tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88597567858063777232024-03-13T22:36:38.031-07:00SFU English 101W: Fiction in the Blog DimensionA class blog for Students of English 101 -- Introduction to Fiction -- an Intensive Writing course at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, CanadaDr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.comBlogger102125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-32346930934461062452007-04-10T21:36:00.000-07:002007-04-10T21:42:52.095-07:00Course Final ExamWell, I hope you found that the Final Exam was structured as advertised! Please leave your comments here now that it's history.<br /><br />The survey results about your feelings toward this blog were as follows:<br /><ul><li>"A Total Help" = <strong>75%</strong></li><li>"Who Totally Cares?" = <strong>13.5%</strong></li><li>" Total Waste of Time" = <strong>11.5%</strong> </li></ul><p>Some of your wrote comments & I'm grateful. There are also some intresting comments being added inposts below -- some good detail & neat ideas. (Tao & the Ice Hockey goalie in one ...)</p>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-68562345450186654662007-04-10T00:00:00.000-07:002007-04-10T00:05:45.400-07:00"Simone" & Rei ToeiFrom a helpful "Peyman A": (I am to read "simone" as "SIM One"?)<br /><blockquote><p>....post this link onyour blog. It is about a singer who is actually like Rei Toei, a famous singer, who is actually "a sea of code". The movie is called <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258153/">Simone</a>. I suggest everyone should go rent it and watch it. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EntZGr90-qk">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EntZGr90-qk</a> </p></blockquote><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EntZGr90-qk"></a>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-39594901451830735762007-04-07T17:32:00.000-07:002007-04-07T17:46:02.826-07:00Final Exam PreparationI know that you are all doing diligent study for the Final exam Tuesday morning. There's the fine-grained detail and the major Course themes, naturally. Your lecture notes, notes on the texts, and of course this blog are your effective resources. However, I want to encourage you to keep in mind as you prepare the motto I repeated through the Course, that fiction indeed instructs, but instructs by <em>delighting</em>.<br /><blockquote><strong>Let your study time for our Course, be guided by your <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">aesthetic</span> response to the literature: keep your love of any of the particular works topmost in your mind, and you won't go far wrong on the Exam</strong>.</blockquote><br />Sincere best wishes.Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-67813787838434087642007-04-02T21:47:00.000-07:002007-04-02T21:51:13.418-07:00ATP: Vincent Black LightningCrosscut buzz from classfellow R.B.<br /><blockquote>This is a relatively minor part of the book, but Fontaine mentions that Skinner rode a Vincent Black Lightning, I think it was a 1952, I can't remember.<br />Anyway, I don't know how popular it is or whether the version I know is a cover, but <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azB7B8hrVZY">Richard Thompson</a> that I can't get out of my head everytime I go to read the book.<br />This is a relatively good version, but I like the one I have better, just because of the back up vocals. I'm a band kid; I can't help it. If you want to listen to that version, you can </blockquote>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-11908760087706890362007-04-02T10:29:00.000-07:002007-04-02T12:17:47.913-07:00The Closing Lecture of the TermOn Wednesday we'll wrap up our understanding of <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em> and then tie things together for the course as a whole, all with a nod to the shape of the Final Exam. Also, we'll have opportunity to write course evaluations for students who were unavoidably absent today....Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-67482392010710976722007-04-01T11:53:00.000-07:002007-04-01T12:13:15.778-07:00BalkanisationThe process of larger national political unities breaking into smaller national fragments -- generally, to intensify ethnic, religious or economic homogeneity -- is reflected, as detailed in lecture, in <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em>. The term <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/59/13/balkanizatio.html">balkanisation</a> covers the process, as does <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/history/pathtodevolution/index.htm">devolution</a> and <a href="http://www.keysheets.org/red_11_decentra_gov.html">decentralisation</a>.<br /><br />The concept, as Gibson well knows, is well-debated. What I found interesting when researching the concept for these lectures is that it is a promiscuous concept. When one side or the other finds it in their immediate interest to <em>fragment</em> a larger political unity, the concept is vigourously advocated as a Good. Then, when it is in the interest of each of the same sides to sustain, or create a large political unity, then balkanisation is decried as a great evil.<br /><br />The result for me was that my low -- <em>very</em> low -- opinion of political operatives and advocacy was re-affirmed (not, God knows, that it needed it.)Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-42326877321441290652007-03-29T22:36:00.000-07:002007-03-29T22:40:22.808-07:00"Bridget Jones in Paris" Blog<span style="font-size:130%;"><strong><a href="http://www.petiteanglaise.com/">'Petite anglaise' </a>blogger wins sacking case</strong></span><br /><blockquote>By Henry Samuel in Paris<br />An Englishwoman sacked for bringing her employers in Paris into disrepute by writing an internet diary under the pseudonym petite anglaise was awarded £30,000 for wrongful dismissal yesterday. a test case for bloggers in France and beyond, a tribunal concluded that Catherine Sanderson, whose blog is said by some to be the equivalent of "Bridget Jones in Paris", had been dismissed "without real and serious causes". <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=L5EJCQ0OHRUUXQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2007/03/30/wblog30.xml">>>more</a><br /></blockquote>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-90952451332690264902007-03-29T21:22:00.000-07:002007-03-29T21:25:08.426-07:00Nanotechnology today....in AlbertaFrom the <em>Vancouver Sun</em><br /><blockquote><strong>EDMONTON</strong> -- A shiny new building rises from the snowy campus of the <em>University of Alberta</em>, a brash, imposing upstart amid the older faculties of physics, chemistry and engineering....<br />Welcome to the brave new world of nanotechnology, where for the first time in human history, scientists, once relegated to theorizing about atoms and molecules, can now touch, see and even manipulate some of the smallest particles in nature.<br /></blockquote>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-67367747928015060582007-03-29T11:25:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:39:59.258-08:00Taoism in "All Tomorrow's Parties"<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_yUpVInPLRYs/RgxNug4fqbI/AAAAAAAAAKY/n-s1wAnOKP0/s1600-h/tao.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5047494743871695282" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_yUpVInPLRYs/RgxNug4fqbI/AAAAAAAAAKY/n-s1wAnOKP0/s320/tao.jpg" border="0" /></a>The assassin ("Konrad") in <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em> is, as we have read & heard in lecture, a follower of Taoism. I found <a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/taoism.htm">this website</a> which can be provide helpful information to anyone who wants a fuller understanding of William Gibson's artistic use of the character and the metaphysical beliefs that he projects.<br /><br />From that webpage, here are some specific Taoist concepts, beliefs and practices pertaining directly to Gibson's text:<br /><br /><ul><li>Tao is the first-cause of the universe. It is a force that flows through all life. </li><li>The Tao surrounds everyone and therefore everyone must listen to find enlightenment.</li><li>Each believer's goal is to harmonize themselves with the Tao.</li><li>The concept of a personified deity is foreign to them, as is the concept of the creation of the universe. Thus, they do not pray as Christians do; there is no God to hear the prayers or to act upon them. They seek answers to life's problems through inner meditation and outer observation. </li><li><strong>Time is cyclical, not linear as in Western thinking</strong>. </li><li>Taoists follow the art of "wu wei," which is to let nature take its course. For example, one should allow a river to flow towards the sea unimpeded; do not erect a dam which would interfere with its natural flow. </li></ul>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-14051041420084714552007-03-28T22:46:00.000-07:002007-03-28T22:47:22.975-07:00The Devil Tempts Literature Students<strong>Do not read <a href="http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=y41vfqr9vzxg3846bh37h2fg0ck3wjbv">this article</a></strong>. <span style="color:#cc0000;"><span style="font-size:130%;">It is evil</span>.</span>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-42679895605711203632007-03-28T11:18:00.000-07:002007-03-28T11:46:37.271-07:00William Gibson Wrap upMonday we'll wrap up <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em> -- Balkanisation, nodes & networks, interstice & emergent properties, and autonomous zones -- and then move on to talk about the Final Exam. Keeping in mind, as we will be, that these Big Issues are used by Gibson for their <em>Imaginative Truth</em>, not their economic, political or computer science Truths ....Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-23414185892694037232007-03-26T12:07:00.000-07:002007-03-26T15:22:07.817-07:00Supply, Demand & DesireToday's lecture on William Gibson can perhaps be summed up by the literary question, How are we to understand the character Rei Toei, the idoru?<br /><br />At the start of <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em> it is said that "....she doesn't exist .... she's code. Software....Hundred percent unreal" (ch.21, p.82,) and by the conclusion she is not only real -- but the Absolute reality, chapter 68 "The Absolute at Large."<br /><br />Rei Toei, then, is the <em>incarnation</em> of those universal forces that the text calls variously the Tao, the clockwork universe, the nodal point of history. Heavy stuff, to be sure, like the good science fiction that it is, but what is this doing in terms of <em>fiction</em>?<br /><br />To answer this, lecture presented <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em> in its aspect of satire, and identified Capitalism in our own day and age as the satirical target. However, evidence of Gibson's artistic merit as a novelist, the satire is not dismissive of Capitalism <em>tout court</em>, but rather targets certain of Capitalism's vices, while presenting some capitalist features in favourable aspect.<br /><br />This non-extremism, or non-fundamentalism, regarding Capitalism is a feature which marks Gibson as a dialogistic author: creating a text which presents a <em>dialogue</em> between alternative conceptions through a heteroglossia -- a multiplicity of voices -- and thereby leave the final judgement upto the reader; allowing the reader to participate in the creation of the future.<br /><br />This is in opposition to didactic texts, which have their minds made up; present the Good and the Bad already determined; thus compelling the reader to accept the narrator's moral position or be branded as among the Bad.<br /><br />So, how does Rei Toei function in Gibson's satire? Capitalism can be described as a system which enables people to freely exchange money for goods or services that satisfy particular desires. Capitalism, then, assumes (<em>a</em>.) that people have desires, and (<em>b.