User:Sluzzelin/Raisins from the RD

Purpose
Wikipedia's Reference Desk has potential beyond pointing people to articles. I hope more knowledgable editors will look in once in a while and offer their services at the desks. I intend to go through the archives looking for examples illustrating what I mean. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but what finally sparked this page was the following question and the reply it received:

Culture and the internet (Feb 6, 2007, but currently under Feb 5, 2007)
what might be the ramifications of the hypertext on culture? The hypertext transforms a text, which no longer has a set meaning, but how can we look upon a text as a unit when it is led into different directions by "links". There are no authors any more(in the sense that nothing new or amazing can come from an online publication), only writers and users, most of whom do not write very well. What is the future for culture when it is being degraded as it is? Also, does anyone know of any idea of where we are headed with the hypertext? What's next? Thank you for any comments on this you might have, it would be greatly appreciated. Henry Adams —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.138.124.63 (talk) 13:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC).


 * I disagree with your comments that "there are no authors any more" and that "nothing new or amazing can come from an online publication". I have come across many things new and amazing online, and there are many authorial voices.  Bloggers, especially those with a broad following, are an example of this.  I am also not sure that culture is being "degraded".  It is true that the internet allows many to publish without meeting the quality standards typically required by print publishing. But there are also people online who do meet those standards.  I think that what we have instead with the internet is a migration of conversational culture into a (sometimes poorly) written format and forum.  While the quality of the discourse is often not up to the level that might have been found in an edited and printed magazine, there is a compensating advantage in that a much greater number of people are able to participate actively as producers and not just consumers of content.  This has allowed a degree and volume of exchange and cross-fertilization that did not exist in the days before the internet and that, in my opinion, has enriched global culture.  Marco polo 14:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed, plus I would put fourth that MTV, or reality television are far more damaging and degrading to culture than the internet could ever be. Cyraan 16:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your response- very helpful. Please consider that the author I was thinking about was the person who writes a set text, and that text is left to be as it was- hence, he has an identity that cannot be changed, apart from by the individual reader at the time of reading(who might add his own interpretations, personally). With the internet, however, the author writes a piece and it is taken apart by anyone who wants to add to it, links that move away from the original text, and other online pieces. Because of this the author's identity is changed by the other authors online. The hypertext does not allow the text to remain static for long enough for the readers own interpretation. Clearly, the significance of this on culture (and difference between individual cultures)is effected on the global scene. Any thoughts? Henry Adam


 * Your analysis seems to rely on a shaky and debatable premise: the notion that "fixed" text is somehow the historical antecedent to "hypertext," and that the encroachment of the latter is somehow influencing the definition of "authorship," which depends on the "fixity" of print media. This premise shaky because: 1) traditional print media already has many examples where the definition of 'authorship' is not trivial or obvious (see e.g., Bible, Work_for_hire); 2) print media are subject to revision, republication, redaction, sometimes even *requiring* frequent and unpredictable change (see e.g., West American Digest System); 3) some philosophers and scholars would debate there even *is* such a thing as the "fixity" that you imply in your premise (see e.g., Deconstruction, Operationalization). Just some thoughts, I hope this question was not a substitute for doing homework ;) dr.ef.tymac 15:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * --Henry, the same complaints were made in the early part of the age of print, in the rise of popular culture in the 19th century, and over and over again in the 20th century. Certainly in my youth, I heard the same complaints about TV and commercial arts.  If you take "meaning" to mean "reference", then texts have never had set meanings.  If you take "meaning" in the Derridean sense of internal structures of opposition, then texts have always had an indeterminate number of meanings open to exploration.  Consider the constant process of discovering and rediscovering different meanings in the works of Shakespeare - a process that has been unquestionably fruitful and productive, and has gone on for several centuries.  This undermines any claim that a lack of set meanings is something new.  I don't see how hypertext is ever going to change any of that.


 * And there most certainly are authors. Postmodern authorship is perhaps more explicitly about repurposing other works than in the past - it is maybe more aware of its self-referentiality than in past ages.  I like to use Quentin Tarantino's films as examples, but it's a pervasive phenomenon across not only the arts, but practically all text production.  Blogs are almost a trivial example.  But greater self-awareness is really about all that's changed.  It's not as if the fact of repurposing and self-referentiality have changed, merely our awareness of it.  Shakespeare's plots and characters were old when he stole them, and any theory of culture that dismisses the Bard for unoriginality or denies him genuine authorship is boldly going nowhere.


 * As for the "degradation of culture" - that's been a line used against novelty in media since... I don't know, isn't there some kind of bitching about the degradation of culture somewhere in Plato? Egads, if there's been a time in the history of man when there haven't been complaints about the degradation of culture I'm hard pressed to think of when it might have been.  Most writers suck.  Most writers have always sucked.  If you think authors of the past were better than those today, it's because the sucky authors of the past are forgotten, not because they didn't exist.  Access to writen media is more democratic these days, so more people are able to become authors.  But limited access to media in the past didn't mean that only the best authors had access to it; more often, it kept the most original works from gaining distribution in favour of mediocrity.  At least the present offers more works a chance at distribution.


