Just quickly read 2 articles that seemed interesting.

“Structure of Self-Organized Blogosphere” — (language: international english of the Chinese variety) — pdf here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/math.ST/0607361. Which is ‘one of those’ statistical analyses of linking in the blogosphere. Conclusions: ‘the blogging network has small-world property’ and the distribution of links-in and links-out follows a power-law. In other words: here’s a sort of statistical ‘proof’ of the common knowledge that a few celebrity blogs receive lots of incoming links, and most blogs hardly receive links. I’m not so interested in this kind of network-research, it seems to be more about (statistical/mathematical) network-theory, than about communication, flow of information &c. tho’ it’s possible that I miss the point.

“Copy and Paste Literacy: Literacy Practices in the Production of a MySpace Profile – An Overview” by Dan Perkel strikes me as more interesting: a simple and to the point analysis of how MySpace is used. He argues that one could see MySpace as an “informal learning environment that fosters the development of new literacies”. One could state that of a lot of similar enviroments and softwares, I’d say, yet this overview, accompanied by different theories about ‘literacy’ I found worthwhile reading. It is clear and straightforward in its approach — looking at how copy & pasting of code, links, images, music and video is used in MySpace. Although, again it does not go further than confirming what one (well, I) already believe(s). But that’s no so bad… Text is online here: http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~dperkel/media/dperkel_literacymyspace.pdf.

Found these papers thanks to http://jilltxt.net.

Perkel points to the ‘problem’, for theories of literacy, that copy&paste and remixing is generally not seen as ‘writing’. (Well, he writes: “However, the importance of copying and pasting code does not easily fit in the common conventions of reading and writing, consumption and production.”) But what if we’d go back to antique rhetorics, where learning to deal with the tropes and commonplaces, is part of learning to write & construct an argument. To really make that analogy would be stretching the point — yet I’d say that ‘writing’ is also learning to use “pre-fab elements” in a good way. (And then the question is: what is that good way?)

Nice (well, useful, quotable) quotes:

“Genre is the conceptual glue that binds social activity to technical activity. In order to understand what literacy might be, one must pay attention to the particularities of social activity, to the particularities of media, and also to the generic forms and competencies that groups share in their use of a media.” (p. 3)

“Bakhtin argues that, “genres must be fully mastered in order to be manipulated freely,” implying both a mastery of both recognizing generic forms and using them, or generic competencies (80).” (p. 6)

“HTML and CSS, like other programming languages, encourage a particular way of thinking about problems. For example, learning to use them requires learning how to think modularly. The rhetoric concerning the separation of content and style, however useful, embodies a certain way of understanding communication.” (p. 8)

“The idea that same message in different form is still the same message implies that social context of use, the specifics of the activity, and the specifics of the medium have little importance in determining meaning. Regardless of how one feels about this rhetoric, learning to think this way, uncritically, may have important consequences.” (p. 8)

“[H]ow good of a learning environment is MySpace for mastering the representational form and technical competency of web programming? Certainly, it provides an introduction to the medium, and some even may learn more about HTML and CSS as a part of trying to customize their profiles. However, the way in which the MySpace designers use CSS works completely against the point of style sheets.” (p. 8) (Hear me say: “right you are!”)

Now go on to read: Henry Jenkins, “Learning by Remixing”: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/07/learning_by_remixing.html.

Useful start — for a more or less academic bibliography:
http://jilltxt.net/?p=1726#comments.

Yesterday I took part in the first discussion of the Reading Department: http://www.reading.department.cc/. Using Skype for a collective chat — reading through Agamben’s text We Refugees. I had to log off at 21.30, at a moment when some interesting issues where coming up — a beginning of a critique of Agamben.

Well, that is what I am interested in, a critique of Agamben. (His texts are beautiful anyway). In order to to entangle both the fascination and the sense of unease with Agambens way of reasoning and doing philosophy. Or trying to do that. Something — I ‘feel’ — is not ‘right’ with Agamben, yet his analysis seems to be very precise and thorough, and to the point.

