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WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE  July 2005

WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE July 2005

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Subject:

Re: message below

From:

"George P. Landow" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

[log in to unmask]

Date:

Mon, 4 Jul 2005 10:15:43 -0400

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In my workshops on hypertext, I find one of the useful recognitions for 
participants is that if you can readily print out your project and it 
works as a printed document, you (1) are not thinking in hypertextual 
terms (2) you haven't created hypertext. (One uses these new media 
(especially educationally), not just because they're cool but because 
they do things that cannot be done conveniently in other ways.

Remember, one can always (or almost always) do things in one 
information technology that were created in another, but sometimes 
something that takes a few seconds in the digital realm can take hours 
to replicate. Think, for example, of hand-retouched or airbrushed 
photos and Photoshop! Or looking up a word in a print version of the 
OED, which can take (a) the time to walk to the library and find the 
volume you need, (2) the 1-2 minutes to look up the item, (3) the time 
needed to write down definitions and historical examples. Compare that 
to the online version that returns a response in a second or two and 
permits copying into one's notes instantly! Years ago I heard a talk by 
a someone preparing linguistic databases for an experiment in teaching 
a modern language the way it is actually spoken. In passing he 
remarked, that looking up a word in a foreign dictionary took about 90 
seconds on average and using a computer database returned a response in 
a second and  a half, the result of the difference being that readers 
try not to have to use the print dictionary — looking up ten words 
takes 15 minutes — but the quick response time of the digital version 
creates a vastly different relationship to the text: people use it 
frequently to check that they have the exact definition or use it 
almost like flashcards as a learning tool, Conclusion: while the words 
in each version of the dictionary are the same, the different way of 
experiencing them changes the reader's use and experience of the text.

As a corollary: one of the most discouraging things about many well 
known media theorists who come from the humanities is that they 
theorize extensively about things like, say, moving text or hypertext, 
but themselves have experienced very few examples (and thus their 
theorizing is very skewed) and have never actually created any 
themselves. I can think of several very well known books on hypertext, 
for example, that reveal upon examination, that the authors have almost 
no experience with it.

Gunnar Liestol and Andrew Morrison, both  of the U Oslo, have urged 
that hypertext and digital media give humanists, for the first time, a 
laboratory or test bed by which humanists can actually prove or 
disprove their theories. The problem is that most critical theorists, 
unlike people in the sciences, are not used to the idea that one 
actually has to test one's theories before publishing them, so now that 
we have a chance to do so, they still put out what, in the sciences, 
would be a research proposal as a finished project. Hmm.


On Jul 4, 2005, at 2:14 AM, babel wrote:

> Susan Pritchard wrote:
>
>> Digital literarure easily becomes ink/paper based literature and vice
>> versa.
>
> Hi Susan,
>
> when it is useful to make this distinction, I've found that print 
> literature can easily become digital, but _not_ vice versa... would 
> anyone else agree with that?
>
> chris
>
> **********
>
> To alter your subscription settings, log on to Subscriber's Corner at 
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> WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE
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>
George P. Landow
Professor of English and the History of Art
Brown University

www.landow.com

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