Kirschenbaum begins his exploration of DH by posing a quote from selfe.  She writes, “As a profession, we are just learning how to live with computers…”.  Whatever the digital humanities are at this point in time does not mean that this definition will continue.  As a number of different candidates for a position in the digital humanities have passed through Clemson, I find myself more confused about what DH “is”. 

Kirchenbaum equates DH to “humanities computing”, which looks a lot like (in some ways?) Katherine Hayles notion of machine reading and Moretti’s ideas of data mining and “distance reading”.  Much of the digital humanities are not concerned with composing new arguments or analyzing any one argument, but rather they are concerned with analyzing an entire corpus or writing code to do analysis for you. 

Perhaps  in the past most of my notions of DH have come from professors who value the digital and employ it in their research and using pedagogy.  But, many of those who have become more familiar to me recently seem to be using DH for more empirical means.  I feel that this should be resisted. 

While it is a given that at some point in time (hopefully?) at least some (more) consensus will be gained about what DH is.  Kirschenbaum explains that because of the openness of many English departments to teaching culture and literature and literacy and many other things aside that DH or some new brand of literacy can fit.  Based on Moretti’s work with DH and distance reading in particular, I can see some utility in the process, but I am very resistant of limiting DH to some particular aspect of the humanities.

As a “new” and often undefined term, digital humanities is an opportunity for scholars to self identify.  Much of my resistance comes from the idea that some scholars would try to keep others off of their “DH” jungle gym because they disagree with the kind of work that they are doing.  I love that a Wikipedia article is cited in this piece.  In other works perhaps that would be less appropriate, but the fact that it works for this work seems important to me.  

From Epic to free verse: poem evolution

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Reading through Franco Morettii’s Graphs, Maps, Trees made me think of the evolution of poems as a form of literary production. In his book, Moretti states that politis plays a major role in the repression of books publishing, and book trade. If one make a chart of the literary production there are other cultural reasons for the rise and down of a certain literary genre. By taking into consideration the factors that may play a role in the changes of the poem form, from the popular long poems and epics to the modern short poems, one can see the parallel process of the development in poetry and technology, which has a direct affect too. For example if we think of the time and environment, old poems tend to be long because they were suitable for the simple life of the time. People had the time to meditate, listen and enjoy such a long production. Unlike the age of printing and the medieval age , where life begun to be more complex, and publishing enabled people to have access to wide range of reading, poets began to write shorter poems that are easier to be published and faster to be read. The following video is a summary of Beowolf epic; it is presented with the help of the new technologies that served to summaries the long poem that is unreliable to be read in our hyper reading age.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SiarUS3ddA&feature=related

            Another thing to be noticed about the poem, is the change of its verse from the dominant theme of being rhymed into the modern free verse. This doesn’t mean the decline of the rhyme, but rather the emergence of a new kind of poems that is free of this condition. The poems were mostly written to be read loudly, that’s why they tend to be musical to the air. But, the modern developing technologies enabled a new kind of poetry to be emerged, and that the aesthetic value of the verse is tend to be in its abstract merits rather than in the form. In this video a poem called Silence is an example of where the poem is going to in the modern life; the poet uses artifact that contains images and music, which helps to illustrate the lines of the poem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wjhqmGlOzI&feature=related
as we see, by relating the word to an image, thepoem is turning into a visual peice that is interesing to be read although it lacks a ristrict rhythmatic  form.

Out with Theory, In with...Literary Historiography?

Upon receiving Graphs, Maps, Trees in the mail at the beginning of the semester, I found myself a bit bothered by the description on the back: “Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead.”  Not exactly music to my English-majory ears.  However, I found that Moretti is presenting another way to learn about literature, and while I continue to have a problem with his push for this quantitative method of study to replace our current methods, I still found what he had to say useful.  In this work, Moretti uses abstract models of things like quantitative history and geography, things that we typically don’t associate with literary criticism but instead provide a “more rational literary history” (4).  As much as I wanted to resist this book full of numbers and maps – two things with which I am particularly inept – Moretti convinced me that it would be worth my while.

