Dissertation (Chapter 1)

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1       Site of electronic language

     We have entered an era in history within which the dominant form of communication  has moved from being the printed word, and a host  of other artefacts that emulate the organisation of print  and its forms, to an era dominated by electronic language . In the era where print dominated, the most significant human attribute for schooling , education and therefore one’s ability to function in society was taken to be literacy . Now, in this new era, literacy does not provide a guide to making meaning with electronic semiosis (Heim, 1987:167; Turkle , 1995:50); a new set of social and cultural skills and activities is taking prime place in human communication  (Heim, 1987:169; Landow, 1992:75-81) - the skills and activities required to participate in the new culture  of computer  communication  that links people across the world , through the Internet , across many thousands of computer networks  to personal computers on many thousands of desk-tops across the world.

     Technacy is that new set of social and cultural skills and activities centred on making meaning with computers. There is a temptation to name these new skills as literacy  or an extension to literacy (Tuman, 1987). However, it is quite clear from evaluating meaning making by people who have yet to break into literacy that it is possible to work with computers and make meaning in that context without a high degree of literacy. Naming this set of skills technacy  provides a sense of discontinuity that is required to set those skills of using a computer  apart from those skills of working with written language.

     Print has dominated discourses of schooling , learning , business  and social life for such a long time that we have tended to consider print  and its orientation to life as normal. Through our preoccupation with print in these arenas in life, we have tended to consider thinking , knowledge , and even life itself in the terms of that dominant technology. Schooling is a preparation for future life, and its central point of learning is print, its decipherment, its reproduction and gaining central knowledge about living that is encapsulated in artefacts of print. Learning, particularly at higher levels, has been centred on notions of reading, writing  and knowledge building  that has been displayed in terms of print.

     The Internet , computer  networks  and personal computers are challenging all that we have come to rely upon as secure. Through electronic language,  knowledge , intellectual property, copyright , and contracts, to name but a few, are under re-negotiation. Electronic media provide the possibilities of copying and repackaging of information  without giving those who have invested in the production of such artefacts any recognition or payment. An even greater threat to the current status quo is the Internet, where not only is it possible to copy and repackage electronic documents but distribution of copied artefacts can be effected world -wide within seconds by file  transfer protocol, or a little less speedily through electronic mail which may take at most a number of minutes or an hour or so depending upon the transfer mechanisms across firewalls and into private networks.

     The challenge that electronic devices coupled with the Internet  bring to every person in the world  is a challenge of firstly understanding the new media  and its potential , but secondly identifying and renegotiating what it is to make meaning with computers, networks and the Internet, and to define exactly how we might transfer from a world where ownership of knowledge , ideas and information  was protected in print  through such devices as “copyright ” into a world where ownership is no longer guaranteed, and where information is available globally, reproducible and replicable with such ease.

     This chapter, provides a context within which an understanding of “electronic language ” and human activities to make meaning with “electronic language” can be built. It focuses on the enabling technologies of computing that provide the context wherein we can view computing activities as languaging activities. The two major points of focus are:

1.      two major technological developments ¾ the graphical user interface, and world-wide networking ¾ which it is argued here, provide us with technologies that sponsor human communication via computing devices;

2.      computer communication in the light of those technological developments as being primarily of two types human-computer and human-computer-human.

Technological developments

     Two major changes have occurred in the way we use computers to bring about the emergence of a new paradigm  of computer  use:

1.      computer interfaces have changed from text-based to graphical-based, sponsoring activities that require manipulation of a large number of variables in the one activity (topic discussion beginning page 27);

2.      computers are no longer isolated units ¾ encouraging meaning making activities that move from computer to computer instead of from computer to paper (topic discussion beginning page 34).

