Edge 313. David Gelertner – the conservative – on taking the internet seriously. Follow links from there.

Keep yr browsers pointed here: Sonic Acts XIII The Poetics of Space. The programme will be online, finally, in a few days – or sooner. The book will be for sale from the 25th of February on.

And yes, I have been busy working on all this, together with the others (Nicky, Annette, Lucas, Gideon, Martijn etc.)

Therefore there were no updates here.

And btw, due to all the snow and the freezing I haven’t been able to get out on the bike for weeks now. I have even installed the old Tacx, for the first time in 5 years, to do a bit of riding inside. (I find that completely boring but my legs begin to ache from not riding).

Brief history of social media, yes, and starting with the phone phreaks. Sure one could go before that? Conference calls? Chatboxes on landlines? As this is an American history Minitel isn’t mentioned either. I can think of a few things more even. Yet, good as an overview: http://socialmediarockstar.com/history-of-social-media.

Btw: I’m blogging live at the Print / Pixel conference at the Piet Zwart, in Rotterdam: http://blog.wdka.nl/communication-in-a-digital-age/.

My last 4 “tweets”:

ariealt going thru my rss-feeds, seeing i havent looked at most of them since november 16th (2008), excepting those of friends &c. less than 5 seconds ago from web

ariealt the website that’s not updated since january 2006! less than 5 seconds ago from web

ariealt first a second big coffee. hmm twitter-spam. have to finish listing my publications of 2008, then update the website less than 5 seconds ago from web

ariealt home (after a’dam-r’dam-enschede-almelo-r’dam-a’dam for an evening on digital poetry in enschede), dishes done, back to work or cycling? 8 minutes ago from web

Yeah, I know, plugins do exist to stream twitter-updates straight to wordpress. I won’t use it, I guess

A call for contribution for Video Vortex 4 is up (ah, since the 2nd of december): http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/videovortex/archives/108. Also a a pdf of the reader covering Video Vortex 3: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/inc-readers/videovortex//.

Reading through Lev Manovich new book Software Studies, which is downloadable here: http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2008/11/softbook.html.

Being massively jealous of course (“hey,I could’ve easily written part 3, that’s my research”), I wonder if what Manovich is doing in this book — which at first quick reading through seems to be great as a summary, and very teachable — is in fact first “interface studies” and secondly software studies. Shouldn’t way peel off one more layer, open one more black box to reach at — well, how software is made to function so it makes us function? Or is this criticism due to my fascination for programming — not being a programmer myself?

Naturally their are many smaller issues on which I’m tempted to take issue with Manovich, or where I think he might have missed something. (German media theory?). I wonder if remixability is as central as he claims it to be. Yet, exactly making such a claim — remix as dominant form of cultural production — produces clarity too.

Just as Language of New Media this could be a book that one simply cannot go around / escape, when doing software studies. Even if one’s own approach would be different. (Manovich focussed mainly at American and Americanized culture, less at more marginal software cultures, et cetera et cetera).

Well, this is all very very preliminary, having read Part One, skimmed through Part Two, and read diagonally across Part Three. But I couldn’t resist…

And well, this is a great quote: “In the era of Web 2.0, we can state that information wants to be ASCII.”

There is so much to say about this little book by cyclist, writer, publisher and OULIPO-member Paul Fournel, that I do not know where to begin. It is perfect. It captures what riding the bike is about, in just a few works, a few sentences he describes the essential.

Why, you ask, gather all these data about rides, how far and how fast, measured by computers and GPS-devices, when you need just a few well chosen words that condense the reality of it. (Ezra Pound: ‘Dichten’ is condensare).

I recognize almost everything in Fournel’s ‘need for the bike’. Which, I guess, is a way to say I am a cyclist like him. (Only I think he’s way faster, more competitive, I never did any sports prior to buying a racing bike when I was 30, I am a late-comer).

