Nelson’s Dream Machines (1968-70), Bolter’s “Seeing and Writing” and “Writing as Technology,” Lanham’s “The Electronic Word” (1989), Bush’s “As We May Think” (1945), Edison’s “To-Do-List,” MITH’s “Vintage computer collection,” and Griffin’s “Turing Test Breakthrough” (2014).
Usefulness: Nelson’s work (and I simply have to get the whole book now) informs my work directly. His connecting of concerns, visions, and arguments regarding education with those regarding computer graphic design exist only briefly in the excerpts here, but the rich possibilities of some of his claims to the design of computer “environments” for pedagogical purposes resonate beautifully with me.
He dismisses the potential explicitly, though: “My special concern, all too tightly framed here, is the use of computers to help people write, think and show. But I think presentation by computer is a branch of show biz and writing, not of psychology, engineering or pedagogy” (306).
Nelson’s narrow treatment of education may inform his choice here to dismiss pedagogical potential in the designing of computer graphical spaces.
Throughout these works, actually, I think the clearest message coming through is how limiting it is to “translate” analog processes and understandings into “fantic” (I hate that term!) environments. The Bolter pieces, and the Lanham piece, seem quite constrained by the lenses of “alphabetic text production”… They are very interesting histories of the evolution of print text and how digitized text emerges as part of that history. Lanham’s focus on the effect of “losing the book” or the substantial, material aspects of “the book,” on literary studies, and artistic creation in general, is quite interesting. I think, though, it lacks the prescience of a Bush and a Nelson and this disturbs me a bit…
Another term unifying these works is “transparency.” These authors “see” transparency both as a goal—Lanham: “And this unselfconscious transparency has become a stylistic, one might almost say a cultural, ideal for Western civilization. The best style is the style not noticed; the best manners, the most unobtrusive; convincing behavior spontaneous and unselfconscious” (3)—and as a potential danger—Nelson: “The trap is that we so easily lose sight of arbitrariness and even stupidity of design, and live with it when it could be so much better, because of this psychological melding” (323).
Alexander & Rhodes, Jody Shipka, Berthoff, Maria Montessori … all identify as pedagogical goals “fleshing out” the transparent, meta-cognitive awareness. The idea is that awareness conjures the potential for control, “intelligent” control.
I am struck by the Montessorian implications of several of Nelson’s claims:
“The greater task is to design overall computer media that will last us into a more intelligent future” (325). ***Montessori promotes the goal of education as being “a more intelligent future” for the human race.
“Our goal should be nothing less than REPRESENTING THE TRUE CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF HUMAN THOUGHT. (Yes, Dream Machines indeed.) But it should be something more: enabling the mind to weigh, pursue, synthesize and evaluate ideas for a better tomorrow. Or for any at all” (327). *** This is a Montessorian values system—not stopping at the former, in all caps, but that “something more.” And it identifies implicitly the “new” role of the teacher/guide/designer.
I note that the “content and structure of human thought” is pretty much the substance orienting the visions of V. Bush. The movement expressed in the “something more” aspect of the above passage shifts importance to individual (away from collective and collection, and more toward human use of information)…
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My notes and questions from the Bolter readings… These seem tightly constrained by an alpha-textual, conventional schooled, English bias:
“Our technical relationship with the writing space is always with us as readers and writers” (16).
How is writing “ a more fragile device” than pen/paper? (17)
“The materiality of writing matters…” Bolster, writing as technology (17)
How else does “Electronic writing still requires our physical interactions with…materials”? (18)
“The electronic writing space may seem to be severed from the material world in a way that the space of print was not” (19).
How do Web pages “react”? What is meant…
Warnings against “technological determinism” (19).
Missing in this article is a sense of systems and the forces (deterministic) that shape cultures… Does our culture “choose” commercial and self-promotional? (20)
(21) Issues of linearity: Does tech problematize the linearity of print text?
“remediation is a process of cultural competition between or among technologies” (22).
