User:Lieven Van Speybroeck/Graduation Project/Thesis/Outline
The Quantification Galaxy.
Training the eye to hear, touch, taste and smell
Abstract
In 'The Gutenberg Galaxy. The Making of Typographic Man', Marshall McLuhan traces the ways in which forms of experience and mental outlook have been modified, first by the phonetic alphabet and then by printing. The book is a philosophical and theoretical meshwork that describes how the history of literacy is characterized by the gradual visual substitution for auditory methods of communication which ultimately resulted in a definitive authority of the visual sense. Apart from looking at the past and present (1962), the renowned Canadian philosopher and media-theorist also casts a brief glance at the future. It is a vision of the world as a 'Global Village', an electrified interrelated network populated by retribalized man. Audio-tactile technologies have broken the state of visual predominance enhanced by print, causing a relapse into a culture where our ordinary perceptions and habits of action have recreated in us the mental processes of the most primitive men. Half a century later we can check this vision against reality, as the 'Electric Age' is in full swing and electronic media have penetrated everyday life up to a point where imagining a world without them has become impossible. Has the spell of visual hypnosis and sensory anesthesia been broken? Are we primitive post-literate beings living in a terrorizing global auditory network of possessive interdependence? Yes and no. This thesis entails to re-address some of the futuristic speculations raised in The Gutenberg Galaxy and apply them to the time they were reserved for. The most significant effects of print and electronic technology, as described by McLuhan, serve as a guideline for this analysis. Particularly the advance in quantification – the translation of non-visual relations and realities into visual terms – will be elaborated extensively. The internet is well on its way to finalize the electrified, interrelated network that radio and television laid the foundations for. The globe has never been this small before indeed, but even though the auditory methods of communication have (re)gained in importance, the Electric Age requires a kind of literacy that transcends the level of visual stress inherent to print culture by far.
Annotated Bibliography (in progress)
Orality & Literacy. Ong, W. J., [1982] 2002. New York: Routledge
Orality and Literacy is a thorough study of how the shift from oral to literate culture by means of chirographic (writing) and print technology drastically changes human cognitive processes, consciousness and social constructions. Ong argues that both cultures are fundamentally different in their conception of communication and organization, which offers an insightful perspective on the divergent functionalities of sound, language, memory etc. He approaches the subject both synchronic and diachronic in that he focuses respectively on cultures coexisting at a certain point in time and concurrently discusses the change in the West from being oral-based to chirographic, instantiated by the emergence of cuneiform script around 3200 BC.
Underlying the main principles of oral and literate cultures are the differences between the sensory worlds of sound and vision. The whole discourse that is conducted throughout the book relies on this division, perhaps most eloquently summarized in these four words: 'sight isolates, sound incorporates' (p72). According to Ong, writing and reading are solitary activities that throw the psyche back on itself (p68), thereby creating a split between mind and body, which is unthinkable in a speech-driven communal culture relying completely on the interplay of the mind and all senses. He argues that thought is nested in speech instead of in text and subsequently that writing is not a mere appendage to speech, but moves it from the transcendental oral/aural world of sound to the static world of vision. It is this shift that gradually shaped a textual organization of consciousness. Although this sounds as a condemnation of literacy, Ong emphasizes on the fact that writing has been a necessary and invaluable human development as it unlocked a vast amount of possibilities that oral culture can not provide. In fact, while reading the text one could think that Ong feels literacy is in some way 'superior' to orality due to its vast improvement over earlier techniques for storing verbal meaning. At the end of chapter 7, however, he states clearly that he does not believe in any level of superiority or inferiority between the two.
Towards the end of the book, the reader is introduced to the term 'second orality', a cultural blend facilitated by electronic media that incorporates principles of both oral and literate modes of communication. Written in 1982, this is Ong's vision of the future, for which he seems to rely heavily on the theories of Marshall McLuhan (i.e. 'The Global Village'), his thesis supervisor at Saint Louis University. However touched upon very briefly, the main idea is that electronic technology creates a platform whereby core characteristics of oral culture, which have been subordinate since the advent of writing, are revived, recontextualized and re-experienced in new ways hitherto unknown to the established literacy in Western culture.
Going through the text, it is hard to grasp what exactly a concept such as primary orality means, since it can only be looked at through the eyes of literacy. And I think this is exactly the point Ong is trying to make by referring to the reconfiguration of consciousness. It is irreversible. Maybe that is why I am struggling with the idea of 'second orality'. Has the electronic revolution really broken the state of visual hypnosis? Reading this in 2012 or 1982 makes a huge difference of course, so perhaps it is time for an issue entirely devoted to this concept of 'second orality' and the transformations of literacy itself?