First of all, it became clear to me just how limited my scope of “literary knowledge” is.  I’ve spent so much time in English classes studying the canon, learning about the “influential” books and theories that have come to shape my understanding of literature, that I’ve failed to see the grand scheme of things.  What does it really mean to say a book or novel is “influential”? Moretti helped me realize that to make a claim about influence on literature is to put our trust into the remarks and claims of the readers and authors, which is a problem because these people are just as fluctuating and vast as “quantified” literary history is.  Moretti’s use of graphs, maps, and trees lets us see major trends across the whole spectrum of literature.

Yet I still resisted.  Last semester in our Theory & Criticism class, I saw how each new theory to come along claimed to be better than the one before it, always being re-invented as the best lens through which to view literature.  I found myself always wondering, Why do we need to choose one?  For some people, certain theories get them where they need to go, and Moretti’s graphs, maps, and trees get him to a redefinition of literary history and aesthetic form.  I think his method for viewing literature is invaluable to the field of literary studies, but why suggest that it should replace all previous methods and theories?  Moretti writes toward the end of the book,

‘Theories are nets’, wrote Novalis, ‘and only he who casts will catch.’ Yes, theories are nets, and we should evaluate them, not as ends in themselves, but for how they concretely change the way we work: for how they allow us to enlarge the literary field, and re-design it in a better way, replacing the old, useless distinctions…with new temporal, spatial, and morphological distinctions.  (91)

When he puts it that way, I guess I would have to agree.  He doesn’t necessarily want us to continue to use the theory, but would instead have us examine the theory as a thing itself and as a shaper of the quantitative literary history.  It’s kind of neat, really, how Moretti is able to step away from our theory-based literary studies and suggest we have a look at the way our studies have shaped our studies.  It seems an appropriate path of inquiry for those of us looking to keep up with the advancement of literature.

Dis is a gr8 article!

N. Katherine Hayles presents an interesting contrast between close reading of print literature and text and digital reading in her essay entitled "How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine." She argues that close reading is the very practice that gives value to the literary discipline, and it is diminished when one converts to digital reading. This "screen reading of digital materials" creates a problem, particularly among those in junior high up through graduate school, for these individuals are reading printed text less well since their reading skills in general are on the decline (62). This overall idea makes me think of Facebook and other forms of social media where it is commonly accepted, if not expected, to deliberately misspell words and to use improper grammar. (Can I say 'to butcher the English language' on here?) Furthermore, these forms of social media are used as outlets to procrastinate and hinder those individuals from doing real work, from reading actual print literature and doing such close readings that Hayles outlines in her essay. Yet, it is interesting that these various types of social media also include applications on their websites with texts similar to scholarly articles, even texts similar to highly revered (or at least well-known) newspapers. Take, The Washington Post Social Reader, for example. It provides its readers with various topics that one would encounter in the actual newspaper or perhaps CNN. But here's the catch--it is on Facebook. This creates a digital atmosphere for its readers, therefore altering the way the brain reads and processes the information since individuals read in the shape of the letter 'F' when viewing digital texts rather than the traditional z-line. According to Hayles, much information is lost towards the end because viewers are looking more towards the left side of the screen rather than all the way across.

This adoption of newspaper articles--what I would consider more than just mindless reading--on digital interfaces and social media makes me consider Hayles's words in a different sense, reconsidering if at least some, not all, of these articles on the application are not very ingenious. I would never utilize them in an essay, they are not scholarly, I would certainly go to CNN or a more credible source for more information; yet, I still felt like they hold some credibility and would require some thinking. The conclusion I can draw after reading Hayles is that although I would not close-read these articles--or anything on a social media interface, for that matter--the traditional print medium, particularly of literature and scholarly texts, is the better alternative. It allows room for close readings, more thinking, and innovative thought. I believed this all along. Yet, Hayles's article made me realize that there is, in a sense, a dark gray area, and I think this social reader, for example, is one of them.

The art of graphs

Franco Moretti’s Graphs, Maps, and Trees is a book that exemplifies the vast potential of charting texts in the realm of literary criticism.  It seems to me that in the digital humanities this has become an especially interesting area because with the aid of new technologies charting extremely large data sets has become possible.  One interesting comment that Moretti makes involves the importance of group analysis as opposed to individual analysis (4).  He relates this to the reader in terms of historical studies, emphasizing the potential of literary history as a means to heighten critical analyses through the simplified models of graphs, maps, and trees.  This is interesting, and while I do not disagree with Moretti here, it is important to note how imperative it is for a researcher to properly designate these groups if accurate depictions are to be made. 

