Arie Altena
index
‘The new media are not ways of relating us to the old “real” world; they are the real world and they reshape what remains of the old world at will. ’ Marshall McLuhan, Counterblast, 1969, p. 52.
‘Of the alphabet, Theuth said, “this invention . . . will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories, for it is an elixir of memory and wisdom that I have discovered”. ’ Plato, Phaedrus, 274e.
‘But the king replied that writing would have just the opposite effect: “. . . this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practise their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented not an elixir of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom”. ’ Plato, Phaedrus, 275a.
‘Technologies are artificial, but — paradox again — artificiality is natural to human beings. Technology, properly interiorized does not degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it. ’ Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy, Routledge, London, 1988, (1982), p. 82–83.
‘Each new technology — new environment — is a reprogramming of sensory life. ’ Marshall McLuhan, Counterblast, 1969 p. 33.
‘Es besteht ein komplexes Feedback zwischen der Technik und dem sie verwendenden Menschen. Ein sich änderndes Bewußtsein ruft nach veränderter Technik, und eine veränderte Technik verändert das Bewußtsein. ’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft? , Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987) p. 20.
‘The more you know [about technology], the higher your level of control (and thus self-expression). ’ Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook, Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining your Blog, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge MA, 2002, p. 41.
‘Oral cultures act and react at the same time. Phonetic culture endows men with the means of repressing their feelings and emotions when engaged in action. To act without reacting, without involvement, is the peculiar advantage of Western literate man. ’ Marshall Mc Luhan, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, Sphere Books, London, 1964, p. 96.
‘Das Alphabet schreibt die gesprochene Sprache nicht nie der, es schreibt sie auf. Es erhebt die Sprache und nimmt sie in seinen Griff, um sie nach seinen Regeln zu ordnen. Auf diese Weise regelt und ordnet das Alphabet auch das von der Sprache Gemeinte: das Denken. ’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft? , Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987) p. 36.
‘Without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does, not only when engaged in writing but nor mally even when it is composing its thoughts in oral form. More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness. ’ Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy, Routledge, London, 1988, (1982), p. 78.
‘Die Schrift, dieses zeilenförmige Aneinanderreihen von Zeichen, macht überhaupt erst das Geschichtsbewußtsein möglich. Erst wenn man Zeilen schreibt, kan man logisch denken, kalkulieren, kritisieren, Wissenschaft treiben, philosophieren — und entsprechend handeln. ’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft? , Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987), p. 11/12.
‘As a time-obviating, context-free mechanism, writing separates the known from the knower more definitely than the original orally grounded manoeuver of naming does, but it also unites the knower and the known more consciously and more articulately. Writing is a consciousness-raising and humanizing technology. So is print, even more, and, in its own way, so is the computer. ’ Walter J. Ong, ‘Writing is a Technology That Restructures Thought’, 1986.
‘Tatsächlich geht es beim Schreiben um ein transcodieren des Denkens, um ein Übersetzen aus den zweidimensionalen Flächencodes der Bilder in die eindimensionalen Zeilencodes, aus den kompakten und verschwommenen Bildercodes in die distinkten und klaren Schriftcodes, aus Vorstellungen in Begriffe, aus Szenen in Prozesse, aus Kontexte in Texte. Das Schreiben ist eine Methode zum zerreißen und zum Durchsichtigmachen von Vorstellungen. Jeweiter das Schreiben fortschreitet, desto tiefer dringt der schreibende Reißzahn in die Abgründe der Vorstellungen, die in unseren Gedächtnis lagern, um sie zu zerreißen, zu beschreiben, zu erklären, in Begriffe umzukodieren. ’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft? , Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987), p. 18.
‘Separatedness of the individual, continuity of space and time, and uniformity of codes are the prime marks of literate and civilized cultures. ’ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, Sphere Books, London, 1964, p. 94.
‘To be read (…) the roll had to be held with two hands. Thus, as frescos and bas-reliefs illustrate, the impossibility of a reader’s writing and reading at the same time, and thus too, the importance of dictation. The reader was liberated by the codex. ’ Roger Chartier, The Order of Books, Stanford UP, Stanford CA, 1994 (1992) .
‘Physically the printed book, an extension of the visual faculty, intensified perspective and the fixed point of view. ’ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, Sphere Books, London, 1964, p. 184.