Gutenberg Galaxy. The making of Typographic Man. McLuhan, M., [1962] 2011. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
The subtitle of the book goes right at the heart of its content. Along with the book, typographic man himself is a product fabricated by the printing press. Not only did this 15th century invention – or combination of much older inventions, as pointed out throughout the text– result in drastic changes for the book economy and economy as a whole, it also transformed human thinking. It marked the definitive break between oral-based and visual-based culture, preluding the definitive authority of sight. The first page introduces the main thesis of the book: 'The Gutenberg Galaxy is intended to trace the ways in which the forms of experience and of mental outlook and expression have been modified, first by the phonetic alphabet and then by printing.' There are many moments where McLuhan reformulates the core theme of his writing, almost as if it is a reminder to himself and the reader to prevent him from getting lost in the density of the text. As a Joyce scholar, McLuhan makes reference to a plethora of prose, poetry and philosophy, such as Cicero, Shakespeare, Blake, Cervantes, Heidegger, Kant and many others, to support his philosophic theorems in a metaphoric style rather then sketching a factual historic overview of the effects of typography. It makes sense for the kind of discourse McLuhan is trying to set out, but it requires a commitment from the reader which is impossible to fulfill completely. Not everyone eats Finnegans Wake for breakfast. At the same time, the style and structure of the book is so intelligent and almost mandatory in a way that its form amplifies and validates its content. By using glossaries – used in medieval manuscript culture – instead of chapters, interspersing theory with prose and poetry, confronting the reader with one continuous stream of text, this document cleverly bridges different literary conventions and at the same time seeks to clarify how these conventions are affected by oral, written and printed forms.
The segmentation of senses and functions, and how this fostered the illusion of segregation of knowledge by the isolation of the visual sense is one of the main concerns of the book. It reverberates in all areas of society, affecting social relations, economic structures, education, language, literature etc. The history of the progress from script to print is one of progressive quantification, namely a translation of non-visual relations and realities into visual terms (p160), a substitution of visual for auditory methods of communicating and receiving ideas (p87). As the level of literacy increases, so does the detachment from the world we live in. Print continued the process of categorization by separation instantiated by the phonetic alphabet, thereby creating a split between writer and reader, producer and consumer, ruler and ruled. It turned books into commodified things rather then representations of thoughts, moving away from the word's association with sound to the word as a thing in space.
Although the overall tone of the text is quite pessimistic, it is not clear what McLuhan's position – if he wanted to express any – is on this visual predominance until at the end of the book where he writes: 'The theme of this book is not that there is anything good or bad about print, but that unconsciousness of the effect of any force is a disaster, especially a force that we have made ourselves.' An unsettling view on technology at large. Even when McLuhan brings up the 'The Electric Age', which is supposed to mark some sort of partial relapse into oral culture by means of electronic media, the fact that with every technological invention something is lost forever beyond the level of human control seems to weigh heavily on the text, leaving a bitter taste of fatalism.
To me, the idea to think of the printed page and moveable type as a micro-representation (and instigator) of a complete cultural infrastructure orchestrated by visuality is very potent. However dense and at times almost cryptic, The Gutenberg Galaxy offers a very concrete platform to dissect society from a viewpoint of replaceability, segmentation, commodification, and categorization using the phonetic alphabet and the Gutenberg press as an essential base to start from and return to.
The Unbound Book. May 19-21, 2011. Koninklijke Bibliotheek Den Haag, Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam
'The Unbound Book' was a 3 day conference hosted in The Hague and Amsterdam in May 2011. The website announced the event as 'a conference that invites its speakers and audience to take part in defining the transformative landscape of reading, publishing and learning' [1]. Central premise of the symposium was that the conventional notion of the book, based on centuries of print, is rapidly growing outdated and that 'the entire concept of 'bookness' needs reinvention' (http://e-boekenstad.nl/unbound). A selection of very diverse speakers was given the task to reinforce or criticize this strong but rather blurry conviction.