One way to clarify the importance of accurate and truly representative grouping is to consider the ancient Chinese text, The Art of War.  Originally, this text was comprised of a relatively small number of comments made by the famous Chinese general Sun Tzu, but as the text grew in importance throughout the ages because of its apt teachings on military strategy and leadership, other of China’s well known and successful generals began to add their commentary as well.  Today, copies of The Art of War come with these other generals comments layered in on the pages with Sun Tzu’s original commentary, and the result is an amalgamation of China’s greatest military strategists ideas as they follow and evolve from the original authors.  If one were to graph these generals and to measure their successes in the chart, then it would likely appear that SunTzu’s philosophies were so astute that they have inspired nothing but success.  This is a problem.

The problem is not that so many generals have followed in Sun Tzu’s footsteps by adding to and amending his writings, but since the text has been so influential in terms of its acceptance as a military guidebook (taught in military academies around the world) there have been many unsuccessful generals that have adopted and enacted Sun Tzu’s teachings as well.  If the graph only consisted of those generals included in the work, then a false depiction of the history of Sun Tzu’s strategies would be the product.  This is not so different from any other type of statistical fallacies that are so often encountered in charts of this kind, and it is crucial that those interested in literary research of this kind understand both their subject and statistics.  In the end, I think that Moretti makes good use of his charts and data sets, but if considered closely enough certain fallacies can be found in them as well.  For instance, in his graph of literary genres, in which he tries to chart the emergence and decline of genre types, I’m not so sure that he allows for trend cycles that include the potential for genre comebacks or tapering interests.  This is a definite issue with this type of research, but as the digital humanities progress and technology becomes better at allowing for this kind of confounding variable, accuracy should improve.

Graphing Literary History

Considering Franco Moretti’s Graphs, Maps and Trees, I tried to think of a way in which one of these mechanisms could provide a way for me to better understand the world of literary theory and criticism.  According to Moretti, “all great theories of the novel have precisely reduced the novel to one basic form only (realism, the dialogic, romance, meta-novels…); and if the reduction has given them their elegance and power, it has also erased nine tenths of literary history.  Too much” (30).  This reduction seems particularly problematic because it limits certain texts to critical inquiry within a certain field.  If texts were considered for their social impact at large, rather than their contribution to a specific genre, it seems that there might be more that could be understood about the nature of text, writing and writing on a larger scale.  Widening the scope of critical analysis, then, seems enabled by the graphs proposed by Moretti.

Using graphs might enable critics to think about reading in a way that is not so closely tied with the canon.  Rather than consistently considering the texts which have, for one reason or another, persisted in popularity and continually made the curricula for high school English classes and the syllabi in English college courses, graphs present a way of thinking about reading without specifically considering these canonical texts.  As the canon itself has come under fire given the rise of feminism, civil rights, post colonialism (and any other –ism I am forgetting at present), it seems that only exploring these texts critically is ultimately doing a disservice to the less conventional texts not written exclusively by white men. 

With this thought in mind, I feel that a graph could be applied to Lee Morrissey’s article “Re-reading Reading in Eighteenth-Century Literary Criticism.”  In this article, Morrissey explores the political atmosphere which deemed the acceptability of reading at large as well as the types of text which were tolerable to read at a given moment.  Considering various arguments regarding reading, Morrissey explains differences in opinions which resulted in the changing popularity of reading throughout the eighteenth century.  Discussing Hooke’s stance on reading, Morrissey writes that “For Hooke’s, texts represent the man-made in general; in their dirty irregularities they show ‘the dangers in the process of human reason, the remedies of them all can only proceed from the real, the mechanical, the experimental philosophy’” (166).  Similarly, Morrissey discusses Sprat and Dryden’s aversion to complicated textual passages and “swellings of style” (166).  Morrissey also notes contributions by Locke and Pope, who suggested that words have no natural meaning and that meaning can be garnered through channeling the spirit of the author, respectively. 

With so many opinions on the concept of reading and textual influence, it seems that a graph may be helpful in sketching out the conflicts and comparisons which coincide with publishing and the popularity of books at a given moment in history.  Rather than tracking the popularity of one specific text, looking at the popularity of reading might actually provide some insight into the ways in which politics shape the way that people read as well as the types of texts which are published.  This type of graph seems to have larger political ramifications than does a close of reading of say, Hawthorne.

