Musings on Bolter

Before I continue, I should say that, overall. I was very favorably impressed by this reading. It introduced so many new ideas to think about that I’ll probably need to re-read it several times before I feel like I’ve absorbed everything it has to offer. This seems to have turned out rather nit-picky, however...

What is this??
Firstly, I’d like to hear other’s views, or research into what exactly Jay David Bolter is attempting to do with this site. I talked briefly to Jeremy about our shared perception of a difference between the way information is presented on this site, and statements made by the author such as:
Our literate culture is choosing to exploit electronic technology to refashion the unified rhetorical voice of the text. Michael Heim (1987) has written, for example, that "...Fragments, reused material, the trails and intricate pathways of pathways of 'hypertext,' as Ted Nelson terms it, all these advance the disintegration of the centering of voice of contemplative thought" (p. 220). An electronic text may fracture the single voice of the printed text and speak in different registers to different readers. An electronic encyclopedia may address both the educated novice and the expert, while the same corporate website may serve for general public relations, stockholder education, and even sales and marketing. In the ideal, if not in practice, an electronic text can tailor itself to each reader's needs, and the reader can make choices in the very act of reading. (Introduction, “Refashioning the voice of the text”)

Or:

Hypertext seldom exists as pure text without any graphics. Today, hypertext is usually hypermedia, as it is on the World Wide Web, and it is hypermedia that offers a second challenge to the printed book. (3)

As I read through this site, I felt as if it were an artifact of the “The Late Age of Print” itself, seemingly often trapped in the conventions of an older format. Where are the hyperlinks? Images? Multiple modes of navigation? After poking around a bit, I discovered that the author has a 200+ page book by the same title. So. Is this meant as a re-working of that material, or perhaps only a promotional page put together by Routledge?

As a partial remedy, here's the word cloud I created from the text:


“The old and the new in digital writing”
This section irked me a little. For those who don’t know, I’m currently working on a thesis that has to do with grammar, and hence have been immersed in literature of all sorts related to that theme. (It will become clear why this is relevant shortly.) Due to this, I was very surprised to find Bolter stating matter of factly that,

Gutenberg's 42-line Bible does not seem to us today to have been a radical experiment in a new technology. It is not poorly executed or uncertain in form. The earliest incunabula are already examples of a perfected technique, and there remains little evidence from the period of experimentation that must have preceded the production of these books. Gutenberg's Bible can hardly be distinguished from the work of a good scribe, except perhaps that the spacing and hyphenation are more regular than a scribe could achieve.

And:

The parallel to Gutenberg's period can be overstated, however, for Gutenberg inaugurated the new age of print, rather than the late age of the manuscript. At its invention, the printed book seemed familiar and yet was in many ways new, whereas the computer seems utterly new and revolutionary, when, at least as a writing technology; it still has much in common with its predecessors.

I couldn’t help but connect these assertions to a related position put forth by David Crystal in The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left:

“The impact on people’s developing sense of English usage must have been powerful. For the first time, a single text was in front of the eyes of thousands of people, and in a medium which was much easier to read than had hitherto been the case. The handwritten manuscripts which had been the earlier practice were, by their nature, fewer in number, limited in distruibution, and very variable in linguistic character.” (17)

In short, the introduction of the printing press in Britain brought about the first rumblings of a push for standardization of the English language. This seems like a very large shift in what writing was, and what it was supposed to do to me. There is documentation of this issue causing headaches for those in the printing business. Not only were more modern concerns such as standardized spelling and punctuation coming to the forefront of discussion, but also issues of choosing a dominant dialect. Our fundamental understanding of what our language was changed with the advent of the printing press, and I feel that, though texts may have looked very similar on the surface to those created by scribes in earlier times, the importance of this shift should not be left completely out of the picture. (But, that could be because my life is currently revolving around similar issues. That means that everyone else’s should as well, right?) I also think it’s particularly interesting, because the advent of digital writing seems to be pushing back at this standardization to some extent. This is not only in the form of new modes of communication like texting and IMing. See this article, for example.

Lastly, for others who like expanding their vocabulary:

in·cu·nab·u·la

   /ˌɪnkyʊˈnæbyələ, ˌɪŋ-/ Show Spelled[in-kyoo-nab-yuh-luh, ing-] Show IPA

–plural noun, singular -lum  /-ləm/ Show Spelled[-luhm] Show IPA.

1. extant copies of books produced in the earliest stages (before 1501) of printing from movable type.

2. the earliest stages or first traces of anything.

Use incunabula in a Sentence

See images of incunabula

Search incunabula on the Web

---

Origin:
1815–25; < L: straps holding a baby in a cradle, earliest home, birthplace, prob. equiv. to *incūnā ( re ) to place in a cradle ( in- in-² + *-cūnāre, v. deriv. of cūnae cradle) + -bula, pl. of -bulum suffix of instrument; def. 1 as trans. of G Wiegendrucke

—Related forms

in·cu·nab·u·lar, adjective

post·in·cu·nab·u·la, adjective

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2010.