Just a few quotes — in English (the translation is by Allan Stoekl, the book is published by the University of Nebraska Press):

“Bike speed requires you to be selective about what you see, you reconstruct what you sense, In that way you get to the essential. Your gaze brushes over the title of a book or a cover, a newspaper catches your eye, you glimpse a potential gift in a window, a new bread in a bakery. That’s the proper speed of my gaze. It’s a writer’s speed, a speed that filters and does a preliminary selection.” (p. 44/45)

“As soon as I knew how to ride I grasped the idea of a greater world. When I left tot do a circuit, everything inside the circuit was ‘home’.” (p. 63)

“Road maps for me are dream machines. I like to read them as if they’re adventure stories. When I drive my car I use them to find the shortest route, to find the long roads where cities join, roads that don’t go through the country. As a bike rider I use them for everything else. If I know an area, every centimeter on the map is a landscape laid out for me. If I don’t know it yet, every centimeter is an imagined landscape that I will explore.” (p. 79)

For me maps are dream machines too. And there is the reason why I still use maps, and do not have a GPS device — though I am fascinated by how these technologies change one’s relation toward space, landscape and dreaming. I find it impossible to dream while staring at Google maps and Google Earth.

Should I write an essay on that?

(Btw: thanks to Alex Myers for bringing this book to my attention)

Paul Fournel is here: http://www.paulfournel.com/.

Almost two weeks ago, while staying in North Groningen, I read Roger Chartier’s Inscription and Erasure. Nuanced and well-argued short essays, a pleasure to read. Chartier combines history of written culture with sociology of texts, focuses the attention on the material side of the culture, and at the same time is an acute reader of the texts under scrutiny.

With these chapters:

I Wax & Parchment: about the use of wax tablets by the poet Baudri de Ourgueil, 11th century.
II Writing & Memory: about the ‘librillo’ in Don Quichotte — according to Chartier this is a booklet of wax tablets.
III The Press & Fonts: about Don Quichotte in the print shop, printing as work, copy-editing, proof-reading.
IV Handwritten Newsletters, Printed Gazettes: about 16th century handwritten manuscripts with news, copied for the powerful and rich; described via the satirizing of newsprint in comedies of Ben Jonson. Shows how printing was bound up in commercialism, printing what will sell rather than what is true, printing what has a success with the public.
V Talking books and Clandestine Manuscripts: about Cyrano de Bergerac whose works were circulated as manuscripts, never printed.
VI Text & Fabric: with an overview of the use of the weaving as metaphor for text, mostly by way of a comedia of Goldoni, and about Goldoni’s postion as a writer.
VII Commerce in the Novel: an essay about Diderot’s reception of Richardson and how the Richardson-novels led to a new idea about what constitutes good reading: namely a sympathic way of reading, identification of the reader with the characters is central, and valued positive.
VIII Epilogue Diderot & his Pirates: about copyright and Diderot’s ambiguous take on it.

I won’t copy all my notes here, though I do copy the quotes:

“By refusing to seperate the analysis of symbolic meanings from that of the material forms by which they are transmitted, such an approach sharply challenges the longstanding division between the sciences of interpretation and those of description, hermeneutics and morpholopgy.”(p. vii/viii)

“.. they involve the manifold, shifting, and unstable relation between the text and its materialities, between the work and its inscriptions.” (p. ix)

“It is therefore pointless to try to distinguish the essential substance of the work, which is supposed to remain invariable, from the accidental variations of the text, which are viewed as unimportant for its meaning.” (p. ix)

“Compared with the books that came out of print shops, manuscripts offered many advantages. For one thing, it allowed for controlled and limited diffusion of texts without the risk that they might fall into the hands of ignorant readers, since they circulated within a distinct social milieu defined by family ties, similar social status, or shared sociability. For another the very form of the manuscript book left it open to correction, deletion, and insertion at all stages of production, from composition to copying and binding, so that the writing could proceed in successive stages (…) or by several hands (…). Finally manuscript publication was a response to corruptions introduced by printing: it rescued the commerce of letters from economic interests (except when it too a commercial form itself, as with handwritten newsletters), and it protected works from the alterations introduced by clumsy compositors and ignorant proofreaders.” (p. 76)

[In the chapter on Richardson and Diderot (VII Commerce in the Novel) Chartier returns to the idea of a reading revolution in the eighteenth century, the presumed birth of extensive reading that took the place of intensive reading. Although he acknowledges that a lot changes, he does not believe that extensive reading took te place of intensive reading.]