‘Socially, the typographic extension of man brought in nationalism, industrialism, mass markets, and universal literacy and education. ’ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, Sphere Books, London, 1964, p. 184.
‘How did increased circulation of printed matter transform forms of sociability, permit new modes of thought, and change people’s relationship with power? ’ Roger Chartier, The Order of Books, Stanford UP, Stanford CA, 1994 (1992) .
‘Warum und wozu schreibt man eigentlich? Die erste Antwort lautet: Man schreibt um die in einem Gedächtnis gespeicherten Informationen nach den Schriftregeln zu prozessieren und dann die derart prozessierten Informationen in einem allgemeinen Dialog zu füttern. Man drückt etwas aus dem Gedächtnis ins Öffentliche.’ Vilém Flusser, ‘Schreiben für Elektronisches publizieren’ in Schriften, Band I, Lob der Oberflächlichkeit, für eine Phänomenologie der Medien, Bollmann, Mannheim, 1995, p. 102.
‘Texte sind Halbfabrikate. Ihre Zeilen eilen einem Schlußpunkt zu, aber über diesen hinaus einem Leser entgegen, von dem sie hoffen, daß er sie vollende. (…) (A)llen Texte (ist) gemein, daß sie ausgestreckte Arme sind, die hoffnungsvoll oder verzweifelt versuchen von einem anderen aufgegriffen zu werden. Das ist die Stimmung des Geste des Schreibens.’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft?, Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987), p. 41/42.
‘Far from being writers — founders of their own place, heirs of the peasants of earlier ages now working on the soil of language, diggers of wells and builders of houses — readers are travellers; they move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves. Writing accumulates, stocks up, resists time by the establishment of a place and multiplies its production through the expansionism of reproduction. Reading takes no measures against the erosion of time (one forgets oneself and also forgets), it does not keep what it acquires, or it does so poorly, and each of the places through which it passes is a repetition of the lost paradise’. Michel De Certeau, ‘Reading as Poaching’ in The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984, p. 174.
‘Another “revolution in reading” concerns the style of reading. In the second half of the eighteenth century, “intensive” reading was succeeded by what has been described as “extensive” reading. The “intensive” reader faced a narrow and finite body of texts, which were read and reread, memorized and recited, heard and known by heart, transmitted from generation to generation. Religious texts, and above all the Bible in Protestant countries, were the privileged sustenance of such reading, which was powerfully imbued with sacredness and authority. The “extensive” reader, that of the Lesewut, (…) is an altogether different reader — one who consumes numerous and diverse print text, reading them with rapidity and avidity and exercising a critical activity over them that spares no domain from methodical doubt.’ Roger Chartier, The Order of Books, Stanford UP, Stanford CA, 1994 (1992) .
‘Although since the eighteenth century, the author has play ed the role of the regulator of the fictive, a role quite characteristic of our era of industrial and bourgeois society, of individualism and private property, still, given the historical modifications that are taking place, it does not seem necessary that the author function remain constant in form, complexity, and even in existence. I think that, as our society changes at the very moment when it is in the proces of changing, the author function will disappear, and in such a man ner that fiction and its polysemous texts will once again function according to another mode, but still with a system of constraint (…). All discourses, whatever their status, form, value, and whatever the treatment to which they will be subjected, would then develop in the anonimity of a murmur. ’ Michel Foucault, ‘What is an Author’, in Essential Works of Foucault 1954 - 1984, vol 2, Aesthetics, Penguin, London, p. 22.
‘Non-things now flood our environment from all directions, displacing things. These non-things are called ‘information’ . Vilem Flusser, ‘The Non-Thing 1’, in The Shape of Things, A Philosophy of Design, Reaktion Books, London, 1999.
‘Our culture is itself a vast writing space, a complex of symbolic structures. Just as we write our minds, we can say that we write the culture in which we live. And just as our culture is moving from the printed book to the computer, it is also in the final stages of the transition from a hierarchical social order to what we might call a “network culture”. ’ David J Bolter, Writing Space, Storyspace Hypertext, 1992.
‘Ein neues Bewußtsein ist im Enstehen. Es hat um sich aus zudrücken und sich mitzuteilen, nicht alphanumerische Codes entwickelt, und es hat die Geste des Schreibens als ein Absurder Akt durchblickt, von dem es sich zu befreien gilt. ’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft? , Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987), p. 91.