</em>) that they will pay to have their desires satified. So, Rei Toei is described as being "....<strong>an amplified reflection of desire</strong>" ch.39, p.198.) She is, that is to say, in Capitalist terms, a <strong>Supply</strong>. Gibson expresses the supply function, in his novel, in terms of <a href="http://www.ingrimayne.com/econ/Connections/Says.html">Say's Law</a>, which, in a rough generalisation, says that "<strong>Supply creates its own demand.</strong>" in other words, demand follows supply. This doctrine is put, in <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em>, into the mouth of Tessa, who replies to Chevette's remark Rei Toei's kind of perfection "....is what people want," with this firm statement of Say's Law:<br /><blockquote>....you've got it exactly backwards. People don't know what they want, not before they see it. Every <strong>object of desire</strong> is a <em>found</em> object (ch.15, p.82.)</blockquote><br />Here, then, Gibson is treating in fiction the <em>commodification</em> aspect of Capitalism: the way that it turns values into commodities -- goods or services to be sold and bought. In this formulation, each good and service is an "object of desire." Thus, the Capitalist sequence is,<br /><ol><li>A human desire.</li><li>A capitalist's supply of an object of that desire: a commodity.</li><li>A capitalist buyers' demand and provision of money for, and consumption of, that object.</li></ol><em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em> resists wholesale belittlement of this sequence, because, it was argued in lecture, the condemnation of people gratifying their desires is a form of <a href="http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/history/thepuritanssubj.html">Puritanism</a>: those people who apply moral censure to desires and their fulfillment are said, in our culture, to be <strong>Puritanical</strong>; moralistic; Fundamentalist. William Gibson's background in the expressive nineteen sixties makes him very resistant to moral condemnation of free expression of will and desire.<br /><br />In Wednesday's lecture upcoming we will see what aspects of Capitalism <em>are</em> being satirised in Gibson's gloriously <a href="http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=876">polyphonic novel</a>, and more of what his posthuman dystopia-utopia looks like.Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-46829101218029884922007-03-25T20:01:00.000-07:002007-03-25T20:09:32.486-07:00"Twitter": Cell-phone Mini-bloggingFrom <a href="http://www.ft.com/home/us">FT.com</a><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">By Richard Waters and Chris Nuttall in San Francisco<br /></span>Silicon Valley is abuzz over <strong>a new mini-blogging service for mobile phones</strong> that some predict will be a mass-market hit with the reach of a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a> or <a href="http://www.myspace.com/">MySpace</a>.<br />Over the past two weeks, <strong>Twitter</strong> has attracted the sort of hyperbole the Valley reserves for its next internet darling – though such self-reinforcing adulation also led to dotcom mania.<br /></blockquote>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-70951506165112452572007-03-23T20:42:00.000-07:002007-03-23T23:26:48.012-07:00Clarke's Third Law and Gibson's "All Tomorrow's Parties"As lecture offered, one important idea that inspired William Gibson's imaginative conception of <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em> was surely novelist <a href="http://www.clarkefoundation.org/acc/biography.php">Arthur C. Clarke</a>'s famous <a href="http://sciencefictionobserver.blogspot.com/2006/11/clarkes-three-laws-of-prediction.html">Three Laws</a>: specifically his popular Third Law:<br /><br /><ul><ul><li><strong>Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic</strong>.</li></ul></ul>Gibson repeatedly presents the technology central to his plot in magical terms: the multiplied Rei Toei echoing '<a href="http://www.fln.vcu.edu/goethe/zauber_e3.html">The Sorcerer's Apprentice</a>;' the renewal of the old watch 'before your very eyes' at the close of the book suggesting the <em>djinn</em>'s promise of '<a href="http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewShortStory.asp?AuthorID=18734&id=12359">new lamps for old</a>;' <em>&c. &c</em>.<br /><br /><strong>ps</strong>: A reformulation of Clarke's Third law (of which <a href="http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/2005/jun/m17-014.shtml">there are many</a>) -- 'Ogden's Corollary One' -- says:<br /><br /><ul><li><strong>Magic is Technology at a sufficiently advanced stage</strong>.</li></ul>And an 'Ogden's Corollary Two' reads:<br /><br /><ul><li><strong>Sufficiently advanced Technicians are magicians</strong>. (Just never ask them to show you their wands....) </li></ul>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-10062641019837339882007-03-23T08:45:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:39:59.474-08:00Clocks: "the order uncomprehended."<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045305289431623026" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_yUpVInPLRYs/RgSGbff4pXI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/-Dbz2LrR_Hg/s400/Time.png" border="0" />William Gibson's character "Silencio" in <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em> is presented as being "....colonized by an order uncomprehended" (<span style="font-size:85%;">p. 87</span>) and the 'order' is in the form of a watch: that is to say, the clockwork universe behind the world of experience and appearance. ("some power or intelligence beyond his comprehension," <span style="font-size:85%;">p. 85.</span>)<br />Silencio, in fact, is an <a href="http://www.pantheon.org/articles/o/oracle.html">Oracle</a> for these <a href="http://www.horology.com/hs-hscie.html">horological</a> forces: "....He has become the words, what they mean" (<span style="font-size:85%;">p. 88.