university business computing education, I give a brief psychological and educational framework for the inclusion of unconscious knowledge in interpretive research. This can play an important part in the self-reflection that is part of interpretive research, and in fact it can be become part of the researcher's own personal journey of self-discovery (what Jung would call 'individuation'. Through this overall balancing of conscious knowledge with the unconscious knowledge as reflected in emotions, myths and dreams, Jungian insights can help to promote wholeness in interpretive research. I conclude by explaining how I see this as part of the main metaphor in my research: encouraging others to join in journeys in wholeness. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Sep 1994 09:10:09 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "Russell A. Potter" Subject: Re: what happened to TNC? Wouldn't it be ironic if the question of "why is this list so quiet?" became the topic which revived its activity? How Po Mo ... oh no! ... ======================================================================== "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" --Friedrich Nietzsche =======Russell A. Potter============================= ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Sep 1994 16:25:37 +0200 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: espen.aarseth@HF.UIB.NO Subject: Re: what happened to TNC? >Wouldn't it be ironic if the question of "why is this list so quiet?" became >the topic which revived its activity? How Po Mo > > ... oh no! ... This is only natural(TM), since we started out (if my wetware serves me) in the "gee-look-at-this-new-type-of-communication" mode. A forum that ends up talking about its own death must surely have outlived itself?! Stuart!! Where the hell are you?! (not to mention other tncnasaurs..) ____________________________________________________________________ espen aarseth aarseth@uib.no ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Sep 1994 06:41:44 +1000 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Abbie Angharad Hughes Subject: Re: MS Word (Mac) In-Reply-To: <9310041549.AA21845@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU> from "Mark Bernstein" at Oct 4, 93 11:27:25 am Dear Mark, As a near ten year user of MS WORD I am continually frustrated at not being able to import into Storyspace, particularly irritated by the loss of footnote linksDo Claris XTND filters exist for importing WORD into Storspace? How does one get them, are they public domain? What other filters are available for images other than PICT etc. Is there something for importing Word 3 in particular (I am not moving up until the software becomes less monstrous and my machine larger). Best Wishes and thanks for your help, Abbie (Of course I mean frustrated at not being able to import other than as TEXT. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Sep 1994 09:09:23 +0059 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Mark Bernstein Subject: Re: MS Word (Mac) In-Reply-To: You *could* save a copy of your Word documents as Macwrite files, and import formatted text from MacWrite. However, if you need to move frequently between Storyspace and Word, the best solution (as you surmise) is an XTND translator. The shift of XTND technology from Claris to Apple slowed licensing down, alas, but for about $80 you can get a Word translator -- and lots of other translators for all sorts of software, in a file conversion package called MacLink. Most of the mail order outlets carry it. There is a Claris XTND translator for Word bundled with MacWrite Pro. We have not yet been able to license it ourselves, but hope to do so. XTND is cleaner in Storyspace 1.3, which begins shipping this month. The upgrade price is $25 (ten-pack upgrades $75). I hope this will solve the problem. If you need more detail, let me know. Mark Bernstein Eastgate Systems, Inc. 134 Main Street Watertown MA 02172 USA voice: (800) 562-1638 in USA +1(617) 924-9044 Eastgate@world.std.com Compuserve: 76146,262 AppleLink:Eastgate ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Sep 1994 11:19:20 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art" Subject: importing footnotes (Hi, Abbie. Good to hear from you on TNC again). I don;t think Mark Benstein me ntioned that one can important footnotes from Word into Storyspace with the imp ort command. The problem I have with that painless import is that it preserves a reference structure best suited for print technology, including the superscri pt note numbers, in the movement to an electronic environment within which many of the notes could better stand as separate lexias. One of the effects of tran slating text from one envbironment to another is reconfiguring our attitudes to ward part of the text. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 08:19:22 +1000 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Abbie Angharad Hughes Subject: Hypertext Imports etc Dear Mark, Michael, George, Thanks for your replies to my query. As you may have guessed I pulled the wrong address off my back mail list and went public with a private message for the first time. Apologies Mark, Mea Culpa, but I am not just prolonging a glitch with this letter. George made a more general point about my query, that importing footnotes is contrary to the spirit of the new medium. That there are better ways of handling such requirements. Some years ago I talked to George about a work I am engaged-in that I see as very suited to hypertext. But with the current demography of computer and hypertext usage, the available technology and given the market I am aiming at, there is no question that my primary target must remain a printed book, perhaps one which embodies the spirit of hypertext in some degree. I had originally hoped to compose within Storyspace but for reasons that I have not yet analysed I found that difficult, there was a "blockage" that I don't encounter in Word. So, I find that I am using footnoted Word text as my primary source. However, as others have done, I develop a hypertext in parallel, but this means, if it is done concurrently, that I am importing the same sections to Storyspace after each rewrite to keep it current. I have used the technique of saving a Macwrite file which, if read back into Word restores the original document perfectly but when it is imported into Storyspace I find some loss of formatting and glitches. This is tedious when it requires retouching of the text after every rewrite & importation. A Word translator might solve this. Once I am inside Storyspace and engaged full-time with producing the hypertext version I may remove the footnoting and use one of George's alternatives, but for now I need frequent and unproblematic imports which retain parallelism between the two texts otherwise it all becomes too tedious (of course one could choose not to do the works simultaneously!). I find writing a very difficult task, as do many. My personal torture is to have to rewrite and dissect almost every line I write until the text bores me so much I can't work on it for a week. Unfortunately I can't stand a messy page and when it was all typewriters I used to start retyping at about the fifth line down or paste new sections on top of the old. It was awful. The 1980 Apple II+ and Wordstar was wonderful, nothing has since beaten the joy of that step into fluent rewriting. It didn't matter about the buried control characters, the green screen, the awful font - for a while. But I remember the first day I used a Mac, Christmas Day 1984. I wrote and printed out a page on the wonderful Image Writer in its high resolution mode. It looked *just like a printed book page* (Then!). Later, with the laserprinter, I employed full layout for even early drafts. I now find that the physical layout and design of what I am writing is almost as important to me as the content (desk top publishing with one customer). Stupid you may say, go back to the pen and paper, free yourself from distraction. But somehow, I see this involvement with more than the text, choice of figures, layout, font etc as a justifiable concern of me as author. Not something to simply hand on to the publisher. Dealing with layout also provides thinking time, variety. What once emerged as an irritating obsession with clean typescript, a rather empty affair, has, through the medium of the computer, become the empowerment of the author as book designer. In fact, I now print out my drafts as dummy books through Pagemaker. I find this process is encouraging. It gives me something closer to the final product than a stack of manuscript. I find that I do not get the sense of liberation that I had expected from the current implementation of hypertext. I had thought it ideal for writing. I wondered if I had become too locked into the appearance of my text. The careful choice of on-screen font, the column widths, the indenting and changes in font-style; but if you consider Storyspace for instance, you can control all that except that you have to accept ragged right margins which I don't like. I can't imagine that my lack of comfort comes down to this and the lack of a ruler in the hypertext writing spaces. When I look back at what I used to think was wonderful, like the Apple II+, and given the obvious advantages of Hypertext and my essential goodwill to it I am at a loss to explain why I feel a barrier between me and it. My request was a symptom of my continuing desire to embrace hypertext fully. I recently took up 3D CAD without pain and embraced Mathematica with joy. I am not yet closed to innovation, hidebound, in other respects. I will ponder the matter and see what surfaces. