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How We Think How We Think HOW WE THINK { Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis } N. KATHERINE HAYLES The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London N. Katherine Hayles is professor of literature at Duke University. Her books include How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics and Writing Machines. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2012 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2012. Printed in the United States of America 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-32140-0 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-32142-4 (paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-32140-1 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0-226-32142-8 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hayles, N. Katherine. How we think : digital media and contemporary technogenesis / N. Katherine Hayles. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-32140-0 (hardcover : alkaline paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-32142-4 (paperback : alkaline paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-32140-1 (hardcover : alkaline paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-32142-8 (paperback : alkaline paper) 1. Digital media— Psychological aspects. 2. Communication and technology. 3. Humanities— Philosophy. 4. Cipher and telegraph codes. 5. Hall, Steven, 1975– Raw shark texts. 6. Danielewski, Mark Z. Only revolutions. I. Title. P96.T42H39 2012 302.23'1—dc23 2011038467 a This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). For my family Contents List of Figures ix Acknowledgments xi 1 How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis 1 FIRST INTERLUDE Practices and Processes in Digital Media 19 2 The Digital Humanities: Engaging the Issues 23 3 How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine 55 SECOND INTERLUDE The Complexities of Contemporary Technogenesis 81 4 Tech-TOC: Complex Temporalities and Contemporary Technogenesis 85 vii viii Contents 5 Technogenesis in Action: Telegraph Code Books and the Place of the Human 123 THIRD INTERLUDE Narrative and Database: Digital Media as Forms 171 6 Narrative and Database: Spatial History and the Limits of Symbiosis 175 7 Transcendent Data and Transmedia Narrative: Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts 199 8 Mapping Time, Charting Data: The Spatial Aesthetic of Mark Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions 221 Notes 249 Works Cited 255 Index 271 Figures 4.1 Screen shot of TOC from Vogue model monologue 108 4.2 Screen shot of TOC showing player-piano interface 113 4.3 Screen shot of TOC showing bell jar with text interface 114 4.4 Screen shot of TOC showing Influencing Machine image 116 4.5 Screen shot of TOC showing The Island of Time 119 5.1 1945 army manual showing time to learn telegraph sound receiving 129 5.2 1945 army manual showing stroke directions to form letters 131 5.3 Telegram from 1906 136 5.4 Telegram from 1900 137 5.5 Telegram from 1937 138 5.6 Grassi code machine for producing pronounceable code groups 141 5.7 Mutilation table from Bentley’s showing first two code groups 143 5.8 Mutilation table from Bentley’s showing last two code groups 143 5.9 Mutilation table from Bentley’s showing middle code letters 144 5.10 Telegram from 1941 144 5.11 Parallel column layout from Tourist Telegraph Code 159 5.12 Scientific Dial 164 ix x Figures 5.13 Keys for Scientific Dial 166 5.14 Sample page from The Scientific Dial 168 6.1 Georeferencing to USGS quad 187 6.2 Railroad distance 190 6.3 Railroad distance as a function of freight charges 190 7.1 Ludovician shark from The Raw Shark Texts 205 7.2 Keyboard encryption from The Raw Shark Texts 210 7.3 Triple encryption of “Light Bulb Fragments” 210 7.4 ThERa 212 8.1 Sample page from Only Revolutions 226 8.2 Endpapers from Only Revolutions 233 8.3 Inverted (legible) endpapers from Only Revolutions 234 8.4 Map of Sam’s journey in Only Revolutions 243 8.5 Map of Hailey’s journey in Only Revolutions 243 8.6 Map of Sam’s and Hailey’s journeys in Only Revolutions juxtaposed 244 Acknowledgments If every book is a collaboration—a confluence of thoughts only some of which are original to the author—this one is especially so. In the four or five years this book has been gestating, I have benefited from a great many conversations, books, interviews, comments, and feed- back too numerous to mention. Some contributions are so central, however, that I am pleased to acknowledge them explicitly here. First, I thank those scholars who gave generously of their time in agreeing to have an interview with me and for trusting me to han- dle their comments with fidelity and integrity. These include Eyal Amiran, Jay David Bolter, Tanya Clement, Gregory Crane, Sharon Daniel, Philip