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Meta-MOOingwith Mark Bernstein
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Meta-MOOingwith Mark Bernstein
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From "InterMOO Request," original e-mail invitation sent to Mark Bernstein and Michael Joyce, March 27, 1998:
I would invite you, in a departure from our past policies, to write a brief summary/overview/review/introduction to the MOO after it has taken place and you have had a chance to see the log in its edited format.
Note: All five participants in the MOO session were given this opportunity. Joyce, Thompson, and English opted for occasional spelling and grammar corrections only, and the removal of some MOO-generated code. Bernstein and Doherty opted for a more direct approach to "meta-MOOing." Their commentary follows.
The contributors to this MOO session, along with the entire readership of this journal, is invited to continue this conversation; send your comments to Response Editor Jennifer Bowie for publication in a forthcoming issue, or watch your electronic lists for announcement of an additional Kairos Hypernews Forum.
Thanks again for inviting me to the InterMOO. It's a very interesting experience. The transcript, I fear, is a hash; too many opinions, too little information. Perhaps you can salvage something.
I'm unsure how much editing you'd like me to exercise; at several points, I felt less than coherent, and at other points the interleaving of MOO sends made things seem even more incoherent than they felt. I've rewritten liberally below, while trying to stick closely to what I said at the time. I don't really care whether I'm Bernstein or MarkB or whatever you like. First names seem to be your custom; it strikes me as odd -- what do European writers think? What happens when you have two Johns? -- but when in Rome.
Doherty writes
I agree that InterMOO transcripts are often a "hash" ... this kind of "meta-MOOing," or textually commenting on the text, provides an interesting opportunity to either re-hash or un-hash, depending on how good we are at what we do.
As for the name ... well, I think the names do matter, as a reader seeing "Mark" may react slightly, even subconsciously, differently from one seeing "Bernstein." Familiarity of that sort is either a danger or an asset of MOOing -- again, depending on how good we are at what we do. That said, we left the names of the participants as they were ... including MichaelJ, as Michael Joyce was not the first "Michael" to make it to LinguaMOO.
[From the MOO transcript]
bernstein says, "I did not equate the Web and hypertext. I said that the Web *is* a hypertext. When I said, "The Web is a hypertext", I didn't equate the Web and hypertext. Socrates is not equal to man."
Mick [to bernstein]: OK ... so the Web is to Socrates as hypertext is to humanity? The Web is a hypertext platform? Am I following you?
ADD
bernstein [to Mick] No, your syllogism is faulty. To say that "the Web is a hypertext" is not to say that the Web and hypertext are identical, but rather to say that the Web is one example of a larger class of interlinked things -- a class we call 'Hypertext'.
[From the MOO transcript]
Mick [to bernstein]: I dunno if you can equate it with sculpture, in which the finished product is pretty static. I like your answer, and think I agree with it ... I once argued hypertext was a "rhetorical situation." That may be a bit of a stretch.
ADD
bernstein [to Mick]: Once again, I didn't equate hypertext with sculpture. I said that hypertext, like sculpture and drama, is simultaneously an art, a tool, and a medium.
Well, yeah ... Mark and I actually agree on many of these points. We were perhaps misunderstanding each other's syllogisms -- semantic differences are hard to nail down in MOOspace -- but in retrospect I think both sides hold up pretty well. Mark says the web is a hypertext, I say the web is a hypertext platform -- these are not mutually exclusive. Mark, I think, is speaking two or three levels higher than I am on the evolutionary scale ... I'm talking about hypertext as a species, and he's discussing it as a class. I never did very well in Biology, though!
I think the same thing happened with the "sculpture" simile ... I couldn't agree more. Scott Consigny's definition of "rhetorical situation" implies that the situation is simultaneously a tool and a realm. If you understand rhetoric as an art, and substitute "medium" for "realm," then we're on the same page. Or screen. Or node.
The ensuing discussion [following the "Hypertext Gardens" slide] is even less coherent than what has gone before; gathering threads together may not recreate the literal experience, but will likely be the only way readers can figure out what anyone is saying.
That's one of the most interesting things about "publishing" MOO logs ... the consideration put into moving text around or editing/changing it before presenting it as "publishable." At one point in the MOO, Mark called me a "gatekeeper" -- absolutely.
