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EJournal Volume 01 Number 02
From LISTSERV@uacsc2.albany.edu Tue Jan 5 16:00:13 1993
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May 1991 _EJournal_ Volume 1 Issue 2 ISSN 1054-1055
An Electronic Journal concerned with the implications
of electronic networks and texts.
University at Albany, State University of New York
ejournal@albnyvms.bitnet
There are 506 lines in this issue.
CONTENTS:
Editorial 48 lines.
by Ted Jennings
Re/View of _Writing Space_ 277 lines.
by Joe Amato
Department of English
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
DEPARTMENTS:
Letters (policy) 11 lines.
Reviews (policy) 11 lines.
Supplements to previous texts (policy) 12 lines.
Information about _EJournal_ (subscribing, etc.) 45 lines.
PEOPLE:
Board of Advisors
Consulting Editors
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This electronic publication and its contents are (c) copyright 1991 by
_EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give away the journal and its
contents, but no one may "own" it. Any and all financial interest is hereby
assigned to the acknowledged authors of individual texts. This notification
must accompany all distribution of _EJournal_.
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E D I T O R I A L [line 1]
This issue's principal text is an essay-review of a book about
electronic writing and hypertext, phenomena that have drawn some people
into a kind of euphoria whence they uncritically celebrate our
"revolutionary new medium." Joe Amato is concerned about what he calls
"the dark side" of this electronic playland; his note of skepticism
establishes a context for some questions about _EJournal_'s role in this
medium -- and euphoria.
Our masthead says that we are "concerned with the implications
of electronic networks and texts." I suppose we aim to be informed
kibitzers, alternately enthusiastic and skeptical, watching this novel
version of community evolve. But we're not quite sure how best to to
play that role, or even if that's the role we should undertake; we would
like to hear from readers about your sense of what we should be doing.
The consulting editors and advisors and I are talking back and
forth among ourselves about our "purposes," are debating the best ways
to work toward them, and we'd like to have you join the conversation.
As background, here's where _EJournal_ began:
All-electronic (no distribution on paper);
Refereed, peer-reviewed, "scholarly";
Concerned with electronic networks and texts;
Essentially "free."
There was an unexamined assumption lurking in these beginnings:
_EJournal_ would resemble the journals that represent conventional
academic disciplines and departments.
Wrong.
It has gradually become vividly clear, excruciatingly clear,
that there is no academic space for _EJournal_ to represent. We have no
automatic, self-defined "constituency." What we do have is some 350
subscribers, networkers who dwell near the middle of a "field" that may
someday have a name but probably will not settle into a conventional,
3-D "home."
In this context, then, let me urge you, as one of the early
subscribers, to help us develop _EJournal_'s attitudes and policies.
Here are a few specific questions. Please send your ideas about
them or other matters to
EJournal@AlbnyVMS .
1) What does / should constitute "scholarship" in this "field"?
2) How closely should we try to emulate the format, regularity,
and other conventions of printed journals?
3) How would you like to see our "purpose," our editorial
policies, defined?
4) What "subjects" or "issues" should we be bringing up?
What should we stay away from? (What interests you, what bores you?)
Thank you.
TedJennings [l.48]
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A RE/VIEW OF BOLTER'S _WRITING SPACE_ [line 1]
by Joe Amato
Department of English
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
_Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing_,
Jay David Bolter, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991, 258 pp.
"Because the subject of this printed book is the coming of the
electronic book," Jay David Bolter writes in his Preface to his timely
and important text, "I have found it particularly difficult to organize
my text in an appropriate manner -- appropriate, that is, to the printed
page." Perhaps as a consequence, *I* have found it particularly
difficult to render a fair account of Bolter's text, a text that exists
both in book form and as a hypertext. Having read the text in codex
format initially, I have chosen to discuss that version, not the
Macintosh - Storyspace diskette. And I have opted to consider the book
itself in light of this new paradigm of writing, a paradigm that informs
both the material practices and specificities peculiar to "electronic
writing." It is also a paradigm which -- if we take Bolter at his word
-- is effecting a conversion of culture away from the "unification"
implicit in "high culture" to that of a potentially global "network of
interest groups" (233) -- an interconnected but fragmented global
village. [l. 24]
In discussing this intriguing book, I want to examine the darker
implications of Bolter's argument, the ways in which electronic media
and network technologies could end up constraining human consciousness
and culture by splintering and isolating both groups and individuals. I
want to resist, for the sake of this re/view, the kind of evangelistic
euphoria evident in Bolter's frank assertion that he decided to "remain
the advocate, to argue rather cheerfully that the computer is a
revolution in writing" (ix).
