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EJournal Volume 02 Number 01
From LISTSERV@uacsc2.albany.edu Tue Jan 5 16:04:33 1993
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:03:13 -0500
From: Revised List Processor (1.7e) <LISTSERV@uacsc2.albany.edu>
Subject: File: "EJRNL V2N1"
To: pirmann@trident.usacs.rutgers.edu
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April, 1992 _EJournal_ Volume 2 Issue 1 ISSN# 1054-1055
2321 Subscribers
An Electronic Journal concerned with the implications
of electronic networks and texts.
University at Albany, State University of New York
ejournal@albany.bitnet
There are 351 lines in this issue.
** This first issue of our second year is aimed especially at new subscribers **
CONTENTS:
Introduction/Editorial
Summary of Network Commands
Contents of Volume 1 (1991)
Subjects
Personnel
Ancient History
Other History
DEPARTMENTS:
Letters (policy)
Reviews (policy)
Supplements to previous texts (policy)
About _EJournal_
PEOPLE: Board of Advisors, Consulting Editors
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This electronic publication and its contents are (c) copyright 1992 by
_EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give away the journal and its
contents, but no one may "own" it. Any and all financial interest is hereby
assigned to the acknowledged authors of individual texts. This notification
must accompany all distribution of _EJournal_.
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INTRODUCTION/EDITORIAL
This is _EJournal_'s second year of publication. Our recent push into Usenet
space has brought hundreds of new subscribers. It seems like a good time to
bring all 2321+ readers up to date.
This issue contains a skeleton table of contents for volume I (1991), with
brief notes about the essays. There is a section suggesting the *kinds* of
subjects we would like to see essays about. The emphasis is on suggesting, not
limiting; your list is as good as ours. There are also some preliminary
thoughts about how to staff _EJournal_ as we grow. Near the end, just before
the listing of Editors and Advisors, there is a quick history of how the
journal began and what we said, back in 1989, about what we hoped to
accomplish.
First, though, here is a summary of how to SUBscribe, how to GET back issues,
and how to GET the cumulative Table of Contents.
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SUMMARY OF NETWORK COMMANDS:
To accomplish (for example): Send to: This message:
Getting a list of all files LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET INDEX EJRNL
Getting the back-issue index LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET GET INDEX EJRNL
Getting Volume 1 Number 1 LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET GET EJRNL V1N1
Subscribing to _EJournal_ LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET SUB EJRNL Your Name
Mailing to our "office" EJOURNAL@ALBANY.BITNET Your message...
[ Note: This is a new site ID. We hope it simplifies communication. ]
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CONTENTS of Volume 1 (1991)
\V1N1\: A 226-line essay by Robert K. Lindsay, "Electronic Journals of
Proposed Research." Scientists and other scholars should use the networks to
share ideas before preparing elaborate grant proposals. Publication in this
preliminary form would attract cooperative peer review, would "register" the
concepts involved, would attract qualified collaboration, and would lead to a
smaller number of futile applications for scarce funds. Notes, Bibliography
(TedJ)
\V1N2\: A 275-line essay re/view, by Joe Amato, of Jay David Bolter's book,
_Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing_. Joe
praises the book, and asks some questions about the "evangelistic euphoria"
with which Bolter greets the "revolutionary new medium." Post-modernist
theorizing, ideological assumptions, and "the darker side of hypertext" are
some issues raised in a positive review. (TedJ)
\V1N2-1\: A 216-line exchange between Doug Brent and Joe Amato about the
re/view of Bolter's _Writing Space_, including the requested expansion of
"ideas on the 'darker side' of hypertext." (TedJ)
[This issue was our first try at extending discussion of a subject via an
electronic "thread" sequence -- volume one, number two "continued," so to
speak. Therefore the designation \V1N2-1\, which we could have distributed at
a later date than \V1N3\.]