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Sep 1994 20:58:58 +0059 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Mark Bernstein Subject: Re: Hypertext Imports, formatting, etc. In-Reply-To: <199409082221.AA02105@world.std.com> Both of Eastgate's hypertext systems, Hypergate and Storyspace, have adopted a plain, brown-bag approach to presentation in order to emphasize the use of hypertext in the process of serious writing, not merely as a multimedia presentation tool. Of course, this drives some of us up the wall, especially when the formatting won't do what *you* think would look really great. Storyspace for Windows shows some signs of a *slight* escalation in the formatting race, and Storyspace II for Mac will doubtless do even more presentation features. But this year's screen remains something of an impediment; even if you really like the look of justified type, you won't like the way it looks at 72 dpi. This will pass, but it will take a little time. What's been *really* interesting in thinking about presentation and electronic text has been our Newton prototype of Judy Malloy's "its Name Was Penelope". It's great to hold a hypertext in your hand, but the tiny screen, while portable, holds some strange typographical and UI challenges. Mark Bernstein Eastgate Systems, Inc. 134 Main Street Watertown MA 02172 USA voice: (800) 562-1638 in USA +1(617) 924-9044 Eastgate@world.std.com Compuserve: 76146,262 AppleLink:Eastgate ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Sep 1994 14:26:29 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Bill Gardner Subject: D. Gelertner Perhaps this will help restart the discussion . . . from "The myth of computers in the classroom" by David Gelertner, _The_New_Republic_, 9/26/94. Gelertner is a professor at Yale, he's written some books on computers and art, I think, that I haven't read. He was one of the victims of person who sends bombs to academics. Criticisms of the use of multimedia in the classroom are followed by: "Hypermedia, multimedia's comrade in the struggle for the brave new classroom, is just as troubling. It's a way of presenting documents on screen without imposing a linear start-to-finish order. Disembodied paragraphs are linked by theme; after reading about the First World War, for example, you might be able to choose another item about the technology of battleships, or hemlines in the '20's,. This is another cute idea that is good in minor ways and terrible in major ones. Teaching children to understand the orderly unfolding of a plot of a logical argument is a crucial part of education. Authors don't merely agglomerate paragraphs; they work hard to make the narrative read a certain way, prove a particular point. To turn a book or a document into hypertext is to invite readers to ignore exactly what counts -- the story." Hmmmm . . . just to save time, let me comment on the reference to hemlines. Hate to be overly scrupulous about these matters but I can't help but remember my dad commenting frequently on that sort of thing, as if women's exposure of their legs is the interesting aspect of their contribution to history. Gelertner wrote a multiprocessing computer language and named it LINDA, apparently because he was impressed by "Deep Throat." Hmmmm . . . with those ad hominem remarks out of the way, anyone else have a reaction? -- [][][][][][][][][][][][] William Gardner [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] [] /_ o / / Psychiatry Dept, School of Medicine 412-681-1102 [] [] /__) / / / University of Pittsburgh wpg@ethics.med.pitt.edu [] [][][][][][][][][][] Pittsburgh, PA 15213 [][][] FAX:412-624-0901 [][] ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 07:57:04 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "Neil Randall, University of Waterloo=" Subject: Re: D. Gelertner In-Reply-To: <9409090503.AA02913@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> My reaction to the multimedia commentary is this: it's right, in a limited and potentially disastrous way. Denying multimedia in education for the sake of the development of linear argument is to suggest that linear argument has no place in whatever our society has become. Multimedia -- through television and cinema and music videos and just about everything else -- is de facto a huge part of our students' lives (at the kindergarten and university level alike), and it will not go away no matter how much we might want it to (and I don't, by the way, not at all). The challenge is to present the role of logical argument in the context of multimedia/hypermedia, to demonstrate the creation of logical argument within the act of jumping from topic to topic. If we cannot do that, or if we deny its importance, we've already lost our usefulness. I could go on, but I have to jump to something else ... Neil Randall University of Waterloo ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 09:15:40 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Maura Hogan Subject: Re: D. Gelertner here i go, i was hooked into responding... Gelertner's implication seems to be that the ability to choose between numerous topics and proceed to them is less than desirable. for some readers (passive readers), i suppose it is disconcerning to find that they must direct their own reading. hypermedia challenges the quiet and calm of their reading experience as a book reader and makes things noisy and bumpy. interacting with hypermedia also excercise certain reading muscles that probably have not been flexed in years..(associative thinking). so, perhaps it is painful for some. (some people follow, some lead). > from "The myth of computers in the classroom" by David Gelertner, > _The_New_Republic_, 9/26/94. > To turn a book or a > document into hypertext is to invite readers to ignore exactly what > counts -- the story." i would prefer to reword this last sentence....keeping part of the sentiment for it does hold a grain of insight: hypertext does invites readers to ignore "the story," especially THE STORY. readers are invited to explore the rich presence of STORIES forming in the multiple spaces, links, and intersections of a hypertext: this is what counts. An interesting question: how does being a hypertext reader change/influence the experience of reading a linear/paper book? maura hogan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 16:12:55 +0100 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Leif Erik Otteraa Subject: Re: D. Gelertner > > i would prefer to reword this last sentence....keeping part of > the sentiment for it does hold a grain of insight: > hypertext does invites readers to ignore "the story," especially > THE STORY. readers are invited to explore the rich presence of > STORIES forming in the multiple spaces, links, and intersections > of a hypertext: this is what counts. > > that's good. Being a writer, I mean an excellent, brilliant writer, isn't it (among other things) to write a multi-dimentional text without really using hypertext as we use it in a multimedia system? Reading a novel, we make jumps in space and time, we make jumps between different stories, but physical we are sitting here (or lying in our bed) and read quite linearly. > > An interesting question: how does being a hypertext reader > change/influence the experience of reading a linear/paper book? > >maura hogan Perhaps it will make us more aware of the multi-dimentional qualities in a good (physically linear) novel? Leif Erik Otteraa leif@bih.no ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 10:34:34 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: A Few Minutes Into the Future Subject: D. Gelertner In-Reply-To: Maura Hogan's message of Fri, 9 Sep 1994 09:15:40 -0400 <9409091340.AA05200@media.mit.edu> I disagree slightly with Maura Hogan's interpretation of Gelertner's remarks. I read him to be saying that the experience of reading a well- written linear narrative helps teach the skill of understanding and making a linear narrative/argument/discussion. I think that's probably an un-arguable point. Furthermore it seems a reasonable question to ask whether the experience of learning to create non-linear media enhances or detracts from the ability to reason in conventional, linear styles. The fact that literature and culture are heavily promoting non-linear pop forms at the moment does not mean that we do not need to teach a broad range of skills to our students. I read Gelertner to be arguing against *supplanting* -- I think *supplementing* is a different idea, one with which I think he would have less quarrel. --Alan Wexelblat, Reality Hacker, Author, and Cyberspace Bard Media Lab - Intelligent Agents Group wex@media.mit.edu Voice: 617-253-9833 Pager: 617-945-1842 "Properly done science is a sort of masochistic game where one beats one's head against a wall until it falls down, and then goes in search of another wall." --Steven Vogel ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 11:28:24 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr." Subject: Re: D. Gelertner I think I agree with Alan on this. I'm trying this (structuralist) analogy on: "linear" modes of presentation are like a language. Many archaic non- linear presentation modes are just as rule-governed as linear story/ argument; there is little room for choice among the elements. But hyper- connectivity is predicated on choice -- make your own metalanguage, be free. To ask students to learn a techno mix-and-match language that is predicated on "going beyond" the constraining rules of linear styles is like encouraging people to write poems in a language that they have not quite learned. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 09:51:39 -0700 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: { brad brace } Subject: Re: D. Gelertner In-Reply-To: <199409091555.IAA16914@netcom16.netcom.com> Non-linear media encompasses and extricates the defacto conventionality of linear statements. The linear argument of the status-quo does not allow major premises to be re-examined. Just for example, inhumane acts are frequently compared to Hitler's regime and never the more horrific slaughter in China (mainly because China was America's ally). When historical accounts are presented as hypertext, more than the expedient, dominant logic can be seen as viable. -- { brad brace } bbrace@netcom.com ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/bbrace/bbrace.html ~finger for pgp __ On Fri, 9 Sep 1994, A Few Minutes Into the Future wrote: Furthermore it seems a reasonable question to ask > whether the experience of learning to create non-linear media enhances or > detracts from the ability to reason in conventional, linear styles. > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 13:01:10 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "David H. Porush" Subject: Re: List inactive? In-Reply-To: Greg "Re: List inactive?" (Sep 4, 8:31pm) Dear Greg, Here at RPI I'm trying - against the tide of an austerity budget and cynical administrations - to begin an EMAC BA program: Electronica Music Arts and COmmunication (or Culture), a synthesis of our iEAR (interactive ELectronic Arts at Rensselaer), LL&C (Lang Lit and Comm)_ and Arts programs, each with its own undergrad and grad programs. [Plenty of Acronyms, eh?] We have a pretty good vision of where we want to go and what we want to do based on existing resources and faculty interest. The trouble, of course, is institutional inertia and opposition. I can tell you more you'r interested, Greg. David Porush ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 13:34:39 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "David G. Durand (David G. Durand)" Subject: What we've all avoided saying. Where's the beef? This non-linearity that Gelernter fears (and is it the Master of Divinity speaking this fear? The idnividual committed to a _sacred text_? I mistrust his (like all) religious motives, especially as they inform his work throughout) does not exist, for the most part. What have we gotten so far from hypertext / multi-media: Voyager's book simulators. Pretty popular. often regarded by publishers as a view of "the future". Pretty darn linear for the most part. As Ted Nelson said of the Mac "It's a paper simulator". Video games. Most popular. What level are you at? How do you get past the pirate? This is more linear than just about anything... Adventure games. Text used to be popular. Myst is the new-age version, and is pretty popular. Little linear sequences that you have to discover. Say the magic word, pick up the bauble, carry it to the idol of Moloch and get a dollar bill for the vending machine. Potential for non-linearity inherent in a simlated environment squandered because of the difficulty of doing