response to "overture" (randall packer and ken jordan)

the ideas in this article are taking me to different places at once. i spent some time this summer with susan stewart's book On Longing wherein she talks about the book as both an aesthetic object as well as a site for ideas. on one hand it is an artufully organized and bound material object. on the other hand it is a site where the actions of writing and reading take place, two actions which seem to happen in a virtual time and space. i mean, they are actions which allow the subject (both the writing subject and the reading subject) to leave the cartesian feield of space-time.

when "overture" speaks about vannevar bush's intended goal for science, that (as wikipedia puts it) "scientific efforts should change from increasing physical abilities to making all previous collected human knowledge more accessible", i am reminded of this space-time bending. bush wants to take the book and not only shrink it, but twist and contort it so that the progression is no longer linear, from one page to another. rather each point in the book can lead several different places, so the possible lines of progression are increased exponentially. apparently his ideas foreshadowed the hyperlink and the world wide web. it is fascinating to think of the book as a type a technology and the internet as not distinct from the book but simply a more technologically advanced book.

i have to admit that i had hitherto been turned off or wary of cyber culture. perhaps i'm just wary of the aesthetic (pixels, wires, plastic, spikey hair), but this idea of technology that reduces the dimensions of physical world (not only are the devices smaller but the dimensions of the world itself are reduced [spacial and perhaps even temporal]) while an intangible, virtual world grows in size is an exciting idea. it actually reminds me of the work of one of the first modernist novelists marcel proust.

proust's rememberance of things past conveys the idea that reality is actually the domain of the senses and the mind. he likens memories and his six-volume work itself to these little japanese paper toys that sound a lot to me like those little sponges that come in plastic capsules and which bloom once they're put into hot water. out of nothing, out of the the perceiving being blooms an entire experience that becomes the narrator's story.

at the same time i keep thinking about plato's Republic, this idea of people in a cave watching images on a wall. i don't remember plato's work so well, but my impression was that his cave metaphor was delivered as a warning, that representations of a reality manipulated by a priestly caste (or a creative caste, or a corporately sponsored creative class) do not deceive us.