Books: Entering the Age of Glosses

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A Normative Approach

Some very interesting insights here, Mitch. I'm excited about your work on the future of the writing, and I eagerly look forward to your forthcoming book.

I do, however, have some trouble with the general framework from which you seem to be exploring the future of writing. Based on this entry, you are applying norms of print-based textuality to digital space, and this, I think, is a mistake. It's one that continues to be repeated in a variety of fields (not the least of which is my own--Rhetoric and Writing Studies--which continues to proffer hermeneutic norms of print-based textuality to all manner of meaning-making).

This is to be avoided, I think, if we are ever to effectively explore the potential of writing in digital environments. Quite simply, print-based norms are not seamlessly analogous to digital writing, and remediating those norms brings along all of the baggage of book culture and applies it, ipso facto, to digital writing (even when we pretend or hope that it does not).

In a certain sense, marginalia seems quite a suitable analogy to commenting, for example. But it's dangerous to extend that analogy into discussions of what writing might be in digital environments, because it so profoundly limits what we can see, reverse-engineering digital writing through the framework of book culture. Marginalia and glossing privileges The Text, not user interaction (see for example, C. Davidson, 1986 for more on marginalia). Glosses are furtinve, individual acts, isolated and contained. Blog comments, tweets, et al., are fundamentally social and public, privileging interaction between users rather than the hailed alphabetic text. It's not about the
book alone, but about the writing that extends beyond.

This is but one example, and the prevalence of normative, print-based approaches to writing in digital environments is overwhelming. So, more than anything, I stress caution in privileging such a framework.

A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.

Posted by: bmcnely   Posted on: 04/29/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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