(25) “Hypermediacy”—making the medium really apparent (not transparent)
(26) “When one medium sets out to remediate another, it does so by claiming to do a better job”
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Bolter’s Seeing and Writing….
- “Although writing is visual, the appreciation of the visual aspects of it competes with understanding what is written…” (I don’t understand why this is necessarily so…)
“This attitude was appropriate to the age of print because printing reduced each letter in a text to a visual minimum” (2). What does this mean? Japanese?
Again this issue of transparency…. typography
“The precision of the machine now replaced the organic beauty of the handwritten page” (680).
Interesting how little typography has changed….
“If the trend in the age of print has been to make the visual symbol simple, unornamented, and mathematically precise, a backlash developed in the 19th century led by William Morris, who distrusted mechanization in almost any form” (681).
“The irony is that these nostalgic books could only have been produced in the Industrial Age: the precision of his Chaucer was greater than was possible in a Renaissance printed book or a medieval manuscript” (681)… What is meant by “precision”? Value? Ideology here?
“The word processor is an attempt to harness the computer in the service of the older technology of print, and the word processor’s presentation of text is nostalgic, in that it looks back to the aesthetic criteria of the printing press” (681). **”word processor” is now difficult to distinguish?
“They mix elements from the whole history of typography, often without any sense of propriety or proportion. Professional graphic artists can lodge a similar complaint: bit-mapped personal computers permit untrained users to indulge in a riot of graphic design. Often it is graphic design appropriate to the printed brochure or the billboard rather than the computer screen” (681). “There is an inevitable degeneration in the quality of typography and graphics in the new electronic writing space…” value judgement
Seems like this is speaking through a very narrow lens… which one?
Aesthetic: an economic value
“Printers have always understood their role as craftsmen, and their guilds, which served to protect their aesthetic as well as the economic prerogatives, remained strong until the middle of the 20th century. “ (682)
grappling with impermanence?
“The computer introduces a new degree of mathematical rigor in the design of letter forms themselves. “
“Computer typography reduces the writing space to a Cartesian plane, in which every letter is determined by a set of numbered lines or points. It is the triumph of the mathematization of writing that never quite succeeded in the era of mechanical printing.”
“Perfection is still defined in terms established by printers in the 15th and 16th centuries—as the clean, crisp, static image that occupies the monumental writing space of ink on paper.”
“And many typographers would agree that the decisions of layout all flow from the letter. The printing press is really a letter processor” (683)…**I find the “word” bias strange and disorienting …
***In the digital age is the “new” currency attention? What is on the page is constantly purposed to capture attention, and compete for it…
(686)… Still no mention of Asiatic languages and writing…
Kristen says
I found Bolter to be a little off-putting for the reasons you mention…the works seemed very English literature-y in that there was a deep vein of conservatism and print-privilege. One particularly confounding passage that I noted on 690. “The same holds
for writers who seek to animate any verbal or graphic text in
the computer. They must envision what the reader will see at
each moment and how that view will accord with what comes
before and after. Authors in print or manuscript must also
conceive of their text as unfolding in time, but they have little
control of the reader’s pace. The electronic author who chooses
to animate must bear greater responsibility for the reader’s
temporal experience, because he or she can regulate the flow of
text and images on the screen.”
Why is the onus of responsibility so heavy for the author of animated words–it does seem that Bolter only speaks of animated words, not images, although the article’s date makes that somewhat forgivable. There is also an invective passage on pages 681-682 which laments the “freedom without professionalism” that electronic word processing allows everyone.
I guess this whole piece–actually, most of these readings, simply confuse me. Why would the democratizing effects of new media ever be seen as a bad thing? I always think of Aristotle as primarily conservative in his guidelines for rhetoric. Maybe we are just seeing that recapitulated.
PDArrington says
Oh yes! I can’t help wondering if it’s fear of losing status or a sense of value that keeps academics clutching to “old” ways, or unable to see potential in new ways beyond translating the old ways into new mediums.