Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1315] Pre-discussion paper
From: Kinshuk (Kinshuk@massey.ac.nz)
Date: Fri 09 Mar 2001 - 10:22:57 MET
From: "Kinshuk" <Kinshuk@massey.ac.nz> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1315] Pre-discussion paper Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 22:22:57 +1300
Dear colleagues
Please find below the pre-discussion paper on the theme 'Distilling the language
of cyberspace' by John Laurie, Australian Emergency Management Institute,
Australia, our moderator and summariser for the discussion. The discussion will
formally end on 23 March 2001.
The HTML version of the paper is available at:
http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss_march2001.html
(HTML version also contains a graphic)
Please send your comments on the paper to IFETS list at
ifets-discussion@catfish.valdosta.edu
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"Distilling the language of cyberspace"
"Quaero non pono, nihil hic determino dictans Coniicio, conor, confero, tento, rogo.."
(I inquire, I do not assert; I do not here determine anything with final assurance;
I conjecture, try, compare, ask.)
- Motto to Christian Knorr von Rosenroth,
Adumbratio Kabbalae Christianae
* The situation
In the past twenty years the Internet has grown, from text-entry green-screen
communication between the military, a few universities and researchers, to a
visually-based mass communication and advertising medium and even a tool for political
activists. This growth has been ad hoc, spectacular and peripatetic. The advent of
the GUI into mainstream computing was the point at which the Internet began to be a
largely visual medium.
The nature of the internet with its dispersed networks, massive redundancy and its MO
of sending information on small packets, means that it was always going to be an
accretion of disparate particles rather than a structured flow. (Codognet P, 2000)
Today the average website is a mess of text, graphics, flashing ad bars, animations,
java applets, avatars, VR, media players and dialogue boxes all constructed by
different people to different designs with different fonts and layouts all jumping
around competing for attention in one screen. Despite various champions of website
usability (Jakob Nielson, 2000) promoting their theories, (sometimes in almost as
chaotic a form as their targets), the average website appears to be structured like
the interior of a garbage bin. There are no rules on the internet except convergence,
and strangely enough convergence does not diminish the chaos. This doesn't deny the
possibility that the Entropy Law is at work here (Codognet P, 2000, pp2/20) - particle
motion becomes faster and vibrates in a smaller and smaller field until the null point
is reached.
This alphabet soup of seemingly formless chaos extends throughout the cyberworld right
into on-line education. E-mail, bulletin boards, course support tools, as well as the
internet, are all in the vortex. Part of the problem in on-line education has been
the disassociation between all the tools and the educative elements. As developers keep
working on more patches to overcome drawbacks technically the questions must be asked:
is the solution actually a conceptual one? Is there a way to make sense of, and turn
these weaknesses to strengths - to move from dis-integration to integration?
Education on line-is increasingly hindered and remains at risk from the situation
described above. In seeking means to teach on-line, the traditional pedagogy has been
questioned and often found wanting. One of the major problems has been, and remains,
for both students and teachers, the lack of any holistic and focussed way to interpret
and use the apparent chaos to enable nuances and a sense of community to thrive on-line.
In place of that, development has concentrated on discrete sections to address problems
reactively without any holistic concepts. But this may be the nature of the medium,
requiring research into new modes of language, and an understanding of the relationships
between all the elements, in an attempt to develop that holistic vision, rather than any
vain attempt to control the way the on-line world develops.
* The Problem / The Question
Currently there is no language which embraces and extends the mechanics of the on-line
screen. Semiotics has some relevance here, but the discussion is not intended to centre
around semiotics, which concerns itself with understanding language and meaning, rather
then creating it. It may be suggested that semiotics has some part to play in any
solution to the problem, but it is no way intended to be central to the discussion.
The arguments herein are not beholden to semiotic theory but are largely empirical
deductions derived from working with the media. One medium which has a well-codified
audio-visual language is that of film. Film has the advantage of invariably creating
narrative. In fact, it could be said that the narrative line of film enabled the
creation of its coherent language, or perhaps, as TV soap operas suggest with their open
endless stories, narrative is an inevitable by-product of film language (Butler, JG,
1986). In modern film the sound is an integral part of the language. The on-line
screen can use sound at will, but currently places it as just another discrete
disassociated element, ranking it comparatively at the level of sound in silent films.
The film screen is kinetic, but the on-line screen is both kinetic and static, part
textual, part visual, but never settled. Rather than kinetic the on-line screen could
be described as 'unsettled'.