good simulations. Literary hypertexts. Small, self-conscious, mostly academic audience. Pretty non-linear, but not very widespread. WWW. The information supermarket. non-linear, because almost randomly linked. Go from the alt.drugs archive, to pretentious self-musings on undergraduate sex-lives in the click of a button, or, instead, get some astronomy pictures. huh? ------------ If you look at multimedia it's even more more linear, because that's the nature of film and video. You need serious horsepower to have a simulated environment good enough to generate even relatively crappy interactive video. Now for the most part, the consciously written non-linear stuff isn't having a great effect on people. Why is this? I think there's a lot more educating to do, or maybe we just have to wait for the folks who grow up with this to start making things... So maybe we don't yet have good examples to see what non-linear argumentation might be? and maybe non-linearity is best for building repositories and research-bases that people can fashion linear arguments out of. -- David ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 13:39:18 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr." Subject: Re: D. Gelertner Regarding Brad Brace's comments that "the linear argument of status- quo does not allow major premises to be re-examined," a) his statement re-examined a certain premise; it was a linear statement/ b) why should we assume that the expedient, dominant logic is necessarily, or even usually "linear"; propaganda has never relied exclusively on ratioonal argument; c) wouldn't a hypertext's ability to break the enchantment of status-quo (whatever...) depend on the qualities of the information accessible in the system and the particular purposes of the user? In which case it would be not very different from the "status quo" in which huge chunks of v ariously linear statements are available to those who have access to them and the training/desire to mix and match? I don't see the point of romanticizing an interesting new technology, that like most technologies disturbs everything, not just what we disap- prove of. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 14:48:00 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Greg Subject: Re: Hypertext Imports, formatting, etc. In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 8 Sep 1994 20:58:58 +0059 from Mark, is StorySpace II for Mac the version that I have heard talk of that allows internet or at least Mosaic interface (for writing something for Blair's Waxweb for example)? One writes it off line then imports it seamlessly? into a collective hypertext? Greg Ulmer ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 15:27:32 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Greg Subject: Re: List inactive? In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 9 Sep 1994 13:01:10 -0400 from to David I am very interested in more details about the vision and prospects of your electronic arts program. As I said, electronic education seems an appropriate topic for technoculture. At a time when programs and practices are emerging in all sorts of colleges and departments there is a kind of unstandardized creativity at work, curtailed by the institutional inertia you mentioned. I would like to compare notes on both or all sides of this emergence. Greg Ulmer ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 15:42:27 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: A Few Minutes Into the Future Subject: D. Gelertner In-Reply-To: { brad brace }'s message of Fri, 9 Sep 1994 09:51:39 -0700 <9409091656.AA23976@media.mit.edu> Dear lord, I go off-line for two hours and they start spouting gibberish :) Brad said (and I quote) "Non-linear media encompasses and extricates the defacto conventionality of linear statements." Translated into Alan-speak, I think that means 'anything you can say in a linear narrative I can say in a non-linear medium.' If that's what was meant, I strongly disagree. Mark will remember my passionate argument to him about 3 years ago in favor of the "holy scroller" and against the "card sharks." (*) I believe this recapitulates that argument. I won't say more until Brad tells me if I've made a correct translation. (*) The quoted terms refer to two factions within the hypertext community. One, based around Hypercard and Notecards, argued that ideas should be fragmented and composed in their smallest possible incarnation -- a 'card.' Longer ideas meant simply adding more cards, not extending the text and using scroll bars. In contrast, the other faction asserted that the expression of an idea had a natural length that was a function of the idea and the expresser and if that happened to be larger than the card size in your system, you had to add scroll bars. Back to Brad: > The linear argument of the status-quo does not allow major premises to be > re-examined. Nonsense. If that were so, the entire field of revisionist history would not exist. The Kuhnian-style revolution would be inconceivable, etc. Thousands upon thousands of linear re-examinations exist. One might argue that non-linear expression makes it easier, but I find that dubious at best. > When historical accounts are presented as hypertext, more than the > expedient, dominant logic can be seen as viable. Sez you, buddy boy. Assertion is fine, but what evidence do you have for this? --Alan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 16:24:28 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "David G. Durand (David G. Durand)" Subject: Re: D. Gelertner >I don't see the point of romanticizing an interesting new technology, >that like most technologies disturbs everything, not just what we disap- >prove of. > >Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. Hear! Hear! (or is that READ! READ!) -- David ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 17:21:00 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: rk27 Subject: Re: Hypertext Imports, formatting, etc. In-Reply-To: <9409090100.AA11729@umailsrv1.UMD.EDU> Re: Eastgate's hypertexts I write this to be provocative, and, I guess, to express some real discomforts. I find the current crop of hypertext fiction I've seen boring and vigourously denying the possibilities of their medium. The writing isn't very good. The narrative structures seem merely to obfuscate rather than provide serious commentary on the new possibilities of narrative in a new medium. Maybe what I'd like is someone to do for hypermedia what Alain Resnais did for cinema in films like "Last Year in Marienbad." Instead, imagination, I find, is being sacrificed to mere fragmentation. The computer needs to be rethought as a discourse rather than a means for crypto sophisticated games with not very interesting blocks of text. Robert Kolker Department of English University of Maryland Email:Robert_P_KOLKER@umail.umd.edu (rk27) Phone:(301) 405-6250 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 19:05:48 +0059 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Mark Bernstein Subject: Re: Hypertext Imports, formatting, etc. In-Reply-To: Here's the scoop on all the various Storyspace projects underway: ------- Storyspace 1.3 Macintosh will ship this month * HTML export * New navigate options * Maintenance upgrade ------- Storyspace For Windows Windows 3.1 will ship in early to mid October, possibly sooner * Storyspace for Windows-machines * Easy file import from Macintosh * New TreeMap view -------- Storyspace 2.0 Macintosh late 1995 A complete new-technology version of Storyspace. PowerMac native edition, link apprentice, many new ideas. Mark Bernstein Eastgate Systems, Inc. 134 Main Street Watertown MA 02172 USA voice: (800) 562-1638 in USA +1(617) 924-9044 Eastgate@world.std.com Compuserve: 76146,262 AppleLink:Eastgate ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 20:26:19 -0700 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: { brad brace } Subject: precious little remains, as... (1) We can only believe in scale. (2) Communities* (and consequently, most values), are rarely possible. (3) Our technology is our culture. -- { brad brace } bbrace@netcom.com ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/bbrace/bbrace.html ~finger for pgp __ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Sep 1994 10:25:00 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: rk27 Subject: Internet Conferencing In the Fall of 1995, the University of Maryland at College Park will present an exhibit/installation/networking experiment called "Imagination in the Digital Village." It will include an exhibit of computer-mediated art (quite broadly defined), an attempt to network art schools and students in the state and across the world, and a conference that will explore intersections of the computer, the imagination, pedagogy (not only art-related), business applications, interface issues: a broad range of related computer, design, art, and teaching problems. We'd like the conference part of the project this to be an Internet conference, and this first notice is to solicit two things: information from people who have organized an internet conference and who can offer ideas, suggestions, and (perhaps) cautions; and responses from folks who think they might like to take part. This is all in the early stages, and we are open to any ideas. Robert Kolker Department of English University of Maryland Email:Robert_P_KOLKER@umail.umd.edu (rk27) Phone:(301) 405-6250 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Sep 1994 11:54:11 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Mary-Kim Arnold Subject: Re: Hypertext Imports, formatting, etc. In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 9 Sep 1994 17:21:00 EDT from I think saying that the "current crop" of hypertext fictions "vigorously denies" the possibilities of the new medium is unfair and harsh, since these possiblities have not yet been completely explored, much less agreed upon. I am not sure which crop you are referring to, and I will agree that sometimes structures can obsfucate certain elements of what we might consider traditional narrative, but the exploration of these obfuscations quite often can reveal important issues about the implications of nonlinear narrative, and our expectations of reading. The great masterpiece of hypertext fiction, if we can assume that there will ever be one, has not yet been written. But that doesn't mean that we're not all trying. Which means the efforts that have been made, rather than being considered "boring," can teach us. Mary-Kim Arnold Brown University ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Sep 1994 11:26:51 -0700 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: { brad brace } Subject: Hypertext and new paradigms If all this dialogue was presented as hypertext, the reader would be less inclined to be swayed by the politically, predominant logic or pandemic context of the loudest, or merely, more frequent participants. Instead, by following lateral threads and links, come also to understand for example that, hypertext and traditional text will continue to inform each other, and that these developments envelope other paradigmatic tools such as Mosaic, and even the