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05/05/2004 Archived Entry: "Book of Probes"

While on the subject of 21st century composition...
I finally have gotten around to looking through Gingko Press' new edition of McLuhan's Book of Probes. Very stunning design. It's a book rich with wonderful McLuhanesque observations on print and electronic culture.

The age of writing has passed.
We must invent a new metaphor, restructure our thoughts and feelings

All this inspires me (yet again) to think up new ideas for writing assignments. McLuhan provides an excellent example of the power of the fragment. We know how to critique student writing for engaging with fragments at the level of incomplete thought, but we don't yet know how to encourage fragments as a way to produce meaning.

This book is a compilation of McLuhan's work, but a good deal of his work does function by fragments, aphorisms, probes, etc. Barthes gives us other good examples of how the fragment can be used to produce knowledge (Textbook has its own exercise based on Barthes' Lover's Discourse). Barthes by Barthes fragments subjectivity into various observations, anecdotes, ideas, critiques. Advertising is the best popular example of the persuasive power of fragments ("Just do it").

But I would like students - undergrad or grad - to produce their own online Book of Probes. Fragmented entries would be hyperlinked. Content would be up to the student; the probes wouldn't be about writing/electronic culture, but about something else.

Write Your Own Book of Probes on an Area of Interest to You (or another version: On The Area You are Becoming An Expert In, Your Major). Hyperlink your entries. Make each page (or more than one page) a Fragment