\V1N3\: A 686-line essay by Doug Brent, "Oral Knowledge, Typographic
Knowledge, Electronic Knowledge: Speculations on the History of Ownership."
The theory of transformative technology (McLuhan, Ong, Heim et al) is applied
to the problem of intellectual property versus communal knowledge. Oral
cultures have no intellectual property: knowledge is communally generated and
shared. Print technology created the book as artifact, knowledge as
individually generated, owned, and protected. Copyright and plagiarism are
inventions of the print age. With CMC and hypertext, we may be returning to an
age in which personal ownership of knowledge becomes virtually impossible by
the nature of the medium itself. This will require profound shifts in our
attitude to knowledge and the way we use its ownership as an incentive to
produce it. (DB)
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SUBJECTS
We're not yet sure what to call the texts we distribute. They lack some of the
attitude and apparatus of the stuffiest traditional scholarship in the
humanities, but they are as interesting and authentic and sensible as the
better articles in more conventional publications. It seems silly to call our
pieces "papers," yet the borderline "oral" quality of our medium makes that
label, a reminder of spoken academic presentations, almost appropriate. For
now, at any rate, the generic label "essay" feels most comfortable.
Here are some subjects that we think our readers might be interested in:
Changes in amount of and access to "information." Will we be overloaded, as
alarmists worry, or have people usually been able to adapt to expanding pools
of information?
Indexing, cataloguing, paying for, producing, maintaining, accessing DATA
BASES, especially TEXT-based data bases...
The implications of electronic texts and networks for research, especially in
the humanities but also in relation to general issues of collaboration,
intellectual property, intercultural literacy, privacy...
The relationship of cyberspace-matrix environments and teaching-learning
situations. What happens when instructors can give up the power to force
students to gather in the same place at the same time...?
Hypertext: research, creativity, interaction, network access, interpretive
con-structures, pedagogy, delivery systems...
Virtual reality (text-based versions): are these unprecedented, network-based
mini-societies to be thought of as escapist utopias, as realtime scale models of
social-evolution processes, as participatory fictions? Can they be considered
art/fiction/SF/fantasy/game/simulation? How do they integrate into the
virtual society of Internet? How do Inter-Relay Chat networks integrate into
the virtual society of the Internet?
Modifications in the epistemology of "text" (and other arts): What happens to
concepts like sensation, association and imagination when "performance"
incorporates audience participation? Mixtures, compounds, intersections of the
above: e.g., bibliographic overload within research specialties; transnational
(textual) databases that will become world-scale archives/ memory banks,
thereby providing cultural roots that transcend ethnic-linguistic boundaries;
the implications of interactive hypertext "documents" for issues of
intellectual property, primacy, and privacy.
[Digression/segue: If you would like to arrange a cluster of essays in any of
these realms, or on other subjects, or feel like suggesting a collaborative
piece, we encourage you to do so. Our format should make it easy to share
responsibility for organizing "threads" of comment and controversy. We have
already devoted one issue to a response to another issue [\V1N2-1\], and can
easily keep several threads going at the same time. One experiment we'd like
to try is a hypertext issue (or thread) that would be written using the
"Storyspace" hypertext engine and BinHex protocols for distribution for readers
with access to Macintosh hardware. But we will need a special editor to put it
together.]
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PERSONNEL
This brings us to _EJournal_'s staff and procedures. Who edits a "special
issue"? There is no checklist of qualifications; if there is a subject you
think the journal should address, please think about who could write the
essay(s) you want, and inquire about preparing a special issue or sequence.
Who gets to be a consulting editor? Not exactly anyone, but all subscribers
are invited to volunteer; we settled on a panel of about 20 members as
manageable cluster. The time may come when we'll seek some kind of balance, or
even representation of specialized interests, and from time to time
individuals will want to leave the panel, so I have started asking volunteers
to provide an outline of their expertise. But the "waiting list" of potential
consulting editors is not long. Do not hesitate to express your interest.
