E-Forum #3: Writing on the Computer: Craft or Knack?
My presentation is available (in .ppt and .mov formats) here: http://condor.depaul.edu/~sslatte1/CWO2006/. And see Pavel Zemliansky & Kirk St. Amant's co-presentation "Online Work: Theories, Challenges, and Perspectives." Then let's start the conversation. ~Shaun
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3 comments postedIn thinking about "textual coordination," which you so wonderfully illustrate and describe in this presentation, I'm wondering if, in any of your research, you have found textual dissensus?
I guess I would think of such a thing a composition environment in which multi.window/multi.program computer composition doesn't help writers/composers "weave" together a unified text. Instead of weaving toward a singularity, it might lead instead to the composition of an array of texts? Or something else? I'm thinking: compu.composition as not productive of unified single texts.
I ask because I use several programs to create online texts, but I seem to fight with many of them (or they fight with me!) as much as they coordinate the creation of one text. Also, what I produce takes many forms.
Wow, great question Spencer. I did, in fact, see examples of such a problem in my study, though I didn't have such a pithy term for it. One of my writers "Doug" runs into a problem trying to determine how many cords will ship with the product he's documenting. He checks several other documents, but something interesting happens... He doesn't *trust* the answer he finds (because he remembers conflicting information from a meeting). So, while we coordinate documents to construct meaning, it apparently has to agree with other knowledge we have before we'll act on the text-assemblage. I'm sure the texts must also agree with each other before we'll accept the assemblage. So Doug can't "weave" (though he wants to!).
Your statement about "compu.composition as not productive of unified single texts" makes me think of the single-source movement where we plan for text-distribution (and have to design textual affordance to support it). Hmmm....
Ah yes, that issue of trust (and then reverting to or checking against prior knowledge) makes sense.
I'm thinking, too, about ways that working with several applications simultaneously can lead to the production of several texts, half-texts, or combinatory texts -- a sort of technologically enabled entropic composition that seems to keep it from "all coming together," as they say.
I'll have to look into single-source -- thanks for that!