J. Ethington, Alice Gambrell, Caren Kaplan, Mat- thew Kirschenbaum, Timothy Lenoir, Alan Liu, David Lloyd, Tara McPherson, Todd S. Presner, Stephen Ramsey, Rita Raley, and Jeffrey Schnapp. Kenneth Knoespel and Ian Bogost at the School for Litera- ture, Culture and Communication at Georgia Tech provided useful information on their program, its aspirations and priorities. At King’s College London, I am especially indebted to Willard McCarty for ar- ranging my visit there, as well as to Harold Short, Stephen Baxter, xi xii Acknowledgments Arthur Burns, Hugh Denard, Charlotte Roueche, and Jane Winters for their willingness to allow me to interview them. At the Office of Digital Humanities at the National Endowment for the Humanities, I appreciate the help of Brett Bobley, Jason Rhody, and Jennifer Serventi in talking with me about their programs. I am especially grateful to Fred Brandes for allowing me to photocopy many of his books and browse through the rest while researching the archi- val material discussed in chapter 5. He also read through the manuscript and offered several corrections. I warmly remember and deeply appreciate his gracious hospitality, and I thank him for his generosity. I am indebted to the National Cryptologic Museum librarians for their help and encourage- ment, and I thank them for access to one of the largest intact telegraph code book collections in the United States. The collection was originally assem- bled when telegraphy was still alive (although long past its heyday), and the National Cryptologic Museum has worked to keep it as a valuable historical archive. I also thank John McVey, who has spent untold hours searching for telegraph code books that have been digitized, primarily in Internet Archive and Google Books, and has created bibliographic records and information for them. He has also compiled a valuable “Resources” page and other assets. I, along with anyone interested in this topic, am indebted to him for his fine and meticulous work. I am grateful as well to Nicholas Gessler for access to his “Things That Think” code book collection and for conversations, infor- mation, and explanations that make him my most treasured confidante. I am indebted to Laura Otis, Marjorie Luesebrink, and Nicholas Gessler for reading drafts and giving valuable feedback. John Johnston, one of the readers of the manuscript for the University of Chicago Press, offered cru- cial guidance and useful insights that helped enormously in rethinking the book’s structure; also invaluable were the second reader’s insights and strong endorsement. I owe a large debt of thanks to George Roupe for his meticu- lous copyediting; this book would be much more error-pone if it had not been for his help. I am also grateful to Alan Thomas of the University of Chicago Press for his continuing guidance and strong support, and to the staff for their good work on this book. In addition, I thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for support during summer 2009, when I participated in the “Broadening the Humanities” institute led by Tara McPherson and Steve Anderson at the University of Southern California. During the institute I began work on a website to accompany chapter 5 that will have over one hundred code books in digital form with the functionality to do keyword searches, send and re- Acknowledgments xiii ceive coded “telegrams” via e-mail, and other resources. George Helfand, then on the staff at USC, helped set up the database for the project, and Zach Blas helped with the website design. I am grateful to them both, and to Steve and Tara for their discussions about the project. I thank Deborah Jakubs, the Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs, and Winston Atkins at the Duke University Library for assis- tance in scanning the telegraph code books in the Gessler collection, which will be part of the data repository at the website. A prototype of the website may be found at http://vectorsdev.usc.edu/nehvectors/hayles/site/database .html. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Allen Beye Riddell, who coauthored the coda to chapter 8 and who did much of the programming on the telegraph code book website. In addition, he also did the research for and authored the website for chapter 8 on Mark Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions. His tireless work on this project has made it much richer and more extensive than it otherwise would have been. I am grateful to Steven Hall for permission to use images from The Raw Shark Texts in chapter 7, as well as for his willingness to read that chapter and offer comments. I am indebted to Mark Z. Danielewski for his friend- ship and feedback on chapter 8 on Only Revolutions, as well as for permission to reprint the images that appear in chapter 8 from Only Revolutions.
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