‘A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory. ’ Vannevar Bush, As We May Think, 1945.
‘[Die Denkart des Programmieren] ist eine profane, wertfreie Denkart. Sie ist nicht mehr mit historischen, politischen, ethischen Kategorien zu fassen. Andere, kybernetische, komputierende, funktionelle Kategorien sind auf sie anzuwenden. Deshalb ist das Programmieren nicht eigentlich ein Schreiben zu nennen. Es ist eine Geste, in welcher eine andere Denkart zum Ausdruck kommt als beim Schreiben. ’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft? , Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987), p. 59.
‘Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. ’ Vannevar Bush, As We May Think, 1945.
‘[F]rontiers of a book are never clear-cut,” because “it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network . . . [a] network of references. ’ Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge, Routledge, London, 1989, p. 23.
‘By ‘hypertext’ I mean non-sequential writing — text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways. ’ Ted Nelson.
‘Everything is deeply intertwingled. ’ Ted Nelson.
‘And if we combine the dynamic writing of the word processor with the dynamic reading of the bulletin board or textual database and add the interactivity of computer-assisted instruction, then we do have a textual medium of a new order. This new medium is the fourth great technique of writing that will take its place beside the ancient papyrus roll, the medieval codex, and the printed book. ’ David J Bolter, Writing Space, Storyspace Hypertext, 1992.
‘He proposed something based on ‘hypertext’ or ‘non sequential writing’ — a method of composition in which parts of a document can be linked to parts of an entirely different document, rather as footnotes are linked to reference marks in a conventional book. He suggested building an experimental hypertext ‘web’ for the worldwide community of physicists who used cern and its publications. (…) As a concept, hypertext was old hat, dating back to the 1940s. Berners-Lee’s great ideas were to make it global and make it useable by ordinary people. ’ John Naughton, ‘The Quiet Englishman’, in Spectator, 1999, (http://molly.open.ac.uk/Personalpages/Pubs/Profiles/tbl.htm)
‘Der Stilus ist strukturell einfacher als und funktionell komplizierter als der Pinsel. Das ist ein Merkmal des Fortschritts: Alles wird strukturell komplexer, um funktionell einfacher zu werden. ’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft? , Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987), p. 20.
‘The substitution of screen for codex is a far more radical transformation because it changes methods of organization, structure, consultation, and even the appearance of the written word. ’ Roger Chartier, The Order of Books, Stanford UP, Stanford CA, 1994 (1992) .
‘Wir werden lernen müssen, digital zu schreiben, falls eine derartige Notiermethode überhaupt noch ein Schreiben zu nennen ist. ’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft? , Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987), p. 143.
‘The revolution of the electronic text will also be a revolution in reading. To read on a screen is not to read in a codex. The electronic representation of texts completely changes the text’s status; for the materiality of the book, it substitutes the immateriality of texts without a unique location; against the relations of contiguity established in the print objects, it opposes the free composition of infinitely manipulable fragments; in place of the immediate apprehension of the whole work, made visible by the object that embodies it, it introduces a lengthy navigation in textual archipelagos that have neither shores nor borders. . . . While earlier revolutions in reading took place without changing the fundamental structure of the book, such will not be the case in our own world. The revolution that has begun is, above all, a revolution in the media and forms that transmit the written word. ’ Roger Chartier, Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer, University of Pennsylvania Press 1995, p. 18.
‘Der künftige “Leser” sitzt vor dem Schirm, um die gelagerten Informationen abzurufen. Es geht nicht mehr um ein passives Auflesen (Aufklauben) von Informationsbrocken entlang einer vorgeschriebene Zeile. Es geht vielmehr um ein aktives Knüpfen von Querverbindungen zwischen den verfügbaren Informationselementen. Es ist der “Leser” selbst, den aus den gelagerten Informationselementen die von ihm beabsichtigte überhaupt erst herstellt. ’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft? , Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987), p. 146.