It's ludicrous -- and saying this in otherwise collegial MOO sessions at the Tuesday Cafe and C-Fest has gotten me into trouble before -- to think we should just plop a MOO log into the journal and call it "published" because altering it would be "inappropriate" or "untrue to the nature of the dialogue." Sometimes ideas need culling; that's why journals have Editors.
Ooh, that sounds arrogant.
[From the MOO transcript]
bernstein says, "Is it local? I'm always struck at how few of my neighbors read my Web stuff, and how many people from very distant places follow it closely
ADD:
I can't get my family to read my work.
I can.
Count your blessings!
[From the MOO transcript]
Mick [to bernstein]: well, that's sort of like saying the audience for _Kairos_ is similar to the audience for _CCC_ or _Rhetoric Review_ ... or more likely, C&C.
I confess that I had absolutely no idea what Mick was trying to say here, and so my response, such as it was, is probably irrelevant and useless. The dynamics of the MOO precluded my stopping to say, "huh?"
Fair enough. I guess what I meant was this: technically speaking (pun intended) the audience this journal reaches out to is the same audience that reads Rhetoric Review or perhaps more likely Computers & Composition. Similarly, I think the audience for hypertext fiction is probably the audience for fiction in general.
The problem is, the people most likely to read a web journal are those who already use the web; the people most likely to buy Joyce's latest hypertext are those who use hypertext platforms somewhat regularly. (A tautology, I suppose.) The goal is to expand that audience beyond the techno-literate who enjoy a certain topic to all people who enjoy that topic. Much harder than it sounds, as Mark surely knows better than any of us.
Incidentally, I must disagree that the dynamics of a MOO -- or of this one in particular, if that's what Mark meant -- precluded saying "huh?" I'm pretty sure that Joel and I each spun that question about forty different ways!
[From the MOO transcript]
Sandye says, "There still is that 'attempt' to determine effectiveness...headcounts and dollars are easy to tabulate..."
bernstein [to Sandye], "The headcount argument says that Blake and Poe and Bach were all failures. Do you want to defend that?"
Mick says, "But in the last 100 years, millions of people have read Poe. So the headcount idea works ... and that leads me to think ..."
ADD
bernstein [to Mick]: If you were writing in 1780, headcount would rate both Blake and Bach as obscure failures. Beowulf was consigned to oblivion for centuries. I need not remind you of the state of literature by women in past eras. Your job is to read with insight and skill and to make your own judgements; leave headcounting to the folks at People Magazine and Entertainment Tonight.
Are Clancy and Grisham are greatest writers of our era? Is _Titanic_ the pinnacle of cinematic achievement? You KNOW there's more to good writing than box office. Why pretend otherwise?
(the topic wanders into the text section)
[Nack to the MOO transcript]
MichaelJ says, "Syn-chronic. Mark is right we *must* judge now, history is the accumulation of nows, the silt of the delta of time"
ADD:
Bernstein says, "Posterity will take care of itself. Apply the standards that matter: does it say something important and true? Is it real or phony? Does it awaken us or deaden us?
Again, in the heat of MOO argument and the soup of scrolling words, we seem all of us seem to have missed the point that we were agreeing with each other!
We cannot always equate "contemporary success" with "historical relevance." (If we could, Tony Perez would be in the Hall of Fame. But I digress.) Simply put, though, we can't argue both sides successfully: if we hold Poe up as an example because he "says something important" by our current standards while he was miserably unsuccessful by his own contemporary standards ... how can we possibly judge what early 22nd-century society will deem "important"?
Maybe it will be Grisham and Clancy. I hope not! But I am reminded of the scene in Star Trek IV (there's another box office success sneaking into the meta-MOO) where Spock refers to Harold Robbins as a literary "giant." Who knows? The difference between Mark Twain and Bret Harte might just be a good publicist.
[To the slide about Laura Miller's article] Bernstein replies, furiously:
Miller's article happens to name a few men. That's her business. You named some men and some women. Your selection of names 'that roll off the tongue' is your business; I cannot speculate on the gender disparity because I don't know you, I don't know the breadth of your knowledge, and I have no idea what criteria you adopted here.