Judge a Book by Its Cover

A few years ago, one of my good friends was helping me and my wife move into our new apartment and she offered to organize our bookshelf. Being unorganized people who own a lot of books, we were glad to let her do it. Once she was finished, I walked over to the bookshelf curious to see the system of organization she had employed: genre, author, date, etc. After I stared at our books for a few minutes and failed to notice a consistent theme, I turned to our friend and asked her how she had organized them. She said, “aesthetically.” I turned back to the bookshelf and immediately understood. The books were sorted according to color, height, width, and every other detail about a book besides its actual content. On the Road sat next to a copy of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and it looked perfectly appropriate.

Franco Moretti’s book Graphs, Maps, Trees (along with the Hayles readings from two weeks ago) got me thinking about this incident again and the ways that this new system of classification may tell me something new about my library. Although my bookshelf has since reverted to its normal state of disorganization, I still recall certain sections of color and height and that may be enough for the purposes of this blog. Discussing the benefits of a more “bird’s eye view” approach to literary history, Moretti writes in his section Graphs that “this process can only be glimpsed at the level of the cycle: individual episodes tend, if anything, to conceal it, and only the abstract pattern reveals the true nature of the historical process” (29). I think the aesthetic realignment of my bookshelf forced me to reconsider my collection not in light of “individual episodes”, such as phases in my literary tastes, but rather as an “abstract pattern” that in its arbitrariness foregrounded the materiality of my library. I had never considered questions such as: “Why do I own so many white and black books?” and “Do publishers make more white and black books than other colors?”.  These were interesting questions, but perhaps the most revealing moment came when I realized that somehow all of my favorite books were in a section on the top shelf at the smaller end of the size spectrum and most of them had neutral colors. Although it may seem like an obvious connection, I had never considered how my taste in a book might possibly be influenced by something as seemingly superficial as its length or its appearance. This got me thinking in a chicken and egg sort of way: Is it the book’s shape and color that makes me enjoy it more or is it just a coincidence that the type of books I like happen to be made in this style? The more I think about these questions the less I see a difference in them. It is in this way that I see a connection to Hayles’ ideas about the materiality of the text and how a book’s form can affects its content, an action that takes place both ways with the content of the book influencing its eventual form and the form of previous books influencing the content of future books. Thus, the next time somebody asks me if they think I might like a new book, it might be more apt to ask them what it looks like rather than who wrote it. 

Hyper Reading Popular Fiction

In "How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine", Katherine Hayles talks about some of the theories surrounding hyper and deep attention. She begins with these theories, and avoids giving her position until about halfway through the article. One such moment is Hayles’ summary of James Sosnoski’s study on hyperreading, and how print encourages deep reading more than the internet does (66).

What stood out to me about this was the assumption that print mediums invite deep reading. There are certainly types of print texts that invite immersion into the fictional world they create, but this does not always engender a close reading of that material. Take, for example, the writings of popular authors like Suzanne Collins--of Hunger Games fame--or Dan Brown. Their texts invite the reader to become deeply immersed in the linear storyline, which is a common characteristic of popular fiction. When reading either of these authors it is easy to block out distractions in favor of “finding out what happens next”, but as stated before, this does not mean close reading. In fact, close reading almost invites hyper attention in these texts, because they are texts that do not invite a close reading. The layering of meaning just doesn’t exist on the same level that is available in more complex literary works either print or digital.

When I first read the Da Vinci Code it was an easy read. I was able to immerse myself in the storyline, only vaguely aware of anything beyond the immediate desire to find out how the story would end. Because of this I read much faster. My goal wasn’t to enjoy Dan Brown’s masterful prose (his mastery, after all, nonexistent), so I didn’t need to read closely. Skimming would do, although I don’t think I considered the type of reading I was doing skimming, at the time, and I’m sure I skim website much faster because I don’t necessarily read web pages.

When I began to read Hunger Games, however, I found it difficult to get into--as a graduate student rather than a high schooler. I wasn’t used to immersing myself in popular fiction, or entering into the spirit of page turning fiction. Instead, I was used to reading sentences over several times. Only, the more I read or reread the first few sentences of Hunger Games the less sense it made. I set the free sample aside, and decided Hunger Games was a stupid book. There were a few more moments like this, over the course of my fall 2011 semester. I would think I was ready for some mindless fiction, only to discover that I couldn’t read mindless fiction anymore.

