thump scrrrrrverrrruooooomfffffft! Napster Miscue

Chapter One: Filesharing Subjects

Napster miscue: a new trope for teaching in the commons.

The first part of this dissertation narrates how an observation, a hypothesis concerning the "filesharing subjects" that populate our writing classrooms today, turned out to be a bit of miscue, and how, in wiki, miscues themselves trope observation towards participation in ways that allow new rhythms emerge. Wiki practice turns our attention to peer-to-peer culture, where computers cluster and ambient networks compose themselves, synching into self organization. Peer to peer networks provide one topos for wiki pedagogy, which asks us how we might teach writing as the creation of links. With wiki, such connections can now unfold heuristically, as rhythm, the creation and interruption of connections. Penn State's licensing agreement with Napster provides atmosphere for wiki pilots, and I forecast the segments that make up the rest of the Lost Book of Rhythm.

In “Listening to Napster” investment advisor and technology pundit Clay Shirky writes “definitions are useful only as tools for sharpening one's perception of reality and improving one's ability to predict the future. Whatever one thinks of Napster's probable longevity, Napster is the killer app for this revolution” (Shirky 26, emphasis added). Why do I emphasize “this revolution,” in this sample? Imagine the time it takes for a hit record to make on revolution on a phonograph player: one revolution holds enough information for one short sample,not much more. So it is in the “infodynamic” space of the world wide web, where writing happens today. Indeed, “if the Internet has taught technology watchers anything,” Shirky continues, “it's that predictions of the future succcess of a particluar software method of paradigm are of tenuous accuracy at best” (26). A simple and somewhat obvious observation, to be sure. That's just it though: observation is not as effective as participation in the dynamic just-in-time/space of the world wide web. Whether measured according to anthropologist and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson's pragmatic units of information (“the difference that makes a difference”), the conjugates of thermondynamics, Technorati hits, or global warming, observations about linking practices don't render the novelty or use value that narratives grown from a practice can. However, Shirky makes a very important point for those of us focused on the question of writing and writing instruction that would take such an ontology seriously. Because there's something more important than “getting it right” when it comes to developing and sharing descriptions and defintions about infodynamic ontologies.

Movement is created and sustained by working and writing in rhythm—that is to say, together. On the move, rhetoric becomes an art of interupting each other: knowing when to cut in on a developing sequence, and how to detach from a deeply felt major premise when another premise arrives unexpectedly, with a clang. In “Order from Rhythmic Entrainment and the Origin of Levels Through Dissipation” philosopher John Collier and musician Mark Burch introduce rhythmic entrainment to describe the emergence of regular, predictable patterns within or between systems. Rhythmic entrainment realizes symmetries of information by means of sharing, but the production of information also manifests in moments of symmetry breaking. Collier and Burch offer this perspective to researchers in physics, chemistry, biology, measurement and communication, which suggests uses for writing instruction. Today, writers work with information so dense and ongoing in its generation and transformation, that mathematical models of information production apply in everyday writing. When writing becomes a practice of creating and breaking links, a lot of noise gets mixed into the signal, and we find ourselves immersed in a kairotic space-time comprised of information, where "not just meaningful distinctions," but "any distinctions" take hold (Collier and Burch 2). Crucially, asignification and affect become important dimensions of community formation through writing. Democritus, Lucretius, Aristoxenus, Plato, Liebniz, Freidrich Nietzche, John Cage, and inumerable physicisists and logicians have closely queried the infinitessimally small cuts and perferations that we feel so strongly in the discontinuous digitality of rhetorical practice today, which unfolds in what Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck name an “attention economy” (Davenport and Beck). How are we to get a handle on digital rhetoric? Collier and Burch provide a clue that this dissertation takes to heart. “The result of rhythmic entrainment is a simplification of the entrained system,” and this helps make sense of abundant and dynamic information because “the information required to describe it is reduced. Entrainment can be communicated, passing information from one system to another.” Crucially, “the paradigm is a group of jazz percussionists agreeing on a complex musical progression” (Collier and Burch 1). When it comes to writing together,then, it seemed to make sense to start mixing the musical paradigms that made the brand name “Napster” synechdoche for the movement and resonance of music itself directly into composition pedagogy. Or, not. What's important, much more important than being right about this or any other pedagogical premise is creating a space for experience and participation, where students and teachers can learn how to share premises and build arguments together, heuristically. In an atomosphere of closure marked by universities, such as Penn State, signing licensing agreements with Napster and otherwise fretting over DRM and liability concerns related to copyright infringement, it seemed that getting a handle on the shift in musical practices (composing, performing, and listening) that provoked so many myopic bureacratic measures and court decisions would help writing instructors get a handle on the digitality of rhetorical practice. Rhythm, which can't be had, but can be perpetually lost and found, is that handle. Wiki made it possible to experiment with rhythm in my teaching, and my dissertation is an attempt to share that.

FileSharingBibliography

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