Taking up Dewey: maybe the problem lies in that Agamben, does use examples from experience, uses practical, political situations, but in the end relegates everything to the realm of ideas and ideals — and leaves it there. A realm of “Anschauung”… the spectator view of knowledge…

But I have to add a big question mark here.

— Then I stumble on this, in the statement of the Reading Department: “Can theory compete with an ongoing war? And what kind of implications bears the “distance of theory”?”

Is that the problem? Theory is not distant, should not be distant. Theory comes from and applies to the world of experience. Of course there are different layers of involvement, entanglement — but the realm of ideas and concepts is not seperate from dirty life. Distance is not the same as separation, but at some point distance becomes separation in practice.

Anyway. Maybe my conclusions are too eeeazy.

And then I also read Reconstruction in Philosophy of John Dewey. It’s a collection of lectures, given in Tokyo, in 1920, shortly after the First World War. I picked it up because it was the only Dewey-book in the Jan van Eyck-library. It might not be among Dewey’s main works, but I found it extremely inspiring and clear and accessible — in fact it is a perfect introduction into philosophy from the standpoint of pragmatism. Well, I’d say it’s the best introduction to philosophy I ever read. Wish I’d read this when I was 18.

Dewey outlines very clearly how the divide between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge came about; what is wrong with the philosophical antitheses of reason and experience, ideal and real. What is wrong with the spectator view of knowledge; what is the importance of the scientific method. What is wrong with the divisions like art/imagination/aesthetics on the one hand and science/practical knowledge on the other. Et cetera.

Of course there are problems as well with Dewey’s approach, and a few times he seems to come close to a sort of optimistic view of life that reminds one a bit of self-help books. But that seems to be the price to pay when philosophy is reconstructed from practical life…

“If this lecture succeeds in leaving in your mind as a reasonable hypothesis the idea that philosophy originated not out of intellectual material, but out of social and emotional material, it will also succeed in leaving with you a changed attitude toward traditional philosophies.” p. 25

Then Dewey goes on to describe Bacon’s scientific method and its importance for changing philosophy and the concept of knowledge: away from relying on tradition; involvement with the processes of life. Actually the reconstruction in philosophy that Dewey is after is “the endeavor to undo the entanglement [– that philosophy is caught in, due to the impossible combination of Baconian method and older traditions –] and to permit the Baconian aspirations to come to a free and unhindered expression.” p. 52

“True method, that which Bacon would usher in, is comparable to the operation of the bee who, like the ant, collects material from the external world, but unlike that industrious creature attacks and modifies the collected stuff in order to make it yield its hidden treasure.” p. 32

(Pragmatism is not common sense philosophy, on the contrary).

“Men who are thrown back upon “common sense” when they appeal to philosophy for some general guidance are likely to fall back on routine, the force of some personality, strong leadership or on the pressure of momentary circumstances.” p. 100

“In fact, the whole conception of knowledge as beholding and noting is fundamentally an idea connected with esthetic enjoyment and appreciation where the environment is beautiful and life is serene, and with esthetic repulsion and depreciation where life id troubled, nature morose and hard.” p. 115-116

“When the belief that knowledge is active and operative takes hold of men, the ideal realm is no longer something aloof and separate; it is rather the collective of imagined possibilities that stimultates men to new efforts and realizations.” p. 118

“If knowing were habitually conceived of as an active and operative, after the analogy of experiment guided by hypothesis, or of invention guided by imagination of some possibility, it is not too much to say that the first effect would be to emancipate philosophy from all the epistemological puzzles which now perplex it.” p. 123 (This is 1920, so way before Popper, Feyerabend, Lakatos).