Well, this isn’t true. I could read Hunger Games, it turns out, I just couldn’t read it like it was a piece of theory, or like a literature book that I might write a paper about--at least, not on the first read through. Once I saw the movie I began reading the book again, but this time I wasn’t close reading every word, looking for some deeper message, or all the different angles on each sentence. I knew what the basic story was, and I was more interesting in reaching what happened next, so I flew through the entire series in a week (that’s 800 pages of reading, by the way). The faster I read the more sense the novels made, and the slower I read, with closer attention to the construction of individual sentences, the less sense they made. These books weren’t written for close reading. The sentences weren’t carefully crafted for multiple meanings--although, many Hunger Games fans will argue to the death with you about the deep psychological layering of characters, and how important that is to the plot.

Because of this experience, it seems like there must be some kind of reading that is between deep, close readings and hyper attentive readings. I would argue that linear narratives designed for ease of comprehension, don’t necessarily reach the deepest layer of attention that humans are capable of. Instead, popular fiction seems designed to induce a deep enough attention to create a feeling of disembodiment, without deep awareness of the text as a text.

Of course, it’s typical of Hayles to leave her readers enough room to problematize the sources she is presenting, before problematizing them herself. Hayles eventually mentions that reading shouldn’t just be about comprehension or memorization and regurgitation of a plotline. Furthermore, she points out that for practiced close readers nonlinear texts are a welcome challenge that become about more than memorization of material, but that would be another blog post.

I Knew I Shoulda Taken a Left Turn in Albuquerque...

Moretti’s Graphs, Maps, Trees serves as a means to approach literature from a different angle, one of concreteness through abstraction. In his book, literary history becomes interpretable through objective analysis and visual representation, rather than wordy subjective interpretations which imbue the text with sometimes unfounded meanings. I was particularly drawn to the “Maps” section of the book. What interests me is the way in which locations in novels become significant sections of analysis, a way to relate seemingly unimportant points of contact into substantial indicators of interaction. The visual of the map lifts the sometimes banal list of places a character visits into an abstract form where one can discover hidden relationships and mini-truths. It is as if the map is a coded umwelt and by analyzing what it tells us, lifted out of the rest of the story, a variety of relationships can be revealed about the novel: Morreti indicates that it can translate into things like the type of land, the economy, the land’s politics, level of self-sufficiency, and even its ideologies (42). I like this concept that the map is abstracted from the rest of the novel so that it can stand alone and reveal hidden patterns or points of contact that may have been overlooked originally.

I did a brief YouTube search with “maps” in the search bar just to see what popped up. From Bugs Bunny to Criminal Minds, it is a common thread that words can be deceivingly subjective and that maps will reveal where we go astray. Often, Bugs Bunny winds up traveling to a strange location from faulty directions and is corrected by referring to his trusty map, to discover that he should have taken a left turn in Albuquerque. In Criminal Minds (my personal favorite) and other crime dramas, the FBI profiler maps where the suspect has committed crimes, thus enabling him to discover a hidden pattern in the attacks. Witness statements and cryptic notes from the killer serve as interference, but the map is solid information. The FBI can then analyze this information to get one step ahead of their criminal and justice is served. Maps serve to get us back on track, to open us up to new possibilities. Words and the like are subjective and whether it is intentional or not, can lead one astray. Cue Dane Cook’s comedy skit. In the BK Lounge section, the comedian instructs a woman at the Burger King drive-thru to pull ahead to the window. The woman is confused and says “...where do I go?” Frustrated, the comedian gives her faulty information, exasperated at her inability to follow the same road around the corner. His words are sarcastic, misleading and disingenuous. I'm guessing that the poor girl needed a map. Maps are seemingly neutral and lend themselves to enhancing what one already knows or to put them back on track, to give more depth by displaying truth through pattern. However, it should be noted that there is a chance to misinterpret and that leads to a whole new slew of problems, but primarily it appears as if the map is a resource which, until recently, remained unused by literary scholars. The use of a map serves to increase our understanding and simultaneously break us out of the narrative structure and into the realm of the visual.