“The eigtheenth-century novel took hold of the reader, captivated him, governed his thoughts and actions. It was read and re-read, studied, quoted and recited. The reader was invaded by the text , which came to dwell within him, and through identification with the heroes of the story he began to decipher his own life in the mirror of fiction.” (p. 114)

[But this is not enough to invalidate the idea of a revolution in writing:]

“Throughout enlightened Europe, profound changes transformed the production of print and the conditiosn of access to books, despite the stability of typographic technology and labor. Everywhere the growing supply of books, the secularization of the titles on offer, the circulation of banned books, the proliferation of periodicals, the triumph of small formats, and the mushrooming of literary cabinets and reading societies (…) imposed new ways of reading.” (p. 114)

“For the most literate readers of both sexes, the possibilites of reading seemed to expand, opening the way for a variety of practices associated with different times, places and genres. Each reader was thus at one time or another either “intensive” or “extensive”, absorbed, or casual, studious or amused.” (p. 114)

“This diversity suggests tht any full historical approach to literary texts should avoid the temptation to universalize any particular mode of reading and should rather seek to identify the specific skills and practices of each community of readers and the specific codes and conventions associated with each genre.” (p. 115)

“One of the principal tasks of combining textual criticism with cultural history is precisely to dispel this illusion.” (namely the illusion of the reader that he is forgetting his own social conditions of production). (p. 115)

“Paradoxically, in order for texts to be subjected to the laws of property governing material objects, it was necessary to divorce them conceptually from any particular material embodiment. But composition, copying,, and printing require stylus or a pen, wax or paper, a hand or a press. And works reach their readers or listeners only by way of objects and practices tha make them available to be read or listened to.” (p. 143)

Chartier, Roger. 2007. Inscription and Erasure, Literature and Written Culture from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press. (orig. 2005 Inscrire et effacer).

This is a classic from the Annales-school, published originally in 1958. It sets out to meticulously describe the impact of printing, based on empirical/archival research, combining the perspectives of technology, economy, culture, politics, sociology. It’s a bit dry, not only because of the Annales-style of socio-economic history, but also because a lot is well-known from later studies. Well, it’s a classic…

I am not enough of a book-historian to assess the actual importance of this book as I do not really know how much has been made even clearer or is refuted by the subsequent research in this field. But Febvre & Martin ask the right questions, the research is thorough, claims are backed-up by numbers (that is the real power of this work), and there are some sobering thoughts for those who’d like to believe that printing meant an immediate ‘revolution’ — with positive effects — for our ‘mentality’ and culture.

They write:

“(W)e hope to establish how and why the printed book was something more than a triumph of technical ingenuity, but was also one of the most potent agents at disposal of western civilization in bringing together the scattered ideas of representative thinkers.” p. 10

And:

“We propose (…) to examine the influence and the practical significance of the printed book during the first 300 years of its existence.” p. 11

Compared to a McLuhan the quotability of this book is not very high. But this is an interesting thought:

“From time to time writers turned printer — to print their own works, see them through the press ensuring their accuracy and good appearance, supervise their distribution and so have a direct influence on the reading public. This was and always will be an ambition common to many intellectuals. At times of intellectual crisis and of conflicts over questions of conscience, when polemical literature flourishes, this will be particularly the case.” p. 143

The last chapter is entitled “The Book as a Force of Change”. From their research it becomes clear that there was a swift change (p. 249): about 20 million books (copies) were printed before 1500 (p. 248). Then they ask:

“What was the result of it? What kind of books did the public want from its printers and booksellers? To what extent did printing ensure a wider circulation for the traditional medieval texts? How much of that heritage did it preserve? In making a sharp break with in the material conditions of intellectual work did the press promote the growth of a new type of literature?” (p. 249)

A digest from this (long) chapter:

“One fact must not be lost sight of: the printer and the bookseller worked above all and from the beginning for profit.” (p. 249)

“(T)he immediate effect of printing was merely to further increase the circulation of those works which had already enjoyed success in manuscript, and often to consign less popular texts to oblivion.” (p. 249)

“By multiplying books by the hundred and then thousand, the press achieved both increased volume and at the same time more rigorous selection.” (p. 249)

(In the beginning, before 1500, most books (77%) were Latin, and the majority were religious books).