</span>)<br /><br />As lecture explained, Gibson has thus put his novel directly <strong>within a long-standing intellectual and, more importantly, literary tradition</strong>. I displayed the poem "<a href="http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2232.html">Evening Watch</a>" by the great Seventeenth century <a href="http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9052291/Metaphysical-poet">Metaphysical</a> poet <a href="http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/vaughan/">Henry Vaughan</a>. Here is the final stanza:<br /><br /><blockquote>11 Ah go; th'art weak, and sleepy. Heav'n<br />12 Is a plain watch, and without figures winds<br />13 All ages up; who drew this circle, even<br />14 He fills it; days and hours are blinds.<br />15 Yet this take with thee. The last gasp of time<br />16 Is thy first breath, and man's eternal prime</blockquote>To explain this stanza, and help take Gibson's meaning, look at the little Scottie dog in the image here. He is standing on the face of "a plain watch" which, not having any numerals on it, is "without figures." Because the minute and hour hands block his vision of the whole of the 'plain', they are in effect "blinds" -- as in <a href="http://www.theboxotruth.com/images/14-1.jpg">shooting blinds</a> which block the little dog from seeing the full circle. [<em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em>, <span style="font-size:85%;">ch 43, p 215</span>: "Because we have <strong>constructed this blind</strong>, says the cat."]<br /><br />Let's interpret this: we can't properly see what the poem calls "heaven" -- that is, Eternity -- because Time, the past, present & future, blocks out, in a sense, our eternal view. In Vaughan's final stanza above, the phrase "eternal prime" invokes the horological sense of 'Prime," the first liturgical hour of the ecclesiastical day. Thus in eternity it is always morning, since there is no Time which can bring the day to an end!<br /><br />Gibson's futurist re-vision of this in <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em> gives a secular eternity, where matter can be endlessly re-created newly, and a post-human being -- Rei Toei -- is created & re-created infinitely from "pure code." (<span style="font-size:85%;">p. 184</span>.)<br /><br />Now, of course, we are here dealing solely in terms of <em>Fiction</em>: <u>art</u> to be enjoyed and delighted in for its æsthetic qualities. And if it should 'instructs' by this delighting? Well, that is purely for each individual to decide .....Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-50705364923459408192007-03-23T08:38:00.000-07:002008-11-12T23:39:59.624-08:00Nodes & Interstices<span style="font-size:85%;"></span><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yUpVInPLRYs/RgSM_Pf4pYI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/WFsz22BjoAg/s1600-h/so.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5045312500681713026" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_yUpVInPLRYs/RgSM_Pf4pYI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/WFsz22BjoAg/s400/so.bmp" border="0" /></a> Last Wednesday's lecture outlined the two Big Ideas that are behind the repeated references to 'clocks' and 'nodes' in <em>All Tomorrow's Parties:</em> respectively, the 'clockwork universe' and 'interstices .' On Monday we'll finish this outline and then see how these two Big Ideas are worked diversely by William Gibson into his fiction as <em>settting, </em><em>characterisation</em> and <em>plot</em>.<br /><br />[The graphic here is actually a seriously cool graphical representation of this very blog in the form of <em>nodes</em> and <em>dendrites</em>, created from <a href="http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/">this web tool</a>. In effect, it's how Laney might see our blog as it "haunts his nodal configuration...." <span style="font-size:85%;">(p. 19)</span>]<br /><br />'Interstices' are an extremely important concept within the novel <em>and</em> (as Gibson is suggesting) within present-day Vancouver: 'Terminal City' -- updated for 2007 as a cyber-Terminal.<br /><br /><strong><em>The following is non-essential, and is only here for anyone with an personal interest in these technological ideas. Those with other kinds of interest need read no further.</em></strong><br /><br />As lecture explained, interstices are conceptual parts of the idea of <strong>nets:</strong> fishing nets, wireless networks, the internet itself. Gibson's first novel is titled <em>Neuromancer</em>, and deals with the idea of <a href="http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~nd/surprise_96/journal/vol4/cs11/report.html">Neural Networks</a>: a system model of information not being located in a centralised and unified place -- such as in the <a href="http://web-us.com/brain/PhysiologyOrdinaryConsciousness.htm">homunculus</a> ('little man') model -- but instead is distributed as signals across a complex network of nodes and signal pathways ('<em>axons</em>.') The model is derived from the architecture of the brain, and is used to construct non-CPU computers, <a href="http://www.gc.ssr.upm.es/inves/neural/ann1/anntutorial.html">Artificial Neural Networks</a> ('ANN'), under a concept called <a href="http://www.scism.sbu.ac.uk/inmandw/tutorials/pdp/pdpintro.html">parallel distributed processing</a>, under the doctrine of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Connectionism-Practice-Vancouver-Cognitive-Science/dp/0195076664/ref=sr_1_17/002-0801899-8800845?ie=UTF8&s=books&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;qid=1174699836&sr=1-17">Connectionism</a>.<br /><br />Part of the power of nerual networks (biological or artificial) is that the individual nodes have a equality of signficance relative to each other, and the clusters within a network have plasticity of function, so that the breakdown of, or attack upon, one, or even several, nodes does not destroy the system, as the information are redistributed across the reamining nodes. As you probably know, this was the advantage that the United States military hoped to exploit by developing the Internet in the first place.