Okay, so I’ve been thinking that with all my other work I have to do, that researching and diddling around in the larger issue is a bit too time-consuming at the moment, and that perhaps I should narrow down my focus after some thinking and brainstorming writing. So, where do I go from here? I think I have an idea that I want to narrow down my focus to something having to do with “collage, citations, technology, and experimental narratives” or something…I know that doesn’t seem or feel that narrow at the moment either, but before, I was thinking about all sorts of ideas, such as the historical nature of using technology (going back to Tristram Shandy, if not before), the postmodern theory behind experimental writing (which I still might incorporate, who knows), hypertexts, and other ideas.
But something that I’ve really been thinking about, especially after I wrote my first entries in this and thought about people making comments, and the potentiality of a community of research weblogs where people were constantly leaving comments and ideas…okay, so I’ve been thinking about the “communality” of the author, how the author is only actually writing, well, what I am doing here, a collage of citations, a series of references, whether explicit or implicit, to previous authors and thinkers and communities. I mean, I ripped off the term collage from Lance Olsen, who probably got it somewhere else.
My friends Jesse and Tom and I were talking once about citations and referencing sources. I argued that everything is a citation, that all our ideas come from somewhere, and then Jesse said something that was like a huge eye opening for me. He said “If everything is a citation now, then it’s not so much what we say, but how we say it,” or something to that effect. Of course, I still think what we say matters, as I’m sure he does, but it’s how we put together those citations that makes up what we say.
But, to link this collage and citation idea back to the course: language, technology, and culture. So, I’m wondering how technology is being used in general discussion of collage and citations and such. I know I’m still being vague, as I was before, but I feel more assured in my focus, and this is something that really excites me. I definitely need to look as some of Ede’s suggestions for reading, especially on authorship and such.
Okay, I’ve got to go meet someone for lunch.
