Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:03:13 -0500 From: Revised List Processor (1.7e) Subject: File: "EJRNL V2N1" To: pirmann@trident.usacs.rutgers.edu _______ _________ __ / _____/ /___ ___/ / / / /__ / / ______ __ __ __ ___ __ ___ _____ / / / ___/ __ / / / __ / / / / / / //__/ / //__ \ / ___ \ / / / /____ / /__/ / / /_/ / / /_/ / / / / / / / / /__/ / / / /______/ /______/ /_____/ /_____/ /_/ /_/ /_/ \___/_/ /_/ April, 1992 _EJournal_ Volume 2 Issue 1 ISSN# 1054-1055 2321 Subscribers An Electronic Journal concerned with the implications of electronic networks and texts. University at Albany, State University of New York ejournal@albany.bitnet There are 351 lines in this issue. ** This first issue of our second year is aimed especially at new subscribers ** CONTENTS: Introduction/Editorial Summary of Network Commands Contents of Volume 1 (1991) Subjects Personnel Ancient History Other History DEPARTMENTS: Letters (policy) Reviews (policy) Supplements to previous texts (policy) About _EJournal_ PEOPLE: Board of Advisors, Consulting Editors ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This electronic publication and its contents are (c) copyright 1992 by _EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give away the journal and its contents, but no one may "own" it. Any and all financial interest is hereby assigned to the acknowledged authors of individual texts. This notification must accompany all distribution of _EJournal_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION/EDITORIAL This is _EJournal_'s second year of publication. Our recent push into Usenet space has brought hundreds of new subscribers. It seems like a good time to bring all 2321+ readers up to date. This issue contains a skeleton table of contents for volume I (1991), with brief notes about the essays. There is a section suggesting the *kinds* of subjects we would like to see essays about. The emphasis is on suggesting, not limiting; your list is as good as ours. There are also some preliminary thoughts about how to staff _EJournal_ as we grow. Near the end, just before the listing of Editors and Advisors, there is a quick history of how the journal began and what we said, back in 1989, about what we hoped to accomplish. First, though, here is a summary of how to SUBscribe, how to GET back issues, and how to GET the cumulative Table of Contents. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY OF NETWORK COMMANDS: To accomplish (for example): Send to: This message: Getting a list of all files LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET INDEX EJRNL Getting the back-issue index LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET GET INDEX EJRNL Getting Volume 1 Number 1 LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET GET EJRNL V1N1 Subscribing to _EJournal_ LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET SUB EJRNL Your Name Mailing to our "office" EJOURNAL@ALBANY.BITNET Your message... [ Note: This is a new site ID. We hope it simplifies communication. ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS of Volume 1 (1991) \V1N1\: A 226-line essay by Robert K. Lindsay, "Electronic Journals of Proposed Research." Scientists and other scholars should use the networks to share ideas before preparing elaborate grant proposals. Publication in this preliminary form would attract cooperative peer review, would "register" the concepts involved, would attract qualified collaboration, and would lead to a smaller number of futile applications for scarce funds. Notes, Bibliography (TedJ) \V1N2\: A 275-line essay re/view, by Joe Amato, of Jay David Bolter's book, _Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing_. Joe praises the book, and asks some questions about the "evangelistic euphoria" with which Bolter greets the "revolutionary new medium." Post-modernist theorizing, ideological assumptions, and "the darker side of hypertext" are some issues raised in a positive review. (TedJ) \V1N2-1\: A 216-line exchange between Doug Brent and Joe Amato about the re/view of Bolter's _Writing Space_, including the requested expansion of "ideas on the 'darker side' of hypertext." (TedJ) [This issue was our first try at extending discussion of a subject via an electronic "thread" sequence -- volume one, number two "continued," so to speak. Therefore the designation \V1N2-1\, which we could have distributed at a later date than \V1N3\.] \V1N3\: A 686-line essay by Doug Brent, "Oral Knowledge, Typographic Knowledge, Electronic Knowledge: Speculations on the History of Ownership." The theory of transformative technology (McLuhan, Ong, Heim et al) is applied to the problem of intellectual property versus communal knowledge. Oral cultures have no intellectual property: knowledge is communally generated and shared. Print technology created the book as artifact, knowledge as individually generated, owned, and protected. Copyright and plagiarism are inventions of the print age. With CMC and hypertext, we may be returning to an age in which personal ownership of knowledge becomes virtually impossible by the nature of the medium itself. This will require profound shifts in our attitude to knowledge and the way we use its ownership as an incentive to produce it. (DB) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUBJECTS We're not yet sure what to call the texts we distribute. They lack some of the attitude and apparatus of the stuffiest traditional scholarship in the humanities, but they are as interesting and authentic and sensible as the better articles in more conventional publications. It seems silly to call our pieces "papers," yet the borderline "oral" quality of our medium makes that label, a reminder of spoken academic presentations, almost appropriate. For now, at any rate, the generic label "essay" feels most comfortable. Here are some subjects that we think our readers might be interested in: Changes in amount of and access to "information." Will we be overloaded, as alarmists worry, or have people usually been able to adapt to expanding pools of information? Indexing, cataloguing, paying