<br /><br />In <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em>, Gibson presents history itself as a nodal network, and human lives the connecting pathways. The interstices are, in a sense, where the <em>meaning</em> or the <em>potential for new meanings</em> can be said to exist. <div><div><blockquote>....plunging down the wall of this code mesa, its face compounded of fractally differentiated fields of information he has come to suspect of hiding some power or intelligence beyond his comprehension.<br />Something at once noun and verb.<br />While Laney, plunging, eyes wide against the pressure of information, knows himself to be merely adjectival: a Laney-coloured smear, meaningless without context. <span style="font-size:85%;">(p 85.)</span></blockquote><strong>Ps</strong>: An article I published (in a Danish journal) on parallel distributed processing for a literary audience is in our library at this link: "<a href="http://troy.lib.sfu.ca:80/record=b1858149a">Forbindeleser</a>."</div></div>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-18899073833424114512007-03-23T08:36:00.000-07:002007-03-23T17:37:34.584-07:00Classroom Insta-messaging & ProfsRead <a href="http://instapundit.com/archives/022400.php">this</a> post from <a href="http://instapundit.com/">instapundit.com</a> on students who text message in class. Be sure to follow the link there to the <a href="http://althouse.blogspot.com/">Ann Althouse </a>blog. Briefly, they -- like me -- think that since WiFi makes messaging inevitable it's best to encourge the most beneficial use of it. And as I've discovered this term, blogging your course is a dream for the instructor. (The instapundit post includes a link on this topic to <a href="http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2005/04/law_and_ec_of_b.html">PrawfsBlog</a>.)<br />For my part, students text messaging to each when they miss a point or don't get someting is advantageous and unobtrusive. And the fact that students can google during lecture will allow them to bust profs who bend the truth for ideology and will -- hopefully -- embolden students to raise objections.Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-36361079611654889502007-03-23T08:07:00.000-07:002007-03-23T14:24:05.793-07:00Essay Writing AssistanceFrom the <a href="http://learningcommons.sfu.ca/">Student Learning Commons</a> people at the great <a href="http://www.lib.sfu.ca">W.A.C. Bennett Library</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><p>As we near the end of the term, the <em><a href="http://learningcommons.sfu.ca/">Yosef Wosk Student Learning Commons</a></em> would like to remind you of the additional academic support we provide students in writing and learning skills. (Via one-on-one appointments or drop-in .)<br /><br />As....students enter the semester's 'writing crunch' <strong>and then final exams</strong>, please take a minute to remind them that there is <em>additional writing and learning skills support</em> available in the Student Learning Commons (room 3695-Podium Level 3-to the right of the Library). (Emphases mine.)<br /><br />Some of the areas our friendly and knowledgeable Peer Educators and myself can assist students in are: </p><p>- planning and flow of a paper,<br />- integrating quotes (<em>sic</em>) and paraphrasing,<br />- improving coherence and cohesion,<br />- controlling sentence structure and punctuation,<br />- exam strategies,<br />- overcoming exam anxiety,<br />- ....more.<br /><br />.....we do not edit or proof papers. The YWSLC Coordinator and Peers provide the insight, skills, and techniques to improve a students own performance, including learning how to write, edit and proofread their own work. </p></blockquote>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-78107614064444971622007-03-20T14:53:00.000-07:002007-03-20T18:12:07.404-07:00Gorillaz: Virtual Band<a href="http://www.virginrecords.com/home/_extras/gorillaz/01_0800_gorillaz_wp.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 189px; CURSOR: hand" height="140" alt="" src="http://www.virginrecords.com/home/_extras/gorillaz/01_0800_gorillaz_wp.jpg" border="0" /></a>Classfellow A.T. draws attention to Gorillaz, a virtual band that necessarily evokes Gibson's Rei Toei. There is a YouTube clip of them with Madonna <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=oMPkTYhY9Ug">here</a>, and their homepage is <a href="http://www.gorillaz.com/flash.html">here</a>.<br /><div><div></div><br /><div>(It is not truly <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Idoru-William-Gibson/dp/0425158640">Idoru</a> </em>virtual, but it is a big step on that direction!)</div></div>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-81210353363319528842007-03-20T14:05:00.000-07:002008-04-05T10:26:00.146-07:00TA lecture: notesOur TA has elected to have her Microsoft PowerPoint file from her excellent lecture on politics & <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em> hosted online at SFU for full access, <a href="http://www.sfu.ca/~ogden/WGibson.ppt">here</a>. If there is any trouble with them on local workstations, please leave me a comment at this point.Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-71075330396110320942007-03-20T13:35:00.000-07:002007-03-20T17:57:54.654-07:00Blogs of NoteTA Steve Zillwood recommends the following two blogs.<br /><br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/">Making Light</a> is run by the husband and wife team of Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who are the editors for Tor Books in New York. A very well-written and topical blog, covering aspects of the publishing industry, current events, writers and<br />writing, and tons of other oddball items of interest - and the best part is often the comments after each post.