First, however, a brief account of the book's structure is in
order, beginning with the following rough outline:
Introduction - Chapter 1
Part I The Visual Writing Space (Chapters 2 - 5)
Part II The Conceptual Writing Space (Chapters 6 - 9)
Part III The Mind as a Writing Space (Chapters 10 - 14)
As one can see, Bolter's text is divided into three main
sections, plus a cogently argued and highly engaging Introduction that
whets the reader's appetite. Part I, "The Visual Writing Space,"
discusses the technological embeddedness of various writing practices,
>from stone tablets to ancient papyrus to medieval codex to the
"Gutenberg Galaxy," including brief and informative forays into
hypertext and hypermedia. Bolter is perhaps on firmest footing here,
and his careful, lucid style makes for a highly persuasive,
historically-grounded analysis that will be hard to dispute. This is
the part of the book that those of us with even a modest interest in the
impact of electronic media on writing will want to surreptitiously slip
under the office doors of our Mont Blanc- or Smith-Corona- bound
colleagues. Whatever minor lapses one notes in the early chapters --
such as the somewhat reductive assertion in the Introduction that, "In
the act of writing, the writer externalizes his or her thoughts" (11) --
they are one-by-one accounted for as Bolter proceeds with the
implications of his argument; he writes later, for instance, that
"writing need not give voice to anything" (45). Again, I regard this
less as contradiction than as a progressive refinement of his argument,
though some may feel that I am being a bit generous here. [l. 62]
Part II, "The Conceptual Writing Space," begins by tracing the
ways in which the age-old conception of the "world-book" is shaped and
constrained by particular technologies of writing, including, of course,
electronic print. In Chapter 8, "Interactive Fiction," Bolter
introduces the reader to Michael Joyce's hyperfiction, "Afternoon"
(1987), and it is here, I believe, that many readers will find
themselves beginning to resist the implications of Bolter's argument.
In such interactive fictions, ordinary distinctions between writer and
reader begin to blur. Readers are allowed to make (finite) choices
about what to read next even as they proceed through interactive texts,
choices that control the sequencing of the text itself. Thus there is
really no fixed text, at least from the point of view of the
reader-cum-writer (shall we simply write "wreader"?), and yet the (deep)
structure of the "original" text would seem to be immutable. One is
reluctant, at first, to think of a text as both immutable and
ever-changing.
Having had the opportunity to toy both with Bolter's hypertext
and Joyce's "Afternoon," I can attest to that ambivalence with which one
may well confront such emerging writing technologies; clicking away with
my mouse, I began to feel a bit like a mouse in a labyrinth, sniffing my
way to the site of an elusive hunk of Brie or, better still, Swiss.
Bolter does point to Sterne, (James) Joyce, and Borges as literary
precursors to interactive fiction; it is also evident, in these
postmodern times, that the idea of a "fixed" text could be labelled a
"reductivist interpretive construct." These considerations
notwithstanding, interactive fiction *does* encourage a more
disjunctive, less linear, more casual (hence less causal), ostensibly
more open-ended textual experience -- *provided*, that is, that readers
are willing to modify their expectations regarding "text," and aside
>from the sort of rethinking which will invariably characterize the
*writer's* response to this new medium. [l. 95]
In Chapter 9, "Critical Theory and the New Writing Space,"
Bolter's chief concern would seem to be to substantiate his claim that
"Not only reader-response and spatial-form but even the most radical of
theorists (Barthes, de Man, Derrida, and their American followers) speak
a language that is strikingly appropriate to electronic writing" (161).