beginnings of government-as-software. Or, come to see that the defacto singular, linear history is but a means of overrunning the diverse threads underneath; and that Revisionism's shell-game is nothing new. Or, even manage a smile when confronted with Alan's quaint, in-your-face demeanor, realizing that it>s the sad result of his being ideologically mired in the desperate Old Art-World of Manhattan 8^) -- { brad brace } bbrace@netcom.com ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/bbrace/bbrace.html ~finger for pgp __ From: Alan > When historical accounts are presented as hypertext, more than the > expedient, dominant logic can be seen as viable. Sez you, buddy boy. Assertion is fine, but what evidence do you have for this? -- From: "Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr." Regarding Brad Brace's comments that "the linear argument of status- quo does not allow major premises to be re-examined," c) wouldn't a hypertext's ability to break the enchantment of status-quo (whatever...) depend on the qualities of the information accessible in the system and the particular purposes of the user? In which case it would be not very different from the "status quo" in which huge chunks of variously linear statements are available to those who have access to them and the training/desire to mix and match? I don't see the point of romanticizing an interesting new technology, that like most technologies disturbs everything, not just what we disap- prove of. -- From: Leif Erik Otteraa Subject: Re: D. Gelertner Perhaps it will make us more aware of the multi-dimensional qualities in a good (physically linear) novel? -- __ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Sep 1994 18:04:15 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Terry Harpold Subject: Re: Hypertext Imports, formatting, etc. >Both of Eastgate's hypertext systems, Hypergate and Storyspace, have >adopted a plain, brown-bag approach to presentation in order to emphasize >the use of hypertext in the process of serious writing, not merely as a >multimedia presentation tool. -- Er, an unforutnate choice of words, I think. "*Merely* a multimedia presentation tool" (emphasis added) doesn't do justice to the need for improving the typographic capabilities of Storyspace (I know that you know this, too, Mark ;-) ) or its siblings. -- It's a bad idea to divide the demands of careful letterforms and page/lexial design from the "process" of writing. The distinction between "hypertext" and "multimedia" that peeks out from the appeal to "serious writing" falls back on a psuedo-Platonic aspiration that the material plane of text in the former is/should be transparent (you can see through it to the "serious" content -- this is what makes it "serious"), and that the latter is/will be *all* material plane (no "serious" content -- WYSIWYG: I think that Thamus would be pleased by this acronym from digital publishing). It's a common distinction, frequently called upon by hypertext evangelists to bind themselves to the high-serious (maybe even high-modernist?) scholarly and esthetic tradition: we don't *do* that empty, commercially-driven, low-brow stuff that the press calls "multimedia". (Those of you who attended the TINAC conference this summer may remember how we kept running back into the warm, fuzzy embrace of this terminological distinction...) >Of course, this drives some of us up the wall, especially when the >formatting won't do what *you* think would look really great. -- There is no doubt that we must reconsider many of the paradigms of textual form in a digital field -- George's comments about hypertext footnotes earlier in this thread are a good example of this -- but it is also clear that hypertexts are things that we *see*, we *read*, and we have hundreds of years of print typography and design to draw upon in order to inform the reading (and writing) of these new texts. The rules of good typographic style have evolved not only in reponse to the limitations of paper and ink, but also in relation to the demands of the human eye and brain. -- One of the most significant weaknesses of the current crop of hypertext tools (with the exception of publishing systems like FrameMaker, though desktop publishing-with-hypertext is not in the same category as a truer hypertext editor like Storyspace) is that they include almost nothing in the way of typographic control. There are reasons for this: the authors of these programs have been focusing their energies on developing the interfaces of composition and navigation, and it is harder than many may think to write a good word processor. But I look forward to future generations of hypertext software that know more about the formal presentation of the written word, pixellated or not. (What I wouldn't give for a Storyspace where writing spaces had something as simple as embedded formatting rulers, [optional] smart quotes, em dashes and the like, and author-specifiable white spaces around lexias!) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terry Harpold "The player should not die. Comp. Lit. and Lit. Theory It just slows things down for no reason." University of Pennsylvania tharpold@mail.sas.upenn.edu -- Robyn Miller, author of _Myst_ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Sep 1994 18:04:22 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Terry Harpold Subject: Re: importing footnotes George Landow writes, >The problem I have with that painless import is that it preserves >a reference structure best suited for print technology, including the >superscript >note numbers, in the movement to an electronic environment within which many >of the notes could better stand as separate lexias. One of the effects of >translating text from one environment to another is reconfiguring our attitude >toward part of the text. It's an interesting problem: how to loosen up the restrictions of the paratextual apparatus we've inherited from paper technology (how meaningful is a *foot*note when the note resides in a virtual "place" far removed from the visible boundaries of the lexia to which it is attached?), but still provide for easily recognizable symbols or interface behaviors that permit the user to see narrative structure intended by the author? We need a set of cueing symbols that are freed of the conceptual baggage that footnote numbers, sidebars, etc. bring with them. An interesting article on the subject is: Evenson, Shelley, John Rheinfrank, and Wendle Wulff. "Towards a Design Language for Representing Hypermedia Cues." _Hypertext '89_. Pittsburgh, PA: Association for Computing Machinery, 1989. 83-92. TH -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terry Harpold "The player should not die. Comp. Lit. and Lit. Theory It just slows things down for no reason." University of Pennsylvania tharpold@mail.sas.upenn.edu -- Robyn Miller, author of _Myst_ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Sep 1994 18:04:28 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Terry Harpold Subject: Apple & Discontinued hardware Hi folks, Several years ago, I recall reading or hearing somewhere that Apple has stored examples of discontinued series of computers in a vault somewhere, so as to make it possible to recover files created on those machines, should it ever become necessary, in the future, when the machines may no longer be common. Can anyone point me to a source that can verify this? TH -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terry Harpold "The player should not die. Comp. Lit. and Lit. Theory It just slows things down for no reason." University of Pennsylvania tharpold@mail.sas.upenn.edu -- Robyn Miller, author of _Myst_ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 09:17:37 +0059 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Mark Bernstein Subject: Re: What we've all avoided saying. Where's the beef? In-Reply-To: > Now for the most part, the consciously written non-linear stuff isn't > having a great effect on people. Why is this? You may be setting a standard that is too high; damn few things *ever* have a great effect on people, and some of those aren't apparent for years. But, on the whole, I agree: "Where are all the hypertexts?" Mark Bernstein Eastgate Systems, Inc. 134 Main Street Watertown MA 02172 USA voice: (800) 562-1638 in USA +1(617) 924-9044 Eastgate@world.std.com Compuserve: 76146,262 AppleLink:Eastgate ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 09:21:15 +0059 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Mark Bernstein Subject: The quality of hypertext In-Reply-To: <199409100012.AA13538@world.std.com> Professor Kolker may be surprised to learn that I am in partial agreement with his critique of contemporary hypertext. Let those teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well. -- Pope The most effective way to criticize today's hypertexts is to write better ones. Mark Bernstein Eastgate Systems, Inc. 134 Main Street Watertown MA 02172 USA voice: (800) 562-1638 in USA +1(617) 924-9044 Eastgate@world.std.com Compuserve: 76146,262 AppleLink:Eastgate ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 10:15:00 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: rk27 Subject: Re: The quality of hypertext In-Reply-To: <9409121323.AA08364@umailsrv1.UMD.EDU> >Professor Kolker may be surprised to learn that I am in partial agreement >with his critique of contemporary hypertext. > >Let those teach others who themselves excel, >And censure freely who have written well. > -- Pope > >The most effective way to criticize today's hypertexts is to write better >ones. > >Mark Bernstein >Eastgate Systems, Inc. 134 Main Street Watertown MA 02172 USA >voice: (800) 562-1638 in USA +1(617) 924-9044 >Eastgate@world.std.com Compuserve: 76146,262 AppleLink:Eastgate > > Yes, indeed write better ones. But something more: theorize! How is the computer screen different from the printed page, and how does it represent things in ways that other media can't, don't, won't? There are some few examples. I'm just beginning to look at the "Haldemann Diaries." To be sure, this work is partially a translation from another form, but, here is an example of the computer and its potential discourse speaking history through personality, images, and an offer to the reader of enormous cross-referencing possibilities. If only on the level of organization, here is something that only a computer can do. It's not--it seems to--only an electronic collage, which much hypertext so far is. Robert Kolker Department of English University of Maryland Email:Robert_P_KOLKER@umail.umd.edu (rk27) Phone:(301) 405-6250 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 11:31:43 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art" Subject: visual writing I am in complete agreement with Terry's assertion that writing, like reading, becomes reconfigured in e-space, something not so apparent in e-mail on the systems most of us use but certainly so even in the most rudimentary hypertext and hypermedia documents I've seen. Eever since illustrations and interword spacing enetered written text, visual information has been a part of writing, but now it promises to become a far larger part -- and not just in the form of video, weird fonts, and other visual signs of markup (eg, paragraphic, font change for titles, etc). Greg Ulmer's *Teletheory,* which I use in my hypertext class and which, just as the semester is beginning, I have learned is now out of print, argues that we have to develope new modes of writing, new genres for academic and other forms of discourse, We can see the beginnings of such things in not only the experimental art pieces in hypertext but in well "written" work like the National Gallery CD-ROM and Voyager's WHO BUILT AMERICA. