Re: first brief remarks on Carol Lee's article

From: Luiz Carlos Baptista (lucabaptista@sapo.pt)
Date: Sat Nov 22 2003 - 11:01:32 PST


Hi Steve,

There is a fundamental difference between technologies of mass reproduction, such as printing, and computers. Printing, broadcast media, movies, etc., are non-interactive: in each case, we are basically left with two options, namely reading (watching, listening, etc.) or not. We can't "talk back". But when we use computers, we must act on the material presented on the screen: we must constantly issue commands, through writing, pointing-and-clicking, voice activation, whatever. And if we connect computers in networks, and these networks in the Internet, besides the "interactivity" with the machine we also have interaction with other people.

It's true that we are able to "talk back" to television or radio shows, but only if we use the telephone (an interactive medium). On the other hand, we may issue commands to a TV or radio set, but they boil down to zapping and adjusting parameters such as volume, brightness (in the case of TV), etc. We can't change the programs themselves - and when we can, as is the case with "interactive television", this is done thanks to a computer connected to the TV.

All this is to say that the use of computers as an aid to learning literature will certainly change how we interpret literary works and even what counts as "literature". When you say that "Printing presses and computers can modify the forms of literature and provide different ways that these artifacts of text can be looked at", I would say that printing presses helped to establish literature as a form, and computers can induce some important changes in the way this form of expression is understood and (re)produced. But what these changes are, and how wide, nobody knows. We'll have to wait and see.

Sorry for the delay. Rgrds,

Luiz Carlos Baptista
lucabaptista@sapo.pt
lucabaptista@hotmail.com
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Steve Gabosch
  To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
  Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 2:48 AM
  Subject: Re: first brief remarks on Carol Lee's article

  Hi Luiz,

  Great points.

  One underlying theme we seem to be grappling with is the question of
  whether and how much computers really change the basic issues of culture in
  general and literature in particular. The essential educational challenge
  behind Carol's article is the development of ways to learn and teach
  literature across cultures. Her article is about how a new generation of
  computer-based learning tools is beginning to open possibilities for
  teachers to produce their own illustrated, annotated and hyper-linked
  versions of literature to facilitate culturally responsive approaches in
  the classroom to the study of "canonical texts." How are these new tools,
  and computers in general, changing our understanding of what literature
  really is? Do they change the essential dynamic of literature?

  As you emphasize, digital technology brings many possibilities to new
  heights, such as the ability to create copies that are immediately
  identical to one another, and the ability to create text, images and sounds
  in the digital media itself. But hasn't this been a characteristic of
  industrial mass production all along? In particular, the mass publication
  of literature - barely 500 years old, since the invention of the printing
  press - has always had an aspect of these peculiar features. Just as is
  the case in digital communication technology, virtually identical copies
  can be made in large quantities, and the medium of reproduction itself
  (print galleys, etc.) can be used for composition. Mass literature is born
  as a reproduction. And now, in the digital age, this capacity has leaped
  to new levels.

  Which gets back to those complex questions: just where is the
  "original"? (And what is a "reproduction"?) As you point out, scholars
  are sometimes needed to sort out confusion over origination, and when they
  can, of course they go to the original manuscripts - which themselves can
  have multiple versions! But is the question of the original really just a
  technical question of identifying a particular artifact?

  I am inclined to think in Bakhtinian terms at this point. Is there really
  such a thing at all as an "original'? Is there such a thing as an
  "original" if it is not "reproduced"? Is it literature in any sense at all
  if it is not reproduced? Can a work of literature really be such without
  readers, without interpreters, without people who themselves mediate the
  message and transform the text into real experience, real dialogue, and in
  doing so, real social relations? In this line of thinking, all
  "reproductions" become versions not just of some "original" but also the
  living process of people interacting with the work.

