Subject Lines: Fragmentation, Construction, and Computing

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Subject Lines Fragmentation,Construction,and
Computing

• Johndan Johnson-EilolaClarkson University

mailtojohndan_at_clarkson.eduhttp//www.clarkson.ed
u/johndan/
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Space Motion Subjectivity

• Why does Microsoft Word suck?
• Why do we still primarily browse the web?
• Are we going anywhere?

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MS Word
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Dreamweaver
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Office Wall
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From Time to Space
The great obsession of the nineteenth century
was, as we know, history with its themes of
development and of suspension, of crisis and
cycle, themes of the ever-accumulating past, with
its great preponderance of dead men and the
menacing glaciation of the world. The nineteenth
century found its essential mythological
resources in the second principle of
thermodynamics. The present epoch will perhaps be
above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch
of simultaneity we are in the epoch of
juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and the far,
of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at
the moment, I believe, when our experience of the
world is less that of a long life developing
through time than that of a network that connects
points and intersects with its own skein. One
could perhaps say that certain ideological
conflicts animating present-day polemics oppose
the pious descendants of time and the determined
inhabitants of space. Michel Foucault, Of Other
Spaces, p. 23
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Theories (I)

• Foucault From History to Space, Microphysics of
  Power
• Jameson The Sentence Involves the Subject
  Uniting Past and Future in the Present
• Ronnell The Telephone Call, Technologies
  Socially Constructing Hailed Subjects

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Theories (II)

• Marvin Technologies, Developers, Marketers, and
  Users Mutually Constructing Each Other
• Feenberg Primary and Secondary Moments of
  Technology Development and Use
• Reich Symbolic-Analytic Work
• Hall Articulation Theory

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Articulation Theory

• An articulation is ... the form of the connection
  that can be made between two different elements,
  under certain conditions. It is a linkage which
  is not necessary, determined, absolute and
  essential for all time. You have to ask, under
  what circumstances can a connection be forged or
  made? So the so-called unity of a discourse is
  really the articulation of different, distinct
  elements which can be rearticulated in different
  ways because they have no necessary
  belongingness. The unity which matters is a
  linkage between that articulated discourse and
  the social forces with which it can, under
  certain historical conditions, but need not
  necessarily, be connected.
• Stuart Hall, On Postmodernism and Articulation,
  p. 141

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Articulation Theory

• Ideology is structured like language
• No necessary correspondences, but no necessary
  non-correspondences
• Local rather than global/universal
• Open to change

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Symbolic-Analytic Work

• Identify, rearrange, circulate, abstract, and
  broker information
• Principle work materials are information and
  symbols, their principle products are reports,
  plans, and proposals
• Frequently work online, either communicating with
  peers (they rarely have direct organizational
  supervision) or manipulating symbols with the
  help of various computer tools
• Job titles include investment banker, research
  scientist, lawyer, management consultant,
  strategic planner, and architect.

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Maps of Use
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Problems

• Tendency still towards unity, linearity (or, at
  best, hierarchy)
• Tendency still towards single views
• Creation still enmeshed in Romantic view of
  genius/production
• Lack environments for writing in, and, and as
  fragments

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Or,

• We continue to believe in the myth of unity.
• From Adam and Eve
• To the World Wide Web

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(re)Articulation Processes

• Recursive figure on (re) articulation totality gt
  disarticulation gt fragmentation gt rearticulation
  gt totality
• (Notes about totalitarianism)

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Maps of Production
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Comparing Subject Constructions

• History constructs a continuous subject
  (mythical, but accepted)
• Microsoft Word as a reading and writing
  environment

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Writing in MS Word

• Top down, left right
• Moving in a rough line
• Layout (2D) subordinated (but somewhat available)
• Pages in linear order

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Equals Reading in MS Word

• Top down, left right
• Moving in a rough line
• Layout (2D) subordinated (but somewhat available)
• Pages in linear order

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Reading the Web

• 2D Layout of Page
• Multi-linear (macrostructure)
• But still linear
• Texts are relatively fixed and distant
  (uninhabited)

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Writing the Web

• 2D Layout of Page
• 2D Layout of Textspace (macrostructure)
• Time Colonized
• Writing Becomes More Spatial

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Listening to Music (II)

• iTunes
• Simple Playlist
• Linear
• Receptive
• Smart Playlist
• Contingent
• More spatial
• Music collection becomes a database

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Producing Music

• Fragments
• Rearrangement
• Transformation
• Spatial
• Recursive
• Database-like

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Flaming Lips

• Parking Lot Experiments
• Zaireeka

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Turntablism

• Production from Consumption
• Awareness of History Through Sampling
• Awareness of History Through Performance (Funk
  101)
• Scratch Notation (DJ Radar, etc.)

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Composition as Articulation

• Multiple forms of composition (writing, design,
  production)
• Bridging Production and Consumption
• Beyond Consumerism
• Weblogs as Productive Web Use

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Weblogs

• Linear Spatial
• Individual Social
• Fragmentation Totality

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Weblog Writing/Reading Spaces

• NetNewsWire
• NewsMonster
• Tinderbox

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NetNewsWire
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NewsMonster
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Tinderbox
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Conclusions Where Do You Want to Build Today?

• Understanding the mutual construction of tech
  development and use
• Moving beyond unity without ending in
  fragmentation
• Building a sense of history without determinism
• Moving from a passive to an active reading/using
  subject