Women are extremely influential in hypertext research and in literary hypertext. Consider Mary-kim Arnold, Kathryn Cramer, Jane Douglas, Diane Greco, Carolyn Guyer, Shelley Jackson, Deena Larsen, Marjorie Lusebrink, Kathy Mac, Judy Malloy, Cathy Marshall -- all fine and successful hypertext writers. Douglas and Guyer are also important critics, as are Anne Balsamo, Nancy Kaplan, and Kate Hayles. No editor has been more influential than Diane Greco. Cathy Marshall was program chair of Hypertext 96 and keynoted Hypertext 97; Elli Mylonas is program chair of Hypertext 98 and keynoted Hypertext 93. Jan Walker and Polle Zellweger served as Program Chairs in 1991 and 1992, respectively. Other women who have made major contributions to research include Nicole Yankelovich, Amy Pearl, Lynda Hardman, Franca Garzotto, Rosemary Simpson, Mountaz Zizzi, Jocelyn Nanard, Anne Rockley, and Wendy Hall. Ilana Snyder's book is very fine. So is Janet Murray's. Peg Syverson and Dene Grigar have done fascinating work in hypertext composition.
(All these names are off the top of my head; I apologize to everyone who I forgot in a moment of fury, or whose names I misspelt)
Uninformed or erroneous opinions, broadcast in email lists or mumbled in MOOs, serves neither scholarship nor research. It casts your discipline in a very bad odor. It's no excuse, either, to whine that "lots of people believe this" or "people felt this way at some conference I attended"; responsible scholarship demands attribution and deals in facts, not idle rumors.
[From the MOO transcript]
Sandye has to admit that the names I hear most often cited to me in other forums are male, even though, as you have demonstrated, women's voices have been an active influence... I just wonder why
ADD:
I can't speculate without knowing the forums you refer to, and without knowing whether you are referring to an objective phenomenon or an informal impression. I no longer follow the C&W literature, even casually, because standards of scholarship seem so low. The hypertext literature, fortunately, is easily accessible; instead of relying on secondary sources that, it seems, have let you down, it might be prudent to consult the original literature.
[From the MOO transcript]
Mick [to bernstein]: because, like it or not, the men's work is still the "canonical" work ... bad word. But teachers are more likely to assign Joyce and Moulthrop than Greco ...
ADD:
Bernstein [to Mick]: Again, I doubt that this is precisely true. On what data do you base your opinion? Teachers assign what they choose to assign -- the blame for sexism in the classroom rests with the teacher. As it happens, though, you're mistaken; Jackson's _Patchwork Girl_, for example, has become very popular in the classroom. Greco is also going to have tremendous influence. It'll take a little longer. She has plenty of time.
Up to this point, I have no problem with what Mark writes. I hope I am wrong -- that the most-frequently referenced works of hypertext would be written primarily by men would serve only to re-instantiate the idea that computer-based communications environments (up to and including video games) are designed primarily for, by, and on behalf of men. That would be, unequivocally, a shame.
My comments are based not on the empirical data that Mark has available to him, but rather on a feel developed in communication with teachers of writing over the last five or six years via lists like ACW-L and Rhetnet. When we gather at conferences to discuss "hypertext" as a subset of "the computers and writing classroom" the names raised are invariably the same: Joyce, Bolter, Moulthrop -- in that order. I can't defend the statement any further than that.
[From the MOO transcript]
Mick says, "But, Mark ... didn't you say earlier that popularity wasn't a yardstick for judging effectiveness? I'm not trying to be difficult here, and that undercuts my own argument ... I just find it interesting"
ADD:
Bernstein [to Mick]: You said that teachers didn't assign work written by women. I said that I happen to have the data, and it appears to me that you're not quite correct. This has nothing whatsoever to do with asking whether the hypertexts they assign are the best hypertexts, or whether teachers are a good judge of quality; you said "teachers only assign hypertexts by men", and I responded to the question.
[Back to the MOO transcript]
Mick exclaims, "But *that's* the reason a faceless demographic like ACW-L will believe most hypertexts are by men!"
ADD:
Bernstein: I cannot figure out the antecedent for this remark. I don't know why ACW-L is a "demographic"-- a strange term in this context.
