Response to Karen's post,
Yes, books have their place. They are yet to be beat in their portability. But, I think it should be brought to mind that at one time codex books were esoteric (as Karen described Storyspace)-- the private and exclusive domain of priests, scholars, and royalty. It took centuries for books to become popular. People had to become literate, books had to become affordable, people's tastes had to be developed and satisfied, distribution systems had to be set up, markets had to be formed, etc., etc.
Books have another thing going for them as well as portability. Books have what could be called in the world of sales, which unfortunately I was a part of for far too long, the "puppy" factor going for them (the "puppy close" is simple, if you are selling something tangible, you put the item in the prospects hands, a bond forms). Books are something you can hold in your hand, smell, carry -- they're carnal, private, and this may sound wierd, but I think books are also sexy. (Look up the words corpus and carnal -- a corpus is a body, human or textual. Carnal means bodily, fleshy, sensual, sexual, etc.).
We must keep in mind that all of us in this class were educated through books. As scholars, we love them. But I didn't take this class to explore my love of books. That's a given. I want to break new ground, understand, and find appreciation for a new medium.
I sympathize with my fellow book lovers, however, and am suspicious of the utopian and unqualified optimism of the rhetoric of the hypertext champions that we've read. I've felt like I'm being evangelized when I read their hypertext hype. And, we have to keep in mind that these authors have a vested interest in the spread of the electronic word -- for instance, Mike Joyce is in the business of selling hypertext authoring tools.
Also, we have to think what business we are in, and I don't think we are in the book business in the study of literature. I will take a stab at what business I think we are in. I think we are in the business of forming arguments, of rhetoric, and of making meaning through the associations of ideas. We aren't bound to books or print to do this. These things can be done in hypertext, and perhaps they can be done better in hypertext than books.
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 10:27:39 -0500
From: Randy
Subject: I Love Furry Books, and other thoughts
... Regarding the "I love books" thread. One of my favorite lines of all time on the original Star Trek was in the "Trouble with Tribbles" episode where thousands of the cute, adorable, lovable tribbles were invading the ship. Dr. McCoy is holding and stroking one of the little furry purring creatures and Spock says, "I just can't understand what humans' attraction is to these creatures." McCoy says, "Well, they are soft, and they make a nice sound." Spock retorts, "So would an ermine violin, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to own one."
Well, that reminds me of the "I love the way books feel in my hands" idea. How books feel, how they are personal, how one's relationship to a particular book and its text can be intimate, interactive, recursive is of course all true--but in the quotation above, Spock misses the point--a fur covered violin is not the same thing as a cat in your lap. One is the combination of two components--soft and sound, the other a holistic context (cat, lap, pur, live, affection, oneness).
Comparing books to computers, in some ways, makes no sense when taken at the level of its components, just as a fur covered violin seems a ludicrous substitute for a purring cat. At the level of wholeness, the acts of working with text on the screen and with reading text in a book strike me as two completely different activities. Thus, comparing them, measuring one against the other makes no sense either.