Dialog

Let's leave the physiological effects of reading behind us for now, and move
on to the new semantic and social possibilities unleashed by electronic
writing. In the past few years, there's been a great deal of public
speculation on this issue -- some of it voiced by the participants in this
Dialog. Hypertext, we're told, promises to break down the traditional power
relationship between author and reader. Non-linear narration will transform
our long-standing conventions of start-to-finish storytelling. Electronic
distribution will provide armchair pundits with an instant audience of
millions. And so on.

I'd like to approach these heady matters from a kind of roundabout angle.
There's a wonderful passage in Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," where Benjamin talks rhapsodically
about the cultural effects of slow-motion film (among other things, he
likens the use of slo-mo to Freud's discovery of the unconscious.) I've
always liked this passage because it seems so foreign to us now, reading
Benjamin fifty years later. If you imagine all the extraordinary changes
wrought by the rise of moving pictures, slow-motion seems more like a
side-effect, a footnote or a curiosity-piece. It had a sweeping impact on
the world of televised sports, but beyond that... There's something
endearing about Benjamin missing the boat in an essay that's otherwise so
prophetic. The lesson here, I think, is that it's incredibly difficult to
predict the broader sociological effects of new technologies --
particularly when you're making your predictions from the bleeding edge of
high-tech innovation.

So my question is this: in all the recent hoopla over electronic text,
where are the red herrings? Which of the so-called "paradigm shifts" will
turn out to be duds twenty or thirty years from now? Which aspect of the
hypertext revolution promises to have the least cultural significance in
the long term?

I dunno, Steven. I think you answered your own question before you asked

it: "Hypertext. . . promises to break down the traditional power

relationship between author and reader. Non-linear narration will transform

our long-standing conventions of start-to-finish storytelling. Electronic

distribution will provide armchair pundits with an instant audience of

millions. And so on." Correct deprecating tone and everything.

I have so many problems with this list of predictions that I don't think

there's enough room here for taking them apart. On the other hand, because

of the difficulty factor of predicting the future (which you so rightly

point out), I am interested in looking a little closer at the Benjamin

example of what appears to be an "endearing" lack of prescience. The

slo-mo which he was so taken with, and about which he sensed something

truly significant, might not have become a "side-effect." Is it possible

that the rest of us have missed something? Have we sold out for the easy

stuff (as usual)? Or were we wiser not to pursue the id of slo-mo? Here I

think of the dream-study portion of Wenders' film "Until the End of the

World." The fear that the ephemeral nature of dreams might become an

engulfing reality. The fear of loss of control.

Actually, it sounds a lot like the fear which will probably keep hypertext

from having the kind of significance it might. Our social model of

Dominance shapes everything we do. So hued is our thinking and behavior

that we rarely see it for what it is, let alone how it could be different.

But dominance is obviously, and necessarily, about control. The more

individuated, specific, and unified anything (or anyone) is, the better for

achieving control. Slow motion dissolves. And I will continue to believe

that the conceptual underpinnings of hypertext, which revolve with

multiplicity, rich fields of difference, and shifting centers, express an

aspect of human perception that could provide a balance to our straitened

state of being. Nor do I really care that the chances of that happening

are about the same as the ratio of women to men in this dialog. The belief

that it could be different sustains.

Perhaps the biggest problem with predicting the trajectory of a given

technology is that it resides within a broader social context. It might

be easy to imagine how the internet could help "break down the traditional

power relationship between author and reader" or vastly expand the number

of authors relative to the number of readers. What's hard to predict is

whether society will encourage or discourage such developments.

I recently read a very interesting article by Bertolt Brecht written in

1932, in which he waxes enthusiastically about the potential of radio as a

means for two way communication: "... radio should step out of the supply

business and organize its listeners as suppliers." The fact that radio

didn't go in this direction was fundamentally a social question, not a

technological one. Mass media are owned by the capitalist class which uses

radio and television both for control and to deliver consumers to

advertisers. The capitalists haven't been and aren't interested in using

these technologies to foster true person-to-person communication. Indeed,

any movement in this direction is threatening to them which is why it's

hard to imagine any of the democratizing aspects of new media developing

unchecked in capitalist society. We can see evidence of this in the daily

papers which are filled with stories warning the populace of the dangers of

unrestricted communication on the internet.

My guess is that the hypertext revolution you speak of in your question

will be stillborn if not part of a much larger revolution against the class

relations currently in place. And further, if part of a larger social

movement, the character of the hypertext revolution will be different from

what we expect now in ways we can't even imagine.

