Haynes and Holmevik open "Cyphertext MOOves" with a diagnosis: they name the tropological symptomatology at work in Sven Birkerts's Gutenberg Elegies, noting, for example, that the "crossroads" metaphor on which Birkerts relies operates as a symptom of the unacknowledged metaphysical craving driving the work itself. The trope of the "crossroads," H&H explain, restricts the possibilities of our encounter with information systems to an either/or framework, to a Self's moral decision between the path leading to the Go(o)d (the Book) or the path leading to "the cyborgian devil" (electronic information technologies). H&H—being good deconstructive theorists as well as good symptomatologists—respond to Birkerts's restricted economy not by flipping the privilege from one side (print publishing) to the other (electronic publishing) but rather by busting the binary framework itself; that is: by busting an/other kind of MOOve.

-ddd