Writing Space by Jay David Bolter

1
Writing Spaceby Jay David Bolter

• Summary of Chapters 5 6
• Konstantinos Meintanis

2
Chapter 5

• The Electronic Book

3
The Changing Idea of the Book (1/2)

• The technological forms used by authors affect
  the organization, the style and the genre of the
  writing
• The papyrus roll lacks of the sense of closure.
  Poems seems to be unbounded stories could be
  extended indefinitely (supports memory)
• The development of codex and book supported the
  meaning of closure. The end of the book is the
  end of the text and hence the end of the story
• Printing (especially in Renaissance) helped
  people to see the book as a complete and closed
  verbal structure

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The Changing Idea of the Book (2/2)

• In the centuries followed the invention of
  printing, the book obtained identity (specific
  name, visual style, subject, place and history)
• The advert of digital technology diminished the
  sense of closure. Hybrid books (portable
  computers) have access to a great variety of
  other texts, devices and media forms.
• The example of the Rocket eBook (supports
  features like search and internet access)

5
Great Books

• The notion of encyclopedia (from Greek enkyklios
  paideia) has its roots in the ancient years
  where Greeks and Romans tried to collect and
  organize all the verbal knowledge in one place
• For theologians and philosophers, it was really
  important to join the major philosophical and
  theological traditions into a convincing whole
  while western medieval scholars felt the need to
  authoritative texts by summarizing them in
  handbooks
• In the age of print, the multiplication and
  availability of the books changed the character
  of encyclopedia from a collection of a wide
  information to a selection of accurate information

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Encyclopedic Order (1/2)

• The key notion in an encyclopedia is the
  organization of the knowledge (the order, the
  place and the association of information) and how
  this organization facilitates the reading process
• The first encyclopedias (ancient years and middle
  ages) where organized based on hierarchies of
  topics (categories like poetry, natural history
  and medicine)

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Encyclopedic Order (2/2)

• In the Renaissance, the hierarchical structure
  became less appropriate. The printing press and
  the continuous scientific discovery contributed
  to transition from the categorization in sections
  to more neutral forms of information processing
  (alphabetization, indexing, indices)
• Some of the encyclopedias (Encyclopedia
  Metropolitana (1849) and the 15th edition of the
  Encyclopedia Britannica (1974)) use both ways to
  organize the knowledge Alphabetical ordering and
  philosophical (associative) arrangement

8
The Electronic Encyclopedia

• The electronic encyclopedia can be both broader
  and deeper than the printed one
• Based on the preferences of the editors and the
  users, it can be organized in multiple ways
  Outlines or other topical arrangements can
  coexist with the alphabetical order
• In the age of the electronic media forms, the
  encyclopedic impulse is being directed in two
  channels
• Knowledge is stored in CD-ROM and DVDs The
  electronic version of the encyclopedia supports
  multimedia, hyperlinks and advanced search
• Knowledge is stored in the cyberspace of the
  World Wide Web The organization is provided
  through portal sites (e.g. Yahoo)
• the computer can hold so much information that
  there is little need to be selective

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The Library as a Writing Space

• The library is the physical realization of a
  cultures writing space of books
• Until recently (and unlike encyclopedias), the
  organization of libraries was based on the
  categorization of books by topic
• Today, a system of call numbers and addresses
  facilitates the mapping of the conceptual library
  onto the building physical hierarchy (floors,
  stacks, shelves)
• In a fully digital library, the user can browse
  or rearrange the books based on his searching
  preferences. WWW or cyberspace itself is a library

10
Digital Libraries

• The low cost of production and distribution of
  publishing on the WWW enables people to access a
  huge amount of knowledge (even specialized
  libraries like Perseus Project)
• Xanadu system was the realization of the vision
  of Ted Nelson for a universal library, a plan
  for a worldwide network, intended to serve
  millions of people simultaneously
• The change of the medium and the transition from
  the physical to the electronic collection does
  not mean that the traditional libraries will
  become obsolete
• Culturally irrelevant texts will remain (as
  useless) in the same physical form making the
  complete remediation of the traditional library
  infeasible

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Refashioning the Book of Nature