            Lexia to Perplexia, the artifact work by Talan Memmott exemplifies the concept of assemblage of the human language and the math language signs. As Katherine Hayles explains, this work shows the originality of the digital language in human brain. This Artifact is an electronic text that presents the confusion of the lines between mastering the technology or being part of it. By making technology more natural and the human a more digital creature, it shows how a human is controlled or trapped by the net that he initiated in the first place for his service, or in other words, it reveals the reciprocal relation between human and machines. Beginning by the title, he chooses the terms lexia to perplexia which refers to the difficulty of reading, to hint out the confusion that will face the reader as he moves throughout the parts of the work. This difficulty will not show up from the inability to read the written form in spite of his awkward arrangement of the letters, but rather from being unable to catch up with fast movement of the pieces that are displayed, as well as the way they are layered, and the loss of control over it. Hayles describes the way the reader is overwhelmed by the displayed units and the affect that he can make by a simple movement of his hand.

            This work brings me back to the chapter of the future in literature, although this is not a ‘literary’ digital text, but it reflects the new aspects of the relation between the author and the reader: the way Mammott controls the reader of her text. Hayles states that “digital technologies do more than mark the surface of contemporary print novel. They also put into play dynamics that interrogate and reconfigure the relations between author and reader, human and intelligent machine, code and language”(186).    Hayles conclude her chapter by assuming that although material books will not disappear, but the digital texts is taking a considerable importance in the modern life. although she mentions that printed books will not disappear, but still the one that manages to be performed in a digital media is the one who will get the popularity and a good marketing.    

I think the book Writing Machines was as good an example of a text that exceeds the text as I have seen, particularly in the form of a book.  The book itself is the first thing that caught my attention.  Being something of a book snob I really appreciate nicely bound books.  From there I began to inquire.

  At first glance, writing machines is textured like a barcode and it has barcodes on it.  I explored a bit farther, the barcodes on the book are not scannable- I had rather hoped they would lead to something interesting that was not mentioned in her discussion of the book design.  These barcodes speaks to Hayles tendency to discuss computer code and the digital.  After a more thorough examination the reader also discovers the words writing and machine appear on the outside edge of the book when turning the pages toward one direction or the other.  Apart from the intriguing form of the book, it is not so different from other more traditional efforts.

I fascinated by the range of different compositions compiled in Electronic Literature.  The capabilities of these electronic works vastly exceed those provided by traditional composition.  And to that end, I am particularly interested in looking at some of the ways that the electronic compositions that Hayles compiles exceed those of a more plane text based publication. 

-NIO by Jim Andrews presents various audio sounds that the user can begin playing at different points.  The user can synch the audio sounds and somehow (as discussed in Grosz) all of the sounds wind up sounding pleasant together.

-On Lionel Kearns presents the viewer with a number of different words that flash on the screen randomly, then you click into it and it reveals a shape that forms a kind of fractal pyramid that you keep clicking on until it seems to vanish.

-Stir Fry Texts (also by Jim Andrews) features text which alternates between several accounts of a similar story when you move the mouse over it.  At the bottom of the text there is a color cube that allows you to view all of one text or another, but whenever you put your mouse on the text different portions change to other texts.  It is interesting to see how they run together. (blue hyacinth)

-In the White Darkness, is an image with a quote about the forgetful nature of memory.  In the background the image blurs and refocuses as polka dots blur and vanish as a shape connects some of them.  This peiece is visually stimulating and vastly more evocative than what a novel could do in the same piece.

I also note that several of these works (NIO included)  include the source code.  This is interesting in that it allows others to approach their works.  Traditional novels, which are often, bound my copyright laws restrict other users from experimenting with their works.  Given the apparent desire of some of these electronic works to appeal so much to a reader in a way that is beyond literacy is quite telling.

A New Form of Literature

Katherine Hayles makes an argument directed towards the emergence of electronic media and materiality in her book  Writing Machines. According to Hayles, "Materiality thus emerges from interactions between physical properties and a work's artistic strategies...[it] depends on how the work mobilizes its resources as a physical artifact as well as on the user's interactions with the work and the interpretive strategies she develops" (33). This essentially means that there is a connection between the outside, physical world and the human intelligence that created the work in order to give it meaning.