Although the program looked promising on paper, practically the whole series of lectures – apart from a few exceptions — was a tiring battle between the printed book and its electronic opponent. Taking part in the discussion meant as much as choosing sides. A potentially rich discussion had been reduced to a collection of pleas in favor of one or another medium. Apart from the strong tendency to speak in terms of opposites, it struck me that almost none of the invitees addressed anything beyond the scope of surface or carrier. Even on the level of medium there was a general lack of consideration regarding the significant differences between the functionalities and characteristics of e-reading devices (such as the Kindle) and tablets (such as the iPad). To dismiss them as synonymous is problematic to say the least, certainly in a context where such differences are of crucial importance in terms of user-experience, reading practice and publishing strategies. Insights on how electronic technologies affect reading and writing on a deeper, more substantial level failed to materialize for the most part, let alone that there was a serious attempt to 'define' the real transformative forces that are at work in the landscape of reading, publishing and learning. Below are some notes on a selection of lectures which more or less represent the general spectrum of ideas that were expressed during the conference.
Arianne Baggerman, a dutch historian, professor and editor of Quaerendo, A Quarterly Journal from the Low Countries Devoted to Manuscripts and Printed Books, started of with a hint of nostalgia for the smell, weight, feeling and overall appearance of the printed book. She wondered if we should not ask ourselves what a book wás rather then what it ís. Her opinion on the fact that the Centraal Boekhuis, main distributor of books in the Netherlands, ventured into the world of e-books was rather darksome. In short, her whole speech was an attack against the electronic book, supporting it with very biased and limited research reports and quotes that were often pulled out of context. 'Multimediality' – a term she does not really specify – is something we better get rid of when it comes to the world of books. Also, the economic and ecologic impact of paper books (cheap, durable, environmental-friendly) would be less devastating then their digital counterparts, but no concrete research was presented in order to substantiate this assumption about very complex matters. It came across as if anger and frustration prevented her from making a strong argument for the beliefs she wanted to convey.
Alan Liu, Chair and Professor in the English Department at the University of California Santa Barbara, starts by formulating a refreshing definition of a book: a long form of attention. The 'conventional' notion of the book is confined by standards of affect, emotion and feeling attached to the medium that holds them. The reference to 'e(lectronic)-books' or 'd(igital)-books' as the general 'new' concept of books thus provides for a view that is too narrow. They can exist in any medium, in relation to other media and in different material forms. Liu proposes to use the term 'm-books' and to think of electronic, digital and printed manifestations as metaphors for one and the same core of what a book is. He also draws attention to the general evolution towards shorter, more concise media, which is not just the future for the book in particular, but for all forms of 'long attentive experiences'. The lecture was concluded with a brief demo of RoSE (Research in the Technological, Social, and Cultural Practices of Online Reading), a research-oriented social environment for tracking and integrating relations between authors and documents in a combined "social-document graph"(http://transliteracies.english.ucsb.edu/category/research-project/rose). The project is developed at the University of California, directed by Alan Liu himself and includes other UC scholars such as Lev Manovich and Johanna Drucker.
Mika Kovac focuses on the socio-cultural impact of book technologies on privacy and control. The Slovenian professor who traded the publishing business for academic research and teaching states that the rise of print technology went hand in hand with the development of the 'uncontrolled' private space, whereas the electronic book introduces an aspect of control that invades this privacy by making it possible to monitor and manipulate reading behavior. An example of this is the development of Amazon's kindle short novels as a response to statistics that showed that 'the average reader' only finishes 1/4th of a book. Reading happens diagonally nowadays, in contrast with the linear mode of reading inherent to print. Next to this, Kovac talks about what he calls the symbolic representation of the printed codex. In other words, books can be part of an identity whereby the physicality of the edition is of invaluable importance to the owner's connection with it. In most cases these are artifacts that represent a certain belief, whether religious, political, revolutionary, national, etc. On an end not, the pros and cons of 'electronic books' are discussed: they offer the possibility of doing extensive research synchronously with reading on the same device, but can be distracting at the same time, fostering a short-term attention span. Kovac does not make a distinction between e-readers and tablets, although they are completely different technologies that ask for a particular and dissimilar approach and use. To measure the effects of both by the same standards is untenable.
