But You Didn't Say WHY!

Reading Charles Stross' "Lobsters" and William Gibson's "Burning Chrome" from a twenty-first century perspective is interesting, to say the least. I am connected to the entire world by my fingertips, and I can surf the cybersphere in seconds. It makes me feel, in a way, that I am living in my own Virtual Reality. However, I think that the globally connected world that exists in 2014 is beyond what any cyberpunk writer could've predicted.

In "Burning Chrome," Gibson gives us the archetype for the hacker that we see in movies, books, and comics across genres. The two loner types, sitting on the edge of society, and going against the big, bad corporation. Then, Stross sets up our burning desire for artificial intelligence (A.I.), the interconnectedness of humanity and computers, and the growing legal presence of computers in society. Gibson and Stross give us both sides of the cyber stereotypes: the loner hacker fighting against Big Brother and the shiny scientific innovation becoming part of society.

I would argue that it's in these two stereotypes that we see the major growth that occurred in cyberpunk as the technological age grew into the twenty-first century.

Gibson's characters are separate, loners, and using their skills to fight Chrome and organized crime. In addition, their initial motivation centers around getting money to impress a girl. Throughout, I get the impression that their hacking skills, their interaction with computers, and their involvement in the digital world is all a means to an end.

Contrastingly, Stross' world centers around artificial intelligence, which is as far from "a means to an end" that one can get. The artificial (the technological) is integrated into the mind, and a legal precedent is set for uploaded minds in the story. Manfred, the main character, is integrated in a world that does not view the major integration of technology as something to be fought, and the technologically gifted (hackers and A.I.) aren't loners that exist in the periphery.

In my opinion, these stories grow as the technological age grows, and they are prime examples of how our literature is going to be continually hacked by the increasing presence of technology. However, there is something in these stories that is stagnant, dated, and unappealing: their treatment of women.

In "Burning Chrome," Rikki is actually working for a brothel tied to Chrome, and ends up leaving for Hollywood after integrating technology (a cybernetic eye) into her own body. It paints the picture of Rikki as a betrayer to Jack and Bobby, and as an idealized body being worshipped instead of an actual character.

In "Lobsters," Manfred's fiancée, Pamela, is even more problematically portrayed. She basically rapes Manny in order to get pregnant, so as to insure herself some "right" to his intellectual property and gains. It's diabolical, and there are no other positive female characters or influences in the story.

My question here is why? Why aren't there more women, why aren't they portrayed as fighting alongside Jack and Bobby, or interacting with the spiny lobsters? Why are they subjugated to the sidelines as foils to the main characters or idealized bodies for the loner hacker?

Obviously, the integration of technology into our literature is the focus this week as we consider cyberpunk as a genre; however, I think we cannot lose sight of other problematic issues in these stories simply because this is primarily a technology-centric class. At the end of the day, this is still literature, and it deserves all of our considerations, critiques, and whys.

Cut It, Fold It, Mash It, Hack It

Lemonlewis points out her issues with Robe Pope's "Re-writing Texts, Re-constructing the Subject: Work as Play on the Critical-Creative Interface," and I can understand her confusion. However, I think part of Pope's theory relies on a reader-response attitude, to an extent, because his idea assumes that each individual reader interacts with the text different, and through that interaction, creates something meaningful. In reader-response, we call this "the poem," but I think Pope's idea re-imagines an old idea. 

He proposes that what we re-write in our head is not only an interaction between reader and text, but a tool used to better understand the original text in a critical way. 

Awolewel raises a few questions about the validity of this juxtaposition between the original and the cut-up/mash/fold-in. He asks, "Is interpretation invasive?" (awolewel). In my opinion? Yes, it is invasive. 

But, I think that critical reading, thinking, and understanding is meant to be invasive, to both the writer and the reader. If the reader is not meant to interact with the text and produce their own original interpretations, then the text fails, in my opinion. Pope's ideas only take the interactive concept and push it a step further by suggesting re-imagined texts can be integrated in literary criticism. 