“[T]hinking takes it departure from specific conflicts in experience that occasion perplexity and trouble.” p. 138

“They [theories] are tools. As in the case of all tools, their value resides not in themselves but in their capacity to work shown in the consequences of their use.” p. 145

“If ideas, meanings, conceptions, notions, theories, systems are instrumental to an active reorganization of the given environment, to a removal of some specific trouble and perplexity, then the test of their validity and value lies in accomplishing this work. If they succeed in their office, they are reliable, sound, valid, good, true. If they fail to clear up confusion, to eliminate defects, if they increase confusion, uncertainty and evil when they are acted upon, then they are false, Confirmation, corrobation, verification lie in works, consequences.” p. 156

“Now it is true that social arrangements, laws, institutions are made for man, rather than that man is made for them; that they are means and agencies of human welfare and progress. But they are not means for obtaining something for individuals, not even happiness. They are means of creating individuals.” p. 194

“Society is the process of associating in such ways that experiences, ideas, emotions, values are transmitted and made common.” p. 207

Acoording to Dewey society is always ‘in the making’, it moves, it consists of communication of experience between individuals, hence both the individual and the organization (‘State’) are subordinate to this active process.

“[O]rganization is never an end in itself. It is a means of promoting association, of multiplying effective points of contact between persons, directing their intercourses into the modes of greatest fruitfulness.” p. 206-207.

All quotes from John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, Enlarged Edition, Beacon Press, Boston, 1948 (1920).

“I used formerly, (he added,) when sleepless in bed, to read like a Turk.”

That might be Dr. Johnsons most famous quote…

Earlier in Boswell’s Life of Johnson we learn that Johnson read a lot, read fast, read without any system, read anything that took his fancy, and considered this the best way to acquire knowledge. Also he considered reading books a better way to learn than listening to lectures. In this sense Johnson is the perfect example of a ‘new world’ of learning & acquiring knowledge.

“[W]e may be absolutely certain, both from his writings and his conversation, that his reading was very extensive. Dr. Adam Smith, than whom few were better judges on this subject, once observed to me that ‘Johnson knew more books than any man alive.’ He had a peculiar facility in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of perusing it from beginning to end. He had, from the irritability of his constitution, at all times, an impatience and hurry when he either read or wrote.”

“Mr. Elphinston talked of a new book that was much admired, and asked Dr. Johnson if he had read it. JOHNSON. ‘I have looked into it.’ ‘What, (said Elphinston,) have you not read it through?’ Johnson, offended at being thus pressed, and so obliged to own his cursory mode of reading, answered tartly, ‘No, Sir, do YOU read books THROUGH?'”

“A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?”

“He then took occasion to enlarge on the advantages of reading, and combated the idle superficial notion, that knowledge enough may be acquired in conversation. ‘The foundation (said he,) must be laid by reading. General principles must be had from books, which, however, must be brought to the test of real life. In conversation you never get a system. What is said upon a subject is to be gathered from a hundred people. The parts of a truth, which a man gets thus, are at such a distance from each other that he never attains to a full view.'”

“‘Idleness is a disease which must be combated; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. A young man should read five hours in a day, and so may acquire a great deal of knowledge.'”

Add to this that Johnson wrote for money, wrote extremely fast, often did not edit, rewrite, yes, often did not reread what he wrote and published.

“He told us, ‘almost all his Ramblers were written just as they were wanted for the press; that he sent a certain portion of the copy of an essay, and wrote the remainder, while the former part of it was printing. When it was wanted, and he had fairly sat down to it, he was sure it would be done.'”

“When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very rapidly. The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.'”

All quotes from James Boswell, The Life of Johnson, 1791, electronic version: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1564.

(I read this edition: … edited & abridged by Christopher Hibbert, Penguin English Library, Harmondsworth, 1979).

