[-empyre-] backwardness

[Brigid Mc Leer <mcleer.bridge@virgin.net>]

hi,
have been away so only now getting back to reading all the posts so far.
And having read what's being exchanged i am very much struck by the 
exuberance by which the atomisation of 'writing' in digital 
media/culture is being embraced and discussed. Obviously all of us who 
work with computers have very different experiences and experience of 
what is occurring from the point of view of writing, in general 
(philosophically, socially, technically) and in particular, in terms of 
the work we are producing in and for and by digital realms/means. For 
myself, (and I wonder if this may also be a split common to other 
non-USA residents, where the technology took a lot longer to arrive!) 
using a computer - on any level - only began in 1995. Understanding 
that process has followed on in fits and starts. But either way it has 
entirely entered into my life as a critical 
tool/space/medium/instrument. I am aware however that my relationship 
to the computer, as someone who writes (not exclusively but 
persistently)but does not know how to programme,  is perhaps very 
different than it may be for someone who is working in the fabric of 
the technology itself, writing code, writing new genres of text, new 
concepts of meaning production and reception, through their productive 
and critical engagement with that process. For that reason I was 
fascinated by the ideas being exchanged around pattern flows and 
meaning, but find myself struggling to relate that to my own experience 
- not in terms of understanding, i can see how it is operating - but in 
terms of writing.
I guess what I'm wondering about is something to do with the 
extraordinary 'mulit-modality' ( if i can steal your term bill) of the 
technology itself and as a consequence the extent to which 'writing' is 
diversified and altered in this technology, but kind of 'unstrained' 
(as in unstrained tea). Plain old writing stories, etc. still exists as 
'digital writing', as much as new forms of writerly contexts (MUDS MOOS 
etc.), writing modes - code that remains hidden behind images, 
graphics, motion etc., or writing genres, the 'blog' phenomenon, have 
totally reorientated how we think about what we mean when we say 
'writing'. Poetics as a concept seems to add a whole other spin to all 
of this which is both necessary, inevitable and also over-complicating. 
Then there is the whole question of digital 'space' and the interface - 
perhaps it should also be referred to as an 'interspace' - and how that 
affects not merely writing but reading.  Has any technology (can I 
simply refer to the digital as a 'technology'?) produced such a rapidly 
evolving, and voraciously self-reflective condition, that sustains as 
much as it changes and is as ubiquitous as it is radical?
When I 'write' on the computer, I do two things. One is this - I write 
in very conventional structures (sentences) 'objects' (emails) that sit 
somewhere between letters and speech. I write these things to 
communicate across ridiculous distances, at unthinkable physical 
speeds, to people who I often never meet (and to people I see all the 
time and may even be in the next room to me). I also (and this probably 
still falls under number. one) write longer texts, of similarly 
conventional form though less speech orientated, for 'publication' in 
print or other formats. The other thing I do when I 'write' on the 
computer is that is work spatially with texts. I use the digital's 
disinterest in and lack of need for, linearity and I use computer 
pre'written' softwares, to de- and re-construct 'linear' texts into 
spatial or visual ones. This is obviously something that could easily 
have been done before (and has been - Marcus your mention of Mallarme 
et al is key here) but digital technology has allowed me to make the 
transition from the linear to the spatial much more fluidly and the use 
of prewritten software packages has also set up a kind of collaborative 
aspect to that where the medium itself informs the final outcome. I 
can't do code, so my operations are relatively crude, however I think 
both these adaptions of writing are still important within the concept 
of how we think of 'digital writing'.
The other thing I wanted to add is about literature. Not very trendy I 
know, but I wonder if anyone feels that the digital (whatever 
conception of that we may have) has allowed them to 'write' (at all) 
when they wouldn't have before - because of the hegemonies of literary 
scholarship and expectation? (I'm sure this must be the case in chat 
room type situations but I wonder if it is like this at all for people 
who might consider themselves now 'writers'?) Is 'digital writing' a 
licence, as well as everything else?

Some thoughts from, i guess, someone who is something of a beginner, 
when it comes to the digital!

Brigid