Bolter's point is that electronic text moots many of the critical
concerns of the last two decades; as he puts it, specifically with
regard to deconstruction, "The deconstructionists seek to disturb, to
alienate, to dislocate, and so by embracing the techniques of
deconstruction, electronic writing seems in a playful way to subvert the
whole project" (164). I really can't do justice within *my* somewhat
limited writing space either to the nuances of contemporary critical
theory or to Bolter's rebuke that current critical bugbears are somewhat
beside the point. However, I am quite certain that Bolter will be taken
to task in this portion of his text by a number of cultural critics --
Marxist, feminist, what have you. And I am also quite certain that
Bolter's unasked rhetorical question --"The question is whether the
deconstruction of an electronic text seems worth the effort" -- and what
would appear to be *his* answer -- "In fact, an electronic text is not
hostile to criticism: it incorporates criticism into itself" (165) --
reveal his complicity in the euphoria referred to above, his otherwise
ambivalent tone notwithstanding. The past two decades of critical
inquiry, for better or for worse, are not about to be dismissed so
readily, regardless the sorts of changes being wrought by the coming of
hypermedia. [l. 121]
And yet it is to Bolter's credit that his text does not end here.
Almost as if he has sensed the provisional and somewhat facile nature of
his critique, he devotes Part III of his text to "The Mind as Writing
Space." Beginning in Part I with the more material, visual aspects of
writing, then, he moved on to consider in Part II metaphorical and
fictional constructions. He concludes with a discussion in Part III of
the ways in which the symbolic representation of mind (the cognivists'
version of "subject," "self," "agent," "identity") in AI research
reflects a new form of cultural transmission, figuratively and
literally.
Chapters 12 and 13, "Writing the Mind" and "Writing Culture,"
warrant a few specific remarks. It seems to be a foregone conclusion
today that any discussion of semiotics -- the study of those signs and
symbols with which we humans construct our cultures, our societies,
hence our collective sense of ourselves -- will of necessity invoke some
aspect of that most prolific polymath pragmatist of late last century,
Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce's concept of the "man-sign" figures
mightily in Bolter's formulation; in the subsection entitled "A New
Republic of Letters," Bolter extrapolates Peirce's notion to assert that
"For the new readers and writers, the human mind itself becomes a text
to be fashioned and explored according to the principles of the
electronic writing space" (206). A new writing space, then, heralds a
new text, a new mind. Bolter's subsection headings give one an idea of
the discursive sweep of this portion of his text: "The textual mind";
"The intentional gap"; "Perception and semiosis"; "Virtual reality";
"Cultural unity"; "Cultural literacy"; and "The electronic hiding
place." I found these final subsections to be particularly cursory,
even hasty at times; "intentionality" is perhaps too sticky to be
relegated to a discussion of approximately four pages, and Bolter's
gloss of Hirsch's _Cultural Literacy_, (and his casual reference to what
has since become its companion piece, Allan Bloom's jeremiad) fails to
account for the messy relationship between knowledge and the uses to
which such knowledge is put, a problematic inherent in any such attempt
to establish a measure of "literacy" -- which leads me, full circle, to
my opening remarks, my concern as to the "darker" implications of this
"late age of print." My reservations begin with the sort of structural
movement I have just outlined. [l. 160]
As I have suggested, Bolter's text appears to become more and
more diffuse as one nears his Conclusion (as does, some might argue,
this re/view). Note that his major conceptual transitions, the three
parts of his text, each utilize a spatial framing metaphor -- qualified
by "visual," "conceptual," or "mind" -- and in this way replicate
reflexively the notion that what is at stake is indeed a new "writing
space." Yet the mind is, as Bolter would have it, itself best
represented by the symbolic modeling of mind *via* this new writing
space; that is, the mind is modeled after the simulation, a simulation
whose electronic medium itself is likewise used to orient *his
discussion* along specific, spatially-conceived coordinates. Bolter's
text, then, represents an attempt to reproduce a curious sort of
designed space, a space out of which emerges both electronic text and,
albeit in printed format, the structural conditions requisite to such
text.
