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09/14/2004 Archived Entry: "packet switching"
Packet Switching:
I have to go back to my notes, but when I was writing my diss a few years back, I think I remember reading in Brian Winston's book on technology that packet switching is invented in 1963.
I've since dropped such a reference from the book (I didn't know what to do with it), but I'm reminded of it while reading Carl Raschke's The Digital Revolution and the Coming of the Postmodern University. I'm at a part of the book where suddenly Raschke starts describing how packet switching works. It seems like an abrupt aside. But it makes me think of the larger issue: the logic of new media.
Let's imagine that packet switching has a logic. Bits of information broken down and routed so that they can reach their destination faster than if they travelled together as one unit.
Now imagine a writing class taking up that logic. How would that work? Pieces of writing? Little pieces of writing floating around? Don't we expect finished, one-piece texts? Why not a series of unfinished pieces? Packets of writing? Who assembles them? When? Does the blog support this logic? The blog as packet switching writing.
Would you teach that? How? Maybe, as Sirc writes, in lists...mixes and remixes of bits of information. What's the logic here? Let the reader conduct the assemblage (the cool act of reading). I used to dismiss the list as the logic of print (Goody) but maybe its logic resurfaces differently as the packet swtich...bits of information put out there....
Replies: 4 comments
Well, that's just it. The packets get re-assembled.
To do that, it seems, would be just to reform the logic of uniformity (like when Elbow praises collage).
But what if we stop the process!
They don't get reassembled!
Or maybe it doesn't work at all. Thinking out loud here....
Posted by jeff @ 09/15/2004 09:45 AM EST
Jeff. have you ever noticed how you can't spell "school" without "cool"? If I remember correctly, my 4th grade teacher told me that "School is cool." Do you talk about this in your book?
Posted by Ella Fant @ 09/15/2004 01:12 AM EST
Well, the packet concept could work for collaborative writing. Each student creates a packet, and then they are all assembled in some way. I have a collaborative sonnet writing effort that works that way, though in this case one knows the form of reassembly.
Unrelated: this morning my son was paging through this Life magazine from 1967 and pointed out an ad for Kool cigarettes. I remember they had come on the market in the late 50s or early 60s. Wouldn't it be cool if Kool came out in 1963? Has that been documented in your work, Jeff?
Posted by John @ 09/14/2004 11:21 PM EST
But the "little pieces" part of packet switching is transient; it's designed to be an ephemeral state, with packets reassembled once they reach the destination. The metadata ensures an orderly procession. I'd look to other concepts of new media---objects, variables, libraries---when thinking the mix.
More and more I don't see the list as print oriented. Ordered list? Yes. Hierarchical list? Of course. But the lists that just collections, or which we can reorganize on the fly---not necessarily print logic.
Posted by cbd @ 09/14/2004 10:57 PM EST