Agrippa
I need to show how each text is appropriated by the user so Michel de Certeau’s theory makes sense. Now showing it in text like Don Quixote and Second Life is a no brainer. But I just found a way to do it in Agrippa. The author mentions an interesting fact. As some of you know already this is a self erasing text, but some users have already hacked the code and published the full-text version on the Internet, or so they think. What the author says is that whenever he views one of these texts, he notices that there would be alterations and missing parts in the text, meaning the text erases itself notwithstanding the hackers. So this would be a good example to show how readers have appropriated an otherwise legitimate text. The reader as a textual poacher… I need to think about this idea more when the time comes.
The reader
I’ve been worried about how I can diverge from Hayles for awhile. I think the key lies in the reader. Although she acknowledges the reader/user, she does not dwell on her too much. Her main concern is to emphasize the materiality of the medium and to acknowledge that print is a static medium. It is a static medium, but the reader’s presence is what brings about the materiality as such. Hayles acknowledges this. But if I can use Jerome McGann and Michel de Certeau (I was already planning on using the latter) I think I can effectively emphasize the reader within the paradigm of Hayles’s theory. I just need to be very careful on how I set up my argument and not dwell too much on hermeneutics. I should emphasize performativity instead, which is what I was thinking of in the first place. We’ll see how it goes.
Galatea 2.2
Richard Powers’s novel Galatea 2.2 is an amazing novel, beautifully written. I never thought I would cry over an artificial intelligence dismantling herself. At the beginning I was dragging my feet to include this novel in my dissertation. I still think that it may not be the most suitable example. Hayles discusses this novel in terms of cybernetic theory, but my dissertation does not really focus on cybernetics, but on narrative and text. Here’s my solution:
It is about an author (his name is Richard too) who initially starts his education in the sciences (or maybe engineering? Can’t remember), but later decides to go into field of literature. When we meet him, he is already a famous writer, in a department with some kind of funding. During his tenure in this department, he meets a group of scientists, one in particular, who is eager to build an intelligent machine. On a bet, Richard and this scientist decide to build a machine that can pass Richard’s master’s qualifying exams. Which, in an of itself, is an intriguing idea. His friend builds several implementations and Richard reads the novels to the machine one by one. The remarkable part of this story is the successful way this main story is interwoven with the story of Richard’s broken love affair, to the point that the last implementation, imp H named Helen, becomes a substitute for his long lost love. In the end, Helen shows (at least for Richard) sings of consciousness. As you can see, this is a perfect novel for Hayles to use for her theory of the posthuman, which is not really my primary concern.
But there is one perfect passage that I think I can use as an opener to demonstrate electronic textuality. In this scene a fire alarm goes off at the lab where Richard is reading to Helen. As Richard is leaving the lab, he is extremely concerned about saving Helen who is already showing signs of consciousness. When he tells one of the scientists (Harold) that Helen is still in there and she will die if they don’t do something about it, Harold blatantly tells Richard that she must have a back up somewhere. Of course, fully convinced of Helen’s intelligence, Richard tells Harold that she is not a program, but an architecture, a multi-dimensional shape. Startled by this comment Harold asks, "You run her on silicon, don’t you? Somebody downloads all those hosts to tape every week and archives them to remote sites." For Harold silicon is the only reality, Helen is made up of nothing more. But Richard’s response is quite interesting and comes as a shock to Harold:
"But she doesn’t run on one machine. Her parts are spread on more boxes than I can count. She is grown to scores of subassemblies. Each one takes care of a unique process. They talk to each other across broadband. Even if we had the connects and vectors for each component system, we’d never get her assembled." At which point, Harold is taken aback and says,"Then there is no way to save her."
The difference between how each character view Helen is remarkable, and touching, to say the least. Richard describes her as an idealized woman and even manages to take Harold off guard.