‘This all works only if each person makes links as he or she browses, so writing, link creation and browsing must be totally integrated’ . Tim Berners-Lee, as quoted by Jouke Kleerebezem, quoted on Wood S Lot, (http://www.ncf.ca/~ek867/2001_11_01_archives.html)
‘Instead of bloating the electronic book, I think it possible to structure it in layers arranged like a pyramid. The top layer could be a concise account of the subject, available perhaps in paperback. The next layer could contain expanded versions of different aspects of the argument, not arranged sequentially as in a narrative, but rather as self-contained units that feed into the topmost story. The third layer could be composed of documentation, possibly of different kinds, each set off by interpretative essays. A fourth layer might be theoretical or historiographical, with selections from previous scholarship and discussions of them. A fifth layer could be pedagogic, consisting of suggestions for classroom discussion and a model syllabus. And a sixth layer could contain readers’ reports, exchanges between the author and the editor, and letters from readers, who could provide a growing corpus of commentary as the book made its way through different groups of readers. A new book of this kind would elicit a new kind of reading. Some readers might be satisfied with a study of the upper narrative. Others might also want to read vertically, pursuing certain themes deeper and deeper into the supporting essays and documentation. Still others might navigate in unanticipated directions, see king connections that suit their own interests or reworking the material into constructions of their own. In each case, the appropriate texts could be printed and bound according to the specifications of the reader. The computer screen would be used for sampling and searching, whereas concentrated, long-term reading would take place by means of the conventional printed book or downloaded text. ’ Robert Darnton, ‘The New Age of the Book’, The New York Review of Books, 46, no. 5, 18–03–1999. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/546)
‘From the vantage point of the current changes in information technology, Barthes’s distinction between readerly and writerly texts appears to be essentially a distinction between text based on print technology and electronic hypertext, for hypertext fulfills “the goal of literary work (of literature as work) [which] is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text.” (Roland Barther, S/Z)’. George P. Landow, Hypertext, the Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, 1992, (http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/ht/jhup/writerly.html)
‘Der alphabetische Dichter manipuliert Worte und Sprachregeln mittels Buchstaben, um daraus ein Erlebnismodell für andere herzustellen. Dabei ist er der Meinung, ein eigenes konkretes Erlebnis (Gefühl, Gedanken, Wunsch) in die Sprache hineingezwungen und damit das Erlebnis und die durch das Erlebnis veränderte Sprache für andere zugänglich gemacht zu haben. Der neue mit Apparate versehene und sie digital speisende Dichter kann nicht so naiv sein. Der weiß daß er sein Erlebnis zu kalkulieren hat, in Erlebnisatome zu zerlegen, um es digital programmieren zu können. Und bei dieser Kalkulation muß er feststellen, wie sehr sein Erlebnis bereits von anderen vormodelliert war. Er erkennt sich nicht mehr als “Autor”, sonders als Permutator. Auch die Sprache die er manipuliert, erscheint ihm nicht mehr als ein sich in seinem Inneren anhäufendes Rohmaterial, sondern als ein komplexes System, das zu ihm dringt, um durch ihn permutiert zu werden. Sein Einstellung zum Gedicht ist nicht mehr die des inspirierten und intuitiven Dichters, sondern die des Informators. Er stützt sich auf Theorien und dichtet nicht mehr empirisch.’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft?, Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987), p. 73/74.
‘Marshall McLuhan’s future has not happened. The Web, yes; global immersion in television, certainly; media and messages everywhere, of course. But the electronic age did not drive the printed word into extinction, as McLuhan prophesied in 1962. His vision of a new mental universe held together by post-printing technology now looks dated. If it fired imaginations thirty years ago, it does not provide a map for the millennium that we are about to enter. The “Gutenberg galaxy” still exists, and “typographic man” is still reading his way around it. Consider the book. It has extraordinary staying power. Ever since the invention of the codex in the third or fourth century AD, it has proven to be a marvelous machine — great for packaging information, convenient to thumb through, comfortable to curl up with, superb for storage, and remarkably resistant to damage. It does not need to be upgraded or downloaded, accessed or booted, plugged into circuits or extracted from webs. Its design makes it a delight to the eye. Its shape makes it a pleasure to hold in the hand. And its handiness has made it the basic tool of learning for thousands of years, even before the library of Alexandria was founded early in the fourth century BC.’ Robert Darnton, ‘The New Age of the Book’, The New York Review of Books, 46, no. 5, 18–03–1999. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/546)