Florian Cramer - annotations still to be added
Bob Stein - annotations still to be added
Anne Mangen - annotations still to be added
Waar komt mijn transdigitale schrijfmachine vandaan? Van Weelden, D., 2011. Brussel: De Witte Raaf
The article 'Waar komt mijn transdigitale schrijfmachine vandaan?' (Where does my transdigital typewriter come from?'), is a personal homage to the typewriter by Dirk Van Weelden. Fascinated by computers as a kid, Dirk was determined to become a software engineer. Instead he became a writer, interested in the effect of different tools, be it pens, typewriters or computers, on the kind of writing that is produced. "The real writing takes place in the intermediate space, bounded by the private domain of the manuscript and the public character of the printed word. This is where the typewriter rules.". This conviction started the quest for typewriters that would characterize his future practice, a quest driven purely by the need to facilitate and effectuate a symbiotic relation between form and content rather then by a fetishist admiration for the machine. As a big computer enthusiast, Dirk successfully experimented with Word, cd-roms and the web, but an interactive environment populated by menus and formats, no matter how useful for editorial, audio-visual and communication purposes, proves to be an obstacle to his writing. "Real writing is not text-editing or communicating." His huge interest for digital tools did not mean that he came to regard the typewriter as useless, just as his pen and the system of notebooks that he kept for different purposes. Some things are just impossible to write on a digital keypad. The typewriter proves to be more than a 'neutral' piece of writing material in a digital age where it is liberated from its administrative utility use. Isn't this what McLuhan meant by saying that 'an obsolete medium becomes art.'? Van Weelden claims that the mechanical aspect of a typewriter appeals to the human solidarity, in a throwaway economy where electronics shrouded in cheap plastic casing are the norm. "We understand mechanical machines. They share with us humans the tragical aspects of the body. The fight with gravity, wear and tear that wrecks joints, the battle against filth and fatigue." Digital machines are bodiless: information; software, code, algorithms, data. The transdigital use of typewriters is a way to execute and share the free, literary writing, straight across the digital culture, because, Van Weelden writes, when something is considered economically and technologically obsolete, that does not make it use- and worthless. Instead, digitization resulted in a cultural resurrection of the typewriter.
Riding Range with Marshall McLuhan. McKenna, T., 1996. Lecture, California: The Esalen Institute
Riding Range with Marshall McLuhan is an audio recording of a lecture given by Terence McKenna at The Esalen Institute, California. in 1996. McKenna, an American geologist, philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, psychedelic and other with in interest in the topic of language, talks about the theories of the Canadian philosopher and media-theorist, Marshall McLuhan, and focuses particularly on his ideas about the effects of print on Western culture. After a brief introduction, McKenna quotes some passages out of The Gutenberg Galaxy, a book written in 1962 and devoted entirely to this topic. These short snippets highlight the differences between scribal and typographic culture on the one hand, and on the other they emphasize the tremendous difference between the time it took to transform culture from manuscript to print (centuries) and from print to digital (decades). James Joyce's name is dropped very often to illustrate these changes, but there is one moment where McKenna verbalizes a very poignant view on Joycian literature and characters: "they are instances of the world where we now live in (1995): a world of integrated interactive media, extraordinary data-retrieval that destroys the 17th century notion of the unconscious. Nothing is now unconscious if your data-search commands are powerful enough." Still he claims that the book is the central symbol of the age, a metaphor for reality. Next, he gives a short overview of print-created ideas and concepts:
- the idea of the individual
- the idea of a 'public' created by newspapers
- the notion of an observing citizenry
- the idea of interchangeable parts (on which we now depend entirely) as a result of the interchangeability of moveable type
- the concept of easily reformulated subunits
- the distribution of printed books became the paradigmatic model for the distribution of any product (production - editing - manufacturing - selling - sequels)
This overview is the introduction to what McKenna calls the 'read-look dichotomy' we are confronted by in the electric age. Television screens transmit little pieces of light that must be looked at, but can not be 'read'. McLuhan's distinction between hot (high-definition, lots of information) and cold (low-definition, little information), respectively low and high in user participation, are clarified. It is important to note however that television in the 60's was considered to be a cool, low definition medium because of its poor quality. It required some puzzling (~ participation) from the viewer to create meaningful images out of them, which gave television some kind of tactile feature. This is quite different from the HD television sets of today. Print turned writing into a 'hot' medium consisting of uniform patterns and fast linear movement. It rejects all senses but one and asks for the isolated and stripped-down visual faculty instead of the unified sensorium. McKenna argues that media which can not be read and can only be looked at create a far more complex world that you can not take easily for granted. Television, in McLuhan's time, was the type of medium that sent us back to the medieval world of balanced sensory ratios and manuscript. Print however fosters the continuous drive towards a separation of senses and functions. Perspective in drawing could only be a product of literacy, because it transforms an image into something that must be read instead of something that must be looked at. "Reading is not seeing and those who read, do not see." If applied to nature, the print-approach is problematic. Nature can not be read, it must be looked at according to McKenna. He concludes by mentioning a book by Aldous Huxley, 'The Art of Seeing' as an example of McLuhanesque thinking and critique: train the eye to see the world and cease trying to read it.