M is for Mechanisms

In keeping with the nod to Benjamin arcades project, the theme continues with acrostic-type entries populating the area between negative space. This post discusses the letter "M," pending the peer-review of the next portion of the e-book essay by members of the computer science department at the University of Michigan.

After considering writing a Thought-Catalog-type piece along the lines of "Money," a popular "M" as those behind NACPCS organizations could attest, the decision not to write on this topic reflected a type of political censorship. In the summer of 2010, the USSF fair was held in Detroit and, while thousands of activists flooded the Wayne State campus, life in Detroit continued as usual. The green consumer stores sold Peaberry coffee while luxury cars got their rear windows smashed on Jefferson. One car alarm bleated in scales of sharp while we walked past. Someone relatively wise from this city once told me, "Don't talk about money or we'll fight." "M" might not be about money, but a bit on public policies about money for public workers, briefly.

New employees of the USPS are currently hired in as temporary employees without benefits, in concurrence with the trending of private organizations hiring temps at cost. The Radio Paper notes that blogger Bryan Bradford was likely sacked for his work chronicling his experience as a postal worker. Bradford and other cases of blogotics remind us to focus on the literal webs, the maintenance of webs, and Matthew Kirschenbaum's Mechanisms as the topic of discussion in this arcadian entrance.

Matthew Kirschenbaum's work, Mechanisms, has a unique place in the historiography of the hypertext. Kirschenbaum wrote considerably about the types of machines and software that supported the hypertexts, mainly contributing to the crafting of the theory on the formalism of this media. The links become 401s. Acid rain erases the script on the imposts along the arch of Hadrian.

In Kirschenbaum's preface, one of his first references has already dissolved into an unmaintained hyperlink. Part of this area of scholarship involves ambiguity in scholarship, the kind that drives high schools teachers insane. In high school and even higher education, despite the proliferation of authors and editors contributing to Wikipedia, wary teachers shy away from allowing someone to quote it as an encyclopedic reference. Distrust still exists regarding digital texts and research compendium.

When meeting with NYC Teaching Fellows, The Radio Paper was still surprised to not get a call back after carefully lecturing that the digital sphere is a viable source from which a student can extract valuable, not to mention accurate information.

II.

I spoke in Washington Irving High School earlier this month and presented to a group of four to six prospective teachers (along with two certified teachers). I said that Wikipedia was not unlike the World Books of old, the high-res encyclopedias crafted by the publishing industry. I narrated how Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched the site in January 2001 and that "Wikipedia" came from the Hawaiian word "wiki" (quick) and the English word "encyclopedia."

I asked whether they'd ever been responsible for writing on the topic of this subject or new media. I suggested that my students in my theoretical English class would not only be allowed to cite this, but encouraged to do so after teaching everyone in the small circle how to make a log-in, what happens to Wikipedia articles in processing, and how the editorial process works.

Clear rain dripped down the side of the bricks on the high school. It spurted out of the mouths of the gargoyles on the side of the building. If "Jullian Assange: Hero or Villain" was still the extent of the conversation most people were having on digital literacy, if the volume of my voice was still the main focal point of any review on my potential candidacy, then the effort was as wasted as the plastic Starbucks cups wafting in the sewer. Someone asked me what I knew about horseback riding. Someone else dropped pizza near my foot. It slid into a puddle.

II.

A coffee shop outside of the rain away, before the occupiers returned to the square, I dug up some information for the next sequence of letters, including "M." While I read over the material for Mechanisms, I was struck by how one of the first citations was dissolving. I looked at this hyperlink for one of the sources on Ain't It Cool News and found the article no longer existed on the topic of a hypertext. Not only any hypertext, but this was about a type of software-discus-book called, Agrippa, and penned/scripted by Gibson.

Gibson had written a poem that was "treated with photosensitive chemicals that caused the images to gradually face from view once... exposed to light" and the poem "was encrypted so as to allow only a single reading from the disk... a 20-minute experience" (Kirshenbaum ix). Basically, this writer wrote a poem on a disk that came in a black box and it disappeared after a session. One can picture an app that contained a scrolling text, then it fades into vacuous space.

Much like the disappearing text of Agrippa, this topic was originally documented on Ain't It Cool News and concurrently remains out of the sphere of digital publication. It was, luckily, quoted in the preface to Mechanisms. This work was pointed out to me by a professor at NYU who made issuance that the volume was a seminal text in the academic field of the digital humanities. On the site, a 2000 interview of the author said that the text itself might not even exist.

He quoted Gibson as having said, "'[I]t's kind of an interesting question today as to whether or not any of these were ever really made. I don't have one... I've seen a photograph of one which I suspect to be either a forgery or a kind of dummy prototype that these guys in New York produced, and I don't know which" (Kirshenbaum X).

And, now, the even this February 2000 interview no longer exists.