I was thinking about how exactly hacking texts allows the reader to better understand the original, and I came to the conclusion that it's similar to when you learn forms of poetry. For example, the Shakespearean sonnet has a very specific form that is easier to understand (in my opinion) when the writer/reader has engaged in writing an original sonnet. It allows the reader/writer to gain perspective about the effort that goes into creating sonnets; therefore, their understanding of other sonnets grows deeper. 

I would argue that this kind of writing method (cut-up, mash, fold-in, etc.) could be implemented in the tinkering pedagogy we talked about earlier, and help students simultaneously understand their own voice and the voice of the author's they're studying. 

Is There Another Text for Us to Hack?

Mark Sample says, in his article "Notes towards a Deformed Humanities," The deformed work is the end, not the means to the end" (Sample).

I'm not sure about that. After going through the readings for this week, my understanding of the value of creative-criticism is that it helps us understand a pre-existing text by deconstructing and changing (intervening) with the original text. I decided to create my own N+7 poem to test out my understanding.

Using W.B. Yeats' "No Second Troy," I used the N+7 generator to produce an intervened version of the poem:

Original:

"Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great.

Had they but courage equal to desire? 

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?"

N+7 Text:

"Why should I blemish her that she filled my dealings,

With mission, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant mangles most violent weavers,

Or hurled the little striped upon the great.

Had they but cove equal to detective?

What could have made her peaceful with a minister

That nobleness made simple as a fireside,

With bedstead like a tightened bra, a kitbag

That is not natural in an aide like this,

Bench high and solitary and most stickpin?

Why, what could she have done, bench what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to business?"

I've studied Yeats' poetry before, and this poem specifically in its relationship to Maud Gonne.  The "she" and "her" that Yeats' refers to is Maud Gonne, as he feels spurned by her and thinks that her presence is destructive to his life. By knowing this, my interpretation of the N+7 text is influenced. When "misery" changes to "mission," Maud Gonne is now giving Yeats purpose. A tightened "bedstead" instead of "beauty" implies a denied sexual or romantic venture. "Burn" becomes "business," and the implication of total destruction is removed from the poem.

It is through this exercise that I have to come to understand that it is possible for intervened works to become works within their own right; however, this is only when the textual hacking is for a creative purpose and not a creative-critical purpose. In order to use hacked texts effectively in the creative-critical sphere, it seems necessary to me to re-integrate the original meaning of the text and/or the text itself.

Even in William S. Burroughs explanation of the Cut-Up method, there is greater understanding of the impact of the method at the end of the piece because the reader has interacted with the original text before it was cut up.

I could be totally wrong, but to me it seems necessary to return to the original text in order to find meaning in the creative-critical sense.

50 Shades of Composition

It's embarrassing to admit, but I was a Twilight fan in my early tweens. I enjoyed the Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle, and I thought the Cullen's were a dynamic family unit. As I've gotten older, my tastes have changed and I'm not a "Twihard" anymore. However, when E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey came out in 2011, I was appalled to find out that someone had made a profit by writing fan-fiction. James' characters were based completely on Stephanie Meyers' Bella and Edward, and the only significant difference was the name change (Edward became Christian, and Bella became Anastasia). How was this not plagiarism? Why wasn't Meyers angry and suing James? But the best question yet- how could we, the reading public, buy and consume a work that was so problematic in its plagiarism?

After reading "Plagiarism, Originality, Assemblage" and "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key,"I think I have a better understanding of how the digital-age mindset towards remix works may have created a reading public that saw James' work as original. Musicians sample other artists (think Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice, Baby") and visual artists make pieces that reference other visual art, such as Marcel DuChamp's "Salvador Dali as Mona Lisa," seen here:

We consider these original artworks, so why would books be any different? I think if we understand that mindset of the reading public, it will be easier to dissect the readings this week and their implications for academic writing.

