Week 10: Text, Hypertext, Materiality...
In Translating Media, Hayles proposes “to regard the transformation of a print document into an electronic text as a form of translation…which is inevitably also an act of interpretation” (89). To make her point, Hayles discusses the translation of Blake’s manuscripts to the online medium and says, “changing the navigational apparatus of a work changes the work… Translating the words on a scroll into a codex book, for example, radically alters how a reader encounters the work… such a move alters what it means” (90). Accordingly, Hayles then attacks editor Peter Schillingsberg’s definition of a text by asserting that he does not consider how meaning is changed/affected by the material in which the text is encoded (92).
Amid this discussion, I felt like Hayles failed to clearly explain exactly what it is about the book medium that makes it so different from the text on a screen. She hints at the essential differences here and there by saying that the book contains a whole other set of sensory inputs, and she tells us how computing can rearrange the text—but if we assume that the text on the screen flows in the same order as the book and that the screen text has the same margins as in the book, then I wonder how many other sensory inputs actually affect the reading process to such an extent as to radically alter the meaning. Hayles argues, “Other aspects of the text as physical object, such as the lovely feeling of a leather binding or the musty smell of old paper, are not reproduced in digital codes” (96). Her observation here is obvious, but the fact that she had to bring up the smell of the paper as a primary example of how the material of the book makes the reading/meaning-making process different from the digitized text seems to indicate, to me, that she protests too much.
Nevertheless, Hayles’ best moment comes on page 97 when she asserts that there is no essential ontology to a text; therefore, we should, rather, think of a text in terms of the connections that it makes for us, as opposed to focusing on some magical essence which it does not have. On this point, I must admit, though, that I did feel tempted to ask Hayles (in a snooty, sarcastic way, of course) whether she thinks about various materials as having an ontology and whether she is, in fact, talking about materials in terms of the connections they make for us and not in terms of the pre-determined responses they might illicit due to their ontological condition. She slips, it seems, into assuming materials have an ontological status when they do not.
Again, in Material metaphors, technotexts, and media-specific analysis Hayles advances her materiality argument. She says, “Materiality of the artifact can no longer be positioned as a subspecialty within literary studies; it must be central, for without it we have little hope of forging a robust and nuanced account of how literature is changing under the impact of information technologies. Not only electronic literature but virtually all historical periods and genres are affected as print works 'are increasingly re-produced as electronic documents.” In this article, Hayles explains a bit better how/why materialty is important when she says, “my claim is that the physical form of the literary artifact always affects what the words (and other semiotic components) mean.” Although it is not entirely clear how the word “dog” or the phrase “the dog bit the man on the leg” would change from book to screen, she does make interesting points in regard to how different inscription technologies change the order in which we read and the way in which we make connections from phrase to phrase, page to page.
Regarding Nelson: I found it interesting that neither Nelson nor Bush seemed to think, as Hayles does, that changing the medium for ideas—putting ideas into a file structure or into an organizing machine of some type—would change the meaning of those ideas. Both men are entranced with the possibilities of organizing large amounts of information, but they never consider that such an organization would change the relationships between the ideas--and subsequently how hard this makes organizing ideas in the first place. In other words, the organizational aspect, when we view language as flowing with meanings and not static with a singular meaning, becomes a difficult task; even if the system is “open” and adaptable, the writer may want to change the organization from day to day as new meanings manifest, so the system that Nelson imagines would be daunting to handle because the computer could not predict how the writer/user would want to change it (or some part within in) later; this means that the writer/user would need to remember how all the sub-parts of all the lists are categorized and know how to change elements from one list to another list—difficult to keep up with!
However, Nelson’s ideas are important insofar as he calls attention to the fact that Bush’s memex machine has not yet been put into place. Of course, today we have the internet, which is itself a large filing system that can be searched, but the kind of filing system imagined by Nelson does not exist today—his filing system is adaptable to the writer and designed to help at the level of invention. Nelson imagines “an evolutionary file structure: a file structure that can be shaped into various forms, changed from one arrangement to another in accordance with the user's changing need” (138). Our current computers do not organize different types of ideas or “entries” into different lists that can be pulled up automatically, unless we, of course, do the work and then cut and paste into a word processing document. But our current computers cannot “readily adapt to their own styles of handling things, imposing few conventions or methods of use” (139). I see a need/use for creating a machine like Nelson's—but a machine more advanced that co-produces ideas with us, that “talks” with us as we walk through our ideas and that not only pulls from our own lists but can index the content found on the internet into lists in types of ways that we desire.
Regarding Aarseth: I enjoyed his discussion of hypertext, specifically his rant on why hypertext received critical attention and cybertext did not. Aarseth suggests that the cybertext in adventure games was “too radical to be recognized” and that such texts “fall between accepted categories.” Aarseth implied that the cybertexts of adventure games were ignored because the games were understood as pop culture objects and as objects of serious study; so in my opinion, he calls out academia’s preoccupation with the Platonic tradition that only values certain structures/texts—those that are able to achieve the true, the beautiful, the just and are given an ontological status and considered valuable; but underlying this tradition of “the great books” is, of course, the notion that the true, the beautiful, etc. is static, objective and knowable. The Platonic tradition I am referring to here in academia would relegate certain texts to the arena of “pop” when they did not achieve such a status—such was the case with cybertexts. As Aarseth said, “games are games” (778).
Later in the article, I do not believe Aarseth fairly characterizes how we change the way we read and make meaning as a result of the shift from linear texts to non-linear texts. He asserts that criticism is almost nearly impossible with indeterminate, non-linear texts: “How can we be critics if we can no longer read? How can reviewers of cybertexts face the fact they probably missed large numbers of scriptons?... After the celebrated deaths of the author, the work, and reading, the text is now giving up the spirit, betrayed by its most trusted companion, the signifier” (778). Here, Aarseth sounds like a dramatic teenager. Texts are not giving up words as signifiers simply because they are chopped up and non-linear! People supply the signifiers, and words will always, in our minds, have a signified. Whether a text is linear or indeterminate and non-linear, the meaning-making process will continue; the only question is whether it continues in small chunks (twitters) or in long, flowing narratives.
Aarseth does, however, make an excellent point in terms of the changing role of the critic. He explains that the critic is no longer the swim coach looking down into the pool, but the critic is now the swimmer in the pool, feeling the water with every paddle stroke. That’s my metaphor. He puts it this way: “If literary theorists and critics do engage in the study of indeterminate cybertexts, it should be with an awareness that the old role of a posteriori investigator no longer suffices. Like the user, the critic must be there when it happens. Not only that but, like the participant observer of social anthropology, he or she must make it happen—improvise, mingle with the natives, play roles, provoke response” (778).