Hi Luiz,
Your point about interactivity is a truly important one. There is nothing
like the modern computer and the internet for human interactivity in
writing. As a vehicle for passive consumption of information, computer
technology is arguably just another communication medium with its own
advantages and disadvantages. But as a way for people to interactively
engage with one another in writing about what they and others have written
and otherwise created, the computer is unmatched.
In my opinion, what makes computer technology interactive is not just the
additional gadgets it provides for moving the information around to consume
it in different ways - adjusting parameters, as you point out - but the
greater number of people that are able to not just consume, but also
produce and distribute information. Computers are transforming our
ability to control and adjust machines, but much more importantly, they are
transforming our ability to interact with other people.
Printing presses for some centuries have been revolutionizing the
accessibility of the average person to read the printed word. Radio and
television revolutionized the accessibility of the average person to
receive the broadcast word. Computers are now revolutionizing the
accessibility of the average person to create their own printed and
broadcast words, and access those of many others.
This is having important effects on how teachers and students
interact. Textbooks, chalkboards and blank paper facilitated the first
wave of modern educational technology, where the forms of interaction of
the teacher with the students were primarily verbal and annotative.
Mimeograph machines, copiers and so forth (remember ditto machines?)
facilitated a new wave of interactive possibility, allowing the teacher to
interact with the student with their own printed words (tests, etc.). The
internet, the laser printer, and large color audio-video monitors are now
facilitating a new wave, where the possibilities for teachers - and
students - to interact in the learning process with their own materials are
far more extensive and penetrating than ever. The word processor alone is
changing modern education.
Carol Lee points us toward the possibilities of the keyboard, mouse and
screen, showing us how software like she and others are developing can help
teachers design culturally responsive, interactive multimedia computer
environments. Hitherto, teachers have been largely at the mercy of
publishers, film makers, etc. for quality learning materials, and at that
on the cultural terms dictated by these large corporations. This is
changing. Entirely new levels of local creativity, complex interaction,
and cultural responsiveness by more and more teachers and students are
being made possible by the computer.
Likewise, the world of literature and the published word in general is
becoming more interactive. One interesting example to consider is the
growth of critical customer reviews of books on sites like Amazon.com. How
will these new possibilities of interaction impact literature, and what we
even regard as literature? As you point out, Luiz, nobody knows; time will
tell. It is anybody's guess where all this will lead!
Best,
- Steve
At 07:01 PM 11/22/03 +0000, you wrote:
>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
><mailto:lucabaptista@sapo.pt>lucabaptista@sapo.pt
><mailto:lucabaptista@hotmail.com>lucabaptista@hotmail.com
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:bebop101@comcast.net>Steve Gabosch
>To: <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>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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