Ou sont les duds du demain? Partout. (But first a little necessary

prophylaxis: what will not turn out to be duddy is the already engaged

and inevitable breakdown of hierarchy, the demise of the hegemony of

closure, the blurring of boundary between author and reader, the

permeability of work and world. Also the necessary corrective: paradigm

shifts in a Kuhnian sense are never seen by those within them, that's what

makes them what they are. If you can say they are, they aren't. Now back to

our regularly scheduled program.)

But first. I often wonder in the case of cases like the one at hand

(Benjamin in slomo consciousness) why it seems necessary that he not we

missed the boat. Ever watch those films of irises blooming? bullets

through eggs (or eggs through bullets)? the ballet of milk drops turning to

fountains of ivory lava at super slomo? Perhaps Benjamin was right and we

are all watching too fast. (Wim Wenders quotes Cezanne, "Things are

disappearing. If you want to see anything you have to hurry." Yet in

another place Wenders says, "Films are congruent time sequences, not

congruent ideas...In every scene my biggest problem is how to end it and go

on to the next one. Ideally I would show the time in between as well. But

sometimes you have to leave it out, it simply takes too long...")

On to the fishy stuff...

Biggest Red Snapper? Hypertext itself. There never has been hypertext (Ted

Nelson made it up: as Guyer has written elsewhere "It has to do with, god

help us, the non-existence of abstracted dualities. By this I mean all the

usual, traditional [polar] representations. The list goes on as long as

consciousness itself. We make these things up!") All text is hypertext,

always has been, surely is in an electronic universe, ever will be (even if

all the electrons disappear like carrier pigeons, having seen what we see

we would still likely wander like the ironic inverse of Truffaut's version

of the human bands of book memory in Fahrenheit 451: remembering

photoshop filters, flying toasters, quicktime Beatles and netscape

flashing.) Electronic texts merely provide the occasion for the multiple

consciousness which linearity has always played within and against. Graph

theorists say the hierarchy is merely a special case of the network. The

linear is merely a special case of the multiple. Hypertext is dead as the

book.

My personal candidate for the ruddiest Redoubt of the hypertextual age,

however, is interface (including browser, web, window, virtual world,

storyspace, and so on) understood as anything other than a form of making

meaning. There is no interface. There is us and we are writing on the world

with light.

A short list of other red giants (which you will remember are stars of

great size and brightness that have relatively low surface temperatures)

should include: copyright (gone as Maude Gonne's goose though still laying

golden eggs); brandedness or hotwired hard rock hamburgers (Johnny Mnem-

onic we hardly knew ye); and CD ROM (a mirror with which to watch the

networked milky way of enduring timelessness).

For twenty years or more my definition of culture has been "the experience

of living in a place over time. " Culture is. Experience. Living. Place.

Time. "Which aspect of the hypertext revolution promises to have the

*least* cultural significance in the long term?" Probably the ones we love

best, since we love the ephemeral. Which will have most? I have an even

older belief founded on teaching. Whenever a student holds a view that

really annoys you that is probably because it most likely represents real

change and so is liable to stick. So...

Which aspect promises to have the most cultural significance in the long

term? The one I like least, because like most people (or at least you and

me) I like things the way they are (not going to stay).

What comes to mind first is the claim heard on many sides that the Net will

be a democratizing force fostering ad hoc grass-roots initiatives and

changing the face of our political and economic institutions. A pretty

thought, but I wonder. It seems to me that the best and brightest in the

corporate world are all thinking about how to make money in cyberspace. How

long will it be before the freeways and side roads all have toll booths?

I'd love to see the electronic frontier remain that, a frontier, with all

of the independence and communality implicit in the notion. But if we

succumbed to capital in regular space what makes us think cyberspace will

be any different? It's just another field in which human nature -- both

individual and collective -- can disclose itself.

Secondly -- and this response came first from my wife when I asked her the

question -- that the whole notion of free-form hypertext linkages will soon

go by the wayside. People will dabble, but the hunger for narrative and for

shared perspectives is too great. This is a society in which 90% of the

people who read read Grisham and King -- are these same people going to

venture boldly forth to create their own customized narratives? Only the

eccentrics and the seekers will use the fantastic linkage options -- for

most the net will be a glorified message service, or a place to find

private titillation. We cannot trust, finally, that the mass mind will change,

that people will suddenly individuate, when every other force in

the culture goes against that possibility.

Finally (for now), there is the claim that because it is blind to gender,

race, etc., that the Net will promote a desirable egalitarianism. I can't,

again, give human nature quite that much credit. If this does happen, it

will be confined to cyberspace, with the possible effect that back in the

real space we will find the varieties of otherness heightened rather than

reduced. And this is not a bad thing. We need the friction of otherness. We

don't want to be blind to color and gender -- we just want to be more

humane in our apprehensions and dealings. Obviously there is much more to

get at regarding these issues, but I hasten to get this in.

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