I think this passage will describe electronic textuality as a dispersed structure. It will be an interesting opener.
things to add
Ok, here are some things I need to add:
- flickering signifiers: either in introduction, right after characteristics of new media, or i can include it in the first chapter, claiming that in the introduction I was referring to new media, here I am looking at the characteristics of electronic textuality.
- intermediation
- definitely the idea of looking at print with fresh ideas or the awareness of digital textuality has to be more emphasized
- the importance of narrative in this discussion
- also in the interview, she mentioned that Writing Machines could not have been written without the help of a computer. The book is the conversation between text and design. This could be a great example for intermediation.
- in the introduction add the definition of "textuality" and discuss Ong (his definition of "text" as "weave" could come in handy in defining "textuality."
- how code differs from speech and writing.
Gosh, I am miserably sold to her ideas… Where is the critical distance here? I guess later chapters will give me room to talk about other things. Spatial narratives and performance will come into play too.
Interview with Hayles
I think I am falling in love with Hayles’s work. My worry is that I am so taken in by her argument and her agenda that I am unable to critique her theory at all. Everything she says makes sense. Here is an interview that was posted in ctheory:
Hayles interview with Arthur Kroker
I think I will have to reread My Mother Was a Computer.
disembodiment/materiality
The bigger picture:
In How We Became
Posthuman, Hayles traces an ongoing tendency within the Western tradition to
disembody information and do away with its material existence. Claude Shannon, for
example, a theorist mentioned by Hayles who worked at the Bell Laboratories,
defines information “as a probability function with no dimensions, no
materiality, and no necessary connection with meaning” (How We Became Posthuman 18).
Abstracting information from a material base has
significance for both cybernetics and the theory of textuality. Devoid of embodiment,
information is merely a pattern, and as such, it is a free-floating agent,
unaffected by the changes in its context (19). In terms of cybernetics, this
premise dismisses body as a consequential component of message. Conceptualized
as such, the promise of information is that it can be free of the material
constraints that govern the mortal world. As Hayles states, the implication of such a
premise is that we can become the information we have constructed and achieve
immortality (13) . In other words, if
embodiment is no longer vital to intelligence, than there is no difference between
intelligent machines and intelligent humans, and one must concur that machines
can think.
The significance of disembodiment of information vis à vis textuality
parallels its effect on cybernetics and is more pertinent to our current discussion.
Without taken into account the materiality of the text, we run into the risk of
assuming that two similar texts presented using different technologies convey
the same meaning. Hayles suggests that a book that exists in two different
formats, one published in print and the other generated by a computerized
program, may appear to be the same to someone who is unaware of the different
technological processes involved in the production of the text. She contends
that,
[d]ifferent technologies of text production suggests different
models of signification; changes in signification are linked with shifts in
consumption; shifting patterns of consumption initiate new experiences of
embodiment; and embodied experience interacts with codes of representation to
generate new kinds of textual worlds. (28)
Relating text to body
As I begin the second chapter, I realize that the biggest challenge for me will be making the connection between the print text and the human body crystal clear. In Writing Machines Hayles briefly talks about how print fiction connects body to text, giving Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveller as examples. However, it is easier (and obvious) to argue that these texts (and many others) connect the book to life, not body. Sterne is unable to finish the history of Tristram Shandy because he tries to cover everything about his character’s life, starting from his inception. So at the end of his novel, he is only able to get as far as several years into the life of Tristram. As for Calvino’s novel, I don’t remember any explicit connections between the work and the body, probably will have to reread the novel, but I was planning on using it to explain the changing role of the reader. From a simple reader to a performer who actively pursues the text…
Of course one only has to remember Gines de Pasamonte’s book in Don Quixote. When Sancho asks him if his book is finished, Pasamonte replies sternly, "How the hell could it be finished? My life isn’t finished yet." I would die to place this somewhere into this chapter, but as it is, it might be a little challenging. I began the discussion on Don Quixote with a quote from the prologue where he talks about his own authorship and about the novel as his offspring. So far I used the concept of authorship as a link that ties this particular genre (the novel) to the print medium. As several critics already noted, the concept of authorship became significant only after print. Before, community owned the tales… I will use the idea of offspring to make the relationship between text and body clear, but I am not too sure about that. This is where it all gets tricky. As it is, the relationship seems tenuous at best. If i were to make to relationship clearer, using quotes from Hayles and whoever I can dig up, then I can make the case for Pasamonte as an author who is writing is own tale by enacting it. But the same goes for Don Quixote too, but I will discuss that aspect of it much later in the fifth chapter when I am analyzing how the reader is reconfigured (this is where Calvino come into play too). I guess i can slip Pasamonte here too. Hey that’s an idea…
UNIX
I am finally considering making the switch… No, not the switch from PC to MAC, but the BIG switch, the ultimate surrender to command-line. There has been several stages in this decision, mind you, this is still in the design phase.
