Hi Luiz,
Your questions and points are well taken. I think my writing was a little
muddled - thank you for correcting some loose ends.
Luiz:
When you say that "the very very nature of replication is itself a form of
>editing, because it cannot be identical", this clearly does not apply to
>digital information technologies. Here, there is no difference between an
>"original" and a "copy". If I copy the contents of an Audio CD into a CD-R,
>the end result is identical to the "original". The same goes to the copy of
>software, digitized images, etc. This is a fundamental difference between
>digital technologies and analogic ones.
Steve:
What I had in mind was the general problem of the creation of a copy from
any original. In creating any kind of recording (audio, visual, etc.) we
are - according to the point I was stressing - significantly editing and
modifying the original experience. But once a reproducible copy is
available, that is another story. Mass production, of both the analog and
digital variety, can usually manufacture almost identical replications of
the "original copy", and in incredible quantities. This is true of
phonograph records as well as compact disks, magazines as well as web
sites. Your emphasis that digital information technologies can outperform
any non-digital technology in its ability to replicate in an identical way
is certainly true - nothing beats binary code for that. But 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.
Luiz:
>The other question has to do with the teaching of literature. You say that
>"of course such devices [computers] will affect how people will read and
>interpret. But so does the design and structure of the physical books
>themselves." I couldn't agree more, but... "the design and structure of the
>physical books" is an essential part of what we came to understand as
>"literature". The use of computers in fact adds another layer of mediation,
>and in this process it changes the way in which we approach books and,
>maybe, the very notion of "literature".
Steve:
True, up to a point. Text, especially, gets tricky in this
regard. Consider this. 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?
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"?
Now, I subjectively hold the bias - as many book lovers do, and I suspect
you do, too - that writing isn't really "real" until it appears on
paper. For all my time in front of computer screens, that is a hard
perception for me to shake! But can this impression really be
justified? 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.
Well, I've been asking lots of questions, implying answers, but not without
some perplexity. The world of information processing and reproduction we
live in poses many new challenges. What is your take on all this, Luiz?
Best,
- Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 01 2003 - 01:00:11 PST