<br /><br />The second is <a href="http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/">Neil Gaiman's blog</a>. I think that a fair number of our students will be familiar with him, largely because he has written in so many forms over the past couple of decades (novels, comics, radio plays). He too covers a lot of topical information and news items, with a focus on writing and writers.</blockquote>Mr. Zillwood also recommends a third, but you will need to contact him individually for that url.<br /><br />A blog I like recently is <a href="http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/">The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics</a> by an SFU employee, Heather Morrison. It is worderfully bloggy: varied, literary, informative.Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-17748979493693090472007-03-18T00:47:00.000-07:002007-03-18T13:58:47.042-07:00Literary Method: from CommentsThe comments thread to the "<a href="http://fictionandreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/douglas-coupland-cynicism.html">Douglas <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Coupland</span> & Cynicism</a>" post shows several responses to the explication in lecture of the four-part structure of the afterlife in relation to <em>Hey Nostradamus!</em> Rather than reply to the common attitude there, I wanted to bring it up to a main post, as important points regarding the method of academic analysis of fiction are in play here. <em>I want to thank greatly the commentators themselves for stimulating this little treatise: if they would stop by an Office Hour, I'll repay them in coffee & <span style="font-size:85%;">(pace my post on Canadian spelling)</span> <strong>doughnuts</strong>.</em><br /><br />The commentators object bluntly to the four-fold structure (Heaven, Purgatory, Limbo, Hell) as, in a repeated phrase, "hogwash." Objection, of course, is admirable and welcome, in principle. I myself object. But <em>scholarly</em> objections require that scholarly conditions be met. There is, as I read the comments in question, an unavoidable sense that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Coupland's</span> text is here accomplishing its intended destabilising effect: the fact that the commentators frame their objections against "Roman Catholicism" leads me to wonder whether the real objection might not be coming from an evangelical Protestant position, and is actually directed <em>against the four-part doctrine itself</em>, rather than its use to explain <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Coupland's</span> art.<br /><br />So, to put this in terms of the academic method of analysis of fiction. Straightaway, there is a need to correct the objections against historical fact. The four-part afterlife is <em>not</em> Roman Catholic: or, rather, not exclusively Roman Catholic.<br /><ol><li>The model predated the creation of Protestantism by seveal hundred years. (<em>Cf </em>Dante & <em><a href="http://www.italianstudies.org/comedy/index.htm">The Divine <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Comedy</span></a></em>, below.)</li><li>Although the Roman Catholic Church has not abandoned this doctrine, it is also held by some Protestants. For example, scholar and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis wrote of his affirmation of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Great-Divorce-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652950">Purgatory and Limbo</a>.</li></ol><p>The first step, then, of academic analysis is to research the main historical facts under dispute, rather than take one's assumptions as being correct.</p><p>Next, be restrained both in configuring one's opponent's position and in expressing one's counter-analysis. The pejorative "utter hogwash" is perfectly possible -- I have myself experienced utter hogwash in academic settings -- but it is best to consider the strength of the position being objected to. (This is sound <a href="http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html">Sun <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Tzu</span></a> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">pragmatics</span>, among other things.) Being wrong and being hogwash are two different things. Scholarship almost <em>means</em> presenting one's argument for refutation: that is the nature of the dialectical method stretching back to the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Pre</span>-Socratics. Hogwash, on the other hand, denotes statements with neither <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">plausibility</span> nor support. </p><p>The requirement in the present case is for the objections to be cast in light of the material and arguments presented in weeks of lecture. I must say that I do not see this as having been done here. So, what is the main case for the four-part afterlife as an explanatory <em>schema</em> for <em>Hey Nostradamus!</em>?</p><ul><li>The argument from structure. The <em>structure</em> of a work of fiction with literary quality has, lacking clear evidence to the contrary, thematic significance. So, for a four-part novel, one looks for analogues relevant to the theme of the text. Observing that <em>Hey Nostradamus!</em> has a religious theme, as well as a plot centred explicitly on Christianity, one casts about for four-part systems in that religion. Two of the largest were presented in lecture: the afterlife, and the gospels. (Note that this is required just as much when the text seems to be directed against religion as in support of it.) So, objection to the four-part afterlife in this context needs to contend with the force of this academic aspect.</li><li>The novel opens with the main character <em>actually being in Purgatory</em>: that is, in an ante-state before Heaven but after Earth. Frankly, in context of a four-part novel, this is nearly irrefutable evidence <em>for</em> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Coupland</span> having the afterlife structure as part of his artistic design. At the very least, it would be scholarly dereliction to fail to explain why this is <em>not</em> part of the literary design.