The panel of consulting editors is asked to read the submissions that I think
might interest our (imagined) audience. I synthesize the comments from the
panelists who respond, and communicate with the authors. So far, not even half
of the proposed or submitted essays have been sent out for reading, and we have
published about half of those. When everything works out, Ron Bangel and I set
up and distribute an issue.
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ANCIENT HISTORY
_EJournal_ got started with this announcement in October, 1989.
"I propose starting a refereed electronic journal for discussing relationships
among electronic media and "texts" of all sorts.
"Electronic texts are not yet considered academic "publications." They are not
likely to be looked at in the course of deliberations about tenure and
promotion. This can be attributed, in part, to a latent, unchallenged
premise--a default assumption--that ideas aren't quite real until they have
been printed and bound and received in the mail. Another factor may be the
deliberate informality of the exchanges on computer networks. Perhaps most
restraining is awareness of how pushy it would be to put forward "ideas" whose
merit remained unacknowledged by one's peers. But an edited and refereed
"paperless" journal, one devoted to electronic texts and the implications of
the medium, would stand a good chance of acquiring legitimacy even if (and
perhaps because) it appeared principally on-line. What's more, network
communications ought to permit speedy exchange of submitted texts; reading,
critiquing, revising and distributing ought to happen faster than with
paperbound media.
"Here are a few of the subjects we imagine might be discussed on the screens of
a forum called *BIT.TXT* or *NET.TXT*. Please imagine each of these "headings"
and listed items intersecting with other items and headings to generate other
subjects.
"MEDIA: digitized information: visual, audial, alphanumeric; disks, CDs,
networks; micros and minis and mainframes (including parallel processors,
neural networks); hypertext, relational databases, spread sheets... GENRES:
essays, fiction (interactive, aleatoric...), drama, ethnography, criticism,
memoranda, committee writing, satire... SUBJECTS: education (distance
learning, collaboration...); cultural evolution; intellectual history;
futurology; semiotic and information theory; technology and literature and
theory and criticism; index/filter/categorization/abstraction approaches to
overloads of information... PROFESSION/DISCIPLINE: role of journals;
marginalizing of technophiles; pedagogy; psycho/socio/eco implications of it
all...
"If there's enough interest and advice forthcoming in response to this
announcement, we will revise it and then solicit submissions and promulgate
procedures."
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OTHER HISTORY
By the fall of 1990 we had a good start on an Advisory Board and a multi-
disciplinary group of Consulting Editors. Our first issue was sent in
March 1991. By December 1991 we had distributed \V1N2\, \V1N2-1\, and \V1N3\.
This issue of March 1992 is \V2N1\. We expect acknowledgment of Copyright
registration of \V1N1\ from the Library of Congress any month now. It looks as
if _EJournal_ is launched. Welcome aboard.
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About letters:
_EJournal_ is willing publish letters to the editor. But at this point we make
no promises about how many, which ones, or what format. Because the "Letters"
column of a periodical is a habit of the paper environment, we can't predict
exactly what will happen in pixel space. For instance, _EJournal_ readers can
send outraged objections to our essays directly to the authors. Also, we can
publish substantial counterstatements as articles in their own right, or as
"Supplements." Even so, there will probably be some brief, thoughtful
statements that appear to be of interest to many subscribers. When there are,
they will appear as "Letters."
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About reviews:
_EJournal_ is willing to publish reviews of almost anything that seems to fit
under our broad umbrella: the implications of electronic networks and texts.
We do not solicit and cannot provide review copies of fiction, prophecy,
critiques, other texts, programs, hardware, lists or bulletin boards. But if
you would like to bring any publicly available information to our readers'
attention, send your review (any length) to us, or ask if writing one sounds to
us like a good idea.