* To define narrative
Narrative is a coherent flow, to a goal or purpose. It is to have a beginning, an end,
and some excitement in between. That's all (Butler JG, 1986). Human beings find narrative
in just about anything. It may be innate. Children racing sticks down a gutter are
following a narrative.
Computer games like "Tomb Raider", and even "Need For Speed" provide narrative. But
finding any narrative in any on-line activity, is very difficult. Some discrete elements
might contain narrative and occasionally, while tracking down a research question you
might hit one good link after another and Wow! it's a narrative. But it's accidental,
serendipitous and brief.
* To define language
A language is a code for meanings. In its widest sense it includes any set of rules,
conventions and codes for communication which exist independently of the user. (Sussaure,
1983). It is important to distinguish here between screen language, spoken language and
text. Whilst they may all come within the sense described above, semioticians' readiness
to consider all assemblages of signs as 'text' has muddied the waters somewhat. So also
the reduction of all language to 'signs'. While 'sign' might constitute a way of
describing the 'bits' that make up language, I would argue that the sum of a language's
signs and their relationships is only the skeleton and that the life force lies elsewhere.
Principally in the human 'will to story'. And it's that force and how to apply it to
the advantage of on-line education which will be the focus of the discussion.
* The language of film
In film, the camera looking up, or down on, a subject, a long sustained chord, a simple
shot of a knife on a table, are all codes for meaning. Another element of language is
timing. Film language relies upon the juxtaposition of shots. A basic editing exercise
has students given a number of standard shots, out of which they can make a number of
different scenes, all with different meanings, depending on the order and timing of the
shots.
* Narrative language for the on-line screen
The on-line screen has a number of key elements. It is framed. It radiates, like
television, into a competitive space. The background is almost always static and
isolated from the mobile elements which compete in a complex ordered-disordered way.
The content resides almost entirely in discrete 'bites' of text, which ignore each
other. Motion is mostly for attention-grabbing and novelty ie., 'spectacle'. It could
be said the cyber-world reflects perfectly the "spectacle commodity culture" described
by Guy Debord as: "the existing order's uninterrupted discourse about itself".
And, more completely: "The first phase of the domination of the economy over social life
brought into the definition of all human realisation the obvious degradation of being into
having. The present phase of the total occupation of social life by the accumulated
results of the economy leads to a generalised sliding of having into appearing, from
which all actual 'having' must draw its immediate prestige and ultimate function.
Simultaneously, all individual reality has become social reality, directly dependent on
social power, and shaped by it. It is allowed to appear only to the extent that it is
not." (Debord, 1977).
But at the same time it is interesting to compare the standard web page structure with
the illustration (available at http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss_march2001.html)
(Codognet P, 2000). It seems the image indexing and partitioning favoured on the web has
been recovered from past practise. The formalism of modern graphic design has been
jettisoned for a neo- mediaeval iconic approach to visual elements.
What has been added however is a kinetic element which is largely ad hoc and sporadic.
There are an almost infinite number of separate screens and at almost any point the user
can select from any number of 'doors' (links) and exit to another site which although it
may look different and have different categories of information operates in exactly the
same way. Flow in the on-line screen is the subject of much contention. (Poynter.org)
but only limited study. I could speculate that the flow of the eyes on the screen is
almost circular, vortex-like, in a search for the key (remember the will to narrative)
as well as static (moving round a point) when navigating in depth, through layers of
pages and links. It's very easy to get lost and little tags of narrative come and go,
in a continual parade of 'taste and reject'. This interactive quality through the
mouse/keyboard is in fact a regression from the Kircher drawing (above) because the
vastly increased complexities of web 'indexing' require many levels of pages or screens,
further disintegrating representative elements and dislocating icons from any contiguous
meaning.
The on-line screen is iterative, interactive and disassociated. Content is separated from
the static background which operates almost entirely as decoration. Bits of content are
discrete. Timing is amorphous. Loading is the main time-determinant and that is almost
random, so there can be little timing potential.
* Semiotics
Semiotics concerns itself with signs: "It is.possible to conceive of a science which
studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of social psychology
and hence of general psychology." (Saussaire, 1983). "Semiotics is concerned with
everything that can be taken as a sign" (Eco, 1976), but. ".semioticians study how
meanings are made: as such they are concerned not only with communication but also with
the construction and maintenance of reality" (Chandler, D 1998).
It is not the purpose of this discussion to analyse the on-line interface to determine
what concepts may be reified within it. Nor to argue about what constitutes a 'sign'.
This discussion in fact has little to do with signs at all. "A sign is a meaningful unit
which is interpreted as 'standing for' something other than itself.. Signs have no
intrinsic meaning and become signs only when sign-users invest them with meaning with
reference to a recognised code." (Chandler, D 1998).