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries is a group that thrives in Postmodern Mulitculturalism America. Each of their works is accessible online, and they remind me of the hypertextuality and materiality that Hayles discusses in Writing Machines. When someone visits their homepage, it is merely a list of hyperlinks that takes him/her to each of their works. This may perhaps be the only instance, and a superficial one at that, of hypertextuality related to Young-Hae. However, other concepts and ideas that Hayles outlines in her book apply as well. Considering her definition, I would consider some of the electronic poems or works that are listed to be technotexts. Hayles states that technotexts are "literary works that strengthen, foreground, and thematize the connections between themselves as material artifacts and the imaginative realm of verbal/semiotic signifiers they instantiate [and] open a window on the larger connections that unite literature as a verbal art to its material forms" (25). They, in other words, are material-based, yet these works also play on that particular idea, allowing it to emerge to the surface, whether directly or otherwise, thus creating an overall connection between literature (redefined) to its possible form of materiality. One of the works listed on Yooung-Hae's home page of hypertextual links seems to create this connection, allowing itself to explicitely become a technotext. Entitled Artist's Statement No. 45,730,944: The Perfect Artistic Web Site, the work does not allow the viewer to become engulfed in the story completely because it draws attention to the idea of a website, which is where the text is being viewed.

The computer screen and the software and html and/or css used to create the work (and entire site, in this case) gives the literature materiality, that connection to the physical world, just as ink, paper, and the binding of a book give such a text materiality as well. Yet, one question that Hayles lingers on and addresses in Writing Machines that is imperative, at least to today's every growing technological society, is whether or not reading a text from a computer screen constitutes it as literature, or rather, does literature always have to be presented in the form of a physical, tangible book? This was something I slightly wondered and struggled with a few years back. Hayles, I believe, makes a valid point in her reply: "So what if you read it on a computer? Isn't it far more important what  the language is like, the linking structure, the plot, the characters?...electronic literature operated in fundamentally different ways than print and required new critical frameworks to assess its reading and writing practices" (36-37). Considering this reply, the computer screen or other form of electronic, physical, or material medium does not matter. It does not have to be in the form of a printed book to be considered literature. A new form of literature has emerged, and this one necessitates the materiality and hypertextuality that Hayles discusses in Writing Machines.

Communication is key in every relationship, but MEDIA is key in communication

I was 18, a freshman in college, and had yet to declare a major when my freshman English teacher introduced to my class Jonathon Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  As we read through the book, I was particularly intrigued by the character Thomas Schell, a man so affected by the Dresden bombing that he was left unable to speak.  In the instance that Thomas is moved enough to contact his estranged wife, he does so by typing out the message on the keypad of a telephone since he is unable to speak.  At the time, I was irritated.  Why would the author do this?  What was even the point of including the entire message when the reader couldn’t actually interpret it?  I figured I was just supposed to glean from this moment that Thomas was a messed up man who couldn’t communicate what he wanted to say because he had been so traumatized.

I have not returned to these questions until now.  Hayles explains in Electronic Literature that Thomas Schell actually is communicating what he means to say: “[T]here is no problem with noise in the channel; the machine transmits the encoded message with complete accuracy.  Rather, it is the message’s human import that is at stake” (167).  Though Hayles eventually goes on to use this moment in Extremely Loud to illustrate the “intensification” techniques of the print novel, I want to comment on the human’s role in the digital aspects of this moment.  Allow me to digress for a moment…

With the exception of Augustus Gloop, all the children in the 1971 version of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory make use of some kind of experimental technology in Wonka’s factory, and the results are not desirable.  Veruca Salt is judged by the “Eggdicator” to be a bad egg and drops into the garbage chute; Mike Teavee uses a machine intended for transmitting chocolate into televisions to successfully send himself through television, though he is shrunk in the process; Violet Beauregarde chews a piece of gum that includes a three-course meal and enjoys each course, the final course (blueberry pie) causing her to turn blue and inflate with juice; and Charlie and his grandfather steal some Fizzy Lifting Drinks which work too well, resulting in the two floating to dangerous heights.  I may be stretching the concept here, but just like in the case with Thomas Schell and his typed-out phone call, all of these technologies function as they are supposed to but are not being put to their intended use (except for maybe Violet’s gum, which was still in its final stages of development).   The children experience a disconnect with technology in that it puts them into difficult situations; but at the same time, the technologies they use are working just as they are intended to.