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About "supplements":
_EJournal_ plans to experiment with ways of revising, responding to, re-
working, or even retracting the texts we publish. Authors who want to address
a subject already broached --by others or by themselves-- may send texts,
preferably brief, that we will consider publishing under the "Supplements"
heading. Proposed "supplements" will not go through full, formal editorial
review. Whether this "Department" will operate like a delayed-reaction
bulletin board or like an expanded letters-to-the-editor space, or whether it
will be withdrawn in favor of a system of appending supplemental material to
archived texts, or will take on an electronic identity with no direct print-
oriented analogue, will depend on what readers/writers make of the opportunity.
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About _EJournal_:
_EJournal_ is an all-electronic, Bitnet/Internet distributed, peer-reviewed,
academic periodical. We are particularly interested in theory and practice
surrounding the creation, transmission, storage, interpretation, alteration and
replication of electronic text. We are also interested in the broader social,
psychological, literary, economic and pedagogical implications of
computer-mediated networks. The journal's essays will be available free to
Bitnet/Internet addresses. Recipients may make paper copies; _EJournal_ will
provide authenticated paper copy from our read-only archive for use by academic
deans or others. Individual essays, reviews, stories-- texts --sent to us will
be disseminated to subscribers as soon as they have been through the editorial
process, which will also be "paperless." We expect to offer access through
libraries to our electronic Contents, Abstracts, and Keywords, and to be
indexed and abstracted in appropriate places.
Writers who think their texts might be appreciated by _EJournal_'s audience are
invited to forward files to EJOURNAL@ALBANY.BITNET . If you are wondering
about starting to write a piece for to us, feel free to ask if it sounds
appropriate. There are no "styling" guidelines; we would like to be a little
more direct and lively than many paper publications, and less hasty and
ephemeral than most postings to unreviewed electronic spaces. We read ASCII.
Each issue's "feature article," and those from other issues of _EJournal_, are
now available from a Fileserver at Albany. We plan to distribute a "table of
contents" to a broad population occasionally, along with instructions for
downloading. A list of available files from the _EJournal_ Fileserv may be
obtained by sending the message INDEX EJRNL to this address:
LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET . To "get" one of the files in the EJRNL Listserv,
send the message GET <filename> to LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET .
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Board of Advisors: Stevan Harnad, Princeton University
Dick Lanham, University of California at Los Angeles
Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries
Joe Raben, City University of New York
Bob Scholes, Brown University
Harry Whitaker, University of Quebec at Montreal
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Consulting Editors - April 1992
ahrens@hartford John Ahrens Hartford
ap01@liverpool.ac.uk Stephen Clark Liverpool
crone@cua Tom Crone Catholic University
dabrent@uncamult Doug Brent Calgary
djb85@albnyvms Don Byrd Albany
donaldson@loyvax Randall Donaldson Loyola College
ds001451@ndsuvm1 Ray Wheeler North Dakota
eng006@unoma1 Marvin Peterson Nebraska - Omaha
erdt@pucal Terry Erdt Purdue Calumet
fac_aska@jmuvax1 Arnie Kahn James Madison
folger@yktvmv Davis Foulger IBM - Watson Center
george@gacvax1 G. N. Georgacarakos Gustavus Adolphus
geurdes@rulfsw. Han Geurdes Leiden
leidenuniv.nl
gms@psuvm Gerry Santoro Pennsylvania State University
nrcgsh@ritvax Norm Coombs Rochester Institute of Technology
pmsgsl@ritvax Patrick M. Scanlon Rochester Institute of Technology
r0731@csuohio Nelson Pole Cleveland State
ryle@urvax Martin Ryle Richmond
twbatson@gallua Trent Batson Gallaudet
usercoop@ualtamts Wes Cooper Alberta
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University at Albany Computing Services Center:
Isabel Nirenberg, Bob Pfeiffer; Ben Chi, Director
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Editor: Ted Jennings, English, University at Albany
Managing Editor: Ron Bangel, University at Albany
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State University of New York University Center at Albany Albany, NY 12222 USA