The graphical user interface

     The development of graphical user interfaces has allowed people to work with computers in terms of a stored intelligence rather than as an interactive machine. In the early 1980s, personal computers used command-line interfaces and DOS-based programmes. Very few programmes on any computing platform could handle more than one or at the most a handful of variables that the human could manipulate. Relating to a computer in this way seemed like relating to a very simple calculating machine. Introduction of the graphical user interface sponsored presentation of menus, buttons, and dialog boxes, all of which were presentational devices to handle human modifiable variables. This change has led people away from commanding a computer to get specific tasks completed, to encouraging people to relate to a computer much in the way we would relate to another person. Our relationship with people is multi-variate not uni-variate ¾ we relate to people on a personal level, how a person looks, is dressed, as well as on a business level, what they are selling, what facts are being given, and son on. Our relationship with a computer, with the introduction of the graphical user interface allow people to work in a multi-variate way with a computer.

     The idea of a computer as being a person-like thing with which we interact is noted by experts who work with computers. Daniel, a programmer now working predominantly with the Microsoft program  Visual Basic, designing interfaces, suggests that working with a computer now is like working with a person:

When I worked in DOS , I needed to know exactly what my command did and how the computer  performed using that command. Now that I work on interfaces , and rarely see a DOS command line, I don’t really think about what the computer is doing. It is like working with another person. We don’t know what is going on with the other person, how he is reacting, what he is thinking  — we still have to get on with the person and work together. This is what it is like working with a computer now that I use GUIs a lot. I don’t know what is going on with the computer, but I still throw at it a lot of work and as long as it gets done is all that matters. (QT, 1993)^[1]. 

Working with a computer  when using graphical interfaces has made working with a computer an interpersonal-like experience. Expert computer users focus on what is happening on the screen as they would focus on a conversation with another person. Richard, a system administrator emphasises this notion:

There are more than 2,000 possible modifications I can make when I put together a computer and its software for use on our system. A computer set in one way or another gains a personality; as soon as I look to see how someone has changed the standard settings, I can see it as a character a bit like the user of the computer. The computer has become a reflection of the person ¾ well, I would say it has become person-like, probably. It has its own settings. It has its own way of doing things. (RTA, 1994).

Thinking about the task at hand, as Daniel does, causes him to view the activity  in a different way from that he did in the past:

When I used to work in old WordPerfect , I thought more about what was happening with the computer . Using WordPerfect was not automated and it was difficult to choose options. Now it is like I am working with a person who knows what it is doing . I can shape the document with drawing , charting, photographs  and other tools and when the document looks right, I print  it out. The computer knows what it has to do and gets it done. (QT, 1993).

Using complex interface tools, and focusing attention away from the inner working of a computer  has led Daniel to work with a self-acting tool ¾ one that can remember in the face of manipulating a large number of variables.

     Working with a machine that can handle the manipulation of a large number of variables, remembering the settings, taking on a person-like character has led to the concept of working with a computer as a simulation tool. More than 150 of the interviewees in various studies undertaken by the writer mentioned this as a key idea of how they now work with graphical user interface  tools (particularly since 1995). The introduction of these tools has opened the way for people to understand their computing experience as working with a simulation.

     For these people, working with a word processor can be a simulation. A document is under preparation. It is being simulated on the screen. It is held in fluid suspension until the simulation is complete and the variables all altered to the point where a print of the simulation is desirable. In this context, the computer is person-like in that it interacts with the computer user to achieve a goal.

     Document preparation, prior to the graphical user interface, and even during the first years of the use of graphical user interfaces was very much to do with “print-preparation”. Word processing and desktop  publishing  programmes were essentially tools that could be used to prepare printed pages . Coupled with sophisticated printing  devices, what could be seen on the screen could be printed out on the page . Conversation to do with page preparation dominated discussions of computer  use in these contexts: an area on the screen was identified as a page, particular areas were identified as the margins  of the page, fonts  were displayed on the page, as were headings , paragraphs, and many other features of a printed page. So strong was the paradigm  of preparing print  on a computer that it overshadowed what else might be done on a computer.

     Computers in many businesses were word processing  tools. Sue  remembers back to 1983 when her accountancy business  had sixteen IBM  compatibles installed along with a copy of WordPerfect  for each machine:

That was all that was installed on those computers — WordPerfect . Those computers were used for nothing else except as word processors. The secretaries prepared all our printed documents on them. We didn’t know how to use them, only the secretaries. It was annoying when they all went home at 5:00. A document  had been started, sometimes all typed up, but not printed out. We might have needed that document badly, but we didn’t know how to print  it out and finish it. We had to wait until 9:05 when the secretaries were back in harness. (QT, 1994).

