I enjoyed the intros by Manovich and Bolten. Before I delve into them, I want to address Tribe's Foreword. He writes, "Having to figure out how new tools work necessitates innovation and encourages a kind of beginner's mind" (xii). Tribe likens hacking around to video artistry of the early 70's, but the sentence resonated with me in regards to student writers. Although Boise's 8th grade curriculum hopes to heighten writing skills via a focus on traditional grammar, students really seem to progress when they're given a variety of writing options and the freedom to create via play. Joseph Campbell phrased this: "What you have to do, you do with play." In 8th grade, the notion of the beginners' mind is not taken into account enough today when the first semester attempts to root them (shackle them) with the hierarchal assumption that one needs to know the categories of words in order to use them. Certainly such practice stifles the beginner's mind and I can relate to Manovich's frustration, on Page 4, with having to learn something a computer can already do for him in seconds. Manovich, describing his experience in Moscow 1975, sounded like any frustrated grammar student of today.
Another thing that jumped out at me in the Foreword was Tribe's recounting of the question, "If in the early years of cinema we already had seminal works that defined the language of the medium, why haven't we see the computer-game equivalent of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation?" Tribe then says that we have, but "the question is how to recognize it." I don't see any problem with recognizing the video-game equivalent today. Certainly Grand Theft Auto's mix of visuals, music, sound effects, radio commentary, dialogue, montages, scenes, scenes within scenes, background effects, virtuosity, and the ability to direct the action and alter the course of the story is equivalent. The X-box live experience of Call of Duty's Modern Warfare 2 is also equivalent. There are plenty of others out there...Worlds of Warcraft, etc. (There are currencies in virtual game worlds that trade better than the dollar.) Do we really need "to build a history and theory of language of new media" to recognize this? To play, participate, communicate, trade, and experience within the new media? Isn't this the new form that Vertoz achieved? Manovich claims that new media designers still need to learn this. Since he wrote the book, I believe they have, if they hadn't already. To me, the database and narrative seem comfortable in their new forms already, regarding both art making and marketing. It is clearly Manovich's intent to show us where we were in order to understand where we are now. I look forward to the purposeful map making he intends to lay out, one I hope will enlighten me about what is truly crucial about digital media in regards to visual culture..."how mainstream language is now structured and how it might evolve over time" (10).
While reading, I found myself wishing I had printed off Bolter's intro. I wanted to be outside, highlighter in hand, studying in my comfort zone, the printed word. However, it was pretty convenient to copy and paste the passages I would have highlighted into a word document. I realized that I could highlight the text with that function on the computer, and then save the whole intro to PBworks or my drop-box. There would be no need to file the document in one of 8 files cabinets I have at home and school. I imagine this fashion of study I can adapt to nicely, relishing its advantages, in this late age of print. This will not necessarily destroy that, unless change is seen to embody destruction.
I liked Bolter's assertion that "Our culture has chosen to fashion these technologies into a writing space that is animated, visually complex, and malleable in the hands of both writer and reader." I see many advantages in what seems to be such a natural evolution. The effects of new media upon rhetorical features such as point of view, narrative, space, etc. is precisely why I took this class. I want to learn what changes in/of form will give and take away from the content of literature and communication. I'm interested in how the tools will become weapons or medicines.
Regarding Bolter's arguments, I agree that “we are at a critical moment in the history of writing.” I agree that writers are no longer working with word processors, but image processors. I agree that "The book will enter obsolescence, although because of its long history and enormous installed base, it will linger for a couple of decades before reaching antiquity." It is just a matter of the market molding the new tools and getting us to buy them by teaching us to use them. Is the Ipad the next automobile?
I too, questioned why he felt that we needed to build a history of theory of the new media? I was trying to understand the implications of what this would do for society and the future.
ReplyDeleteI also can't really think of something in my own experience that I have put thousands of hours into developing or learning, only to see replaced by a new technology like he spoke of in his life. I can see how that would have a profound impact though as it did on him, especially since he has stayed working in this field and seen such huge advances.Like you, I look forward to developing new strategies that will replace my burgeoning, unmanageable paper files!
I was wondering what you meant when you said, .."how tools will become weapons or medicine."
If word processors became image processors, what do they imagine will come after that?