‘However healthy the world of printed text may remain, more and more prose will appear on a screen because more and more information of all kinds will be recorded in digital form and expressed on a screen. This revolution has already happened. If we are to understand how electronic text works, as surely we must, we still have to begin, as has been the case since writing was invented, with the prose text itself.’ Richard Lanham, Analyzing Prose, Continuum Books, 2005, (http://www.rhetoricainc.com/ap2preface.html)
‘Schreibt man auf Papier, dann ist man gezwungen, seiner Kreativität Grenzen zu setzen. (…) Man ballt seine Kreativität, um sie auf ein Minimum von Papier mit einem Minimum an Schriftzeichen aufzutragen. Schreibt man hingegen ins elektromagnetische Feld, dann wird der kreative Text zwar auch Zeilen bilden, aber diese Zeilen werden nicht meht eindeutig verlaufen. Sie sind “weich”, plastisch, manipulierbar geworden. Man kann sie zum Beispiel aufbrechen, Fenster in ihr öffnen, oder man kann sie rekursiv machen. Die in sie eingetragenen Schlusspunkte können ebensogut als Ausgangspunkte angesehen werden. Ein derart geschriebene Text wird “dialogisch” sein, und zwar zuerst einmal im Sinn eines Zwiegeschprächs, das aus dem Innern des Schreibens ins Feld hinausprojiziert wird. Der Text ist nicht mehr, wie auf dem Papier, das Resultat eines kreatives Prozesses, sondern er ist selber dieser Prozess, er ist selbst ein Prozessieren von Informationen zu neuen Informationen.’ Vilem Flusser, ‘Hinweg vom Papier’, in Medienkultur, Fischer, Frankfurt/Main, 1997, p. 65.
‘Today, as the information age replaces the industrial age, the Fordist mass production model has been replaced by one of individuation, personalisation, and customisation, but this is only a first step: from customisation follows interaction, from interaction follows interactivity, and from interactivity follows, in the right setting, intercreativity. This undermines the distinction between commercial producers and distributors on the one side, and consuming, passive audiences on the other; participants in interactive spaces are always more than merely audiences, but instead are users of content; further, if they become involved in intercreative environments (as bloggers do), they also are active producers of content. ’ Axel Bruns & Joanne Jacobs, Uses of Blogs, Peter Lang Publishers, 2006 (forthcoming) . (http://snurb.info/index.php?q=node/158)
‘Diese künstliche Stützen gewinnen an Bedeutung, je größer die Summe der Informationen wird, welche die “Kultur” ausmachen. Daraus folgt, daß immer weniger die Rede von einem “einsamen Schreiben” sein kann, von einem “genia len Autor”: Diese künstlichen Gedächnisstützen koppeln die individuelle Zentralnervensysteme und die daran hängen den Organismen zu Gedächtnisgruppen. ’ Vilém Flusser, ‘Schreiben für Elektronisches publizieren’ in Schriften, Band I, Lob der Oberflächlichkeit, für eine Phänomenologie der Medien, Bollmann, Mannheim, 1995, p. 103.
‘I will stand on your eyes, your ears, your nerves, and your brain, and the world will move in any pattern of tempo I choose. ’ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, Sphere Books, London, 1964, p. 80.
‘A weblog is a coffeehouse conversation in text, with references as required. ’ Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook, Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining your Blog, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge MA, 2002, p. 1.
‘Texte sind Informationen, die privat ausgearbeitet und dann veröffentlicht werden. Diese Informationen werden dem Empfängern im öffentlichen Raum (in der “Republik” ) zugänglich. Auf diese Weise etabliert diese spezifische Kommunikationsstruktur private Räume, in denen Informationen hergestellt werden, und öffentliche Räume, wo diese Information empfangen wird. (…) Früher waren die Menschen “politisch engagiert” ob sie nun wollten oder nicht. (…) Die Leute werden “politisch desengagiert”, weil der öffentliche Raum, das Forum, nutzlos wird. In diesem Sinne wird behauptet, daß das Politische tot ist und die Geschichte in die Nachgeschichte übergeht, wo nichts fortschreitet und alles bloß passiert. ’ Vilém Flusser, ‘Das Politische im Zeitalter der technischen Bilder’ in Schriften, Band I, Lob der Oberflächlichkeit, für eine Phänomenologie der Medien, Bollmann, Mannheim, 1995, p. 238/240.
‘I suppose there are only three motivations for maintaining one [a weblog]: information sharing, reputation building, and personal expression. ’ Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook, Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining your Blog, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge MA, 2002, p. 27.