In "Made Not Only in Words," Kathleen Blake Yancey laments, "Don't you wish that the energy and motivation that students bring to some of these other genres they would bring to our assignments?" (298). But, how can educators expect students to approach an 8 to 10 page paper on the Jungian aspects of Shakespeare's tragedies with the same enthusiasm that they bring to a project that engages their creativity, their intelligent, and multiple senses? As I said in my post, "In Defense of the Essay," I still hold the essay as a valuable educational assignment, but I will be the first to admit that not every students finds those kind of assignments exhilarating or engaging.

Johnson-Eilola and Selber ask a question that raises a key question in this pedagogical discussion: "What happens, however, if we tell students that their goal is not to create new, unique texts but to filter and remix other texts in ways that solve concrete problems or enact real social action?" (380). Indeed, what would happen if we asked students to interact with texts, like Shakespeare, in ways that have connections to the world they're living in? I think it is wholly unfair to ask students to disconnect from the world around them in order to focus in on an eight to ten page assignment that ignores the global setting around them. Technology has created a global arena that doesn't allow for students or academics to put on their blinders, sit in the library, and write papers without concern for the real world. To do so, or even suggest that this model is still valid, is completely outdated.

Obviously, the broad incorporation of others' ideas into our own texts is something that is cross-discipline and cross-genre. It is something that's taking hold in academic writing, as well as fiction. I still think that James' Fifty Shades of Grey crosses the line into blatant plagiarism, but there are millions of readers across the globe who could disagree with me.

The question is not whether or not the intertextual/remix relationship in composition is going to happen, because it's already here. Instead, the question for academics and writers across disciplines, is are we going to utilize the new reading public, their mindset, and global arena afforded to us through the digital age; or, are we going to bury our heads in the proverbial sand?

Works Cited:

Johnson-Eilola, J. and S.A. Selber. "Plagiarism, Originality, Assemblage." Computers and Composition 24. 2007. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Yancey, Kathleen B. "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key." CCC 56:2. December 2004. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Value the Vomit

Blogger awolewel shares a wonderful phrase that a professor said to him/her: "Value the vomit!" (awolewel). It's a short and memorable saying that's supposed to make students value their pre-writing and free writing that will eventually turn into a beautiful paper. As I read over the blogs this week, I noticed that many bloggers rejoiced at Mark L. Sample's rejection of the traditional essay. However, I would question: are we rejoicing the rejection of the essay or the evaluation? 

For example, MermaidGhost says, "I struggled with anxiety and depression, so writing anything for school is like pulling teeth. And then I'm freaking out that I haven't written anything yet, or if it's good enough..." (Mermaid Ghost). I would argue that her apprehension is connected to the evaluation rather than the act of writing itself. However, that still leaves students with unnecessary anxiety. So, how do we change that on pedagogical level?

We have to value the vomit. 

If we started teaching students to value all of their writing, from pre-writing to the final product, instead of putting the emphasis on evaluation against a specific formulaic mold, then we might create a generation of students who value and cultivate their writing skills.

I would argue that our class does that. Students are encouraged to blog and share their ideas in formats that are evaluated, but are not demandingly formulaic. We have a basic assignment each week, but we have so many choices of articles and can write on anything that strikes our fancy. In doing so, we have created a space that records the progression of our writing skills and ideas, and simultaneously allows us to learn from the students around us and exchange ideas. In this way, we are building ourselves and tinkering together.

Works Cited:

awolewel. "Awakening my Inner Child" awolewel. 8 Oct. 2014. Web. 10 Oct. 2014.

MermaidGhost. "Week 7 Reading Response" MermaidGhost. 9 Oct. 2014. Web. 10 Oct. 2014.

In Defense of the Essay

As an English major, I am still a fan of the academic paper. I don't agree with everything Mark L. Sample says in his article, "What's Wrong with Writing Essays," but I think he makes the case for changing pedagogy to engage students more effectively. Personally, I think the process of research and synthesizing ideas into an academic format is useful to students across all majors. However, I can see where tinkering could come into play in the literary field in a way that benefits all students.

