Week 10: (Hyper)Text and the beyond
If you believe popular legend, one of the first computer translations (or maybe just a joke) used the phrase, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." When translated into Russian and then back into English, the phrase became "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten." Have we lost something in translation, or gained?
Borges, via Hayles, believes that all writing is always already an act of translation, and that any translation of a text "may realize more fully possibilities that we only nascent in the original" (p. 114). So, I wonder if "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten" is a more appropriate idiom for our times. In addition, this anecdote raises the issue that even though computer translations have become better, good translations still require a human translator to capture the idiom?s essence. Will this change as computers become better translators of natural language? Will the semantic web further this process along? If computers become better translators, is it because humans have become better programmers?
Aarseth, too, addresses text translation: how does a linear text become nonlinear text? I understand Aarseth's definition of nonlinear text and how it captures the instability of text, but I do not understand how it addresses (non)linearity. As others have noted, we still read texts linearly. Even though the nonlinear text may change with each reading, each instantiation of a nonlinear text is another linear text. Is this true, or am I missing something? For example, websites are nonlinear texts in that many are updated continuously, but I think we still progress through the site linearly. Furthermore, even though the text, or content, changes, the form, or design, remains the same. We are likely to read a webpage similarly every time we visit that webpage. Reading becomes more determined by design and usability than content. This seems to correspond to what Aarseth calls the informative script, the ritual of use. Hayles implies this as well in her media-specific analysis wherein design is essential to a work?s effects (p. 94).
Like Aarseth, Hayles implies the nonlinearity of websites: "In cases were text is dynamically assembled on the fly, the text as 'the actual order of words and punctuation' does not exist as such in these data files. Indeed, it does not exist as an artifact at all. Rather, it comes into existence as a process that includes the data file" (Translating Media, p. 93). The text comes into existence as a process, and we move through the text as a process; however, does this make the website nonlinear? Does it make the reading process more dynamic? Many design elements are used to guide a linear reading process.
We expect/accept the nonlinearity or dynamic process of webpages without question, but we do not expect/accept the same from the book. When discussing the chapters of Eagleton?s Literary Theory, Aarseth writes, "It is unlikely that there is a version with only one first chapter, but we nevertheless assume that this is what the text meant, and that the introduction got numbered by mistake. We do this out of lack of respect for the copy; it appears to misrepresent the ?real? text, even if such a thing may never have existed" (p. 764). He suggests that we understand a book as an authoritative original, when, in fact, it is just another copy among many copies. Every book we buy is just one in a million. But does that mean it is ordinary or extraordinary? Perhaps, if web services, like Versionista, become more popular we can create authoritative versions of websites.
Because a webpage is assembled as a dynamic process, it does not exist before its instantiation, before we enter the url. In contrast, a codex book is complete, a closed system. Hayles writes, "Although print readers perform sophisticated cognitive operations when they read a book, the printed lines exist as such before the book is opened, read, or understood. An electronic text does not have this kind of prior existence" (p. 101). Aarseth writes, "Once I pick up a book by Ken Follet, I have already started the interpretation of it, long before I have started on the first page" (p. 764). How are to read these to two quotes? Are they compatible, antagonistic? When applied to websites, this may point to the distinction between searcher and surfer. When we search, we know what we are looking for: we are interpreting the book or webpage before we even begin to read. When we surf, we do not what we are looking for (think StumbleUpon): are we responding to the dynamic process of websites?
It seems that one way we respond to the dynamic process/assemblage of websites is through hyperlinks. Aarseth states, "The main feature of hypertext is discontinuity?the jump?the sudden displacement of the user?s position in the text" (p. 771). But I wonder if we still feel a discontinuity from hyperlinks. We are much more likely to think at the speed of our hyperlinks. That is, hyperlinks have become so engrained in our thinking about the internet that hyperlinks feel more like continuity. We are more likely to experience discontinuity when a link is broken or when no link is provided.
Hayles writes that "by changing how the work means, such a move alters what it means" (p. 90). The video "The Machine is Us/ing Us" asserts that HTML merges form and content while XML separates form and content. This suggests how we think about writing a text determines how we write a text, and how, what it means. We have discussed similar points throughout the semester, and Nelson addresses these as well. He contends the benefits of the evolutionary file structure will be mostly psychological, not technical, which would change, in turn, how we think.
Two other points from Nelson: "As long as people think [computers are possessed only by huge organization to be used for vast corporate tasks], machines will be brutes and not friends" (p. 135). Hello, I?m a Mac. I?m PC. The other: he claims that half the time spent writing is locating what we have already written. Now, it seems, we spend half our time formatting Word.
And finally, as I mentioned last week in my post, why does Hayles refuse to acknowledge McLuhan. In "Writing Machines" especially, she seems to be echoing him in many ways, such as her feeling that now is a good time to question the assumptions of printed text. As McLuhan says, "We march backwards into the future."