I work at the university’s Informational Technology (IT) Training division, we design and write technical workshops (three hours long) and we teach these workshops to whoever is interested. Well at the beginning of this year, I decided not to be put on schedule because I got other jobs and I needed to spend some quality time with my dissertation.
But at the beginning of the semester one of my colleagues actively seeked me out to convince me to revise extensively our UNIX: the Basics workshop. The problem being that I didn’t know an iota of UNIX… Well when I started, I realized that some of the stuff was kind of like MS-DOS, which I used a little bit before the reign of the Microsoft empire (pre-Windows95). Then I got too busy with conferences, grading, and my other job that I had to pull the plug on UNIX.
Well recently, as I was reading Kate Hayles’s My Mother was a Computer, I came across an interesting analysis of two works by Neil Stephenson, one a novel named Cryptonomican, the other non-fiction called In the Beginning Was Command Line. Hayles uses these two texts to discuss the relationship between code and language. But in this entry, I will focus on the surface material.
In the latter work, Stephenson relates a major turn point in his life. One day, his Macintosh Powerbook "breaks his heart" by completely destroying a large important document beyond repair. Familiar? Yes, but I don’t think the rest of the story is. On the same day, he encounters UNIX and decides to make the switch. Too good to be true, right???
In this non-fiction work he extensively discusses why UNIX is far more superior; none of which was news for me, having read about it while working on the workshop. But knowing that some of us take some kind of action when faced with these technological mishaps impressed me most.
Some of his reasons are very legitimate, and a little scary actually. While UNIX allows you to know everything that goes on in your computer and have more control over your machine, Windows (and Macintosh too) actively hides it by keeping the user on the interface. Of course GUI was designed exactly for that purpose. We think we know what is going on underneath when we press and drag stuff to the trash can, but we are totally helpless when a virus breaks loose with the click of a button. Scary because we are surrendering our power to a machine, we have no idea what it will do, or what files it will eat… Gradually we are becoming weak, we are at the hands of others who know these things.
So I decided to take the power back and hopefully I will make the switch. It is a hard switch though. You’re not changing your operating system, but you are changing the way you think. Almost rewiring your brain… Naaa, exactly like rewiring your brain.
ramblings
I decided to make materiality the main focus of my dissertation. Unexpectedly, Hayles’s short little fun book became more than just a side topic. It was the topic under which I can talk about all the other ideas. I would briefly allude to media convergence and remediation at the beginning of my intro and move on to explain media-specific analysis and the importance of it. And then discuss the characteristics of new media, spatial narratives, Jim Collins and Michel de Certeau will enter the stage at this point, and chapter divisions… First chapter will discuss materiality extensively (with example texts), the next chapter will talk about spatial narratives that emerges out of this materiality, next chapter will focus on temporality, and finally the last two chapters will focus on reconfiguring the reader, first in print (Don Quixote and If on a Winter’s Night) then in Second Life.