This is spatial space, in other words. It is space, however
mutable and fluctuating, that is assigned the mutual functions of, A)
representing (or "simulating"), and B) creating the latticework for such
simulation. It might be thought of as a cognitivist version of *mental*
space (and an interesting reworking of one of Kant's categorical
imperatives). Thus, in representing the new (electronic) writing space,
the old (scribal) writing space has begun to exhibit the effects of its
own dislocation. Little wonder, then, that Bolter's argument should
begin to spin off, fragment into hypercultural "aphorisms." (In this
context, we can note his related remark about the "aphoristic rather than
periodic" nature of electronic text, ix.) Given this fragmentation, and
with the model having become the motive, there is no ostensible means of
providing for conceptual feedback. Or is there? [l. 190]
I would argue that Bolter, for all his attention to the work of
novelists such as Joyce (of both varieties), gives relatively short
shrift to several (late-) print-age techniques that might well have
provided his final section with a bit more oomph (and, I suspect, might
well have made it that much more difficult for him to locate a
publisher). Specifically, had he broken with sentence/paragraph
structure -- even within his print-bound format -- the resulting
*aesthetic* reflexivity could, I think, have avoided what must otherwise
be read as a sort of tacit irony, the irony implicit in having to use
print for a discussion of un-printable technologies. While the move to
hypertext and hypermedia cannot be simulated on the printed page, it
does not thereby follow that the only way to address such technologies
is through the linear, prosaic essay that characterizes, even in today's
intellectual climate, most scholarly endeavor. And though it might be
objected that this would surely serve to marginalize Bolter's text even
more, it is nonetheless the case that the text as it now stands,
especially its final portion, may be subject to a harsher re/view than I
have indicated. In effect, and in all good conscience, I am a bit
dismayed that Bolter did not work harder to make good on his claim that
electronic text "incorporates criticism within itself" by rendering a
more aesthetically informed account of this project *in print.* And
given that all aesthetic impulses imply corresponding ideological
assumptions, this leads me to a final reservation. [l. 214]
No critic of the nineties can afford to ignore the consequences
of taking for granted one's ethnicity, gender, economic class, etc. (Yes
-- it's almost a platitude by now). One person's meat is indeed the
vegetarian's poison, and the individual, as many of us now recognize,
may no longer presume to speak for the many, for we each owe our
individual predilections and beliefs to our social birthrights (and
wrongs), in combination with luck, circumstance, genetics, and so forth;
hence the network culture that Bolter describes may be a good thing in
that it makes evident this fact by imposing specific, albeit incredibly
multitudinous, choices from the outset -- who actually *is* capable of
speaking to whom, what choices one actually has in the midst of an
interactive fiction, where one actually ends up situating one's self.
But all of this talk of networking is occurring at a time when the
various global (and national) villages have shown themselves either
unwilling or incapable of dismissing specific cultural imperatives -- in
many cases, justifiably so -- and it is as yet far from clear that
networking may not itself merely represent a further trivializing of
human experience, a way of de-tuning the political consciousness of
groups of individuals, if only non-conspiratorially. Bolter is, of
course, aware of this; he writes, for instance, that even though
"hypertext has become the social ideal," enabling a heretofore
unprecedented "freedom of choice," it is likewise the case that "for
many Americans this ultimate freedom is not available" (233). But
"freedom of choice" of the sort Bolter suggests -- what he refers to
parenthetically as the ability to "rewrite one's life story" -- often
obscures the narrative tensions implicit in social and institutional
realities, aestheticizing lived, and felt, experience in what might be
merely the *illusion* of writing one's own destiny -- a theme park with
no admission, no way to write oneself out of the black-and-white box.
And if this is what is to constitute a new culture, and a new form of
literacy, each of us may find ourselves at some point unable to re/view
the ideological consequences inherent in such apparent
self-authorization, falling into our network niches as singular
splinters with little hope of ever recognizing the structure itself --
both trees *and* forest. [l. 250]
Bolter's text, finally, is a text that demands a critical
reading and, I think, re/reading. It is provocative, useful, and --
unlike many such accounts of new technologies -- sensitive to its
limitations, however much my remarks might indicate otherwise. To use
an entirely outmoded style of analysis, I would say that Bolter's tone
-- his self-avowed "ambivalence" -- is that of a writer who has just
discovered that he has written himself out of a job. But it may simply
be that Bolter's job -- each of our jobs -- now requires retooling,
hence a rewriting of our already comprehensive job descriptions. All
scholars, in fact, are going to have to give some serious thought to
whether or not we can afford to resist the types of changes in print
technology Bolter discusses, to consider whether, in the wake of these
changes, such resistance indeed accommodates the interests and needs of
our colleagues or of our students. Personally, I find resistance a
helpful strategy once I know what it is I am resisting. As in
confronting all ultimately *social* technologies, the question becomes
one of participation in the development of an active and informed
community of teachers, writers, thinkers; in this case, a community
(inter) connected in real time both on an experiential and intellectual
plane with extra-academic communities -- simply and fashionably
put,*networked.* In the absence of such a community, how might we
mitigate less sanguine, and more disciplinary, consequences?
