January 28, 2010 Archives

Taylor Mali also wrote (and performed) the equally masterful "What Teachers Make."

76

• codex (from Latin "tree trunk"; "code" of laws)
• rubrication ("red letter day")
• saccadic (eye-jumps; not struggling letter-by-letter through a word)
• readan (OE "interpret, advise")
• lego (Fr & It root for "reading" -- lecture; "to collect," to pick up while navigating a physical space)
• boustrophedan ("as the ox turns")

80

• paratactic
  
• periodic

line (oral narrative; command-line interface)
tree (codex; mutations and expansions; what-happens-next branching fiction)
network (hypertext; LARP; MMO games)


Let's jump ahead and make a connection to cyberculture.

Bolter, an early hypertext theorist, argues that "The Homeric oral poetry shows that the network is older than writing itself" (81). 

Hypertext offers multiple paths through a text; two different hypertext readers could take different paths through the same text, just as auditors at two different performances by classical poet-storytellers could experience two different versions of the same epic legend. The fact that the reader of a hypertext could make choices that resembled the kind of choices the poet-performer could take was part of much of the hypertext theory of the 90s.  Of course, a the reader of a hypertext story can only choose to follow the hyperlinks the author has chosen to provide, whereas a bard has much more free reign to extemporize. 

So the author of a hypertext does have the same kind of freedom as the performer of an oral epic.  The reader of a hypertext can construct an individual path through a hypertext, while one audience member in a crowd is only one potential voice in what the crowd wants to hear next.

The world had already moved steadily into the manuscript age by the time Plato wrote this dialog. We need to use our intellectual imaginations to re-construct a world in which face-to-face oral communication was the way to get ahead in life.

In the 80s, it was still common practice for most people to hand-write rough drafts, then type them up at a final stage. At my university, people put up flyers advertising typing services; the department secretary would offer to type up one graduate student's dissertation each year. 

Typing was considered a skill that was separate from composition. You've certainly seen old movies in which the secretary walked into the office, steno pad in hand, while the boss dictated a letter.  (In the 80s, I remember a teacher saying that women with good typing skills should not mention that fact in their resumes, because they'd be snapped up in a service job and wouldn't get the kind of experience that leads to a promotion... but consider the story of Tiro, which we'll look at in Di Renzo's article, "His Master's Voice" soon.)

So, my story suggests that skill with a keyboard could hurt your career, since you'd be seen as tied to a keyboard, rather than seen as a source of interpersonal interactions that are important to a rise through management.  In a similar way, Plato tells a story that reminds us that conveniences that keep us from having to do drudgery also rob us of the opportunity to master a skill. (I for one have no desire to learn how to skin an animal and prepare its flesh for cooking -- I'm perfectly happy to depend on the technological conveniences that separate me from that process. Still, I admire the independence of those  people who do not need to depend on Wal-Mart to feed their families. Do I admire that independence enough to emulate it?  Sadly, no. But I don't really understand my place in the economic world unless I can identify and understand different points of view. What is your place in the world of ideas?)