  As indicated by Sue , many people considered that no text  was complete until it had been printed. Through many of my interviews this notion of incompleteness was explored. Seemingly the idea that a document is not complete until it is printed had two effects:

·        one, that all texts prepared on computers (this should be read as personal computers) were not complete until they had been printed;

·        two, that those texts that did not require printing  for their use, such as computer  logs, reference tables, and other files on a computer that could be used on the computer alone and not require printing, were marginalised as not being “real ” texts. 

In effect, as computers became more than computational aids , they were appropriated to maintain the dominant “print” paradigm  of human communication , as Jennifer, a secretary of fifteen years in the same accounting firm as Sue , suggests:

Word  processors, I mean PCs, were just special typewriters to us. They were a way we could make sure all our documents had all the same look and feel. But more, PCs could make them look like real  printed things, like they were typeset by the printer. This was the special go. (QT, 1994). 

     Two features of personal computers at the time sponsored this approach:

1.      Firstly, personal computers were largely isolated from any other computers. Thus as tools of communication , texts prepared on personal computers required a method(s) of dissemination. As printed pages  were the dominant means of sharing information , it seemed logical to print  from a computer , onto pages, to thus disseminate the prepared text (s).

2.      Secondly, the dominant interface of personal computers featured a “text ” orientation rather than a graphical orientation. WordPerfect , perhaps one of the most widely used word processors of the time, displayed everything in terms of a “text” paradigm where all elements of the page, including headings and paragraphs were displayed with the same “text” font, even though a larger font may have been chosen for the eventual printed page .

     What was not obvious in the early 1980s was that computers were being used to “simulate” printed pages . It was not obvious in that the labels used from the dominant “print ” paradigm  led people to think that they were using a “new typewriter” or a “new pen ” ¾ one which enabled people to revisit text  already prepared, revise and reproduce, over and over again. These activities were featured in the dominant writing  theories of the time (Murray, 1980:19; Moffet, 1981b), and computers were pictured as “new typewriters” that allowed this type of activity , which was so labour intensive when completed on paper , to be accomplished:

… the benefit of a word processor is that it allows the writer to revisit the text  over and over again, just as though working on a typewriter  or putting thoughts on paper  with a pen , but having the freedom to modify anything at all that was written before. (Murray , 1980:19)

The idea that computers were good “simulators” did not begin to gain ground until the largely “textual” interface was replaced by a graphical interface that allowed notions of simulation  to appear.

     In 1984, the Macintosh , and in 1985, IBM  and compatible computers displayed a new paradigm  of computing. This paradigm was one that seemingly reinforced the “page ” and “print ” notions of the time, but which through the decade that has now passed has  sponsored a new “simulation ” paradigm. Apple introduced, on the Macintosh, a simulated “desktop ”, and later Microsoft  introduced a Windows  simulation that allowed people to conceptualise programmes running at the same time in many different windows ¾ people could see these programmes as running in disjoint and unrelated “windows”.

     Ten years on from the introduction of the Macintosh  “desktop ” and Microsoft ’s “windows”, it has become evident that a shift of attention when working with a computer  has eventuated. The older text  oriented interfaces , such as DOS , allowed people to be concerned with the operation  of the computer and how it did its job of running programmes and effecting the tasks of preparing print  and running the printer. Gradually as the newer graphical interface has taken hold, the workings of the computer have reduced in importance to the computer user. The graphical interface focuses the attention of the user on the activity  at hand. Whereas in the older text related interfaces people needed to know commands to operate the computer, now graphical interfaces do not require commands to be issued ¾ what people do now is to effect actions  that are consistent with the simulation  in progress, most of which do not indicate the operation of the computer, but rather, indicate the simulation task at hand; it is far more like having a conversation with a knowledgeable person than it is to use a machine.

Networking

     The other major change that has occurred in the last three years has been the networking of computers across the world . No longer is a personal computer an isolated tool, the only contact with the world being its floppy drive to accept incoming data, and printers and other peripherals as a means of outputting data. Before computers were networked, the major way people had to output data, to share it with other people as a means of communication, was to print it out. This has dramatically changed.

