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| Bill Thompson Literature That REALLY Counts Responses to Bill Thompson's Opinion Topic: The New 'Opinion' Topic Very interesting! However, I must strongly disagree that writing programs and telling stories have very much to do with each other. The gist of the article seemed to be that programs are moving the world more than stories. Of course, like all things, it depends on perspective and what you mean by "moving the world". We are living in a world where things happen very fast. The computer revolution will be of greater importance, I think, than the industrial revolution and the advent of electricity combined. But these are tools, and stories are (here we go again!) a method of communication. We use a computer program to make our lives easier or to magnify the raw powers that Nature gave us. We have been doing so for literally hundreds of thousands of years. In the wild, a naked human with no tools and no resources will not fare very well if faced with most other hungry animals. But we have risen above them because we can use our intellect to build tools for ourselves which expand our powers. In short, the fact that we can imagine something very often means that we can make it real. We men like to believe we are strong, but compared to many of the other animals out there we are rather weak! And yet thousands of years ago humans figured out how to build the pyramids in Egypt using simple devices like levers and pulleys (and lots of slave labor). Stories on the other hand empower the imagination that moves us to use the tools we have to do things. In a small sense, science fiction is doing that very thing today. After we landed on the moon for political reasons NASA's budget was slashed so we could step up the effort to build bombs, fund terrorists, and jail people for non-violent crimes. But we could have landed on Mars in 1981 if we hadn't (or so the plan was!). But the more people's minds are fired by imagination the more popular support perhaps would be thrown behind such a mission, and then the computer programs and other tools we have available to us can be used to achieve the goal. Stories: inspiration and communication Okay, it's getting late! Ciao for now!
Topic: The New 'Opinion' Topic I agree with Adam. I also think that there have been changes in programming styles themselves - early on (see the work of Djikstra (sp?) for example), there was a great deal of attention paid to economy of code - the venues were tiny. Today, code is bloated - but then again this isn't the kind of aesthetics that the original article talks about. More to the point, one might as well say that coding is more important than baseball - or any other cultural sememe - because of its functionality. And those sorts of comparisons point up the weakness of the argument, which is based almost entirely on function and overt cultural change. Novels and their worlds are qualitatively different worldings, say, than code; they work within different aspects of the social. Less to the point, but perhaps more interesting, is the poetry literally written in programming language - I'm thinking of the poems at the end of the Perl programming book (which are written in Perl and are also functioning programs), as well as literatures of Unix (there are similar); finally, if you look at the Internet RFCs, you'll find a lot of poetry there as well, some of which has been reprinted in Casting the Net (Peter Salus). Finally, I wonder about these opinion essays which are all-encompassing, and which present judgements of value that seem unsubstantiated (for example, one might have to deconstruct the sort of connoisseurship the essay expresses - as well as issues of audience, performer, text, etc.) - they almost foreclose discussion since they're so definitive; within their terms counterex- amples are close to meaningless - but who set out the rules and agreed to them in the first place?
Topic: The New 'Opinion' Topic Oh, whew, I also want to point out that programming provides the articulation or structure of world-building, but that the building itself is novelistic, whether done by programmers or writers. Look at MOO worlds for example, which _are_ literature as well as programs...
Topic: The New 'Opinion' Topic On 02/08/99 19:28:02, Alan Sondheim wrote: Alan - you're right, although baseball doesn't claim to change the world in the way that fiction - especially novels - does. The functionality of a program, the fact that it actually does something, is less significant than the idea that the act of programming is a creative act on a par with writing fiction, and that the end result has more impact on the real world. >And those sorts of comparisons Agreed, but we still see many claims that fiction has changed the world for it to be worth addressing as a point of debate. >Finally, I wonder about these trAce sets the rules: I was asked to write about something important to me, in a way that would stimulate debate. In 700 words I can't explore all of the aspects: that's one of the reasons why this forum is here. I wasn't trying to be definitive, just to present a viewpoint with which others (including you, I'm pleased to see) can take issue. And perhaps when its all over I'll have changed my view because of the arguments we'll have here... bill
Topic: The New 'Opinion' Topic 'Words are weapons sharper than knives' I seem to remember being asked very pointedly whether I had even heard of the intentionalist phallacy when I said something about an author (as opposed to a writer) intending a particular meaning (as opposed to a reading) when I took my MA....but what do I know. Any thing/experience could lead to that 'road-to-Damascus' moment for any given individual at any time....couldn't it? By which token, who cares?
Topic: The New 'Opinion' Topic Alan asks 'who sets the rules?' for Opinion. Well, in a sense the contributor does, in that we commission people to write about a subject they are passionate on, something which will provoke debate. On the other hand, you could say that trAce sets the rules in that of course we invite writers or select pieces which we feel will get an interesting response - in other words, we make an editorial decision on content. But we also open that out so that anyone can make their reply through this list. And we're glad that you do reply, because without it the Opinion column would be very one-sided. I'd like to add that we are also inviting contributions for Opinion (see front page) and look forward to receiving some interesting pieces.
Topic: The New 'Opinion' Topic There is nothing particularly novel about writing instructions, which is what programming is. Nor is creating instructions in poetic form a modern invention. Instruction manuals such as Virgil’s Georgics were/are? considered great poetry. In fact it took some time for people to catch on that you could convey your ideas without worrying about meter or having to insert lengthy metaphors and similes What is different about computer programming from previous instruction writing is that the writers have to define their terms for machines, which can only think in 0s and 1s. Previously when people wrote instructions for the creation of their world shaking inventions they could rely on the common sense of those carrying out your instructions so they did not have to be too exact in their terms. What Bill Thompson is saying, as far as I can understand, is that the ability to write instructions for something that, perhaps someone other than the programmer invented, is more effective in changing our material environment than writing novels? Since our outlook depends very much on our material environment then yes instructions are more effective than novels in changing our outlook. e.g. We can only decide cannibalism is ‘bad’ if someone provides instructions to enable us to reach an area where there is other food than human flesh. Washing machines, built from instructions, are probably more effective in bringing about women’s lib than e-magazines. On the other hand where do inventors get their ideas from in the first place? Novelists like Arthur C. Clarke were probably instrumental in spreading the ideas for some of the more important additions to our present technological way of life.
Topic: The New 'Opinion' Topic I made a real mistake here in writing; by "set the rules" I was referring not to trAce's invitation but to the rules of the game within an essay. By "opinion" I was also referencing essays in general, not the essays within trAce per se, but that's not clear at all, and it's my error. I like the original "Opinion" topic, because it generates discussion; by "setting rules" I was thinking about something like Leotard's differend, which is a kind of foreclosing. For example, if one says that literature is less relevant than programming culturally (which is not what was said, but I'm making an example), then there's no way to prove one way or another, since "relevant" could be defined _within the sememe of programming itself,_ i.e. functionality - whatever is said in return, then, is always placed within the periphery. That's all I meant, and no offense or flaming or questioning of trAce was involved, and I was thinking all the way back to some of the earlier opinion topics, for example, which queried computers in general in relation to culture. It's so difficult to generalize about cultural/technological topics; I can't do it, in spite of my own turgid theoretical work. So apologies again - upon rereading, I see how it would be possible to misinterpret my comments. And finally, I _did_ like the opinion topic, and what the essay generated here.
more responses to Bill Thompson's Opinion... trace@ntu.ac.uk
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