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 11:41:06 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Greg Subject: Re: The quality of hypertext In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 12 Sep 1994 10:15:00 EDT from On the call for better hypertexts, authored with the guidance of a theory of design adequate to the medium: I apologize for calling attention to HEURETICS: THE LOGIC OF INVENTION, which includes a proposal for a discourse on method called chorography that is supposed to be for composing in hypermedia. I sure wish somebody would try it. Actually, I'm trying it myself, but I don't have anything to show for it yet. George Landow has been using mystory (related to chorography) as a design poetics in his classes at Brown, and finds mystoriography works ok for academic hypertext. Which suggests the possible value of chorography. And if chorography is no good, HEURETICS includes instructions on how to write a better theory yourself. Any takers? Is anyone with serious authoring skills up for trying chorography? Actually, like StorySpace, anyone is supposed to be able to use chorography (it is aimed at undergraduates). Anyway, judging by the time between the invention of printing and the invention of the novel and essay practices that proved to be adequate to the medium, we should not expect our Cervantes or Montaigne to show up immediately. all best Greg Ulmer ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 12:27:56 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Don Byrd Subject: Re: The quality of hypertext In-Reply-To: <199409121334.JAA19584@sarah.albany.edu> from "Mark Bernstein" at Sep 12, 94 09:21:15 am The problem, it seems to me, is not the "hyper" but the "text". Text is a print form, was created and nurtured in print. The modernist forays into non-linear writing--Cantos, Finnegans Wake, The Maximus Poems--push textual non-linearity to a breaking point. They are the great hypertexts that would have been written in Story Space, no doubt, had the technology been an available convention of writing. Both Pound and Olson at least explicitly conceived their formal investigation in theoretical relation to electronic space. As investigations into non-linear form, the Modernists were only at the beginning. It seems to me likely, however, that as investigations of text they were very near the end. The theoretical problems are not at the level of the "screen" but at the smallest of grammatical units. If a sentence appears on a screen, it is already implicated in the grammar of a relentless linearity. Or, if one thinks in "story" terms (avoiding the explicit linearity of narrative)-- character, event, place--the grammar of linearity asserts itself even more powerfully. The linear structures implied by motive and cause and effect are extremely strong. Robert Grenier's remarkable work _Sentence_ (1978) is to the point. It consists of 500 index cards in a beautifully constructed box. It might easily have been published in Story Space or similar form, had it appeared a few years later. I mention it here because it breaks the linearity of the sentence down into "objects" that suggest (unlike the grammatical textual sentence) open combination in non-linear space. As far as I understand the work, however, the 500 cards should be linked randomly (in which case the hypertext structure in terms of choice breaks down). The best I have been able to do is to think of hypermedia in terms of Non-Euclidean geometry. Riemann distinguishes between discrete (linear) manifolds and continous manifolds in these terms: "while in a discrete manifold the principle of metric relations is implicit in the notion of...[the discrete manifold itself], it must come from elsewhere in the case of a continuous manifold." I understand this as a theoretical requirement. I have not been able to discover a concrete practice using hypertext software that gets any closer to continuous form than the existing examples of continuous forms in print. The units of text screen and link seem, if any thing, to emphasize the discrete nature of the manifold. I do not mean this polemically. I bought my first Macintosh because they were offering free copies of Hypercard, and I have remained interested in the formal problems and possible practical conventions ever since. I have, thus far, failed to find the available technologies useful. It has been frustrating, but I have found, so far, that I can better register my non-linear formal investigations by subverting the linearity of a word processor than I can with hypertext software. Don Byrd University at Albany State University of New York ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 18:28:33 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art" Subject: call for relevant position paper Convergence - The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies As you may know we are launching a new academic journal of research into new media technologies to be called Convergence. To help network across disciplines and generate discussion into the nature of convergence we would like to invite you to contribute to a debates section in the first issue. We are seeking contributions of approximately 1000 words that would explore the convergence of critical approaches and methodologies from different disciplines in the study of the new media. For example how could contemporary theories of the reader contribute to the analysis of a multimedia or hypertext product; or how have the achievements of AI contributed to the debate concerning the creation and construction of virtual worlds; or how can the methodologies of anthropology be appropriated in the study of the consumption of the new media; or to what extent have the conventions of realist representation shaped our analyses of new media products. If you would like to contribute please submit your copy by 1st November 1994 to the editors at the address at the top of this letterhead or email to Convergence@uk.ac.luton.vax2. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 18:38:00 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: rk27 Subject: Re: The quality of hypertext In-Reply-To: <9409121912.AA23133@umailsrv1.UMD.EDU> I think Don Byrd is on the right track. The answer to what the computer can offer as a new means of expression is not the sentence. The sentence simply, sometimes elequently, maybe more often elegantly, belongs to the printed or written page. The sentence is only _part_ of the computer screen, subsumed by it, made an element of something larger, differently complex, flexible and inclusive. Hypertexts that are only, or mainly, blocks of prose, are only examples of sentences on a computer screen. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 18:56:48 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: A Few Minutes Into the Future Subject: The quality of hypertext In-Reply-To: rk27's message of Mon, 12 Sep 1994 18:38:00 EDT <9409122241.AA22784@media.mit.edu> Byrd & Kolker assert that the computer doesn't "offer... the sentence." My point was not about sentences, but about the expression of ideas. Whether you use words, pix, music, or whatever to express your ideas you still have to face the issue of whether an expression has a "natural" length and you modify the software to allow that length... or you slice&dice your expressions to the length supported by the system. A mismatch leads to bad hypermedia. --Alan Wexelblat, Reality Hacker, Author, and Cyberspace Bard Media Lab - Intelligent Agents Group wex@media.mit.edu Voice: 617-253-9833 Pager: 617-945-1842 "Properly done science is a sort of masochistic game where one beats one's head against a wall until it falls down, and then goes in search of another wall." --Steven Vogel ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 20:54:17 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: The quality of hypertext In-Reply-To: <199409122258.SAA03104@sarah.albany.edu> from "A Few Minutes Into the Future" at Sep 12, 94 06:56:48 pm AW writes: > Byrd & Kolker assert that the computer doesn't "offer... the sentence." My > point was not about sentences, but about the expression of ideas. I think the point DB was making was that the only thing the computer offers, finally, is the sentence, & that the only place where the S-V-O linear structure of language as grammatical/syntactical text has been cracked has indeed been in the practice of a number of the poets -- I wld go further back & include/ start with mallarme's _Throw of the Dice_ & think, as I often do (his new MERZGEDICHTE FOR KURT SCHWITTERS just to hand) through the practice (textual & spiritual) of Jackson Mac Low. The hyper moves have been there for a long time now, & for anybody familiar with that tradition, hypertext has sofar not had to offer very much. ======================================================================= Pierre Joris | Dept. of English | "La poesie ne s'impose plus, elle s'expose." SUNY Albany | Paul Celan Albany NY 12222 | tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | email: | "He who leaves a trace, leaves an abcess." joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| Henri Michaux ======================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 08:15:14 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Gerhard Werner Subject: Narration and Hypertext I am afraid this comes late as it pertains to an issue raised originally by Bill Gardner. I had some trouble with posting it because of change of E-mail addresses. Nevertheless, I hope it is still of some relevance. I think we owe a debt of gratitude to Bill Gardner for having launched a debate on a meaningful issue, at a time when TNC was in need of resuscitation. Perhaps Gelernter,s position should be viewed in the context of his recently published book : he illustrates there brilliantly (with some episodes from the bible) what he calls , capitalizing on our ability for creating metaphors and analogies across widely disparate ideas and bits of knowledge. He takes his cue from dream analysis in the psychoanalytic framework and, more fundamentally, from the rabbinic tradition of Talmud scholars.. It seems to me that narratives fulfill a very important social function: they create and preserve a common stock of metaphors and images which serve as unifying elements, and support communicative cohesiveness in a culture. That was (is) the role of the classical epics and the narrations of World Literature. It is also worth recalling the extensive literature that claims (and supports) the contention that narration is a basic mode of cognitive function, perhaps more fundamental than the logical-deductive rule- governed mode to which we pay so much lip service. By way of example, consider the way in which much thinking in clinical medicine REALLY (after stripping away some scientific pretenses) occurs: Katherine Montogomery-Hunter has brilliantly analyzed the common saying amongst clinicians . We DO recall episodes in contexts (that is narration, stories) so much better than abstract bits of knowledge!). And we do use narratives to categorize experiential events and episodes.The field of in medical artificial intelligence rests on this premise. NOW: on the other hand, this position does in no way invalidate the justified claims for the unique role Hypertext (i.e. non-linear reading) can play. I am simply pleading for not throwing the baby out with the bath water, and be respectful of a pluralistic mode of writing-reading-speaking, commensurate to the many ways in which our minds are able to function under different circumstances, and for different objectives. Gerhard Werner. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 08:23:01 +0059 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Mark Bernstein Subject: Re: the brutality of technoculture In-Reply-To: <199409130058.AA25946@world.std.com> Pierre Joris weighs in, alongside Byrd and Kolkar, to say that > for anybody familiar with that tradition, hypertext has sofar not > had to offer very much. As some of you know, I'm not trained in this discipline and don't know the local customs. But, from the perspective of customs prevalent in the physical sciences, you folks show a truly brutal candor in your writing, a willingness to dismiss the works and indeed the careers of your colleagues and correspondants without, seemingly, the slightest hesitation. You all must get together at conferences -- some of you must eventually find yourselves working at the same institutions. After dismissing someone's central work as "bad writing", do you go out drinking at night at the MLA? I just don't get it. Mark Bernstein Eastgate Systems, Inc. 134 Main Street Watertown MA 02172 USA voice: (800) 562-1638 in USA +1(617) 924-9044 Eastgate@world.std.com Compuserve: 76146,262 AppleLink:Eastgate ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 09:07:23 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Terry Harpold Subject: Re: The quality of hypertext In reply to Don Byrd: > The problem, it seems to me, is not the "hyper" but >the "text". Text is a print form, was created and nurtured in >print. The modernist forays into non-linear writing--Cantos, >Finnegans Wake, The Maximus Poems--push textual non-linearity >to a breaking point. -- A colleague of mine here at Penn, Jim English, has remarked on the high modernist flavor of much of the current crop of hypertext writing, and I think that he's on to something there. If our paradigms of fractured narrative form are drawn from high modernism -- or its postmodernist descendants -- then we're going to keep producing (hyper)texts that do not break from the *causally* linear, if incidentally or superficially non- or anti-linear modes of those paradigms. (As you may know from my contributions to TNC in the past, I've been working on the contingency and crisis-interruptibility of hypertext narrative as a key to its opportunities for breaking with print paradigms.) > The theoretical problems are not at the level of the >"screen" but at the smallest of grammatical units. If a >sentence appears on a screen, it is already implicated in the >grammar of a relentless linearity. Or, if one thinks in >"story" terms (avoiding the explicit linearity of narrative)-- >character, event, place--the grammar of linearity asserts >itself even more powerfully. The linear structures implied >by motive and cause and effect are extremely strong. -- I'm not sure that we're going to be able to break from this level of linearity in a linguistic mode -- isn't language (and I don't mean only speech or print) forced to be at least episodically linear if it is to construct reference? Maybe the place to look is between the episodes: how does a mimetic mode enhance or foreground the gaps between episodic linearity? > The best I have been able to do is to think of hypermedia >in terms of Non-Euclidean geometry. Riemann distinguishes between >discrete (linear) manifolds and continous manifolds in these terms: >"while in a discrete manifold the principle of metric relations is >implicit in the notion of...[the discrete manifold itself], it must >come from elsewhere in the case of a continuous manifold." I >understand this as a theoretical requirement. I have not been >able to discover a concrete practice using hypertext software that >gets any closer to continuous form than the existing examples of >continuous forms in print. -- A couple of years ago, I made some preliminary efforts at theorizing hypertext narrative forms in terms of knots -- a twist, if you will, on the usual sort of constellated spatiality that is assigned to the topoi of narrative. (Though Jay Bolter's notion of "writing spaces" is often cited as a model for this topology/cartography of hypertext, his reading of textual spatiality is subtler than that, I believe.) It's something that I've been meaning to return to (if I can just finish the current project ;-) ) -- I was thinking at the time that Lacan's erratic efforts to reformulate the symptom ("sinthomme") in terms of the cross-cap, the fourth strand in the Borromean knot, etc. would be helpful in understanding the interruptions of hypertext form -- what's important is the non-dialecticizable residue, the little bit of the Real that can't be assimilated (if you will, the fragment that escapes the narrativizing/linearizing constraints of the Symbolic), that the knot structure encircles. But this is some of the most difficult Lacan, and notoriously uneven. A project to return to. TH -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terry Harpold "The player should not die. Comp. Lit. and Lit. Theory It just slows things down for no reason." University of Pennsylvania tharpold@mail.sas.upenn.edu -- Robyn Miller, author of _Myst_ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 09:07:30 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Terry Harpold Subject: Re: The quality of hypertext Alan Wexelblat writes, >Whether >you use words, pix, music, or whatever to express your ideas you still have >to face the issue of whether an expression has a "natural" length and you >modify the software to allow that length... or you slice&dice your >expressions to the length supported by the system. -- I'm not sure how to measure a "natural" length, but this is an interesting problem: What is the theatre of digital mimesis? The confines of a single screen? The limits of the user's mousing dexterity? The 32K limit of TextEdit? -- Here is one analogue of the page boundary of print media, where the technology of digital media constrains the presentation of information, without regard for the (imaginary?) underlying rhythms of the information. Hard to distinguish the two registers, really. Harder to escape the observation that the formal constraints of the medium will define the boundaries of the "content" of the mimetic modes it supports. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terry Harpold "The player should not die. Comp. Lit. and Lit. Theory It just slows things down for no reason." University of Pennsylvania tharpold@mail.sas.upenn.edu -- Robyn Miller, author of _Myst_ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 10:24:04 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Mary-Kim Arnold Subject: Re: the brutality of technoculture In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 13 Sep 1994 08:23:01 +0059 from Thank you, Mark, for saying what many of us have been thinking. It seems to me that there are fewer writers of hypertext than there are critics... Also, dismissing the entire "current crop of hypertexts" is not very helpful criticism. Perhaps pointing more specifically at elements of specific works would be more effective in providing a framework for discussion. Certainly, the "current works" do demonstrate quite a range of approaches. And with regard to the debate of the sentence as only being offered by the print medium, limiting what hypertext fictions can be by limiting the means by which thoughts and ideas can be expressed in the medium seems like a step backward, if anything. Mary-Kim Arnold ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 11:22:40 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Brook Conner Subject: Re: The quality of hypertext In-Reply-To: <199409130255.WAA04667@cs.brown.edu> >>>>> "Pierre" == Pierre Joris writes: Pierre> AW writes: >> Byrd & Kolker assert that the computer doesn't "offer... the >> sentence." My point was not about sentences, but about the >> expression of ideas. Pierre> I think the point DB was making was that the only thing Pierre> the computer offers, finally, is the sentence, & that the Pierre> only place where the S-V-O linear structure of language as Not to be pedantic, but languages exist with all six possible orders of S,V, and O: SVO - English, French, Swahili, Hausa, Thai VSO - Tagalog, Irish, (classical) Arabic, (Biblical) Hebrew SOV - Turkish, Japanese, Persian, Georgian, Eskimo OVS - Apalai (Brazil), Barasano (Colombia), Panare (Venezuela) OSV - Apurina and Xavante (Brazil) VOS - Cakchiquel (Guatemala), Coeur d'Alene (Idaho), Huave (Oaxaca, Mexico) The most frequent orders are the ones with the subject first, then the object (an interesting fact in itself). A catolog of object-subject languages can be found in Pullum, 1981, Linguistics 19: 147-155. Pierre> grammatical/syntactical text has been cracked has indeed Pierre> been in the practice of a number of the poets -- I wld go Pierre> further back & include/ start with mallarme's _Throw of Pierre> the Dice_ & think, as I often do (his new MERZGEDICHTE FOR Pierre> KURT SCHWITTERS just to hand) through the practice Pierre> (textual & spiritual) of Jackson Mac Low. The hyper moves Pierre> have been there for a long time now, & for anybody Pierre> familiar with that tradition, hypertext has sofar not had Pierre> to offer very much. Any one reading of _anything_, be it Mallarme or Joyce (Michael (hi, Michael!) or James) is linear in some sense. I don't thin that's the point Pierre is trying to get at here, but I also think that he's doing the hypertexts that exist a disservice. Hypertext (unlike throwing dice to pick a phrase, or Cage's work with turning radio dials to produce sounds) has the possibility of both simultenaity and direction (linearity). This is the point (and the problem) with Kolker's comments on structures and "Marienbad": >>>>> "Robert" == rk27 writes: Robert> Re: Eastgate's hypertexts I write this to be provocative, Robert> and, I guess, to express some real discomforts. I find the Robert> current crop of hypertext fiction I've seen boring and Robert> vigourously denying the possibilities of their medium. The Robert> writing isn't very good. The narrative structures seem Robert> merely to obfuscate rather than provide serious commentary Robert> on the new possibilities of narrative in a new Robert> medium. Maybe what I'd like is someone to do for Robert> hypermedia what Alain Resnais