     Networking, via the Internet in particular, has led people away from the notion that a computer  text  is not “real ” until it has been “printed” out, towards the notion that a text can be composed on a computer, viewed on a computer and stored for additional use in the same medium. Lyall, a management consultant who also looks after a world wide web  site for his own business , make this point:

I always thought of documents as paper  things until I started working with the web . Whenever I was halfway through writing  a document , I would have to print  it out to see it as paper. Now that I have been working with the web for six months, I no longer feel that way. Document on the screen, especially web documents on the screen, don’t need printing  out. They are documents that live on a computer . (CBA, 1995)

     The graphical user interface alone could not have brought about a change in paradigm from thinking of computer-based texts as “pre-print” to thinking of computer texts as something else. It was not until people began to appreciate that a “text” could be composed on a computer, used on a computer, and remain stored on a computer until a paradigm shift occurred. This primarily has occurred since networking of personal computers has become commonplace, and more particularly, since computers have been networked across the world via the Internet. At first, in large organisations, local area networks were established and “mail” programmes were introduced. E-mail was then prepared on one machine and forwarded to another machine for reading and storing. Some people, however, did not adjusted their activities and still printed out e-mail messages, in spite of the fact that storing those messages on a computer would leave the messages in a context where storing and searching for retrieval of messages is far easier than in the “world  of paper ”.  

     Now, connecting personal computers across the entire planet through the Internet  has brought about a number of electronic textual forms beyond e-mail that are composed in the environment of personal computers, are designed to be “read” on a personal computer  and are stored in that environment. For example, world  wide web  “pages ” even though retaining the word “page ” in its description often have little resemblance to a printed page - web pages:

·        can be of any length (sometimes up to 31 printed pages ), which in an electronic environment is possible

·        often include animation  sequences which have no correspondence in printed page  text

·        have active computer  links to other pages  which print  in a coloured format on a printed page  but have no relevance in print.

In most cases, web  pages  have been prepared for computer  viewing and do not translate well to the “print ” medium.

     The Internet  has introduced an environment within which numbers of other completely computer  oriented textual forms have been spawned. Interactive and live texts are being formed 24 hours a day through:

·        Chat Sessions  - hundreds of computer  users can be connected through the Internet  to a single computer; the computer records the contribution of each person to a conversation and transmits the total conversation to each person’s computer; the text  is a live text happening as people contribute to it, and while it is possible to log such a conversation and print  it out, it would make little sense out of the context within which it was created as a computer-typed conversation between those people;

·        Multi-user Domains (MUDS) - hundreds of people can be connected to the one computer  game, with each person that is connected is represented as an object  in that game; people can interact with each other in playing such a game; the text  created by such a game is ephemeral and disappears as it happens; there is no relevant way of thinking  of this text except as a live text;

·        Live Audio  - radio station like services transmit through the Internet  to those computer  users who have the receiving computer programmes; this audio text  can also include responses back from computer users; these texts do not even equate with radio texts in that they can also incorporate web  pages  flashing on the screen, chat sessions concurrently happening as well as the audio channel.

     The move toward graphical user interface s and networking of computers, converging as they have done in the mid 1990s, have established a context wherein we must consider computer  based texts as more than “speaking ” or “writing ” or “print ”. Clearly, in that the majority of world  wide web  pages , e-mail messages, chat session and MUD session are never viewed away from a computer monitor , we must now recognise that language  theory must provide explication for the emergence and existence of these texts.

     The focus on this dissertation  is to accomplish such a task, adding to and extending the notion Poster  suggests, but also to provide a reworked paradigm  of linguistic theory  that provides the necessary explication but which takes into account the environment in which electronic language  exists and the emergence of activities which are better explained through postmodern theories, as does Poster, than through those which are more applicable to modernist and prior views. It is to this that we must now focus attention.