for, producing, maintaining, accessing DATA BASES, especially TEXT-based data bases... The implications of electronic texts and networks for research, especially in the humanities but also in relation to general issues of collaboration, intellectual property, intercultural literacy, privacy... The relationship of cyberspace-matrix environments and teaching-learning situations. What happens when instructors can give up the power to force students to gather in the same place at the same time...? Hypertext: research, creativity, interaction, network access, interpretive con-structures, pedagogy, delivery systems... Virtual reality (text-based versions): are these unprecedented, network-based mini-societies to be thought of as escapist utopias, as realtime scale models of social-evolution processes, as participatory fictions? Can they be considered art/fiction/SF/fantasy/game/simulation? How do they integrate into the virtual society of Internet? How do Inter-Relay Chat networks integrate into the virtual society of the Internet? Modifications in the epistemology of "text" (and other arts): What happens to concepts like sensation, association and imagination when "performance" incorporates audience participation? Mixtures, compounds, intersections of the above: e.g., bibliographic overload within research specialties; transnational (textual) databases that will become world-scale archives/ memory banks, thereby providing cultural roots that transcend ethnic-linguistic boundaries; the implications of interactive hypertext "documents" for issues of intellectual property, primacy, and privacy. [Digression/segue: If you would like to arrange a cluster of essays in any of these realms, or on other subjects, or feel like suggesting a collaborative piece, we encourage you to do so. Our format should make it easy to share responsibility for organizing "threads" of comment and controversy. We have already devoted one issue to a response to another issue [\V1N2-1\], and can easily keep several threads going at the same time. One experiment we'd like to try is a hypertext issue (or thread) that would be written using the "Storyspace" hypertext engine and BinHex protocols for distribution for readers with access to Macintosh hardware. But we will need a special editor to put it together.] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PERSONNEL This brings us to _EJournal_'s staff and procedures. Who edits a "special issue"? There is no checklist of qualifications; if there is a subject you think the journal should address, please think about who could write the essay(s) you want, and inquire about preparing a special issue or sequence. Who gets to be a consulting editor? Not exactly anyone, but all subscribers are invited to volunteer; we settled on a panel of about 20 members as manageable cluster. The time may come when we'll seek some kind of balance, or even representation of specialized interests, and from time to time individuals will want to leave the panel, so I have started asking volunteers to provide an outline of their expertise. But the "waiting list" of potential consulting editors is not long. Do not hesitate to express your interest. The panel of consulting editors is asked to read the submissions that I think might interest our (imagined) audience. I synthesize the comments from the panelists who respond, and communicate with the authors. So far, not even half of the proposed or submitted essays have been sent out for reading, and we have published about half of those. When everything works out, Ron Bangel and I set up and distribute an issue. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANCIENT HISTORY _EJournal_ got started with this announcement in October, 1989. "I propose starting a refereed electronic journal for discussing relationships among electronic media and "texts" of all sorts. "Electronic texts are not yet considered academic "publications." They are not likely to be looked at in the course of deliberations about tenure and promotion. This can be attributed, in part, to a latent, unchallenged premise--a default assumption--that ideas aren't quite real until they have been printed and bound and received in the mail. Another factor may be the deliberate informality of the exchanges on computer networks. Perhaps most restraining is awareness of how pushy it would be to put forward "ideas" whose merit remained unacknowledged by one's peers. But an edited and refereed "paperless" journal, one devoted to electronic texts and the implications of the medium, would stand a good chance of acquiring legitimacy even if (and perhaps because) it appeared principally on-line. What's more, network communications ought to permit speedy exchange of submitted texts; reading, critiquing, revising and distributing ought to happen faster than with paperbound media. "Here are a few of the subjects we imagine might be discussed on the screens of a forum called *BIT.TXT* or *NET.TXT*. Please imagine each of these "headings" and listed items intersecting with other items and headings to generate other subjects. "MEDIA: digitized information: visual, audial, alphanumeric; disks, CDs, networks; micros and minis and mainframes (including parallel processors, neural networks); hypertext, relational databases, spread sheets... GENRES: essays, fiction (interactive, aleatoric...), drama, ethnography, criticism, memoranda, committee writing, satire... SUBJECTS: education (distance learning, collaboration...); cultural evolution; intellectual history; futurology; semiotic and information theory; technology and literature and theory and criticism; index/filter/categorization/abstraction approaches to overloads of information... PROFESSION/DISCIPLINE: role of journals; marginalizing of technophiles; pedagogy; psycho/socio/eco implications of it all... "If there's enough interest and advice forthcoming in response to this announcement, we will revise it and then solicit submissions and promulgate procedures." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OTHER HISTORY By the fall of 1990 we had a good start on an Advisory Board and a multi- disciplinary group of Consulting Editors. Our first issue was sent in March 1991. By December 1991 we had distributed \V1N2\, \V1N2-1\, and \V1N3\. This issue of March 1992 is \V2N1\. We expect acknowledgment of Copyright registration of \V1N1\ from the Library of Congress any month now. It looks as if _EJournal_ is launched. Welcome aboard. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About letters: _EJournal_ is willing publish letters to the editor. But at this point we make no promises about how many, which ones, or what format. Because the "Letters" column of a periodical is a habit of the paper environment, we can't predict exactly what will happen in pixel space. For instance, _EJournal_ readers can send outraged objections to our essays directly to the authors. Also, we can publish substantial counterstatements as articles in their own right, or as "Supplements." Even so, there will probably be some brief, thoughtful statements that appear to be of interest to many subscribers. When there are, they will appear as "Letters." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About reviews: _EJournal_ is willing to publish reviews of almost anything that seems to fit under our broad umbrella: the implications of electronic networks and texts. We do not solicit and cannot provide review copies of fiction, prophecy, critiques, other texts, programs, hardware, lists or bulletin boards. But if you would like to bring any publicly available information to our readers' attention, send your review (any length) to us, or ask if writing one sounds to us like a good idea. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About "supplements": _EJournal_ plans to experiment with ways of revising, responding to, re- working, or even retracting the texts we publish. Authors who want to address a subject already broached --by others or by themselves-- may send texts, preferably brief, that we will consider publishing under the "Supplements" heading. Proposed "supplements" will not go through full, formal editorial review. Whether this "Department" will operate like a delayed-reaction bulletin board or like an expanded letters-to-the-editor space, or whether it will be withdrawn in favor of a system of appending supplemental material to archived texts, or will take on an electronic identity with no direct print- oriented analogue, will depend on what readers/writers make of the opportunity. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About _EJournal_: _EJournal_ is an all-electronic, Bitnet/Internet distributed, peer-reviewed, academic periodical. We are particularly interested in theory and practice surrounding the creation, transmission, storage, interpretation, alteration and replication of electronic text. We are also interested in the broader social, psychological, literary, economic and pedagogical implications of computer-mediated networks. The journal's essays will be available free to Bitnet/Internet addresses. Recipients may make paper copies; _EJournal_ will provide authenticated paper copy from our read-only archive for use by academic deans or others. Individual essays, reviews, stories-- texts --sent to us will be disseminated to subscribers as soon as they have been through the editorial process, which will also be "paperless." We expect to offer access through libraries to our electronic Contents, Abstracts, and Keywords, and to be indexed and abstracted in appropriate places. Writers who think their texts might be appreciated by _EJournal_'s audience are invited to forward files to EJOURNAL@ALBANY.BITNET . If you are wondering about starting to write a piece for to us, feel free to ask if it sounds appropriate. There are no "styling" guidelines; we would like to be a little more direct and lively than many paper publications, and less hasty and ephemeral than most postings to unreviewed electronic spaces. We read ASCII. Each issue's "feature article," and those from other issues of _EJournal_, are now available from a Fileserver at Albany. We plan to distribute a "table of contents" to a broad population occasionally, along with instructions for downloading. A list of available files from the _EJournal_ Fileserv may be obtained by sending the message INDEX EJRNL to this address: LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET . To "get" one of the files in the EJRNL Listserv, send the message GET to LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Board of Advisors: Stevan Harnad, Princeton University Dick Lanham, University of California at Los Angeles Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries Joe Raben, City University of New York Bob Scholes, Brown University Harry Whitaker, University of Quebec at Montreal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Consulting Editors - April 1992 ahrens@hartford John Ahrens Hartford ap01@liverpool.ac.uk Stephen Clark Liverpool crone@cua Tom Crone Catholic University dabrent@uncamult Doug Brent Calgary djb85@albnyvms Don Byrd Albany donaldson@loyvax Randall Donaldson Loyola College ds001451@ndsuvm1 Ray Wheeler North Dakota eng006@unoma1 Marvin Peterson Nebraska - Omaha erdt@pucal Terry Erdt Purdue Calumet fac_aska@jmuvax1 Arnie Kahn James Madison folger@yktvmv Davis Foulger IBM - Watson Center george@gacvax1 G. N. Georgacarakos Gustavus Adolphus geurdes@rulfsw. Han Geurdes Leiden leidenuniv.nl gms@psuvm Gerry Santoro Pennsylvania State University nrcgsh@ritvax Norm Coombs Rochester Institute of Technology pmsgsl@ritvax Patrick M. Scanlon Rochester Institute of Technology r0731@csuohio Nelson Pole Cleveland State ryle@urvax Martin Ryle Richmond twbatson@gallua Trent Batson Gallaudet usercoop@ualtamts Wes Cooper Alberta ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ University at Albany Computing Services Center: Isabel Nirenberg, Bob Pfeiffer; Ben Chi, Director ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editor: Ted Jennings, English, University at Albany Managing Editor: Ron Bangel, University at Albany ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- State University of New York University Center at Albany Albany, NY 12222 USA