did for cinema in films like Robert> "Last Year in Marienbad." Instead, imagination, I find, Robert> is being sacrificed to mere fragmentation. The computer Robert> needs to be rethought as a discourse rather than a means Robert> for crypto sophisticated games with not very interesting Robert> blocks of text. The structures are not necessarily there to "comment" -- often times they are the point in and of themselves. I submit (to be provocative) that there is no other medium in which it is so natural to create such a bewildering profusion of structures, ranging from straight narrative to footnoted text to things like "Afternoon" or "Victory Garden" (forking paths stories, with clear narrative that may nevertheless switch direction) to things like "Lust" (no clear narrative, though it still has events that occur in it) to white noise with no direction or focus. "Marienbad" seems like it is trying to place itself in such a spectrum of linearity vs. non-linearity, yet I see it more as a simulation of such a thing. It is a film. You watch it from beginning to middle to end (SVO -- the man, the love, the woman -- a very traditional subject-object position that is the heart of Marienbad's plot). As for overall quality, I'd agree with others that suggext a minimum lag time of fifty years between the introduction of a new medium and the production of the first "masterpiece" of that medium. Film was invented about the turn of the century - it took fifty years to produce "Citizen Kane" (and ten or twenty more for "Marienbad"). Even if we count hypertext's "invention" as Vannevar Bush, we're only just pushing the fifty year envelope now. And the invention of actual working systems (in the sixties) would put the first "masterpiece" at about 2010. Brook ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 14:36:46 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "David G. Durand (David G. Durand)" Subject: Re: The quality of hypertext >Pierre Joris (joris@cnsunix.albany.edu) writes: > AW writes: >> Byrd & Kolker assert that the computer doesn't "offer... the sentence." My >> point was not about sentences, but about the expression of ideas. > >I think the point DB was making was that the only thing the computer >offers, finally, is the sentence, & that the only place where the >S-V-O linear structure of language as grammatical/syntactical text has >been cracked has indeed been in the practice of a number of the poets If so, this point is spurious. The _common_ element between speech and writing is the sentence -- and that's the biggest (semi-)recorded media shift any of us knows about. The sentence is a the primary unit of linguistic communication. Counting occasional fragments as sentences. Most aleatoric experiments (like "It's name was Penelope," Burroughs work, or even the famed Tzara poem) gain whatever inherent interest they have (past the use of randomness to shock) from the virtual sentences and phrases (and hence meanings) constructed by the reader from ambiguous input, or induced from the compulsive re-use of concepts and vocabulary to create echoes (as in Burroughs). I wish to distance myself from a lexicalist view of experimental writing -- I don't think that individual words are of interest, but the relations between them are. Not to say that a media shift does not have effects (nor to argue that these effects are deterministic). For instance, (am I cribbing from Mcluhan here?) the form of sentences changed with writing. Even the form of grammar is changed by writing, since older forms of the language become: 1st visible, in that it becomes clear that in the past they didn't use language the same way we do 2nd privileged, since we are most likely to notice this phenomenon in texts that are revered (in some way) since those are the texts that actually survive the vicissitudes of time. Normative grammar is a child of the written word. But the sentence survives. What is more, the sentence survives even translation out of its original context (though some violence is always done). We need not manuscripts alone to understand medieval texts -- the printed words convey a large part of the meaning. This is even true for Blake, say, though more of the meaning is obscured without the images. Hypertext will give us a new set of tropes and structures and special effects, but that doesn't mean that the text part will go away. I simply don't buy the crapulous millenarian "computers spawn post-literate, post-symbolic communication" agenda. Communication without language is not sufficiently unabiguous. (Read early books on Mayan iconography and culture, before the translation of the script, if you want to see comically clear proof of how true this can be). >-- I wld go further back & include/ start with mallarme's _Throw of >the Dice_ & think, as I often do (his new MERZGEDICHTE FOR KURT >SCHWITTERS just to hand) through the practice (textual & spiritual) of >Jackson Mac Low. The hyper moves have been there for a long time now, >& for anybody familiar with that tradition, hypertext has sofar not >had to offer very much. I actually like a lot of the hyperfiction that I have read (and which we're all dumping on for not being a hyper-Moby-Dick (and what does that make you think of)), finding some of it quite moving. If we want to criticise, and cannot or do not want to strike back as Mark suggests by writing our own, I think we should bear in mind what experimental ficition is -- an experiment. To dismiss out of hand is not to engage. What was the experiment trying to accomplish? How far did it accomplish that? Why did it fail or succeed? Was the original goal worthy of being accomplished at all? My slightly tongue in cheek post earlier was an observation that one possible goal of the more truly non-linear hyperfictions (essentially, in the published realm, Mark's stuff), has failed: to attract an wider non-academic audience. Is this a symptom of the appeal of non-linearity or an appeal of the fiction? I don't really know. Is that goal worthy? maybe, but it may be incompatible with the goals or practice of "art-writing" outside, perhaps, a few genres (there is (or was) a little experimental SF market, for instance, which is not the same audience as that for high culture and academia). -- David ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 21:00:37 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Catherine Taylor Subject: Re: hyperclass hyperteacher In-Reply-To: <199409050049.UAA08308@acpub.duke.edu> I'm gearing up for a class I will teach this spring on Authorship, Print Technology, Law, and Democracy (or some part of this conglomeration). The course is supposedly based on my dissertation (not a great way to come up with course subjects... but, this way lies the funding...) which right now focuses on collective authorship. The class will be a mix of somewhat cannonical 18th c. American Lit. readings, contemporary theory, and hypertexts. The students will be writing independent projects that they will then work together to link. Any suggestions about readings that have worked for others who have taught similar classes would be great, as would any advice about class webbing. A suggestion for Greg Ulmer: any program should make sure that the host library (librarian) is on your side. Access to hypertext novels has been a problem for me... my graduate student budget can't stretch that far and getting to these hot commodities through inter-library loan has so far proven fruitless. If anyone knows how I might "borrow" some recent works, I would be grateful. Thanks, C. C. Taylor ctaylor@acpub.duke.ed ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 22:28:31 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Michael Joyce Subject: Re: Brutality/Quality (Groundhog emerges, casts LONG shadow...) Mark Bernstein, a publisher (my publisher), asks about our profession and its ways. My fellow Eastgate artist, Mary Kim Arnold, joins him in his questions. And while I understand their questions and frustrations, I think this renewed discussion on TNC is important to us, publisher, writer, scholar, and reader alike. I especially understand the frustrations of someone like Mary Kim who has like many of us bravely risked making art (and indeed she has made art) in a fringe medium when other writers would or could not take that risk and where the rewards are unclear. Nor do I mean to speak disingenuously, I realize that in praising her risk I praise my own. For years now (as recently as the current, very laudatory issue of DETAILS), I have had to contend with articles which on the one hand praise such and such quality of my work and not long after complain that so far no "real" writers (read: name) write hypertexts. The Cervantes Argument, first raised by Bob Coover, and later raised more eloquently (and with different players) on this list last year by Don Byrd sometimes seems, so to speak, a bookmark, saving a place for the one raising the argument (though not, I think, these two) or whomever she shall canonize, criticize, analyze, anthologize or indeed (since Mark would gladly blurb a claim that Soandso was "the George Eliot of hypertext") publish.. So be it. Literary culture is a polity like any other, or perhaps (as Yogi might have said) moreso (especially now when, like a fading duchy, it feels the pearly old imperial wand slip away from a frail grasp). As Brook (hi Brook!) points out (and the cases of Bach and Melville, Gertrude Stein and Hildegard Von Bingen bear witness to), the search for the artistic equivalent of the "killer app" is merely a marketeer's game and one subject, as most things are, to the passing time. And in any case it's guy talk: masterpieces are mechanical productions. I hold for the cyborgian post-production multiple-pieces of Haraway's situated knowledges: "webbed connections, and hope for transformation of systems of knowledge and ways of seeing [in which we] construct and join rational conversations and fantastic imaginings that can change history (191-193)" A truth is that the hypertext writers, myself included, have had something of a (glorious) free ride for a time (in the way of all great, seemingly powerless, artistic movements of this century from Dada to Fluxus to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, each of them also arguably fifteen or so artists and critics quoting one another: visually, verbally, physically). A truth is, also, that I would be willing to come out of the sly previous parentheses and argue that ours (like the others and a list so long only Pierre Joris could write it out) has in some sense already had a great effect on our culture. It is good, finally, to be taken as seriously as we have worked for years. >From my old Iowa Workshop mate Tom Boyle in MONDO ("Because a work of art, despite what the French critics might say, has to have an organizing principle behind it. A genius, a person, is responsible for it, and if you break the spell of it in any way, it ruins it.") to Annie ("Nobody is going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever.") Proulx to poor old Updike rewriting (erasing) her in the pages of _Atlantic_ with a less vivid adjective ("Words on the screen give me the sense of being just another passing