</li><li>The text has an aggregation of lexical cues (a.) to the four different states and (b.) concentrated in separate sections (<em>e.g.</em> the word "purgatory" appears in one part, "heaven" repeatedly in another.</li><li>The four-part afterlife has a potent literary tradition which adds immensely to the plausibility of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Coupland</span> having appropriated it. Most powerfully, the great Dante's <em>Divine Comedy</em> (a supreme work of literary genius) is structured according to the levels of afterlife (three-part to resonate the doctrine of the Trinity: Dante was an orthodox Christian, which <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Coupland</span> is not.) We are drawn to this parallel pointedly by the title of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Coupland's</span> text, which invokes another medieval writer.</li></ul><p>Short of repeating lecture, then, this is enough to say that the case for the four-part structure in the text is strong. Not, please note, irrefutable. Quite the opposite, in fact. The point here, though, is that in order to <em>object</em> to the explanation, the strengths of the claims in its favour have to dealt with in proportionate strength.</p><p>Furthermore, the literary method of analysis takes account of the concept of Imaginative Truth. To speak counter-factually, even <em>were</em> the four-part afterlife exclusively Roman Catholic, non-Catholic, even <em>anti</em>-Catholic, writers could find the concept artistically irresistible. Lecture gave <a href="http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking.htm">Led Zeppelin</a> and <a href="http://whedonesque.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Joss</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Whedon</span></a> as examples of anti-Christians who use Christian ontology in their art. To point, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Coupland</span> could in principle use Purgatory and Limbo artistically without any Roman Catholic suggestion at all: the artist, indeed, <em>may not even be aware</em> that the ideas have any specifically Roman Catholic denotation.</p><p>Likewise, literary art does not require that there be direct <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">correspondence</span> between the use of a concept in a novel and its original formalities, nor need there be, what the American poet <a href="http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson/">Emerson</a> called, "a foolish consistency" in the concept's fictional application. Art uses <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">resonancy</span>, allusion, careful distortion, apposition, contrast, invention and inversion: all tints and shades are on the master's palette. (A major example in this regard is <a href="http://www.bway.net/~hunger/ulysses.html">Ulysses</a> by Modernist writer <a href="http://www.jamesjoyce.ie/">James Joyce</a>, wherein a large part of the appeal for its devotees is finding (and then flaunting the finding of) the presence, shape and fictional purpose of, distorted episodes from Homer's original in the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Modernist</span> revision.)</p><p>I hope this brief account of one part of the academic analysis of fiction is beneficial. If not, look to my inadequacies as the reason, not the discipline itself, which is all glory. And for any specific questions on the details of <em>Hey Nostradamus!</em>, again, stop by Office Hours.</p>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-14360705788089714312007-03-17T20:34:00.000-07:002007-03-17T20:38:00.847-07:00Influence of "Blade Runner" on William Gibson's Fiction<img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/blog/uploaded_images/550px-BladeRunner_Spinner_Billboard-784152.jpg" border="0" />I found an excellent FAQ <a href="http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/movies/blade-runner-faq.html">here</a> on the influence of the Ridley Scott film <em>Blade Runner</em>. The clip I showed in lecture last week has elements found suggestively in <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em>: for example, the giant plasma screens on the sides of office buildings, "vast faces fill[ing] the screens, at once terrible and banal." (p6-7). <em>Blade Runner</em> was released in 1982, and was a version of a Philip K. Dick story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" published in 1968. William Gibson published his first novel in 1984, two years after the film was released, and has suggested that Dick, Scott & he share a shared imaginative vision (subsequently labelled, as you may know, "cyberpunk.") Here is a helpful quotation from the FAQ:<br /><p>Gibson, in an interview by Lance Loud in an article on the 10th anniversary of "Blade Runner" for the magazine "Details" (October1992 issue), had the following to say:</p><blockquote><p>'About ten minutes into <em>Blade Runner</em>, I reeled out of the theater in complete despair over its visual brilliance and its similarity to the "look" of <em>Neuromancer</em>, my [then] largely unwritten first novel. Not only had I been beaten to the semiotic punch, but this damned movie looked better than the images in my head! With time, as I got over that, I started to take a certain delight in the way the film began to affect the way the world looked. Club fashions, at first, then rock videos, finally even architecture. Amazing! A science fiction movie affecting reality!'