Electronic language in use

     When electronic language is used, a person always must engage with a computer or a computer controlled device ¾ electronic language is not used in any other context. It would then appear that a person is engaging with a machine, and indeed the person is engaging with a machine albeit a machine imbued with an intelligence. We must be reminded, while considering the intelligence of the machine, that it is in fact a human intelligence; it is a human intelligence electronically mediated. One could be tempted, then, to simplify matters and suggest that indeed when a human works with a computer, it is in fact human to human communication. This is a simplicity that should not be indulged. While imbuing an intelligence, human activity has constructed a machine that presents options and makes decisions outside of human activity, some of which has not been predicted, or contemplated by a human in the making of the machine. The computer has an intelligence that is now self-acting, within particular parameters as designed by the human, but with results not always predicted by the human makers.

     Within this context there are two types of human-computer activity that must be considered, each with their own variations:

1.      human-computer communication (see page 39 onwards)

2.      human-computer-human communication (see page 43 onwards).

The task of this section is to identify the sites where electronic language is used, the participants in communication activities and the way those participants might react. This section is here to raise awareness of the human-computer context rather than to provide meanings or indicate solutions to problems posed by computer communication.

Human-computer communication

     When a person works with a computer there are several strands of communication occurring in an intertwined manner; it is not a simple conversation between a human and an active computer. Because a graphic user interface presents the options of a program on the screen, what can be communicated via the interface to the user is particularly complex. Communicatory activities are involved between the human and:

1.      the current program which has the focus or attention of the human;

2.      the text under construction, or being read;

3.      the interaction between the current program and the text;

4.      all programmatic activity occurring on the computer at any point in time that operates simultaneously yet in the background with the focus program.

     The computer user, when working with a computer, must at all times be cognisant of the focus program. In graphical user interfaces it is possible to have more than one program operating at a time. Particularly if the user has a large screen, say a 21 inch monitor, there is likely to be more than one operating program in view. The program with focus is the one that has the dark top border, opposite to the greyed border ¾ grey in any options list means that the options, or program, are not available. The focus program indicates it is operating and ready for use by way of the strobing cursor, a marked area of the screen, and so on. These are the simple matters of reading a computer program and knowing its state of readiness for use.

     What is not quite as obvious are the options available for use in composing text. These are usually well documented and can be learnt over a period of time. However, so complex are some of the options that even the most experienced users may have to refer to a manual or learn through trial and error exactly how a particular task can be achieved. What the experienced user works with to learn one of these complex tasks are the codified program reactions to the user’s choices. These can be many and varied, some of which were not intended by the programmers who constructed the program but are entirely reliable and useful indicators that a computer exhibits. The most obvious reactions can be seen in the screen ¾ text is bolded, sorted, moved, and so on. The least obvious are known through experience ¾ it could be anything from the time taken by the machine to accomplish a task ( a long pause usually spells disaster), to nothing happening noticeable at all (which may indicate that it did not work, or it may have done something to a part of the text not visible on the screen).

     There are a number of a ways a program communicates directly with the user to ensure that the program is used within the parameters for which it was constructed. Dialogue boxes are the most noticeable, in that they often appear and do not allow anything else to be done on the computer until they disappear. Menu information, labels, buttons and graphics are also used to communicate to the user about the use of the program. 

     More difficult to determine are the messages related to the interaction of co-operating programmes. Often the user wonders why the focus program has ceased, or why the computer is not reacting normally, when it is the interaction of another program with the current program that is at fault. So seriously misunderstood are these messages about what is happening to the computer that the average user calls a system administrator, or some other expert to come and fix their computer. So many times, the system administrator attends to the machine, discovers the situation and has the problem solved within seconds.

     As well as all this going on, the computer user is focussing on either constructing text within the program, such as a document in a word processor, or a table of profit and loss in a spreadsheet program, or reading a multimedia text in a presentation program. Focussing on this text would most normally be considered as reading or writing, but the activities of the computer user are far from reading and writing in the sense of practicing what was learnt in reading or writing classes at school. For example, words can be hyperlinked ¾ that is by clicking on the mouse button while the mouse pointer is on the word the display changes to another context that is linked with the current word(s). Index entries can be live ¾ that is clicking on an index entry changes the display to the referenced context. Diagrams can be active ¾ they can be animated diagrams showing how an engine works, or the passage of food down the alimentary canal.