The aim is to avoid any form of symbology, treat on-line elements as stepping stones -
more virtual tools than signs - and concentrate on contextual relationships to create a
new mode of story. While semiotics de-constructs, we are aiming to re-construct.
"Hawks argues, along the lines of Marshal McLuhan, that within a particular medium,
certain senses become dominant and that the medium thus affects the message, so that in
extreme cases the medium does not serve simply as a means of communication but as 'an
autonomous semiotic system, with a life - that is with messages - of its own'. Hawkes
1977,135" (Chandler, D 1998).
But McLuhan's dictum, illustrated in the above quote, was only a step on the way. From
the message being the message, through McLuhan's 'bon mot', to today, where 'the context'
is now the message. What Chandler says about 'the medium' is now also true about 'the
context'. In the on-line screen, context may also contain an "autonomous semiotic system"
so perhaps now is the time to discover the way to use it; a dynamic principle which
embraces not only the visual but also the textual, the relationship between the two, and
motion within the screen frame. This raises some interesting questions:
- Is language possible without narrative?
- What might a kinetic language for context look like?
- What is the narrative potential of the existing on-line screen?
- How can contextual relationships satisfy the will to story?
- What is the nature of the language that might express it ?
- How would such a language change the way on-line education is conducted?
The relevance of these questions to education on-line is not to be under-estimated.
Cyber-pedagogy must embrace the context of its delivery.
* Education on-line
There's quite a bit of literature around on why on-line learning doesn't work. Or on
the frustrations of students (and instructors) with various aspects of the medium. (Hara
and Kling). But all we get is more tools, more content and inevitably more frustrations.
This is possibly a result of too close a focus. Nowhere does anyone step back and ask the
holistic question: What are all the elements of this medium as it is now, and how can we
use these to provide satisfaction in on-line communication for the universal 'will to
story'?
Could it be that students get frustrated at their inability to find a structured flow -
a start, an end and a bit of excitement in between? How would this be achieved? Not by
changing the nature of the web or using obvious and self-contained story adaptions such
as role play and sims, but by learning how to interpret and engage in the interface story.
Not as in film, but as in the story of the 21st century - a relative contextual
construction of seemingly endless arbitrary conjunctions.
This may include asking the question: where does meaning reside in random conjunctions?
If that sounds almost astrological it could be because humanity has always attempted to
impose form on the formless in order to feel connected and involved, and that applies
to the current formlessness in on-line communication as well as to the random
conjunctions of stars.
Students can learn a spoken language, or film language, but as far as I'm aware, they
don't have the opportunity to learn any on-line screen language. They can only learn to
write web pages, how to use software and how to operate the hardware. Current learning
(if it's taught at all) for on-line communication is entirely operational. But film
students don't just learn to use the equipment. They also learn how to tell the story.
What sort of course could be developed for anyone working on-line, in any area, learning,
teaching, business, whatever, to use that universal will to story to take the cyber-world
to another level?
* Summary
Humans want to find a story in everything. It helps. So where's the story in the totality
of the cyber-experience? Let's find it, pin it down and teach it.
* References
Stanford University and The Poynter Institute (1998). Eyeytrack Study,
http://poynter.org/eyetrack2000/
Nielson, J. (2000). Jakob Neilson's Alertbox, May 14,
http://www.useit.com/alertbox
Chandler, D. (2000). Semiotics for Beginners,
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/
Codognet, P. The Semiotics Of the Web,
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~codognet/web.html
de Saussare. F. (1916). Course in General Linguistics, (trans. Roy Harris, 1983),
London: Duckworth.
Eco, U. (1976). A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press/
London: Macmillan.
Hara, N. & Kling, R. Students' Frustrations with a Web-based Distance Education Course,
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_12/hara/
Bennington, T. L. & Gay, G. (2000). Mediated Perceptions: Contributions of
Phenomenological Film Theory to Understanding the Interactive Video Experience, Human
Computer Interaction Group, Department of Communication, Cornell University.
Butler, J. G. (1996). Notes on the Soap Opera Apparatus: Televisual Style and As the
World Turns. Cinema Journal, 25 (3).
Monaco, J. (1977). How to Read a Film, Oxford University Press.
Marcus, G. (1989). Lipstick Traces - A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, London:
Secker and Warburg.
Debord, G. (1977). Society of the Spectacle, trans., Detroit: Black and Red.
von Rosenroth, C. K. Kabbala Denudata, Sulzbach and Frankfurt, 1677-84.
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