4 thoughts on “premature burial, or, the electronic word in time and space

  1. Gary Frost

    I have a funny view of on-line presentations. I always assume that they will be inept or simplistic simulations of source modes of communication such as conversation. It is miraculous that screen presentations can simulate so many communication genres, but I always assume that the result will be primitive.
    The scroll was an early format for the book. The scroll has a number of presentational features including its characteristic tracking for text, the use of a cursor and a typical functionality as a prompt for recitation.
    Screen presentation appears to have adopted this exemplar. The scroll tracking is certainly there, although in the opposite axis to that typical of antiquity. The cursor is also there. The cursor was originally the pointed finger and it proved important in early writing that frequently lacked word separation or punctuation. The cursor is present throughout the manuscript era where it is frequently drawn in the margins. The original cursor is perpetuated to this day in Judaic liturgy by the silver Yad that travels the lines of the scroll. The scroll is also associated with prompting recitation. Both the Torah and the teleprompter are exemplars.
    As I said, screen presentation seems to borrow these features of the scroll. In my view, screen based presentation is still light years from the presentational sophistication of the codex with its elegant manipulated navigation, its association with silent reading facilitated by ingenious features of paratext and its functionality as a prompt for writing. Default line length alone incapacitates the screen as a simulation of the codex.
    So what about simulation of conversation? In my view, screen based presentation is still light years from compiling the visual and audio prompts of face to face conversation and far from echoing the layers of meaning and web of interaction and participation found in group discussion. How could a screen based simulation of conversation be better designed? Perhaps only by dilution of our expectations and compromise of our need to communicate. But, I suspect that such views are not consistent with expectations.
    I do like the activity of listservs such as the one at SHARP (Society for History of Authorship, Reading and Publication). With a listserv a single thread receives most of the attention and always with the same tag. It has the feel of authentic conversation in at least two ways. One is the real time aspect and other is the provocation to a self-selecting discussion sub-group. Of course everything depends on an astute initial provocation. There was a good plug for FotB.org at the SHARP list under a thread on Google and Yahoo print imaging.

  2. dan visel

    As I said, screen presentation seems to borrow these features of the scroll. In my view, screen based presentation is still light years from the presentational sophistication of the codex with its elegant manipulated navigation, its association with silent reading facilitated by ingenious features of paratext and its functionality as a prompt for writing. Default line length alone incapacitates the screen as a simulation of the codex.

    Gary, did you take a look at the PDFs I posted in the comments on this thread? Do they approach readibility from your perspective? They’re an attempt to deal with (some of) these using commonly available technology, with some allowances made for the screen: while the text is divided into conveniently sized pages, there aren’t folios, for example, because they’re less useful on an electronic screen of text. Would be curious to know what you think of them. Obviously, you can’t recreate print paratext on the screen – but can the screen have a paratext of its own?

  3. Edward Vielmetti

    Looking forward to NextText.
    Making conversations flow on a screen is always hard. Back in the 1980s a set of tools for conversations – instances being Confer, Caucus, and Picospan – helped people manage a bunch of individual discussions on a single system. Relatively long conversations ensued on relatively slow links.
    The blogging format places much more of an emphasis on the author of the original text vs. the many authors of the comments. Some systems make that distinction less visible.

  4. sol gaitan

    Gary Frost brings things down to the very point: “Of course everything depends on an astute initial provocation.” Conversations tend to flow when there is provocation. However, there are two things to consider; in a “real conversation” the interlocutors jump in and out of a thread inspired or piqued by the other(s). They usually don’t wait until a speaker is done with the whole of his thought, unless he is a fabulously articulate one, or a true raconteur. It almost seems necessary to actually get together, in real time, to be able to actually converse. Isn’t that what “chatting” has come to mean?

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