Iterations with Victor Vitanza on MOOs:
an interview on the theory of MOOs and
MOOniversity: A Student's Guide to Online Learning Environments
"I will never forget the first time that I went to a MOO. How strange it was.
The bodily experience of it a/we." vvVictor Vitanza graciously agreed to be interviewed by Kairos about Jan Rune Holmevik and Cynthia Haynes’ MOOniversity: A Student's Guide to Online Learning Environments, the first text in the Writing and Technology Series (Allyn and Bacon ). The Vitanza interview highlights MOOs' "(an)architecture," which changes underlying structures in conversational (read: political) discourse and allows for openings/aporias in shifting hegemony. Who assumes hegemony in this flat text interview? Several interview formats were offered for the interview and we selected questions and answers by e-mail. Imagine the difference between this flat text interview and if we had met as virtual bodies in a MOOinterview.
Vitanza created the flat text as close to recursive flow of living language in the MOO. The iterations form an evolving conversation in an expanding community. More than iterations, we see Derrida's rhythmic anachrony enacted, "the pleasure of repetition; on seeing him so sensitive to these compulsive waves, one gets the impression that he is not just pointing his finger: he is taking the pulse of history," and the future (Specters of Marx). And finally, Vitanza's iterations on MOOniversity echo Ernesto Laclau's belief as stated in a 1997 Diacritics article that iterations empty meaning and open possibilities for additive hegemonic variations. More MOOSs. MOOpower and LINK. Vitanza disperses delightfully over the apparent borders of the screen.
kVw: What “evolving connections” or “olios” can _Kairos_ readers expect to find in _MOOniversity_? It is easy to say this is a first textbook on MOOs.
vv: Yes, as if there is a "first" to anything! And then, What is a "textbook"? I am sure that there are all kinds of first textbooks in a perpetual state of revision on MOOs or whatevers tacitly present in the "interactions" (or olios) that build between or among teachers (facilitators) and students (colleagues) who are learning how to work and play in MOOspace. These so-called textbooks exist—we can say--in the "tacit dimension" (Polanyi). A virtual book is there, wherever that "t/here" might be in the inter(ex)change between or among MOOers, but it's not in print or online. It's not expressed in a symbolic system but in a multiplicity of mental and somatic practices that remain the same yet change from day to day. I have experienced this kind of book; I would think that readers of _Kairos_ have as well.
When I listen to Jan and Cynthia talk about MOOs, when I see them in action at a MOO, and when I participate with them in pragmatic-theoretical discussions about, say, MOO architecture, I see this immense experience with MOOs building to form a tacit dimension that just spills out into and all over the conversational space that we are sharing and building. In discussions the connections evolve quite naturally into more thoughts to be shared and in collaborative articles on MOOs.
But what we have in _MOOniversity_ is that tacit dimension made explicit. It's a (historical, printed) record of an evolving set of conversations that have been going on for a number of years now between CynJan. Aristotle observed the tacit dimension of rhetoric being practiced in the Athenian courts, etc., and he perpetually attempted to make that dimension explicit (generic and codifed) in his teaching notes called _Rhetoric_. We can say the same for JanCyn's attempts. But we can also say, above and beyond Aristotle, that CynJan have put their own experiences and visions into their notes or this thing we call a "book." They are not just observers, reporters, and inventors of "names," but also practioners recording for us where they have been in MOOing and hinting to us where they will have MOOed. And demonstrating where new and seasoned MOOers might variously go in the future. And while doing all this, they take us and our student-colleagues along with them to what will have been, more specifically, in terms of educational MOOs.
kVw: How is this text special to the field of technology instruction textbooks?
vv: Well, I think that I've answered this question in my answering the former one. On a _personal_ level, however, I would say that this text is special to the field because JanCyn lived and wrote the text. They have gone to MOOs—the ever-evolving virtual space called LinguaMOO as well as other MOOs—and have come back to tell us all what was and what is coming in terms of educational MOOs. I see this book as one (several [countless ones]) built in a virtual space between Norway and D/FW; D/FW and Norway! That's how this book all started and still continues in its evolution. It has been built, as I experience the book MOOniversity and LinguaMOO, as an _in-between_. As an instructional textbook for MOOs, it's the very token that allows for entrance into MOO communities for the purpose of sojourning t/here.
On a _professional_ level, I see this book as a "gift" to our electronic community! I am not going to mince any words: It's a gift and labor of love offered to us. Enough said, perhaps!