When you use *phenomenological* are you talking about human consciousness or
an analysis produced by that process or phenomenology as Husserl intended it
( his thinking changed constantly) or in terms of linguistic analysis or
rather in terms of its rather shady distinctions as other disciplines
co-opted it? To be so close and absorbed in a thing can prevent a broader
and more conceptual understanding. I don't know about your world but mine is
certainly changing and it has to do with the revolutionary proliferation of
information and information sharing in all scientific and social fields. I
simply can't keep up with it all and I know of no honest social or
scientific thinker who can keep up with their own field let alone other
disciplines. There is such a thing as *literature* as there is such a thing
as *digital literature* and that's why we define our terms as we go. As for
*literary imagination* believe me there is such a thing as a standard
library search will prove to you. Cheers, scott malby

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan Sondheim" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, July 02, 2005 4:36 PM
Subject: Re: [WDL] message below


> I am still missing the point here, and continue to do so. And for me this
> is odd, since I'm working on a book with Sandy Baldwin dealing with the
> phenomenological distinction between the analog and digital. However, on a
> fundamentally cultural level, there are problems.
>
> For example, I have no idea what the 'literary imagination' is. Whose?
> What period? What time-frame? What culture?
>
> Nor is there necessarily a pre-digital. The earliest examples of writing
> might well be considered digital; as you know, they are tallies which
> permit only of whole numbers, which led to the abacus - a digital machine
> to any particular number base. The written characters of any language also
> form a digital matrix of sorts; in an arbitary word one has (a-z)(a-z)...
> in English - already a system. It's such a system that made the morse
> code, and before that the semaphore, etc., an easy mapping.
>
> And when you say 'radical reconceptualization in literature' - what
> literature? Romance novels, early hypertext experiments, newsgroup
> 'strange attractors' like the monster truck neutopians and their writings?
>
> I think the problem I have is that I don't think there _is_ digital life,
> in any sense of the term except AI experiments (neural networked models of
> cockroaches for example - I have one on my machine) (the model, not the
> cockroach). There have always been new technologies, and new writing
> technologies, and new archiving possibilties, and people like Polyani
> worked well in describing the kinds of tacit knowledge employed in
> adopting and adapting them. And just as we don't talk about electrical
> life or gasoline life or wheat life, but life in relation to these, it
> seems to me, the 'digital' doesn't imply 'digital life' but a phenomeno-
> logical study of the interrelationships among humans and electronic
> computers. Things get sidetracked, however, once this is admitted - the
> fact there are such phenomenologies at work doesn't imply that the
> 'literary imagination' - whatever and however that is - changes as a
> result. The best one can do is define carefully what the literary
> imagination is (Mikel Dufrenne is good), i.e. the world of the work, and
> see how this interacts in particular and culturally-specific situations,
> ranging from Hopscotch and Tristam Shandy, through Bosewell's Johnson,
> John Cayley, myself for that matter, mez, etc.
>
> People of all periods, perhaps have felt _utterly transformed,_ and this
> is a characteristic of people, not techne. (A good example: the book
> Practical Radio, which outlines child radio hackers and their language/
> boundary/culture - from 1924. It's no different than the current hacking
> tradition; the attidues, generation and knowledge gaps, competition, agro,
> etc. are identical.)
>
> - Alan, not trying to step on anyone's toes here. -
>
>
> > Dear List Members,
> >
> > Digital literature being literature, how can we=20
> > (1) distinguish it from the pre-digital?
> > (2) understand the way it modifies the literary imaginary as it
> > existed before the digital? (Specifically, does it mean a radical
> > reconceptualization of literature?)
> >
> > Can anyone help me understand the issues not really techinically but
> > philosophically/phenomenologically?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Rajesh
> >
> > **********
> >
>
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