     To suggest that working within a program text is constructed is to simplify the matters of what can be done in computer programmes. Programmes handle the composition of anything from worded text, to building plans, animations, video clips, voice recordings, and many others. A computer is able to handle composition of just about any symbolic activity that humans have invented. What is remarkable, though, is the fact that moving from one semiotic to another, because it is all achieved on a computer can be effortless and seamless for the experienced computer user.

     Regardless of the program invoked, a person has a number of methods to communicate back to the machine. How a person knows to click a mouse here, point the mouse there, uses a set of keys are the coding devices to communicate to the machine. But what is more important than the actual coding itself is the recognition of the contexts within which such coding can be applied in order to select particular languaging choices. It is by reading the screen, understanding the communication of the program, interaction of programmes with data, and the interaction of programmes with programmes that brings about the potential for a human to interact with the machine in particular and predictable ways.

Human-computer-human communication

     Networking, and in particular connection of personal computers to the Internet, presents to a computer user an even more complex range of communicatory possibilities. Not only is there communication interaction between the human and local programmes, there is also possibility of interaction with programmes on remote machines, as well as other real-time human connections. Communicatory activities, not already mentioned in the above section, occur between the human and:

1.      the computer network equipment ¾ including both software and hardware components;

2.      network messages from intermediate computers between the user’s computer and the destination remote computer;

3.      software running on remote computers reporting to software on the local machine;

4.      programmed human responses on the remote machine;

5.      human-like spoken or interactional responses on a remote machine;

6.      human responses on a remote machine.

     Connecting to the Internet is not a simple matter. Even now that operating systems, such as Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0, have plus and play facilities, plugging in a modem, setting up the software and connecting to a service provider requires an ability to identify where a problem in connection might lie. Even when connected, communicating across the Internet requires the user to decipher the messages given by modem indicators, program action and sometimes, the lack of action. Both interaction and no action have meaning. Lack of action from a browser endeavouring to connect to a computer across the other side of the world could mean one of a number of things:

1.      that the computer address being used is incorrect;

2.      that the computer being addressed is not currently on the Internet;

3.      that the name server machines between the user’s machine and the addressed server is busy;

4.      that the Internet routes between the user and the addressed computer are completely clogged.

The experienced user, who is able to read network activity from the screen and modem indicators, will be able to identify which of these meanings apply. It is not necessarily that a message appears on the screen indicating “Name server cannot find remote computer”, nor might it be that any message appears at all, but rather, it is the sense of timing an experienced user has in expecting a message or no message to appear.

     Communicating with a human across a network requires the user to work with:

·        communications from the local program within which the human’s communications across the Internet will appear;

·        connection indicators;

·        program operation indicators from the remote computer;

·        and the human communications.

There is always the possibility that the human communication from across the Internet may in fact not be human; it could be a human response that is programmed into a computer. For example, there are a number of talk-bots ¾ computer programmes that respond across the Internet as a human could respond. Ask it a question, and it will respond with an answer. The experienced Internet user, knowing about talk-bots, will detect that the responding human is in fact a talk-bot by modifying questions, and analysing replies to find regularities in answers that are not normally a human way of writing. Having exactly the same reply back from an exact question is not the usual response of a human ¾ unsophisticated talk-bots will act this way, but there are some very sophisticated talk-bots that are very difficult to detect.  

     When human-computer-human communication actually does occur, it is quite a different type of communication than humans expect to have with one another. While there are telephone type messaging systems that work across the Internet, in the main, human-computer-human contact is accomplished by each human typing messages to each other. Language in use is written, but takes on the vestiges of human talk. People swear in typing “$%^&*”, address each other, not as one would write, but as one might speak, casually and informally. For even though these messages are written, they are as dispensable as speaking; lines of written communication simply roll of the screen into oblivion.

Sites of electronic language

     These are the sites of electronic language, sites where symbolic activity seems to be written and but are coded like spoken, seem to be human but are in fact programmed, seem to be print-like but is in fact active computer text linked from index to text, from text to text, linked across the computer or across the world. It is these sites, the networked sites and the stand-alone sites that provide a communication context.  

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