Transcript Subject Lines - Clarkson University

Subject Lines:
Fragmentation,
Construction,
and Computing
Johndan Johnson-Eilola
Clarkson University
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.clarkson.edu/~johndan/
Space + Motion = Subjectivity
• Why does Microsoft Word suck?
• Why do we still primarily browse the
web?
• Are we going anywhere?
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MS Word
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Dreamweaver
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Office Wall
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From Time to Space
The great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we
know, history: with its themes of development and of
suspension, of crisis and cycle, themes of the everaccumulating past, with its great preponderance of dead men
and the menacing glaciation of the world. The nineteenth
century found its essential mythological resources in the
second principle of thermodynamics. The present epoch will
perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch
of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the
epoch of the near and the far, of the side-by-side, of the
dispersed. We are at the moment, I believe, when our
experience of the world is less that of a long life developing
through time than that of a network that connects points and
intersects with its own skein. One could perhaps say that
certain ideological conflicts animating present-day polemics
oppose the pious descendants of time and the determined
inhabitants of space.
Michel Foucault,
“Of Other Spaces,” p. 23
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Theories (I)
• Foucault: From History to Space,
Microphysics of Power
• Jameson: The Sentence Involves the
Subject Uniting Past and Future in the
Present
• Ronnell: The Telephone Call,
Technologies Socially Constructing
Hailed Subjects
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Theories (II)
• Marvin: Technologies, Developers,
Marketers, and Users Mutually
Constructing Each Other
• Feenberg: Primary and Secondary
Moments of Technology Development
and Use
• Reich: Symbolic-Analytic Work
• Hall: Articulation Theory
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Articulation Theory
An articulation is ... the form of the connection that can
be made between two different elements, under certain
conditions. It is a linkage which is not necessary,
determined, absolute and essential for all time. You have
to ask, under what circumstances can a connection be
forged or made? So the so-called ‘unity’ of a discourse is
really the articulation of different, distinct elements
which can be rearticulated in different ways because
they have no necessary ‘belongingness’. The ‘unity’
which matters is a linkage between that articulated
discourse and the social forces with which it can, under
certain historical conditions, but need not necessarily, be
connected.
Stuart Hall, “On Postmodernism and Articulation,” p. 141
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Articulation Theory
• Ideology is structured like language
• No necessary correspondences, but no
necessary non-correspondences
• Local rather than global/universal
• Open to change
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Symbolic-Analytic Work
• Identify, rearrange, circulate, abstract, and
broker information
• Principle work materials are information and
symbols, their principle products are reports,
plans, and proposals
• Frequently work online, either communicating
with peers (they rarely have direct organizational
supervision) or manipulating symbols with the
help of various computer tools
• Job titles include investment banker, research
scientist, lawyer, management consultant,
strategic planner, and architect.
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Maps of Use
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Problems
• Tendency still towards unity, linearity
(or, at best, hierarchy)
• Tendency still towards single views
• Creation still enmeshed in Romantic
view of genius/production
• Lack environments for writing in, and,
and as fragments
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Or,
• We continue to believe in the myth of
unity.
• From Adam and Eve
• To the World Wide Web
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(re)Articulation Processes
• Recursive figure on (re) articulation:
totality > disarticulation >
fragmentation > rearticulation > totality
• (Notes about totalitarianism)
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Maps of Production
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Comparing Subject
Constructions
• History constructs a continuous subject
(mythical, but accepted)
• Microsoft Word as a reading and writing
environment
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Writing in MS Word
• Top down, left right
• Moving in a rough
line
• Layout (2D)
subordinated (but
somewhat available)
• Pages in linear order
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Equals Reading in MS Word
• Top down, left right
• Moving in a rough
line
• Layout (2D)
subordinated (but
somewhat available)
• Pages in linear order
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Reading the Web
• 2D Layout of Page
• Multi-linear
(macrostructure)
• But still linear
• Texts are relatively
fixed and distant
(uninhabited)
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Writing the Web
• 2D Layout of Page
• 2D Layout of
Textspace
(macrostructure)
• Time Colonized
• Writing Becomes
More Spatial
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Listening to Music (II)
• iTunes
• Simple Playlist
– Linear
– Receptive
• Smart Playlist
– Contingent
– More spatial
– Music collection
becomes a database
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Producing Music
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•
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Fragments
Rearrangement
Transformation
Spatial
Recursive
Database-like
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Flaming Lips
• Parking Lot
Experiments
• Zaireeka
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Turntablism
• Production from
Consumption
• Awareness of History
Through Sampling
• Awareness of History
Through
Performance (Funk
101)
• Scratch Notation (DJ
Radar, etc.)
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Composition as Articulation
• Multiple forms of “composition” (writing,
design, production)
• Bridging Production and Consumption
• Beyond Consumerism
• Weblogs as Productive Web Use
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Weblogs
• Linear + Spatial
• Individual + Social
• Fragmentation +
Totality
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Weblog Writing/Reading Spaces
• NetNewsWire
• NewsMonster
• Tinderbox
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NetNewsWire
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NewsMonster
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Tinderbox
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Conclusions: Where Do You
Want to Build Today?
• Understanding the mutual construction
of tech development and use
• Moving beyond unity without ending in
fragmentation
• Building a sense of history without
determinism
• Moving from a passive to an active
reading/using subject
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