Joe Amato jamato@ux1.cso.uiuc.EDU
Department of English
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [l. 277]
[ This essay in Volume 1 Issue 2 of _EJournal_ (May, 1991) is (c)
copyright _EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give it away.
_EJournal_ hereby assigns any and all financial interest to Joe Amato.
This note must accompany all copies of this text. ]
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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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Reviews:
_EJournal_ is willing to publish reviews of almost anything that seems
to fit under our broad umbrella: the implications of electronic networks
and texts. At this point we are still hoping to review a hypertext
novel, and have no other works-- electronic or printed --under
consideration. We do not solicit and cannot provide review copies of
fiction, prophecy, critiques, other texts, programs, hardware, lists or
bulletin boards. But if you would like to bring any publicly available
information to our readers' attention, send your review (any length) to
us, or ask if writing one sounds to us like a good idea.
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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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Information about _EJournal_:
Users on both Bitnet and the Internet may subscribe to _EJournal_ by
sending an E-mail message to this address:
listserv@albnyvm1.bitnet
The following should be the only line in the message:
SUB EJRNL Subscriber's Name
Please send all other messages and inquiries to the _EJournal_ editors
at the following address:
ejournal@albnyvms.bitnet
_EJournal_ is an all-electronic, Bitnet/Internet distributed,
peer-reviewed, academic periodical. We are particularly interested in
theory and praxis surrounding the creation, transmission, storage,
interpretation, alteration and replication of electronic text. We are
also interested in the broader social, psychological, literary, economic
and pedagogical implications of computer-mediated networks.
The journal's essays will be available free to Bitnet/Internet
addresses. Recipients may make paper copies; _EJournal_ will provide
authenticated paper copy from our read-only archive for use by academic
deans or others. Individual essays, reviews, stories-- texts --sent to
us will be disseminated to subscribers as soon as they have been through
the editorial process, which will also be "paperless." We expect to
offer access through libraries to our electronic Contents, Abstracts,
and Keywords, and to be indexed and abstracted in appropriate places.
Writers who think their texts might be appreciated by
_EJournal_'s audience are invited to forward files to
ejournal@albnyvms.bitnet . If you are wondering about starting to write
a piece for to us, feel free to ask if it sounds appropriate. There are
no "styling" guidelines; we would like to be a little more direct and
lively than many paper publications, and less hasty and ephemeral than
most postings to unreviewed electronic spaces.
Some subscribers may notice that we had to make up an incorrect
name for you when we moved our original distribution list to the
Listserv utility. You can change it to whatever you want by sending the
SUB message (above), using the name you prefer.
This issue's "feature article," and those from other issues of
_EJournal_, will eventually be available from a Fileserv at Albany. We
plan to distribute a "table of contents" to a broad population
occasionally, along with instructions for downloading.
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Board of Advisors: Dick Lanham, University of California at Los Angeles
Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries
Joe Raben, City University of New York
Bob Scholes, Brown University
Harry Whitaker, University of Quebec at Montreal
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Consulting Editors - May 1991 - [North American addresses are at Bitnet sites.]
ahrens@hartford John Ahrens Hartford
ap01@liverpool.ac.uk Stephen Clark Liverpool
crone@cua Tom Crone Catholic University
dabrent@uncamult Doug Brent Calgary
djb85@albnyvms Don Byrd Albany
donaldson@loyvax Randall Donaldson Loyola College
ds001451@ndsuvm1 Ray Wheeler North Dakota
eng006@unoma1 Marvin Peterson Nebraska - Omaha
erdt@vuvaxcom Terry Erdt Villanova
fac_aska@jmuvax1 Arnie Kahn James Madison
folger@yktvmv Davis Foulger IBM - Watson Center
george@gacvax1 G. N. Georgacarakos Gustavus Adolphus
geurdes@rulfsw.
leidenuniv.nl Han Geurdes Leiden
gms@psuvm Gerry Santoro Pennsylvania State University
jtsgsh@ritvax John Sanders Rochester Institute of Technology
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, Kathy Turek; 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
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