Thomas wants to communicate with his wife, but he can’t via his chosen media, not because the telephone doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, but because the human-end to this technology is incapable of deciphering his particular use of the media.  Perhaps this is why electronic and digital media are becoming so mainstream and useful.  As the world becomes more complicated, entangled with itself, traumatizing, and layered, we must find ways to transcend it all and continue to communicate with each other.  We have established that different medias provide different opportunities for sensation and intensification, and we must choose media with our message and sensation in mind.  We must have these new options if we want to continue living in such a complex and expanding world.

The Great Remediator

I don’t know how she does it, but Hayles always blows me away with her writing.  In Writing Machines I really appreciated her contestation of Beaudrillard’s progression of the simulacrum and her ideas about “remediation” (5).  As she points out, this phenomenon can be seen time and time again in the multimedia millennium that is the current era.  Her book demonstrates remediation beautifully by offering an extremely well thought out and functional restructuring of the scholarly text; however the idea of remediation may give some people pause.  For instance, if the book is transformed into a multimedia conglomerate of text, images, video, audio, and interactivity it is possible that the activity of reading could become too far detached from actual reading and become more of a multi-variegated experience.  This would not be such a huge concern for more mature readers, but if child and adolescent literature were to all take this type of turn, it is likely that something get lost in the transition.

For instance, the interactive e-book Pat the Bunny manages to cram enough activities into every page that one is left to wonder how much actual reading experience a kid can gain from this title.  As can be seen in the image of the books cover, the book contains painting and easter egg hunts (on every page) that seem to me to be mild distractors that could possibly hinder the learning experience instead of activate it.  In the end, Pat the Bunny seems to be little more than a high-tech coloring book with a few words and phrases thrown in for good measure.  This is not to say that all interactivity fits into this category, but there needs to be a stable balance if learning how to read is going to remain the core goal of texts like these.  Then again, if a parent’s goal was only keeping the kids occupied for a bit, then Pat the Bunny is a true masterpiece.

A Coffe Table Book about Coffee Tables

Considering the evolution of hypertext described by N. Katherine Hayles in Writing Machines, I felt that there were important distinctions that she drew in relation to first and second generation hypertexts as well as her engagement with them.  As many of the first-generation hypertexts functioned by “clicking on links to go from one lexia to another” it seems that they were merely electronic representations of books rather than an actual rethinking of the conventions of the book.  According to Hayles, “first-generation hypertexts were largely comprised of text, making little or no use of graphics, animation, and sound… [they] were more like books than they were like second-generation electronic literature” (37).  It seems that the first-generation electronic texts were electronic for the sake of being electronic.  Although a necessary step in order to be able to move past the simple uploading of words onto a computer, the first-generation electronic texts seemed that they did not allow for the level of material engagement with which Hayles seems fascinated.  Simply reading on an electronic medium does not call for the type of rethinking of print culture for which Hayles calls, but rather seems to be a type of gimmick.

Although a departure from the realm of electronic literature, Hayles’s focus on materiality and the ways in which it can be manipulated and utilized to impact that actual text, made me consider the other types of gimmicks used by authors and publishers to frame print texts.  From the pop-up book to books with various sounds, I wonder if it is possible that a strong focus on materiality could actually detract from or lessen the need for strong content.  When thinking about materiality in relation to books, the first thing I thought of was Kramer’s coffee table book on the sitcom Seinfeld.  As the clip below shows, Kramer decides to construct a book that features photographs of celebrity coffee table.  Although seemingly traditional structurally, the book actually has legs like that of a coffee table and can be set up to function as a table.  In this instance, the materiality of the book is a gimmick.  While some people may have an interest in viewing celebrity coffee tables, the main reason the books seems to find an audience stems from the novelty of a book about coffee tables that is, in itself, a coffee table.

While I realize that this is straying from the realm of new media, I believe that Kramer’s coffee table book seems to function in the same way as first-generation electronic texts.  Kramer’s book is merely a book with table legs and its materiality does not ask for a consideration of re-envision of how books are framed and the degree to which structure can impact content.  Rather, the novelty of the shape seems to serve as a justification for potentially lack-luster material.  In much the same way (and without any real knowledge of the content of these first-generation texts), I feel that various forms of media are often implemented in order to make books seems edgy or be dubbed “electronic,” yet these gimmicks are used as a crutch.  Like the first-generation texts, which served as an important and necessary step in the current work being done in electronic literature, Kramer’s coffee table book, and other texts that foreground materiality, potentially do so at the peril of content.