“The reading public was extended by the sheer number of books which reached wider and wider audiences with increasing ease.” (p. 252)

“Printing also made for a more exact knowledge of the Latin language and of the authors of classical antiquity.” (p. 252)

“At the same time we must also note that the Latin classics which were the greatest success for publishers undoubtedly continued to be those which had been most popular in the Middle Ages, those which had most frequently been adapted and translated into the vernacular.” (p. 253)

“It is fairly evident at the outset that printing brought about no sudden or radical transformation, and contemporary culture hardly seems at first to have changed, at least as regards its general characteristics. But selection soon became imperative as the decision had to be made which of the many thousands of medieval manuscript were worth printing. (…) (B)ooksellers were primarily concerned to make a profit (…) and consequently they sought out first and foremost those works which were of interest to the largest possible number of their contemporaries. Hence the introduction of printing was in this respect a stage on the road to our present society of mass consumption and of standardisation.” (p. 260)

But things change too:

“Contemporary writers who had their names attached to hundreds and thousands of copies of their work became conscious of their individual reputations. This (…) was also a sign of a new age when artists began to sign their works, and authorship takes on an altogether new significance. Rapidly, under the mounting flood of new books written for an ever increasing public, the heritage of the Middle Ages lost its hold.” (p. 261)

“(B)y the 16th century the printed book (…) played a central role in the diffusion of knowledge of classical literature (…) and later in the propagation of Reformation doctrines; it helped to fix the vernacular languages and encouraged the development of national literatures.” (p. 262)

“Book production in the first decades of the 16th century shows a clear line of development (…). Religious works were still preponderant, and in fact more were probably printed that in the 15th century, but with the overall increase in production the proportion of religious books decreased markedly, while the constantly growing quantity of classical works is striking.” (p. 264)

(Febvre & Martin remark that while national vernacular languages were born, it was the translators that “helped to preserve the homogeneity of European culture” — as research shows that many works were translated.) (p. 274)

“Latin as the international language did not decline fully until the 17th century. By then the establishment of national literatures everywhere had begun to split up the book market, a process which was encouraged by the development of effective political and religious censorship. Permanent divisions were established between the cultures of the different countries of Europe.” (p. 274)

“Although printing certainly helped scholars in some fields, on the whole it could not be said to have hastened the acceptance of new ideas or knowledge. In fact, by popularising long cherished beliefs, strengthening traditional prejudices and giving authority to seductive fallacies, it could even been said to have represented an obstacle to the acceptance of many new views.” (p. 278)

” There thus took place a process of unification and consolidation which established fairly large territories throughout which a single language was written. Within these territories the languages which are still today the languages of each nation more or less rapidly attained their definitive development. Spelling also became fixed. It came to correspond less and less with pronunciation and was sometimes complicated by the influence exerted upon it by the classical languages. Printing was not the only factor which acted to bring about this evolution. (…) The emergence or strengthening of centralising national monarchies in the 16th century favoured the trend toward a unified national language.” (p. 319)

“(T)here is no doubt that printing generally favoured the development of literature written in the vernacular. Printing thus helped to render the national languages increasingly sophisticated as modes of expression.” (p. 328)

A-and their final sentence:

“So, by encouraging publication in the national languages for economic reasons, the book trade was in the end fostering the development of those languages — and bringing about the decline of Latin. This was to be a fateful development. It marked, it is true, the origin of a culture belonging to the masses, but its consequences, once set in motion were incalculable. The unified Latin culture of Europe was finally dissolved by the rise of the vernacular languages which was consolidated by the printing press.” (p. 332)

A-ah: so the whole book was about the decline of Latin… ;-)

Febvre, Lucien and Martin, Henri-Jean, 1997. The Coming of the Book. The Impact of Printing 1450-1800. Translated by David Gerard. London: Verso. Translation of L’apparition du livre, 1958.