Week 10: Nelson, Aarseth, & Hayles
So I guess I could start with Nelson. One thing I find interesting is his thoughts on the writing process. Nelson, a computer scientist in the 60s (correct?), is not a compositionist by trade, but he seems to anticipate the ideas about the writing process that cognitivistic compositionists developed in the 70s and onward. Many of them fought to dispel the third "false theory" of writing that Nelson talks about. This, as Nelson puts it, is the theory that "all you really need is a good outline, created on prior consideration, and that if the outline is correctly followed the required text will be produced" (p. 136). This may be the process that many writers, particularly inexperienced writers, utilize. Many high school teachers and even some college composition instructors today (mostly the old guard) teach this philosophy of writing to their students. They divide writing into three distinct, linear stages--prewriting, writing, and revision--and imply that there is no fluctuation between the stages. Mind you, the work that is done in all of these three stages is important, according to these composition researchers, but movement between the three occurs in a recursive, not a linear, manner. Outlines are effective, for instance, but they may be better classified as "inductive: certain interrelations appear to the author...at the outset and some as he works" (p. 136). You may create an outline, start writing the paper, then move back to the prewriting stage as you discover that the plan in your outline just won't work. At least I know that's how my writing goes. I create outlines for myself all the time, but I can't remember an instance in which I really adhered to it 100%. Nevertheless, it's useful to get some ideas out on the outline, then restructure the argument as I write.
Nelson's article begs two questions for me. The first: why did Wolverine attack the bottom right hand corner of page 140? But more important is the second question: to what extent does technology change/shape/influence/whatever the way we think? A lot of the controversy surrounding internet reading versus codex book reading today is that these new technologies alter the way the younger generation thinks (I'm sure everyone loves how I tie everything back to this topic somehow). However, Nelson suggests that nonlinear thinking is how humans actually think: his hypertext simply works in accordance with our actual thought processes. While explaining his rationale for ELF, Nelson notes, "I believe that such a system as the ELF actually ties in better than anything previously used with the actual processes by which thought is progressively organized" (p. 144). I think it was Dan that suggested awhile back that while it's important to see how the technology and science popular at a given time influences the language we use to think about our behavior, we also reverse this and consider how our thoughts about the mind or behavior influence the technologies that we create. Is it really true that the mind operates in a recursive, nonlinear manner, so our new technologies compliment our naturally existing mental structures? Or have we merely created new technologies under the guise that they do so? Just some thoughts.
Moving on. Hayles (2002; 2005) argues that electronic texts should provoke us to consider the materiality of a particular narrative/nonlinear production/whatever an important feature in analyzing how the text operates. As we discussed in an earlier class (I think it was Jacob that did the demonstration with a codex book), we can now expand the discussion about content vs. form to include content, form, and materiality. The discussion moves from 2 to 3 dimensions, in a sense. Like many championing a new cause, she fashions herself a Kuhnian style revolutionary, fighting the dogma of such out-of-touch old guard folk as Shillingsburg and the creatros of William Black archive: "Perhaps it is time for a Copernican revolution in our thinking about textuality, a revolution achieved by going back and rethinking fundamental assumptions" (p. 93, 2005, italics added). I'm okay with the rethinking part, but I'll for now hold off on the revolution part. Well, at least I can see it for texts.
Not so sure it works the same for music recording technologies, although to be fair of course this isn't what Hayles is thinking about. But you know, it's what I want to talk about, and instead of answering the kinds of questions Hayles wants me to, I'm just going to talk straight to...probably myself, the only one really worried about the application to music. As I mentioned in a rambling incoherent mess of an outline discussion Wednesday, I am thinking about using Aarseth's (2003) semiotic approach for examining nonlinear texts and translating it to music. I don't know that the translation will be amazing, but maybe it will more fully realize potentialities that are only in a developing stage of Aarseth's system (nod to Borges there, via Hayles, 2005). While the terms "texton" and "scripton" are still a little unclear to me, as I 'm not sure based off of Aarseth's article I could easily identify one or the other, the idea of a scripton seems comparable to songs. In traditional formats the scriptons are presented linearly, while in music players such as Ipods, the music may be decontextualid from their original home on the album (and perhaps recontextualized?). To spare everyone a discussion of my paper, it will suffice to say right now that his terms for analyzing texts, such as topology, determinability, and manueverabilty work for understanding songs as presented in different formats.