• Hypertextual encyclopedias and digital libraries
  remediate (refashion) the vision of the world
  mirrored in a great book (the whole knowledge
  under control)
• In the late age of print, the hierarchical
  division of knowledge has been replaced by the
  less rigid structures of the electronic medium.
  Hence, there is no single, linear way to move
  through the hierarchy of cyberspace
• In other words, cyberspace blurs the distinction
  between nature and our networked culture

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Chapter 6

• Refashioned Dialogues

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The Reading Path (1/2)

• Reading differs from listening in the sense that
  listeners simply allow words to come to them
  while readers give meaning to the writing units.
  That interpretation triggers expectations and
  allusions
• In most books as in the papyrus roll, the reader
  has to follow a dominant, fixed and linear way of
  reading. Only references and footnotes interrupt
  the linearity of the text
• In the oral texts like the Homeric poems the
  storyteller can adjust the tale in order to
  satisfy the wishes of the audience. Hence,
  although the story is strictly linear, the teller
  is free to deviate from the storyline
• The audience has a measure of control too over
  the progress of the tale

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The Reading Path (2/2)

• Plato in his dialogues combined the permanence of
  writing with the apparent flexibility of
  conversation
• The oral philosopher Socrates on the other hand
  alleges that written words are dead things that
  cannot answer questions or adjust themselves to
  various readers
• Platonic Dialogues were not product of nostalgia
  of the spoken word but a consciously literary
  attempt to imitate philosophical conversation
• Plato was never sure that the reader was
  following his mind. Socrates on the other hand
  could adjust his reasoning to the audience

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From Dialogue to Essay to Web Page (1/2)

• Except some branches of philosophy, ancient texts
  where strongly linear
• The invention of the paged book and later the
  printing standardized the hierarchical structures
  of the text (paragraphs, table of contents,
  format, layout etc.)
• Linearity and hierarchy are still the two
  fundamental structural characteristics of the
  scholarly, scientific, business and technical
  writing since they provide carefully controlled
  reading

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From Dialogue to Essay to Web Page (2/2)

• The structure of the electronic writing is based
  on the idea of network. Like the references and
  the allusions of a paged book, anchor phrases
  enable readers to travel through a network of
  associations
• The dispute of the linear argument started long
  before the advert of the electronic
  communication. Writers like Barthes, Kierkegaard,
  Nietzsche and Wittgenstein challenged the idea of
  the single path writing
• For Derida and his topographical writing, textual
  space is as fluid as the electronic medium

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The Hypertextual Essay

• Most of the scholars are reluctant to replace
  their linear writing with a more hypertextual
  structure
• It is significant that even the debate over the
  meaning and value of hypertext itself has been
  conducted in print
• Instead of a single linear argument, a
  hypertextual essay enables writer to present many
  and possibly conflicting arguments that help him
  to share (or postpone) the responsibility of the
  outcome
• What makes us to prefer the hypertextual medium
  from the dialogue (and the other oral forms that
  facilitate the multidimensional argumentation) is
  the fact that the former provides a space for
  multimediated writing with high visual appeal

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Educational Dialogue (1/2)

• Teachers of writing and reading have been willing
  to exploit digital technologies and redefine the
  practices into they initiate their students
• Modern educating methods combine hypertext and
  hypermedia in order to reinforce the perspectives
  of cultural studies
• The digital forms of dialogue range from purely
  verbal (MOOs, discussion groups and chat rooms
  such as Daedalus) to highly visual (web sites and
  hypermedia applications such as Web Crossing)

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Educational Dialogue (2/2)

• Many hypertextual applications have been also
  deployed to remediate forms like the anthology,
  commentary and textbook (e.g. the hypermedia
  textbook The Victorian Web)
• Hypermedia textbooks help students to
• realize the importance of the hypertextual
  writing as a cooperative effort
• use multimedia in their digital writing

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Multiple Dialogs

• Web is not a refashioned version of the book.
  Relying heavily in the graphic design provides a
  fertile basis for a great variety of different
  applications (ads, education, entertainment,
  reports etc.)
• Through the personal home page, users have their
  own presence in the cyberspace
• Web also allows individuals to make an uncoerced
  contribution just as they benefit from the
  contribution of others
• Web designing challenges the ideal of purely
  verbal communication