Let me hand you a better argument, if I may:
[Ed. note: This is Mark Bernstein writing] Mick: I think the best hypertexts I've seen are written by men. These are the hypertexts I've studied myself, and the ones I assign to my students. I'm aware that this is awkward, and I've conscientiously read the work of the better-known women in the field. None of them measures up to __________, ___________, or ____________.
If you were to say something along these lines, I'd disagree, but we could have a useful discussion. I don't know what ACW-L believes, and if they're wrong, I'm not sure their belief is a matter of earthshaking importance.
It's not a better argument because it's not the argument I was making. The best hypertexts I've seen have been written by men and women ... in fact, the Eastgate product that really first impressed me wasn't afternoon but Diane Greco's Cyborg. Just brilliant. In fact, when I have had the opportunity to assign hypertexts to my writing students (when I was in the academy), the authors were always women -- Greco, Kaplan, Malloy. I checked my syllabi to be sure of this, and that's as close as I can come to providing empirical data.
Perhaps the general feel of ACW-L is not a matter of earthshaking importance. The list is made up of (last I checked) around 800 teachers of writing who utilize computer technology in their classrooms. Just a low-end guess here, but if we assume 500 of these teachers had two sections of 25 students each this past semester, that's potentially 25,000 students reading the assigned texts.
I am honestly surprised that a publisher of Mark's magnitude would dismiss that demographic. I understand that the list can be cranky at times, and there are a number of vigilante theorists subscribed who believe "selling hypertext" should be a punishable oxymoron, but for the most part it's just teachers interested in teaching better. I happen to think there are elements of Eastgate's stock that could help them do that, and I'm pretty sure Mark would agree.
[From the MOO transcript]
Mick asks, "It's clearly easier to assign _Twelve Blue_ in a class than to assign _afternoon_, since _Twelve Blue_ is upweb. What was the reason Eastgate decided to put that hypertext in that available form?"
MichaelJ says, "Because the author insisted upon it, over exactly these kinds of objections"
Mick smiles
Sandye grins
ADD:
Bernstein: I think literature is best served by creating a literary world where writers can earn a living. We live in the midst of a capitalist world; we can opt out, we can go along, or we can build a better literary world. If authors and publishers aren't paid for their work, literature becomes the province of the leisure class -- the wealthy elite who need not work, whose time is their own. Is that the literary world we want to create?
[Back to the MOO transcript]
MichaelJ says, "Here Mark and I differ mightily. I do want him to continue to thrive because he is an actual culture hero but I don't particularly care if my own work makes me money (this may be easy because it doesn't really make me anything more than small change and, like most literary writers, I enjoy the rewards in my teaching position, my talks, junkets, etc.)"
Mick [to bernstein]: so the supposed cyberpunk ethic -- "information wants to be
free" -- is well, claptrap.com?
Bernstein says, "That's not cyberpunk ethic It's hacker ethic. The two are quite different"
Mick [to bernstein]: Hacker Ethic as in Levy's book, yeah -- but also adopted by Cyberpunks in various followups. The Hacker Ethic is more in depth and defendable.
ADD:
Bernstein [to Mick]: Let's not use euphemism, OK? By 'Hacker Ethic', you presumably mean Richard Stallman's philosophy. Let's not use euphemisms, ok? I don't think you mean the cyberpunks -- Gibson, Shirley, Cadigan, Sterling; if you do, I have no idea what you're saying.
I find it odd that the stoutest defenders of Stallman's slogan, "Information wants to be free", seem often to be teachers of literature and composition who receive secure, government-subsidized paychecks. Stallman, moreover, chiefly opposes supression of valuable information for the benefit of the few: for example, keeping secret the formula for a cheap and effective drug in order to prolong sales of an expensive product, or making a computer program unecessarily slow in order to sell faster hardware. It's far from clear that Stallman intended to oppose the right of a performer to profit from a performance or of a writer to sell her work.
I will be up front about one thing: I haven't read Stallman, and I don't know his philosophy. I first ran across "The Hacker Ethic" in Steve Levy's book The Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. I conflate it with "Cyberpunk Ethic" in the manner examined by, for instance, Porush and others in Storming the Reality Studio, and did not mean to imply that Gibson, Sterling, and the rest claimed that conflation. (Though Sterling's introduction to Mirrorshades could be read, at a stretch, to imply that.)