electronic wriggle."), the attack of the wriggly word is being heard (even as the word slides into the post- alphabetic). Yesterday's Times reports that the august Library of Congress plans to digitize 100K documents a year albeit (those danged French again!, cf.Jaron Lanier in WIRED: "It was much more, I think, American versus French, and I'm almost tempted to say capitalism versus socialism") doing so years after the Biblioteque commenced a much larger project now nearing its public opening and already merrily churning away at twice the proposed LC per-biblia rate .. Meanwhile all of these events are reported in a newspaper of record which from day to day seems like its being played by MC ScratchArtist, the Book Review taking one line (electrowhoopee) one day, another (electrowriggly) another: the Op-Ed and Ed pages taking the same grey line one day and another; and the Business Section (America's leading literary journal, I always say, seriously) actually reporting what is what and who is writing/seeing it. A truth is ("I'd as lief kneel with Kit Smart," Johnson) I'd rather see Joris go at the screen sentence, rather watch Harpold continue to tease out his brilliant and anguished (and Frenchified) notions of the link, or discover Kolker seeking a visual hypertexual syntax (or actually, if a truth be told, see Jane Douglas, Alison Sainsbury, Cindy Fuchs, Mary Hocks, or--the first serious hyperfiction critic and scholar in America-- Nancy Kaplan, all of whom once were here and went away--or Abbie Angharad Hughes who *is* here-- argue anything) than see any of the above literary luminaries kiss the white buttocks of a rear-guard movement (most of those puns intended). (Nor again do I mean to speak disingenuously. I have been arguing out my own tortured and opaque theory of hypertext contours (the screen "sentence") for some years now, arguing for the emergence of a new form which we cannot as yet name but which readers recognize and appropriate, trying (literally) to see it rather than name it.) A truth is also that if we do not do this seeing and talking and thinking then no one else will. (The same NYT article about the LC listed the visionaries who will advise the library on its electronic corpus: Steve (Next?) Jobs, The Walt Disney Company, Bellcore and NSF among others. I'd trust the task to Kali Tal and Don Byrd alone ("I'd as lief kneel with Kit Smart, etc.") over much of the list of authorized wiseGuys). If I didn't know better I'd accuse Bernstein of being a realist of the old style in his jibe about the MLA (which I know for a fact he's never attended). Of course "after dismissing someone's central work as 'bad writing'," we "do...go out drinking at night." The same thing of course happened at the last ACM Hypertext meeting (which he knows for a fact I wasn't at) where the young bucks and revisionists (we are all cannibals, at least of ourselves) dismissed Ted Nelson's central work as a bad joke because he only prophesied the shining city others (Next?) built.. Michael Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 00:08:05 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Lisa Ann Parks Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS CALL FOR PAPERS - THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP Recent attention to technological developments has sparked critical discussion about the role of technology in representational media. New technologies are placed among pre-existing economic, social, and cultural relationships, facilitating, resisting, or shaping their implementation. This call solicits submissions that assess the ways in which technological developments have influenced the production and reception of film/television texts. Suggested topics include: the use of technology in reception (remote control, VCRs, Dolby stereo, THX, home theaters, interactivity, 3D); the use of technology in style (computer imaging, video, special effects, computer animation, color, digital sound); the representation of technology (the body and technology, the representation of film and television technologies in film/tv, technology as spectacle); technology in everyday life ("amateur" film or video recording, surveillance, the information superhighway); historical studies of the development of film or television technologies; the political economy of technological innovation. Please send submissions by October 15, 1994 to THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP, Department of Communication Arts, 821 University Ave., University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53711. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at the e-mail address/phone number below. Lisa Parks (608)238-7127 laparks@students.wisc.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 08:11:17 EDT Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Anthony Rue Subject: hypertext access >C. C. Taylor: >Access to hypertext novels has been >a problem for me... my graduate student budget can't stretch that far and >getting to these hot commodities through inter-library loan has so far >proven fruitless. If anyone knows how I might "borrow" some recent >works, I would be grateful. I would suggest shifting your focus away from hypertext-as-semi-precious-commodity and toward the experiments that are cropping up on th e net. If you have access to a WWW reader (such as Mosaic), check out Waxweb at http://bug.village.virginia.edu:7777 Several of UF's undergrad comp classes will be using it as a primary text this semester--what few reservations I have about the "purity"of Mosaic-as- hypertext are offset by the "free" (or at least easy) distribution of the texts ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 09:15:18 -0400 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Michael Joyce Subject: Re: hypertext access As a purveyor of "hypertext-as-semi-precious-commodity" (though one whose students also purchase paperback books which cost as much or more than any Eastgate title), my motives for this comment may be suspect but when Anthony Rue writes >hypertext are offset by the "free" (or at least easy) distribution of the >texts That easy parenthese has to overlook an awful lot of expensive infrastructure, relatively precious access, and the avowed intentions of the military infotainment complex to put an end to it anyway. My new guru is brad brace >(1) We can only believe in scale. >(2) Communities* (and consequently, most values), are rarely possible. >(3) Our technology is our culture. Michael Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 09:51:19 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Terry Harpold Subject: Re: The quality of hypertext David Durand writes, > Hypertext will give us a new set of tropes and structures and special >effects, but that doesn't mean that the text part will go away. I simply >don't buy the crapulous millenarian "computers spawn post-literate, >post-symbolic communication" agenda. Communication without language is not >sufficiently unabiguous. -- Jaron Lanier and his cadres, who like to toss around the "post-symbolic" claim, think that they're being extremely radical in so dispensing with (what they think of as) language, but most of this stuff is the crudest Platonic anxiety-in-the-presense-of-the-mark sort of thinking. Anyone who thinks that digital media will spawn a sort of VR-based "post-symbolic" transformation of mimesis has very little understanding of the Symbolic (to fall back on the Lacanian term), or the structures of representation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terry Harpold "The player should not die. Comp. Lit. and Lit. Theory It just slows things down for no reason." University of Pennsylvania tharpold@mail.sas.upenn.edu -- Robyn Miller, author of _Myst_ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 09:51:50 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Terry Harpold Subject: Re: hyperclass hyperteacher C.C. Taylor writes, >A suggestion for Greg Ulmer: any program should make sure that the host >library (librarian) is on your side. Access to hypertext novels has been >a problem for me... my graduate student budget can't stretch that far and >getting to these hot commodities through inter-library loan has so far >proven fruitless. -- I strongly agree. I took part in an informal meeting/series of memo swaps here at Penn, and the library staff, while interested in facilitating teachers' and students' forays into digital media beyond the MLA CD-ROM level, are understandably nervous about the support issues. Hardware, software, compatibility of operating systems -- it's really a mess for a library that doesn't have a person who can devote full-time to these issues (and who does?) -- which, while related to conventional computing resources problems, can go far beyond them. -- Anyone who is hired to teach this stuff should try to make sure that her job description includes a formal obligation (and the departmental authority to back it up) to work closely with library support staff to ensure that the necessary resources are in place, and that there is a sympathetic set of ears and eyes at the library. Buying and supporting the software and hardware is expensive and time-consuming. Unless you reach a critical mass of tools and materials that your students can get their hands on reliably and with regularity, it will be very difficult or impossible to make any headway in teaching. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terry Harpold "The player should not die. Comp. Lit. and Lit. Theory It just slows things down for no reason." University of Pennsylvania tharpold@mail.sas.upenn.edu -- Robyn Miller, author of _Myst_ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 10:46:47 +0059 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: Mark Bernstein Subject: Precious commodity Before we get *too* bogged down with how precious these commodities are, let's remember that these hypertexts cost less than the books with which we are all familiar. > If anyone knows how I might "borrow" some recent > works, I would be grateful. Extra credit: interpret the significance of the quotation marks in this sentence. Mark Bernstein Eastgate Systems, Inc. 134 Main Street Watertown MA 02172 USA voice: (800) 562-1638 in USA +1(617) 924-9044 Eastgate@world.std.com Compuserve: 76146,262 AppleLink:Eastgate ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 10:48:03 -0500 Reply-To: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list Sender: TECHNOCULTURE discussion list From: "Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr." Subject: Re: The quality of hypertext Re: the "post-symbolic" -- Lanier's famous fuzz intrigues me because it envisions as a liberation from the constraints of misunderstandable communication what would surely be (if it could ever be realized) the extension of the sym,bolic function to domains that are now still sort of freelance, unconscious ones. Virtualized experience would turn experience itself into a big gestural language-web. Of course, it isn't necessary to have VR for that, hyperreality can use all sorts of more prosaic tools. But it is interesting to speculate what people might consider an Other of the symbolic when experie