Jentery Sayers talks about the incorporation of tinkering in her essay, "Tinker-Centric Pedagogy in Literature and Language Classrooms." I think the most important point she makes is the space for test-and-failure that tinkering creates in a classroom. In the university setting, there are hundreds of thousands of students whose lives revolve around evaluation and GPAs. Perhaps if teachers change the way students are evaluated to center around the process instead of a formulaic end goal, then students will be able to more actively engage in the classroom and through their assignments.

However, how do teachers approach this new kind of pedagogy without completely removing the importance of the end product? Students should still want to produce original products that showcase critical thinking and an impressive synthesis of ideas. I think the key here is, as Sayers says, "...having students document what changes from experiment to experiment" (285). I would argue that you could translate this process to a paper-writing process. By changing the pedagogy to be tinker-centric, it might be possible to remove the inherently problematic issues with essays that Sample talks about.

I think that blogs are a useful way to approach paper-writing, because I think they serve as a type of change log that Sayers talks about. Teachers could use blogs as a way for students to document the change in their writing and ideas over the course of a class, and then have them use that documented change in a final product that addresses all of the skills they've acquired throughout the semester: coding, digital production, and synthesize of literary ideas.

It seems like blogging is becoming seen as what should be the "standard" instead of the "exception;" at least, according to this article by Michael Drennan of The Guardian. He makes the case for incorporating blogs, without discrediting the experience of writing, by saying, "Asking all students to write blogs as learning unfold and interlinks, empowers the teacher to be more supportive because they're less tied to the bureaucracy; it raises challenge levels; it enables IT-skilling; it lets students see their own progress...it means more productive and accelerating learning-talk over rote-writing" (Drennan).

Additionally, I think Drennan's article makes another important point: adopting a digital method that can be adapted to the tinker-centric pedagogy is good for teachers as well as students. By freeing teachers from confining rubrics and traditional molds, digital/tinker-centric assignments can help teachers interact with students on a deeper level in order to foster a supportive relationship that isn't evaluation-centric.

Sample complains that the traditional essay eliminates critical thinking by following a formulaic model that doesn't allow for productive deviation. However, it might be worthwhile for the digital humanities to consider a true collaboration between the digital and the traditional academic paper in order to combine the values of the paper with the innovation of the digital.

Works Cited:

Drennan, Michael. "Blogging in the Classroom: Why Your Students Should Write Online." The Guardian. N.p., 17 July 2012. Web. 8 Oct 2014

Sample, Mark L. What's Wrong with Writing Essays. Debates in the Digital Humanities. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.

Sayers, Jentery. Tinker-Centric Pedagogy in Literature and Language Classrooms (n.d.): n. pag. Utah State University Press. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.

And You're Walking, And You're Walking, And You're Walking...*

I had a crush on Legolas. It was my first real, massive, there-will-be-no-other-don't-laugh-at-me crush. So, when my mom finally let me create my own character for our family-and-friends Dungeons and Dragons campaign, I chose to be an elf. I think it was one of the happiest moments of my childhood to be able to say "I'm an elf" and have the adults in my life agree with me.

As an adult, I don't get to play D'n'D as much as I would like, but it still holds a special place in my heart. Reading Nick Montfort's article this week was exciting, and I think that Digitize Rhetoric's blog post does a great job of breaking down the possibilities for gaming as interactive fiction. He points out that Dungeons and Dragons may not come to mind as an example of interactive fiction at first glance, but, "...if a redactor were present, a text or work would inevitably arise, infused with basic elements of literature: setting, character, conflict, plot, ambiguity, etc" (Digitize Rhetoric).

I remember members of my own family-run D'n'D group had a redactor of sorts, and there are many funny quotes and memorable dialogue that were memorialized online during our numerous campaigns. However, it's debatable whether or not a redactor role is common in these games. Additionally, if we take into account games such as World of Warcraft and other MMORPG's (short for massively multiplayer online role-playing games),

Chris Davis' blog post talks about the short comings of modern technology because of the lack of preservation techniques for current electronic media. I would argue this is especially true for interactive fiction, because there is no story being electronically written while the player is creating their narrative.