‘Das Geschichtsbewußtsein — dieses Bewußtsein, in einen dramatischen und unwiderruflichen Zeitstrom getaucht zu sein — ist im künftigen “Leser” ausgelöscht. Er steht darüber, um seine eigene Zeitströme zu knüpfen. Er liest nicht eine Zeile entlang, sondern er spinnt seine eigene Netze. ’ Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft? , Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987), p. 147.
‘It is the link that gives weblogs their credibility by creating a transparence that is impossible in any other medium. It is the link that creates the community in which weblogs exist. And it is the link that distinguishes the weblog — or any other piece of online writing — from old-media writing that has merely been transplanted to the web. ’ Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook, Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining your Blog, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge MA, 2002, p. 19.
‘Man schreibt aus zwei Grundmotiven: aus einem privaten Motiv (seine Gedanken ordnen) und einem politischen (andere informieren). Gegenwärtig ist man aufgeklärt genug um sich über diese Motive Rechenschaft ablegen zu können. Das Ordnen der Gedanken ist ein mechanischer Vorgang (…) und kann künstlichen Intelligenzen überlassen werden. Die Leser an die man schreibt, sind Kommentatoren (die das Geschriebene zerreden) oder Befolger (die sich wie Objekten ihm unterwerfen) oder Kritiker (die ihn zerfetzen) (…) . Vilém Flusser, Die Schrift, hat Schreiben Zukunft? , Edition Flusser, European Photography, 2002, (1987), p. 89.
‘… a weblog is the result of human selection and reflection. The elements of a superior weblog are (…): point of view, discrimination in choosing links, and the life experience of the writer. It is the writer’s unique fusion of interests, enthusiasms, and prejudices — her personality — that makes a weblog compelling. (…) [A] weblog’s quality is ultimately based on the authenticity of its voice. ’ Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook, Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining your Blog, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge MA, 2002, p. 59.
‘The Clarity-Brevity-Sincerity or c-b-s theory of style simply will not work in an information society. There, the scarce commodity is not information but the attention we bestow on it. If we are to develop an economics of this attention, which is to say an economics for an information society, then we must develop ways to envisage, imagine, conceptualize, the information. We must look AT it. These two ways of reading, linear THROUGH and imagistic AT, taken together constitute the diastole and systole of reading itself. And this system of respiration comes to a common focus on the electronic screen. The computer screen summarizes the history of prose, indeed of alphabetic notation.’ Richard Lanham, Analyzing Prose, Continuum Books, 2005. (http://www.rhetoricainc.com/ap2preface.html)
‘Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life. Erasmus instructed them how to do it; and if they did not have access to his popular De Copia, they consulted printed models or the local schoolmaster. The practice spread everywhere in early modern England, among ordinary readers as well as famous writers like Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and John Locke. It involved a special way of taking in the printed word. Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality.’ Robert Darnton, ‘Extraordinary Commonplaces’, New York Review of Books, 21–12–2000. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/articlepreview?article_id=13942)
‘Prose styles are themselves different economies of attention. They orchestrate human attention in different ways.’ Richard Lanham, Analyzing Prose, Continuum Books, 2005. (http://www.rhetoricainc.com/ap2preface.html)
‘I designed my site to accomodate smaller screens, and like many others, I included a sidebar, which further reduced the width of my main writing area. Forced to write in a small space, I used the fewest words that would express my mea ning, and my writing became sharper, clearer and more eco nomical. ’ Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook, Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining your Blog, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge MA, 2002, p. 28/29.
‘The media, however, can also be seen as producers of the perception of community, and thus of society at large; media help us understand who ‘we’ are and how we relate to the societies we live in. If, as blogging and other collaborative media phenomena appear to indicate, there is now an ongoing shift from production/consumption-based mass media, which produce a vision of society for us to consume as relatively passive audiences, to produsage-based personal media, where users are active produsers of a shared under standing of society which is open for others to participate in, to develop and challenge, and thus to continually co-create, then this cannot help but have a profound effect on our future. ’ Axel Bruns & Joanne Jacobs, Uses of Blogs, Peter Lang Publishers, 2006 (forthcoming) . (http://snurb.info/index.php?q=node/158)
‘When you begin, you will have an audience of one: yourself (…) If you are going to keep a weblog, it must be for the joy of writing alone. ’ Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook, Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining your Blog, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge MA, 2002, p. 97/98.