In issue 74 of The Idler he defends enjoying the flow of reading, and argues against marking passages or copying fragments in notebooks:

“It is the practice of many readers to note, in the margin of their books, the most important passages, the strongest arguments, or the brightest sentiments. Thus they load their minds with superfluous attention, repress the vehemence of curiosity by useless deliberation, and by frequent interruption break the current of narration or the chain of reason, and at last close the volume, and forget the passages and marks together.”

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Idler

“As soon as actors are treated not as intermediaries but as mediators, they render the movement of the social visible to the reader. Thus through many textual inventions, the social may become again a circulating entity that is no longer composed of the stale assemblage of what passed earlier as being part of society.” (p. 128)

“A text, in our definition of social science, is thus a test on how many actors the writer is able to treat as mediators and how far he or she is able to achieve the social.” (p. 129)

— One could almost read this as the definition of a good novel. (Of the Richard Powers-kind — Latour being as much influenced by Powers as Powers is by Latour’s view of science, technology and society. One can also still ‘feel’ the Greimas-influence here (his actant-theory, stories as transformations &c.).)

“A good text elicits networks of actors when it allows the writer to trace a set of relations defined as so many translations.” (p. 129)

“In a bad text only a handful of actors will be designated as the causes of all the others, which will have no other function than to serve as a backdrop or relay for the flows of causal efficacy. (…) Nothing is translated from one to the other since action is simply carried through them.” (p. 130).

— Because this reads like the definition of a bad novel.

Latour stresses that writing texts is an ‘art’ (although he doesn’t use the word art here):

“The simple act of recording anything on paper is already an immense transformation that requires as much skill and just as much artifice as painting a landscape or setting up some elaborate biochemical reaction.”

And, interestingly, he wants descriptions, not explanations: “If a description remains in need of an explanation, it means that it is a bad description.” (p. 137) A good description is an explanation. I’d like to agree.

Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social, Oxford UP, Oxford, 2005.

In Reassembling the Social Latour, after having stated that ‘tracing social connections’ in effect means ‘writing down accounts’ (p. 122), and after having said that “good sociology has to be well written; if not the social doesn’t appear through it” (p. 124), tells us that as good sociologists, researchers, scientists, we should keep four different notebooks — manual or digital:

1. “a log of the enquiry itself (…) to document the transformation one undergoes by doing the travel.” (p. 134)

2. one for “gathering information”, both structured chronological as well as dispatched into categories, that can be refined.

3. one for “ad libitum writing”, to record haphazardly the ideas that occur while studying and researching.

4. one “kept to register the effect of the written account on the actors whose world has been either deployed or unified.” (p. 135)

I’m a worthless researcher…

Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social, Oxford UP, Oxford, 2005.

[Another digest of an article in quotes — here with many good quotes in the quotes…]

“Since the multitude of books, the shortness of time and the slipperiness of memory do not allow all things which are written to be equally retained in the mind, I decided to reduce in one volume in a compendium and in summary order some flowers selected according to my talents from all the authors I was able to read.” [Vincent of Beauvais in the preface to his four-volume Speculum maius (1255)] p. 11

“The premise of this study is that the experience of overabundance not only fostered the diffusion and development of various aids to learning or “reference genres” but also affected the way scholars worked, from reading and taking notes to composing books of their own.” p. 12

“By the eighteenth century we have a well-studied case in point with Samuel Johnson who, in addition to reporting that he “read like a Turk by tearing the heart out of a book,” when lying sleepless in bed, also used distinct terms to refer to at least four different ways of reading: “hard study” (which included taking notes), “perusal” (punctual consultation), “curious reading” (engrossed in a novel) and “mere reading” (browsing, as in journals).” p. 12

“[O]ne finds similar and quite explicit distinctions made by Francis Bacon in his Essay “Of Studies” (1612): ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.'” p. 13/14