I think it would open up a whole new world of fiction if there was a program created for MMORPG's that allowed for a characters gameplay to be saved in a narrative, electronically written form. Instead of writing off these games, whether they're online or D'n'D campaigns taking place in someone's living room, the literary community should try and figure out a way to foster this love for roleplaying in order to create an entirely new genre of fiction that represents some of the biggest communities in the digital age.

I know that I would love to have the transcripts from my elven character Salogel (yes, it's Legolas spelled backwards), because sometimes the funniest fiction comes from the mind of a child.

*The title comes from a well-known episode of "Dexter's Laboratory," and you can watch the video here. If you've got nine minutes (or 30 seconds and then skip to the last 30 seconds) it's a pretty funny video in light of what we've been talking about.

Works Cited:

davisc47 [Chris Davis]. "Reading Response Five: Invincible Hard Drives " Chris Davis Elite Blog. Web. 4 October 2014. 

digitizerhetoric [Gabriel Vega]. "Is It Literature?" Digitize Rhetoric. Web. 4 October 2014

An Overflow of Gazing at the Unseen

As I've been working on our McLuhan project, I've been able to dive deeper into some of the concepts introduced into McLuhan's work and I think they're particularly appropriate when considering Nick "A Companion to Digital Literary Studies" and his ideas regarding the role of interactive fiction as a conceptual way to better understand Oulipo's theory of potential literature.

I hope this doesn't confuse anyone, because my goal here is to incorporate more traditional literary ideas with newer ones in order to facilitate understanding because that's what helped me comprehend some of the more complex theories.

First, McLuhan defines the exchange between reader and author, saying, "Mechanical multiples of the same texts created a public -- a reading public" (McLuhan 122). This reading public (generally referred to as 'the reader') constantly watches and influences the way the authors write and produce their literary texts.

Now, this reminded me of a literary concept that I've been discussing in my 20th Century American Lit class called the Panopticon, which helped define the powerful impact of the gaze on the subjects of the gaze. Here is an image to help you visualize:

Here's the idea behind the image: The watchtower has a view of the prisoners twenty-four/seven, and therefore influences the way the prisoners behave because the prisoners are constantly aware that they're under the gaze of the watchtower. 

In this way, authors are constantly under the gaze of the reading public. However, what happens when the reading public and the authors merge? I believe this is where interactive fiction and Oulipo's theory of potential literature occur. 

Monfort talks about the role of the author (or the interactor) in interactive fiction, saying, "The interactor could have typed something different and gone into a different area at first... Bronze [the interactive story referenced in the article] provides a specific set of possibilities, however, not every imaginable text..." (Monfort). 

The interactor has become both audience and author, because he or she is able to control the direction of the story to his or her own satisfaction. Oulipo's concept of potential fiction takes that and sets in on an unlimited stage by incorporating the digital components. Stephen Ramsay says in An Algorithmic Criticism, "The computer revolutionizes, not because it proposes an alternative...but because it reimagines that procedure at new scales, with new speeds, and among new sets of conditions" (Ramsay 31). 

Monfort's description of the relationship between human and computers in interaction fiction says, "If interactive fiction were simply a riff on the command-line way of interacting computers, it would be of little interest. But it has been more than that for decades, providing a fascinating structure for narrative human-computer conversation, bringing simulation and narration together in novel ways" (Monfort). 

I believe that this human-computer interaction is reflective of the shift from a drastic separation between reading public and authors into a reading public that are simultaneously authors. 

Works Cited:

McLuhan, Marshall, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel. The Medium is the Massage. New York: Bantam, 1967. Print. 

Montfort, Nick. "Riddle Machines: The History and Nature of Interactive Fiction." A Companion to Digital Literary Studies. N.P., 2008. Web. 01 Oct. 2014. 

Ramsay, Stephen. Reading Machines: Toward an Algorithmic Criticism. Urbana: U of Illinois, 2011. Print.