‘Die seit mindestens 4000 Jahren vorherschende Kommunikationsstruktur war folgende: Informationen wurden im Privaten ausgearbeitet, im Öffentlichen ausgestellt und dort erworben und dann ins Private getragen, um dort verarbeitet zu werden. dan Hinaustragen der Informationen (die Veröffentlichung) und das Erwerben der Informationen in der Öffentlichkeit (das politische Engagement) waren für die vergangene Kommunikationsstruktur ebenso charakte ristisch wie die private Informationsgestaltung (die schöpfe rische Arbeit). Die Kommunikationsrevolution besteht grundsätzlich in einer Umsteuerung des Informations stroms. Der öffentliche Raum wird vermieden und wird dadurch fortschreitend überflüssig. Die Informationen werden im Privatraum ausgearbeitet und mittels Kabeln und ähnlichen Kanälen an Privaträume gesandt, um dort empfangen und prozessiert zu werden. ’ Vilem Flusser, ‘Verbündelung oder Vernetzung?’, in Medienkultur, Fischer, Frankfurt/Main, 1997, p. 148.
‘[Blogging] has given me the practice in performing imperfectly in public and moving forward unashamed. Updating my site daily has taught me self-discipline and given me reason to think deeply. ’ Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook, Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining your Blog, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge MA, 2002, p. 29.
‘Literate man specialized by outering parts of himself — e.g. book as compared with movie. Electronic man like pre-literate man, ablates or outers the whole man. His information environment is his own nervous system. ’ Marshall McLuhan, Counterblast, 1969, p. 52.
‘Zuerst hat der Mensch in der ihn angehenden Welt gehan delt, dann hat er geschaut, um zu handeln, dann hat er gefingert und hingehört, um zu sehen und dann handeln zu können, und gegenwärtig tastet er ab, um überhaupt etwas befingern und hören zu können, um es nachher vielleicht anschauen und behandeln zu können. ’ Vilém Flusser, ‘Das Abstraktionsspiel’ in Schriften, Band I, Lob der Oberflächlichkeit, für eine Phänomenologie der Medien, Bollmann, Mannheim, 1995, p. 19.
‘No Web phenomenon is more confounding than blogging. Everything media experts knew about audiences — and they knew a lot — confirmed the focus group belief that audiences would never get off their butts and start making their own entertainment. Everyone knew writing and reading were dead; music was too much trouble to make when you could sit back and listen; video production was simply out of reach of amateurs. Blogs and other participant media would never happen, or if they happened they would not draw an audience, or if they drew an audience they would not matter. What a shock, then, to witness the near-instantaneous rise of 50 million blogs, with a new one appearing every two seconds. There — another new blog! One more person doing what AOL and ABC — and almost everyone else — expected only AOL and ABC to be doing. These user-created channels make no sense economically. Where are the time, energy, and resources coming from? The audience. ’ Kevin Kelley in ‘We Are the Web’, in Wired 13.08, August 2005.
‘Blogs bring on decay. Each new blog adds to the fall of the media system that once dominated the twentieth century. What’s declining is the Belief in the Message. That’s the nihilist moment and blogs facilitate this culture like no platform has done before. Blog software assists users in their crossing from Truth to Nothingness. The printed and broadcasted message has lost its aura. News is consumed as a commodity with entertainment value. Instead of presenting blog entries as mere self promotion, we should interpret them as decadent artifacts that remotely dismantle the broadcast model.’ Geert Lovink on Net Critique. (http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/2006/03/24/blogging-the-nihilist-impulse/)
‘The weblog’s greatest strength — its uncensored, unmediated, uncontrolled voice — is also its greatest weakness.’ Rebecca Blood, The Weblog Handbook, Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining your Blog, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge MA, 2002, p. 115.
‘I think writing in this social, hypertextual internet might be largely about rewriting. Blogging isn’t simply episodic, because we don’t simply flow with the current of episodes moving from idea to idea. When we write a blog or read a blog over time we stand with both feet planted in a river of thought as water flows around our feet; always changing yet always the same. We blog many of the same kinds of things again and again from different points of view taking new points into account.’ Jill Walker on jill/txt. (http://jilltxt.net/?p=1292)
‘Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation: As no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk all; — so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to a reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself. For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own.’ Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Book 2, Chapter 11.
Quotes collected by Arie Altena. Published in Ubiscribe, Recent Changes, 2006.
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