“Like that other Jesuit, Antonio Possevino, who recommended a select (and aggressively purged) rather than a universal library, Sacchini emphasized choosing and reading carefully a core of “good” books—by which he meant books that would further piety and the ancient classics which were to be read with great care. ‘I urge that when a young man finds himself with some free time, he conscientiously devote himself not to reading new books but rather to re-reading and going over attentively those books which he knows already from the guidance of his teacher…. It is much better in the beginning to learn a few things well, than to taste many things…. Therefore if you set out to read a book, order requires that you read it from beginning to end: in this way you will understand more easily and retain much better the whole subject of the book.'” p. 15

“One of the main functions of marginal annotations made in early modern books was to flag the topics treated in the text, to be able to find one’s way back to a particular passage. The most interesting topics might then be gathered by page number in the fly-leaf.” p. 17/18

[Hmm, compare tagging].

“[T]he Jesuit Jeremias Drexel explained: ‘Reading is useless, vain and silly when no writing is involved, unless you are reading [devotionally] Thomas a Kempis or some such. Although I would not want even that kind of reading to be devoid of all note-taking.'” p. 19

Then Blair goes on to give examples of the note-taking methods of scholars like Sacchini, Drexel, Placcius (with his ‘scrinium literatum’), Gesner, Cardano and others. Till she hits on the 20th century practice of copy&paste — using scissors, glue & index cards:

“Indeed one Renaissance scholar has told me that he was advised as a graduate student to purchase a cheap edition of his main source in order to cut out quotations and paste them onto index cards from which to compose his dissertation.” p. 28

Ann Blair, ‘Reading Strategies for Coping With Information Overload ca. 1550-1700’, in Journal of the History of Ideas 64.1 (2003) p. 11-28

Also: http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_ the_history_of_ideas/v064/64.1blair.htm.

“In the writings of Erasmus and others who cultivated this practice [of keeping a commonplace book], the image of the bee as a clever borrower and collector had positive connotations.”

“In his De Copia (1512) Erasmus wrote: ‘The student, diligent as a little bee, will flit about through all the gardens of authors and will attack all the little flowerlets from whence he collects some honey which he carries into his own hive; and, since there is so much fertility of material in these that they are not all able to be plucked off, he will select the most excellent and adapt it to the structure of his own work.'” p. 66

Richard Yeo, ‘ A Solution to the Multitude of Books: Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (1728) as “the Best Book in the Universe”‘, in Journal of the History of Ideas 64.1 (2003) p. 61-72

“[Ann Blair] argues that historians have paid disproportionate attention to what she calls “literary reading” and not enough to other modes of encountering and engaging textual materials ranging from browsing and skimming to buying and collecting to annotating, cutting and pasting, and dog-earing. For Blair these other modes of acting upon texts are important in all historical moments, but in situations where readers feel themselves overwhelmed by information, they become all that much more crucial and telling.” p. 1

“According to her [Ann Blair] argument, an explosion of book production during the early modern period led to the development of a broad discourse on modes of textual practice. In some instances the problem of “information overload” led to a new emphasis on readerly “diligence” as in the cases of the theologians Francesco Sacchini and Johann Heinrich Alsted. In other instances, the same problem led to new theories and practices of consultative and instrumental reading such as those of Francis Bacon or Samuel Johnson.” p. 1/2

“In a world of rapid change, quick access to knowledge becomes as important as knowledge itself. During the early modern period, the encyclopedia survived by adaptation. If the Medieval encyclopedia aimed to reflect the universe itself, more and more, the early modern encyclopedia aimed to reflect the possibilities of knowing a changing universe of representation.” p. 4

“… during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries factors such as an increasing production and dissemination of books, developing networks of scientific communication, discoveries and innovations in the sciences, and new economic relationships all conspired to produce such quantities of new information that a substantial reorganization of the intellectual world was required. (…) by the end of the seventeenth century, it was widely understood that “representing and ordering the world” would be “impossible unless the representations themselves were put in order.”” p. 6

From Daniel Rosenberg, ‘Early Modern Information Overload’, in Journal of the History of Ideas 64.1 (2003) p. 1-9