by Tim Terman
hen Alvin Toffler published The
Third Wave in 1980, his book didn't even mention the Internet.
Regardless, Toffler was correct when he predicted the Third Wave—a
huge swell toward a computer-based society that is transforming
our lives, economy, and culture, and causing vision problems
for at least one writer.
In fact, at WVU a hybrid institution named the Center for
Literary Computing (CLC), sprouting within the English Department,
is even redefining the word "book" and teaching students
to conceive literature in a virtual environment—training
students to be Third Wave communicators.
Janet H. Murray of MIT's Center for Educational Computing, in
her book Hamlet on the Holodeck:The Future of Narrative in
Cyberspace, notes that when Gutenberg invented the printing
press, he did not invent "the book." It took another
50 years before conventions such as paragraphing, page numbers,
and binding were established, and what we know today as a "book"
emerged. Communication technology is again undergoing a Gutenbergish
evolution, Murray says.
"The garish videogames and tangled web sites of the current
digital environment are part of a similar period of technical
evolution, part of a similar struggle for the conventions of
coherent communication," she says. What Murray calls "cyberdramas"
are "the coming digital story form." In the future,
like the novels or movies of today, the cyberdramas will be a
medium for telling stories.
Walk into a dead artist's world
Of course Star Trek fans will remember the holodeck, where space
voyagers could walk into three-dimensional simulations of novels
and even interact with characters—a chance to get away from
such mundane activities as fighting Klingons. Far fetched, right?
Well, perhaps not. At the CLC, computer science senior Leonard
Brown of Montgomery, W.Va., is creating a virtual environment
based on the work of 19th century artist and journa Porte
Crayon, whose real name was David Hunter Strother.
As a first step, Brown has spent hours and hours using a computer
program to construct the CLC's virtual environment in 3-D, with
walls, windows, a table, and chairs. Soon he'll be putting together
Strother's illustrations, into which one will be able to "walk."
The project is called West Virginia Literature Land and is designed
to illuminate the world of Appalachian writers.
Not only is the project a great training ground for WVU's
cyber-students, it is also intended to establish a new vantage
point for appreciating art and literature, providing, according
to CLC Coordinator Susan Warshauer, "a better understanding
of the historical, cultural, and material contexts in which West
Virginia literature was produced from the early to late 1800s."
This virtual reality tour will not be for just any old desktop computer. In fact, it is being designed for use on WVU's ImmersaDesk, a large screen that projects three-dimensional, computer-generated images that are useful in a wide variety of scientific and engineering applications. The equipment, located in the Engineering Research Building, came to WVU in 1998 through a grant from the federal Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, which also supports the Literature Land project. Warshauer, who is an assistant professor of English, and the CLC's founder, Professor Patrick Conner, now chair of the English Department, wrote the original grant proposal.
Brown hopes to attend graduate school and then pursue a career
in the information technology industry, a sector with more than
300,000 openings nationwide—for qualified people. He attributes
his interest in the field of virtual reality to his involvement
in the CLC.
"I think there will be an eruption of virtual reality uses
over the next decade," says Brown. "Virtual reality
applications will range from video games to medical operations,
and the industry is already reflecting these trends.
"And there's as much potential in the humanities and history—imagine
turning a bland, textbook description of the Battle of Antietam
into an immersive you-are-there experience. Virtual reality is
in its infancy and there's simply so many ways to go with it."
Is there a problem here, though? Will books become obsolete,
and will plays be enacted in real-time virtual realities? What
is lost in such a brave new literary world?
Warshauer would be the last to say that anything is lost. "Similar
to the goals of many creative writers," she says, "authors
of novels, poems, plays or film scripts, our objectives are to
give people an imaginative experience that makes them feel immersed
in a time and place other than their own—and to teach them
about Porte Crayon and West Virginia in the process."
Or, as Strother himself once said: "Indeed, but for sketches, the disheartening task of description would probably not have been undertaken, for how can mere words portray scenes which have no parallel among the things of upper earth? . . . Language fails frequently in conveying correct impressions of the most commonplace objects, and in the hands of its most skillful masters is sometimes weak, uncertain, false. Combine it with graphic art, and how the page brightens!"
Hear the Beat Poets speak
In another part of the CLC, Rich Goldman, an English graduate
student, and Michelle Brown, who is now working on a doctorate
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have created a web site
called "Ashcan Rantings" to explore the lives, times,
and works of the Beat Poets—especially Allen Ginsberg. The
collaborators are probing his poem "Howl" with streaming
audio of Ginsberg himself. The project highlights the constraints
of the print-based version and encourages discussion in a chat
room and through e-mail.
"When I began working on my degree, I expected to leave
my background in technology behind, or at least to relegate it
to hobby time," Goldman says. "I was both surprised
and relieved to find that, even in a discipline such as English—one
not popularly considered to be invested in technology—teaching
methods integrating technology and technology research are both
supported and actively encouraged."
When he finishes his Ph.D., Goldman hopes to teach college English,
and he believes his emphasis in humanities computing will help
him obtain a position in today's rather tight job market for
English professors.
