Metaphoria Digitalus

When was the last time someone wrote a poem about a walkman, email, or Beta Max? Apparently, this guy below was quite attached to the Chappe light telegraph. This poem was written in the late 19th century.

What’s with you, my old telegraph
At the top of your old steeple
As stem as an epitaph
As still as a stout boulder
Life has passed you by
Scientists had warned you
And when the pomp is gone
Neither flatterers, nor friends abound
In the old days you were the marvel
And we stood amazed
To see Marseilles in a single day
Dispatch a few words to Paris
You were the wonder of our age
Children in awe, we wished
We could decode that silent tongue
When your bewitching arms
Carried over the paling horizon
Diplomatic lies
Lost in the fog
Now in only one second
North converses with South
Lightning crosses the world
On a twig or rounded wire

Quoted by L. Barray, Histoire de la filigraphie a Argentan (1912).

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Lake Snow-be-gone.

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Justin, you raise an interesting point. Maybe we can take an example from a wiki, that has a page for fact and a page for talk on every subject. Except that a review is necessarily an opinion piece and no such thing as an objective review will ever be written.

This may just be a phenomenon of the Randites, who take umbrage like most of us take air as a matter of survival.

My favorite quote from one of the Amazon pages is: “a randroid doesn’t need evidence, his word is of course sufficient”

You see, I used to be a randroid.

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“The social system is both maintained and modified in every social act. It is not a steady-state system but is-due in part to the innate inability of individuals to perfectly replicate social norms-in motion at all times, constantly vibrating” (Parsons 2003: 12).

This is analogous to how language changes as well. The image of “vibrating” social-norms is incredibly provocative. It suggests that they cannot possibly remain the same and that tradition is just a way of describing prior states of these norms. As a prescriptive exercise, tradition can do no more than channel the vibrations of the system, not control or dictate how they will emerge over time.

And some traditions have dubious pedigrees.

Parsons, P. Defining Cable Television: Structuration and Public Policy. constitution, 6, 5.

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Weick (2000:5) introduced me to the Schutz Test of Comprehension. This is a heuristic that you use to evaluate your own writing. The test assumes three types of understanding:

• simplistic
• complex
• profoundly simple

When we as authors understand the concepts we describe only simplistically, then we tend to hide in scientific jargon. There is safety in this mode of description because you make no bold claims [my claim]. Unfortunately Schutz provides no analog for complex understanding but I imagine this is similar to something like Foucault or Umberto Eco or Haraway (especially her), who tackle such radically different ideas from new frames of reference. Understanding them is like summiting a mountain in the dark. And I imagine that their own writing process is a similar feat.

I think we find profoundly simple understanding most often in physics texts written for general audiences, like The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene or Einstein’s Universe by Nigel Calder. It would be very easy to sink into the soft and familiar jargon of math and science when discussing higher dimensions and relative time. But these authors provide such beautiful metaphors and translucent examples to illustrate these grand ideas. When I want writing inspiration, I crack open Fabric at any random page and read. And it’s at least 40 pages later that I manage to put it down.

• Weick, K. (2000). Making Sense of the Organization. Blackwell Publishing: p.5.
  

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It worked! This is phenomenal. I can now blog from OneNote. Life is grand(ly connected).

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