Writing Space(s)

It's such a pleasure to read Jay Bolter's second edition of _Writing Space_. He skillfully moves between an analysis of digital culture and print culture, moving back and forth across time and history to the almost current moment. I like how he places papyrus and codex alongside hypertexts. The juxtaposition is highly effective as it demonstrates his principle of remediation. What I'd like to do here is highlight some definitions in the first couple of chapters. My purpose is to anchor myself moreso in some of his claims/statements.

First off, the idea of writing spaces and space, the focal point of the title and much of the book.

Bolter argues that the spatial metaphor for writing and reading is as culturally powerful now as it has ever been" (12). When we speak of the Internet, we talk about "cyberspace." We speak of "visiting" websites (introducing the idea of "traveling" from one place to another). I think of a recent post I wrote that invited people to visit "Tanya's place," her blog in the "blogosphere." A writing space "is a material and visual field, whose properties are determined by a writing technology and the uses to which that technology is put by a culture of readers and writers. A writing space is generated by the interaction of material properties and cultural choices and practices" (12).

Now what does this all mean for electronic or digital spaces? Bolter says "[t]he space of electronic writing is both the computer screen, where text is displayed, and the electronic memory in which the text is stored. Our culture has chosen to fashion these technologies into a writing space that is animated, visualy complex, and malleable in the hands of both writer and reader" (13). Later, when I blog the info. about hypertext and hypermediation, this idea will come out further.

Bolter notes at the end of Chapter 1 that "[w]ith any technique of writing--on stone, on clay, on papyrus or paper, and on the computer screen--the writer may come to regard the mind itself as a writing space. The behavior of the writing space becomes a metaphor for the human mind as well as for human social interaction" (13).

Also, present in Chapter 1 is a meditation on the types of rhetoric that are out there about "the future of print" (4-5). There are the enthusiasts who predict the "end of the book" and the triumphant ascendacy of digital environments (Kurzweil, for instance, see Bolter, pp. 4) and then there are critics who discount the idea that print culture will be overtaken by digital environments. Bolter cites writer Annie Proulx's 1994 comment that no one will want to read a novel on a "twitchy screen" (5). In some ways, Proulx is too easy a mark. It's easy enough to prove her wrong when electronic books are available and Questia online holds many scholarly books available for access through subscription (not to mention digital/hypertext novels). Among the critics are the critical boundary setters who insist on "sensible limits to the computerization of culture" (5), Slouka, for instance. There seem to be the elegaic apocalyptics such as Birkerts who lament "the passing of the traditional literary culture" (6).

Bolter has highlighted the extremes here, and his purpose is not to indicate whether he thinks one is true over the other. Rather, his point is to avoid siding with specific predictions or wallowing in them, but to instead ask a more complex and interesting question about how we can "try to understand the current relationship between print and digital media" (7).

"It is not a question of seeing writing as an external technology force that influences or changes cultural practice; instead, writing is always a part of culture. It is probably best to understand all technologies in this way; technologies do not determine the course of culture or society, because they are not separate agents that can act on culture from the outside" (19). In other words, we need to avoid technological determinism, the idea of "technology" as an external force driving society when it is a human creation with particular goals and outcomes (not necessarily visible or understandable). I hear this same kind of deterministic rhetoric in relation to the idea of the "market" (the economy) as somehow external (an external force) outside of human endeavor. The "market" will tell us x, y, or z.

"Individuals and whole cultures do mold techniques and devices to their own purposes, but the material properties of such techniques and devices also impose limitations on their possible uses" (20).

One medium "remediates" the other, e.g., when there was the shift from "handwritten codex to printed book" (23). This is the process Bolter refers to as remediation" when " a new medium takes the place of an older one, borrowing and reorganizing the characteristics of writing in the older medium and reforming its cultural space" (23). The new medium brings with it specific aspects of the old one but "also makes an implicit or explicit claim to improve on the older one" (23).

Finally "[t]he best way to understand electronic writing today is to see if as the remediation of printed text, with its claim to refashioning the presentation and status of alphabetic writing itself" (26).

As Bolter points out, we live in a media saturated culture where "claims of greater immediacy are constantly being made, as new and older media view for our attention" (26).

What I really like about his first two chapters is the attention to language and terminology AND rhetorics of technology. He doesn't fall into the well-worn trap of the critic or the determinist/enthusiast. He stays true to the research question that drives this project: understanding the relationship between print and digital texts.

There is way more to say, but I have to go to the craft store to find mermaid stickers for Autumn. More later....