</p></blockquote>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-54242956928175265662007-03-17T20:06:00.000-07:002007-03-18T01:28:20.963-07:00Coupland and (Generation) AlienationMy <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">cacophonous</span> term for one of Douglas <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Coupland's</span> signature themes is <strong>generation alienation</strong>. The title of his widely successful first novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/031205436X/qid=1112038825/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/103-4731180-2286248">Generation X</a> entered language and, as naming will, gave a sense of separate identity to members (the etymology of that word is important in this context) of society based on mere age. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Coupland's</span> fiction -- on the lecture thesis that it is work of true art -- does not celebrate or boost the segmentation that it identifies but rather laments in its depiction of people, born between 1960 and 1975, isolated in some sense from people around them of otherwise shared background and cultural standing.<br /><br />The cross-division of a society by age began perhaps with the term "baby boomer" (children born after WWII to 1960) and was intensified by "the 60s generation" but the first is more vague and the second, in its reference to a sub-culture within an age group, narrower than <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Coupland's</span>. With "Generation X" an epistemological change has reached a degree that suggests new ontology: it's identity is certainly cohesive enough create its progeny in "Generation Y," with "Generation Z" (perhaps under different nomenclature) certain to follow.<br /><br />As <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Coupland's</span> fiction has progressed, the scope of his canvas has broadened and details added to his portrait of a society increasingly divided to the point of fragmentation. (As detailed in lecture, it is a particular benefit for us that not only Canada but Vancouver specifically is his setting.) <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Coupland's</span> perceptive readers -- some of you are counted in that number -- recognise that one active cause of the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">segmentation</span> is <em>marketing</em>: the capitalist truth that sales success increases as a market for a product is more specifically identified for targeted advertising. This practice takes heightened importance from its wholesale adaptation into party politics. In this regard, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Coupland's</span> fiction presents us with a question of whether Western society can survive the fragmentation that follows ever-increasing segregation. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Coupland</span> might conceivably find fertile material for his fiction here in academia with the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">current</span> celebration of division over unity. (As an aside, the philosophical opposition here at play is <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11090c.htm"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">nominalism</span> versus universalism</a> -- link <em>via</em> our <a href="http://www.lib.sfu.ca/researchtools/databases/dbofdb.htm?DisciplineID=12">Library databases</a>.)<br /><p>For an intellectual underpinning to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Coupland's</span> portrait of generation alienation, I offer <a href="http://www.psyc.sfu.ca/people/index.php?topic=finf&id=74">Dr. Bruce Alexander's</a> theory that mass addiction is a consequence of a world-wide free-market. In his article "<a href="http://www.vifamily.ca/library/transition/342/342.html#1" name="1">Finding the Roots of Addiction</a>" (a precis of his upcoming book), Alexander uses the term "dislocation" to describe the effect that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Coupland's</span> fiction portrays: an increasingly wide breakdown of healthy "psychosocial integration." Two specific points of contact between Alexander and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Coupland</span> in their conceptions are <em>addiction</em> as the consequence of alienation-dislocation and Vancouver as "Terminal City" -- a place where cultural and ethnic strands are sharply terminated: neither capped nor woven together. As lecture detailed, addiction is presented with great <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">artistic</span> skill in <em>Hey Nostradamus!</em>: it is a ubiquitous element of the story yet it never declares itself openly -- it is "hidden in plain sight;" the elephant in the living room.</p><p>I found examples of generation alienation on one of your course group blogs. In my lectures on <em>Hey Nostradamus! </em>I pointed out how <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Coupland</span> sketches Heather's neurosis by details like her reaction to the child's play area ball-pit in McDonald's as a breeding-ground of plague. Now, my own generation -- like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Coupland</span> and his -- shared water bottles at hockey practice and drank water straight from the tap. To us, Heather's attitude is plainly neurotic. To Gen Y, however, trans-fat-aware, Heather is simply being sensible. Similarly, Gen Y is annoyed when the endless hours that students spend at university computers doing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">MSN</span> Chat are <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">euphorically</span> represented to them by an insightful baby-boomer lecturer .... In a phrase, generation alienation in action.</p>Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8859756785806377723.post-107746456866973772007-03-14T19:44:00.000-07:002007-03-14T19:50:07.896-07:00TA LectureAn opportunity to hear another perspective on course material comes Monday, when TA Jodie Salter will be giving us a lecture on <em>All Tomorrow's Parties</em>.Dr. Stephen Ogdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16765689515656935339noreply@blogger.com1