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Cluster Thoughts

I saw something exciting happen online, and it taught me a little something about what its like to write in this medium. It happened over there in the realm of hypertext theory, in what I take to be the upper eschelon of it, but its important to note that this kind of thing can and should happen anywhere.

I am reminded of the epigraph in Howard’s End that says “Only Connect”.

In one, qualified, paragraph Mark Bernstein called all of his “blogsphere” to task for not trading links and ideas the way he feels they had in the past.

But when was the last time Jill reviewed a hypertext, and Torill wrote a day later that she’d missed a vital point? How long has it been since Adrian proposed a new theory, Lis probed it, Anders elaborated it, and Elin puzzled over it? When did Anja last tell us how we were wrong, to be rebutted by Noah, refined by Diane, and replayed by Gonzalo?

Some of those on the recieving end of that calling out (it was a classy one, constructive) were quick to further qualify Mr. Bernstein’s observation about the state of his network of peers. There seems to be an interesting tension at play here between a scientific ~~“publish or perish”~~ mentality and a preference in the humanities for face-to-face dissemination of information in the form of conversations or lectures. As a student of writing, I am personally interested in this tension because it exists inside of me.

Me, I’m not commenting on this exchange in order to further my own ambitious stance at the very edge of this kind of a community. I’m interested in it because I’m trying to find a place of my own. Maybe its like that one, maybe it isn’t.

I crave, more than anything, a “sphere”. For me, this particular “blogsphere” is giving me an insight into just what it is to be in an educated group of peers. Until recently, my only expereince with such a thing has been with “the faculty” but it need not take that kind of a form. Maybe its the Beatles, or the kind of thing that existed between Vincent Vangough and Paul Gauguin, or the community that gave rise to chemistry as we know it, but whatever it is, there’s something out there for me, even if I have to make it.

I crave a sphere because I like to share ideas, however not everybody close to me needs to care about those ideas. Near the aforementioned post, Mark Bernstein mentioned “I’ve been thinking lots about the people who don’t read this page.” I can relate.

My mother doesn’t read this. (I wish she did) … old school friends… only one of them reads this. My little sister doesn’t read this.

Maybe, for me, those people just don’t happen to be interested, and that’s probably okay. The point is that other people out there might be. Well, I’m going “out there.” I hope I find them.

The sphere for me might not be a “blogshpere” and it might not be one that blogs about blogs, of all things, but that comment coming out of the metablogshphere has given me some insight into the way spheres come to be, the way they ebb and flow, etc.

Shall I conjecture about what kind of shpere I would have? What about how I would find it?

Stay tuned…

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Comments to “Cluster Thoughts”

torill Says:
December 13th, 2004 at 3:45 am

What Mark forgets is that what he sees as the Scandinavian-flavoured blog cluster was never purely an online phenomenon. A lot of the people who relate, reply and comment on our blogs are purely online connections, but it all started from a need to stay connected beyond the few short meetings we could have face to face, and a need to be available and visible to more people than the few who would happen to pass through Volda, Bergen or even Oslo and Copenhagen. We needed, like you, a sphere. The blogs let us make it.

We still need a sphere, and we still maintain it, but it has expanded and diversified. We link to more people, and our writing is not as instantly useful to each other any more. We are still deeply connected though, as the years of a common experience has given us a mutual understanding which permits cross-disciplinary communication with a certain ease.

What Mark misses is however a behavioural pattern which may or may not return, depending on how our lives and our work develops. We didn’t stop where we were. All of us are getting on with our lives and academic careers. And it’s a good thing we do. The new media won’t stop developing just because we have learned to use one slice of it.

As for finding and making your own sphere? Start working on it and enjoy it. Or define yourself as part of an existing one and join in. It’s open and free, and just waits for you!

Dylan Says:
December 13th, 2004 at 2:43 pm

I deleted the phrase “publish or perish” above, after an email from Mark Bernstein, who had quite a bit to say about why it was not exactly the best turn of words. I have quoted some of that below:

This confounds two imperatives: one moral and universal, one merely advantageous and primarily American.

In US universities — and not only in the sciences — junior professors are hired for a limited term and then judged for tenure on the basis, chiefly, of their record of publication. A junior professor who does not publish is unlikely to receive tenure, and will need to look for a new job when his or her contract expires. This is “publish or perish”. It’s perhaps less imperative in other places, where publication may not be the sole source of advancement or where advancement may not, in any case, be within reach.

Any scientist, to be sure, is likely to want to keep their job and to obtain a better one, but the imperative toward scientific publication is inherent in science. Scientists *must* publish what they have learned. It’s not an option. A novelist might choose without censure not to write a particular novel, but a scientist cannot decide not to disclose a result, any more than a physician can decide not to treat someone who needs their care. An aged poet says, “I have done this many times before; it would be a nice poem but today I’m feeling like taking a long walk”, and we think none the worse of him. A doctor says, “It’s too bad this child is bleeding to death, but I’ve treated so many children and today I’d much rather have lunch instead”, and it’s rather different.

Dylan Says:
December 13th, 2004 at 4:52 pm

I’m not sure how I feel about how a poet can “decide not to disclose.” Surely it is understood in our culture that such a decision is fair, but is it?

At my college they teach us about our “calling”. “find your calling” they say, until they are blue in the face. Such talk only annoys me because it doesn’t go further, into what to do with it once it is found. They say, because its a presbyterian school, that your calling is what you must do, and that it is what you agree with God that you must do.

Theology aside, isn’t your calling what you must do? Wouldn’t we all be as bad off as that bleeding child if all of our great artists and musicians had simply opted not to disclose? Poetry is disclosure, in a sense.

Anyway, the difference between Mark and Toril seems, to me, to be not a difference over whether or not to disclose, but how to disclose. I think Mark is saying “hey ya’ll share your lab book please” (although perhaps he’d be loathe to say “ya’ll”) And I think the response has been “define ’share’” or maybe “does it have to be a lab book that I share?”

Cluster Thoughts

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