  The hard copy, according to this line of argument, is just one part of the
  real process of reproduction, which occurs only when people are
  intersecting and interpenetrating with it. The "authenticity" of the
  reproduction of the "original" - its degree of being mediated with
  abridgments, illustrations, annotations, etc., the version it turns out to
  be - plays a role, but perhaps not the essential role. Whether the
  original was on screen and the reproduction was in a book, or the original
  was in a book and the reproduction was on screen, is interesting, but
  again, not essential. Perhaps the essential issue is how the readers are
  actually and culturally interacting with whatever version they are dealing
  with. Versions change over time, forms vary, but readers and the ways they
  interpret the things they read change even more, and here is where we can
  really locate the dynamics of the origin and reproduction of literature.

  Your point is well taken that there are important differences between the
  mode of the mass-published printed page, and the mode of computer
  technology (which often winds up, as you ironically point out, on more
  printed pages!). And certainly, these differences in modes of reproduction
  have opened our minds to more flexible notions as to what counts as
  "literature".

  But perhaps as the industrial age has developed and we have learned to
  reproduce more and more things in more and more ways, we are learning more
  about what the essence of cultural events is really all about. If our
  notions of what counts as literature are changing, perhaps it is because we
  are getting a better idea of what literature really is. Printing presses
  and computers can modify the forms of literature and provide different ways
  that these artifacts of text can be looked at, and if the literature is
  interesting to enough people, over time, more and more versions seem to
  proliferate. But no matter what the form literature takes, and no matter
  what technology is used to make copies of it, it is people that supply its
  content and really reproduce it.

  Thoughts?

  - Steve

  At 03:34 PM 11/14/03 +0000, you wrote:
>Hi Steve,
>
>Lots of interesting points in your message. I'll follow some threads.
>
>«the absolute similarity of copies does not negate the obvious fact that
>even a digital copy is not the same thing as the original performance,
>image, or whatever it is a recording of.»
>
>I agree. But then there is a qualitative difference between digital and
>analogic representation, and it's the fact that whenever we create/produce
>something in digital mode (say, a software, a video game, a piece of
>"techno" music) the "copies" of this work are undistinguishable from the
>"original". There is no loss of quality or information, and the very notions
>of "original" and "copy" become problematic, to say the least.
>
>
>«Just where do we locate a literary "original"? Is it the author's original
>manuscript? Perhaps the serialization of their writing in a newspaper (as
>many of Charles Dickens' books were)? The first edition of the first book
>the text appeared in? The highest quality edition ever published? The
>current edition in print? The best e-book version available?»
>
>Tricky questions indeed. But I think that as regards literature, there is
>already a well-established tradition of scholarship and interpretation which
>employs procedures to identify "authoritative" versions of literary works
>(not that this identification is always without argument; the contrary seems
>to be the case, but at least there is a common basis for discussion).
>
>
>«And then, just to reverse the order of events, how about literary writing
>that originates on the internet? Suppose the next great Portuguese novel is
>originally published on the web - and subsequently printed in book form.
>Wouldn't the production of this work in book form then be a "layer of
>mediation"?»
>
>Of course it would. For instance, a book published on the Web has a
>different structure than in print. Think about hypertext links, the absence
>of page numbers, the different division of sections, etc. Besides that, if a
>text is too long we'd rather print it, because the screen is not as good as
>paper to read. All this is to say that a printed book can "have" more layers
>of mediation than a computer, no problem with that.
>
>
>«Why can't literature be just as real on screens as it is in beautifully
>bound books? Does the screen format really add another layer of mediation
>that is fundamentally different from the layer of editing that is involved
>in creating a new edition of a book? Perhaps rather than another layer, we
>just have the possibility of many versions.»
>
>I disagree. The production of a new edition of a printed book is very
>different from the adaptation of this same book to the Web. The media are
>different. This is not to say that the notion of "literature" doesn't apply
>to texts on the screen. Rather, what we have here is a change in our notion
>of what counts as "literature" - a change brought about by our uses of a new
>technology.
>
>Rgrds,
>
>Luiz Carlos Baptista
>lucabaptista@sapo.pt
>lucabaptista@hotmail.com



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