Goldman, from Annandale, Virginia, got his start in media in
high school by producing a monthly half-hour TV show. For a couple
of years after getting his undergraduate degree at Bethany College,
he produced programs for a public access channel in Washington,
D.C. He's interested in using technology as an educational tool,
and he's also collaborating with a foreign language graduate
instructor on a web site intended to help teach students about
Medieval manuscript production and illumination. Also, he has
authored a web site related to the Virginia Woolf novel Mrs.
Dalloway. "Scholars and teachers throughout the country
have linked to this site from their on-line syllabi," he
says. "It's received nearly 6,400 visits since March 16,
1998. I still have a tremendous amount of work to do on it."
The CLC has played an important role in focusing Goldman's academic
pursuits on the interplay and synergy of humanities, technology,
and teaching methods. "The CLC's greatest contribution has
been the opportunities it's afforded to try new ideas for teaching,"
he said. "Having our own web server has given me the chance
to try different ideas for pedagogical web sites, whether for
courses I actually teach or for courses I imagine teaching in
the future. Two payoffs there: I learn the technology, but I
also have to become an authority on the material I'm trying to
present. The potential is amazing, and the support we get from
the English Department is fantastic."
Take a literary voyage to Mars
Doctoral students Helen Burgess of Wellington, New Zealand, and
Catherine Gouge of Washington, D.C., work at the CLC. They are
finishing a project called "Mars: A Scientific and Cultural
History," part of a collaborative research project directed
by Professor Robert Markley of the English Department. It includes
interviews with NASA scientists and science fiction authors on
a digital video disc, a high-capacity storage medium that many
think will soon replace CD-ROMs. The Mars DVD takes users through
a literary experience in the Martian environment.
Gouge says the DVD endeavor wasn't exactly her idea of a humanities
project when she began working on her degree. Now, however, her
experiences have shaped her future. "Technologies of a 'New
World' Citizenship: Frontier Identities and the Logic of Consumerism"
is the working title of her dissertation. It explores ways in
which film, novels, and advertisements of the late 20th century
respond to earlier conceptions of the frontier.
Gouge hopes to teach American literature and popular culture
when she finishes her doctoral studies. "I now have a better
sense of the range of technical opportunities available to those
of us in the humanities," she says. Gouge, like Brown, foresees
significant growth in humanities computing: "Already there
are so many opportunities for people willing and eager to take
some initiative, and I anticipate that over the next 10 years
universities will spend more time and money exploring the many
possibilities."
Use technology to share discourse
The CLC is a research lab and instructional support center where
undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members develop
educational software, publish texts on-line, create literary
and creative writing projects, conduct on-line research, and
explore new literary forms.
It also has a public service component through its Computer Assistance
Project. With a WVU Faculty Senate grant, the program began teaching
computer skills in communities around Morgantown in 1997. Also,
students produce an on-line literary magazine called Maddening
Loop, available at the CLC's web site: http://www.clc.wvu.edu/.
"I think Patrick Conner was visionary in his development
of the Center for Literary Computing in 1991," Warshauer
says. "He had a keen sense of the great impact that technology
would have on literary studies. Few English departments have
been so supportive of integrating technology into curriculum
and to becoming involved in research and scholarly projects that
teach about literary and cultural heritage and test new ideas
about teaching and literature."
Literary study today requires that scholars analyze critically,
theorize, and even create literary works in a digital format.
Beginning in the 1980s, Warshauer says, a fundamental transition
occurred. "More and more research is being done on-line—people
follow links—and audio and moving images accompany the description
of a production of Romeo and Juliet, or a news announcement about
a new type of medicine, or a new engineering model of a bridge.
Eventually, it made sense that students would be interested in
writing in a format similar to what they're reading."
Conner founded the CLC in 1991 after his Beowulf Workstation,
a Hypercard application that helped students work with Beowulf
in Old English, won an award and was featured in an Apple Computer
advertisement. "The dean then, Gerald Lang, funded the physical
space in Armstrong Hall," he says, "and I collected
half a dozen Macintosh Plus machines and stuffed them with as
much RAM as they would hold, and situated my own wonderful new
Mac II in the lab as a kind of first server, and we were off."
Since then, the Web has stormed to the forefront, and just as
stage actors turned to the movies when they came along, so writers
turn to the Internet. "That's where you find everything
from the on-line Shakespeare editing project to the wildest kinds
of postmodern poetry. Literature is always captured and presented
by whatever technology for discourse reproduction currently exists,"
Conner says.
And what technology will reproduce discourse tomorrow? Perhaps
the CLC students of today are planning that now.
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Until now the human race has undergone two great waves of change, each one largely obliterating earlier cultures or civilization and replacing them with ways of life inconceivable to those who came before. The First Wave of change—the agricultural revolution—took thousands of years to play itself out. The Second Wave—the rise of industrial civilization—took a mere three hundred years. Today history is even more accelerative, and it is likely that the Third Wave will sweep across history and complete itself in a few decades. We, who happen to share the planet at this explosive moment, will therefore feel the full impact of the Third Wave in our own lifetimes. —Alvin Toffler, |
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