Very simply, I think Mark and I are using the same terms coming from different literatures. I'm quite sure he's right within the context he presents (or, at least, I take him at his word pending further reading) and presume he would reciprocate the assumption. No euphemisms intended.
And, incidentally, just because I raised the spectre of the "Hacker Ethic" doesn't mean I support it!
[From the MOO transcript]
MichaelJ says, "Nope, I had a good time myself. Maybe we got side-tracked too much by the in-hand versus web talk (easy answer: the web won)
ADD:
Bernstein: (easy answer: in-hand won. But it's not a question of winning; both kinds of hypertext have long, promising, and distinct futures ahead of them.)
[Back to the MOO transcript]
Mick asks, "Mark, you were starting to suggest that the development of literature would more or less be left to the idle rich?"
ADD:
bernstein says: If writing is removed entirely from the realm of economics -- if writing is free -- then literature is necessarily the province of a privileged elite.
[Back to the MOO transcript]
Sandye say, "but to some extent, the disk hypertexts are for the elite: one must have a computer, the right software, the text itself, the time to learn the computer, the software, etc. etc."
ADD:
Bernstein [to Sandye]: I'm not talking about *that* elite. I'm talking about the elite of people so wealthy that they don't need to work and who have the time to immerse themselves completely in a difficult craft. That means, for all practical purposes, people who have inherited several million dollars, those who have saved several million dollars and still are young enough to begin to learn to write, and those who curry favor with wealthy patrons (or with the State) If we separate writing from economics, then we return to the era when literature was reserved for the nobility, and perhaps for a handful of privileged servants upon whom they lavish patronage.
[Back to the MOO transcript]
Mick says, "I know economic impact is the major impetus for *publishing* ... but for writing ... that may be different."
bernstein says, It's not a major impetus for a great many writers; lots of people write because they have no choice. But most writers need an income from something."
EXPAND, IF I MAY
Today, a novelist can earn a modest living from the books alone by writing a book every year and securing a reliable audience of perhaps 100,000 readers. That's tough, and many fine writers find themselves in the newly-endangered midlist. I believe it might be possible, eventually, for us to build a literary world where hypertext writers could earn a modest living from a reliable audience of 15,000 readers per year. It's a modest shift in economics, but it would transform the literary world in many truly wonderful ways.
Would you rather have a better literary world? Or a few free bits and pieces? The economics of literature are ours to change; we should make a better world, not rely on Michael Joyce's charity.
[Back to the MOO transcript]
Mick says, "And by the same token, though Mark won't want to hear this, I bet most people I know who own "Afternoon" own a bootlegged copy."
ADD
Bernstein shrugs: I know this, but it always surprises me when those who ought to be scholars boast of it. It's petty theft. Yes, I've read _Steal This Book_, and sympathize with it more than you think. But if Eastgate (or Michael Joyce, the author of _afternoon_) represents The Man to the people you know, their values are open to question. Perhaps you know a lot of Republicans? People lend hypertexts to friends all the time. That's fine. Libraries circulate copies of hypertexts. That's completely different, of course.
For better or worse, I get the last word. Comes with being Editor. So, in short:
- I know many Republicans. None of them are among the people I know who have bootlegged copies of Eastgate works. And I'm pretty sure none of the latter group "boasted" -- though doing something guilt-free is a form of boasting, I suppose.
- Of course I want a better literary world ... who doesn't? But the definitions of "better" and "literary" are at best ambiguous. Boy, that's a whole different MOO topic, huh?
Mark Bernstein has probably done as much or more for establishing the credibility of hypertext as a vehicle for literature than anyone alive today. I frequently disagree with him -- as you can tell from this meta-MOO -- but in the end, it's pretty simple: I hope he's right when he says "it's not a question of winning; both kinds of hypertext have long, promising, and distinct futures ahead of them."
Whether the roads converge, fork, or run parallel, or some other thing ...
A year from now, Kairos 4.1 (Spring 1999) will feature a Coverweb dedicated to Hypertext Fiction & Poetry. It should be interesting; and I bet this conversation starts up again.