 * If I were to put my finger on some real change that hypertextuality is bringing to text production, I would look at the way it undermines social cognition by segmenting informational ecologies and restoring a type of communitarianism that people in the 19th and 20th centuries worked very hard to abolish. And, remakably, it  is able to do so without ever challenging the hierarchial and undemocratic structure of western culture and media.  Blogs, and other micromedia like the Washington Times, mean that any news story you read is spun a dozen or a hundred different ways into radically incompatible different texts, and then redistributed among people who use them to reinforce existing cognitive structures within their communities.  A New York Times article on how the war in Iraq is going badly becomes an indictment of the President in one community, while in another community it's just more proof of how the "liberal media" is losing the war.  The importance of texts published in the Times is never questioned, but their significance is impossible to ascertain.  The same applies not only to news, but to popular culture.  Is South Park about liberal values or conservative ones?  Has the show ever taken a discernable stance on anything?  Or The Simpsons?  Or The Sopranos?  It depends on whose blogs you read.


 * I would suggest that the future of culture is therefore the construction of still more limited, hierarchial, undemocratic and information-poor mass media, along with a vast system of writers and rewriters, constantly reconstructing and repurposing its output, until people who try to become well-informed about issues are even less well informed than those who make no effort at all.  Ultimately, it means the restoration of a culture of bad information reinforcing bad social structures, just as existed before the liberal revolutions of the 19th century.  The reduction in international correspondents in the major media, the increasing use of wire articles and pre-packaged news texts from outside sources, the consolidation of the media in the west - these are all phenomena that would fit such a theory because they turn major media outlets into little more than big budget bloggers, commenting and rewriting rather than seeing and reporting.


 * Of course, it may not turn out that way. There is some evidence of a contrary trend as well.  The most popular shows on American TV are - for the first time in my life, if not the first time ever - routinely the best, most original and most intelligent shows on TV.  Even film is slowly improving.  Those media are every bit as hyperlinked as the web - The Sopranos is as hyperlinked as any blog, just chock full of references to Mafia and cop films and other media.  People do seem capable of recognizing sources of creativity and information.  This change hasn't yet reached the news media, or print at all much.  But it may yet be coming.  --Diderot 15:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Diderot, merci de vos points, ils clarifient beaucoup pour moi. Mais que tout cette parole au sujet d'originalité ? La culture contemporaine s'amuse avec le repitition et l'intertextuality- mais où ce fil nous ? Combien de couches doivent là être avant que ce tout devienne inaccessible et unoriginal. Et vous êtes un traducteur ? L'Internet peut vous mettre hors des affaires avec ses fonctions immédiates de traduction ! Quelle, en effet, est une bonne traduction ? Henry Adams


 * Yes, thanks Diderot for the excellent discussion, and thanks Henry Adams for your question. Could you please keep discussions on this page in English though? It helps maintain the continuity of the "text" and also makes it possible to search and find your question in the future if anyone else has the same or similar questions later. Thanks! dr.ef.tymac 17:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, and while I am (or at least was) a professional translator, I'm a much better writer in English than in French, so I'm going to stick to answering your questions in that language - not to mention that it makes the conversation more accessible. And I'm a specialist in machine and computer aided translation doing a doctorate in computational linguistics, so I know a lot about that subject, and no, there is no chance the Internet will put an end to the business of translators.


 * Yes, contemporary culture amuses itself with repetition and intertextuality, and at so many layers of remove, the original substance is often at quite a great distance from the media consumed. However, this stems from a very different source than hypertextuality or any new media.  Media is - and always has been - a consumable product.  The public has never been content with a handful of great, unchanging classics that are recirculated over and over again.  As far back as the classical Greeks, we see the emergence of not especially original plots and characters, used over and over again.  People want and will pay a great deal for new cultural texts even where there's precious little originality in them.  The arts as an industry have always responded to this demand. Repetition and intertextuality are the backbone of the business of the arts - a multibillion dollar industry that brings more colour into people's lives every day than all the religions of the world combined.  One of the functions of text production - one of its most legitimate and necessary functions - is bringing that kind of colour and feeling into people's lives.


 * Even if we were to do as the Marxists always suggested and abolish capitalism and with it abolish the text as a commodity, this need still would exist every bit as much in a post-capitalist society as the need for food and shelter. Demand for texts as consumable products far, far exceeds the capacity for original production.  A social order must exist to meet that excess.  Hypertextuality has changed none of that.  Indeed, one of its most interesting properties is that it places in the people's own hands the means for text production.  Postmodern text production is, in a very limited sense, a kind of Marxist economy of abundance.  There is no monopoly on the means of production, and the result is enormous surpluses beyond the capacity to consume.  That is one of the great changes of the age, but as I highlighted, it has a downside that should be obvious to any economist: inflation, the collapse of value, and an informational and cultural version of Gresham's law where bad texts chase away the good, and a reduction of people's text consumption to a few "junk foods" like Fox News.


 * But if you step away from the idea of originality and see text production as meeting social needs, the importance of hypertextuality fades away. Repetition, intertextuality, commentary on commentary on commentary - all of this is designed to meet demands and none of it represents much of a difference from the past.


 * As for what constitutes a good translation... a lot of ink and occasionally a bit of blood has been spilled over that topic. I am inclined personally to a sort of Marxist conception of practice as being at the root of meaning.  A text is communicative when it produces the intended effect, and learning to do that in one's native language is challenge enough.  A translation is the same.  The only question is whose intention is should guide the judgment.  This was always a burning question for Bible translators - that answer for them was God, but God's intent was always hard to agree about - and a lot of modern translation theory takes its cues from the Bible translators.  In a strict sense, since I hold to a somewhat modified version of Derrida's theory of meaning (which he always attributed to Saussure) I would judge a translation on the basis of its maintenance of the original structure of oppositions within the text. Under realistic circumstances, however, this can be a poor guide for a lot of reasons that I haven't the space to go into. --Diderot 19:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)