Materiality is specifically important in this age (as Hayles acknowledges) as we are flooded with simulations. People who don’t take digital fiction seriously, don’t do so because of the so-called "immaterial" existence of the digital text. The main argument is that the digital text is made up of numbers, you can’t touch it, and it changes constantly, unlike print… Hayles’s main agenda is to prove that digital texts also have materiality, just not the kind we are used to. I also would like to add to that, different types of materiality brings about different types of narratives and alternative reading strategies. That’s where spatial narrative and interactivity comes into play. Still a bit sketchy, but I think it is a good start. Different theorists came up with their own types of narratives according to their own agendas. Hayles’s is informational narratives (I think in line with her agenda of constructing a theory of cybernetics), Aarseth has ergodic literature (his Resistance to narrative in videogames leads him to some up with that model), and Manovich has database narratives… I will have to address all these briefly in the intro and explain why my conceptualization of narrative (spatial narratives) is useful for my own agenda…
What I really liked about Writing Machines is the following:
- It discusses print and digital texts together under the scope of materiality, implying continuity between these two media. There is no revolutionary newness to new media.
- Hayles is a great story-teller. Writing Machines is beautifully written. I never thought that a theory book could be a page-turner. You can see the importance of narrative in her own writing. This is also mentioned in How We Became Posthuman.
- I truly appreciate her agenda.
Later, i read her other two books: How we Became Posthuman and My Mother was a Computer. At times they were impossible to follow (unlike Writing Machines). These three books complement each other and the more I read, the more meaningful they become. I am stunned at the ease with which she uses science to talk about humanities and humanities to talk about science… The transition from one to field to the other is seamless.
introduction chapter: Where the hell is the argument?
I am embarrassed to say that it took me a year to get my introduction in place. At first, I wanted to write on spatial narratives in print and digital media. I wrote my proposal accordingly, I thought I knew where I was going. But when I began to write the introduction chapter, I was consistently asked "So, what is your argument?" "I see it, why can’t you?" was my knee jerk reaction. A year full of rewrites and time spent…
The problem was that I wanted to talk about too much. Here are the following topics that were dear to my heart:
- Media convergence (a book that I bought at MIT at a conference got me into it. The book was edited by Henry Jenkins).
- How orality effect both print and new media (media convergence extended).
- The idea of what it means to be "new," surely "new media" wasn’t all that new.
- As the natural continuation of the second topic, I wanted to emphasize continuity between print and new media, showing that stuff we perceive to be new in new media, was in fact not all that new, and that print displayed some of that too. Although these tendencies were marginalized in print.
- Role of the reader/user/player.
- Definitely wanted to talk about interactivity as it relates to the user.
- Ergodic literature
- Linearity/non linearity
- Arguing for the presence of narrative in videogames,albeit in a different form. The idea being that all these people who refuse the existence of narrative in videogames are operating under a very narrow definition of narrative (Jenkins makes that point clearly).
- And there was a nice little book that i picked up when I was in Seattle at a graduate conference where Katherine Hayles was the key note speaker: Writing Machines, by Katherine Hayles. Quite an interesting, fun book, I thought, gotta make something of it. Actually, when I was at another conference (International Narrative Conference at Louisville), the presenter said the same thing when I asked him about this work. Fun read, but… To tell you the truth, materiality was only marginal in terms of my argument at first.
As you can see from this list, I was at a deadend for months trying to unify all these topics under one roof. To top it all, I wanted to structure my dissertation chronologically. So I’d be talking at first about how print anticipated new media, and then new media texts, and finally how new media influenced the way we write print. Makes sense? Well it didn’t work out for me.
For months on end, I kept writing and deleting. The project turned out to be a postmodern story, where the writing actually erased itself to the point that nothing got written.
What can i say, it was depressing…
Then one day, as i am telling about my dilemma to my friend at the library for the nth time, the idea hit me in the head with the force of a two-by-four. Kind of like how Kate Hayles describes her realization of the different ways in which literary games might be played (Writing Machines)… I asked myself "Why don’t I restructure the whole damn thing and skip the chronological approach? Maybe that’s what is getting me stuck."
