This page contains materials intended
to facilitate class discussion (excerpts from readings,
outlines of issues, links to resources, etc.). The
materials are not necessarily the same as the instructor's
teaching notes and are not designed to represent
a full exposition or argument. This page is subject
to revision as the instructor finalizes preparation.
(Last revised
3/12/02
)
"The key to defining virtual reality
in terms of human experience rather than technological
hardware is the concept of presence.
Presence can be thought of as the experience
of one's physical environment; it refers not
to one's surroundings as they exist in the
physical world, but to the perception of those
surroundings as mediated by both automatic
and controlled mental processes (Gibson, 1979):
Presence is defined as the sense of being
in an environment." (p. 75)
"Two
major dimensions across which communication
technologies vary are discussed here as
determinants of telepresence. The first,
vividness, refers to the ability
of a technology to produce a sensorially
rich mediated environment. The second, interactivity,
refers to the degree to which users of a
medium can influence the form or content
of the mediated environment." (p. 80)
"Interactivity
is the extent to which users can participate
in modifying the form and content of a mediated
environment in real time. Interactivity
in this sense is distinct from engagement
or involvement as these terms are
frequently used by communication researchers
[ . . . ]." (p.
84)
instructor's experience in a VR rig
language? narrative?
Califia and Riven as Information
"Worlds"
Califia
and the Ethos of Networking
Kaye: "hidden links that elude the
mind but enlighten the fancy"
Kaye: "restore the connections,
find the harmony beneath the fragments of song"
Augusta: "I am beginning to see
the way Kaye links everything together"
Calvin: "I am arranging and linking
the contributions of Augusta and Kaye"
Kaye: "The message in the embroidery
can be recovered only in the fragments"
Marjorie Luesebrink's hypertext novel Califia
is about California. It is about what California
means, what California itself is "about."
What is California about?
The most contemporary (but also partial) answer
that the novel gives to this question has to do
precisely with the age of information networking.
As shown by the work's self-reflexive awareness
of the hypertext medium and of computing in general . . .
for example,
—Calvin's deft computer work
—Kaye Beveridge's transcendental instinct
for "linking"
—and the general "windowed"
hypertextual interface of the work
. . . California in Califia
is in some sense "about" Silicon Valley.
It is about personal computing and networking
as the latest "gold rush" of the golden
state.
"At the end of the twentieth century,
the long predicted convergence of the media,
computing and telecommunications into hypermedia
is finally happening. . . .
At this crucial juncture, a loose alliance
of writers, hackers, capitalists and artists
from the West Coast of the USA have succeeded
in defining a heterogeneous orthodoxy for
the coming information age: the Californian
Ideology."
In short, Califia, is an allegory of California
as the epicenter of the age of networked information.
Yet precisely because this is the most contemporary
of the answers the novel gives about what California
is "about," it is also the most superficial.
For, in a spirit very much aligned with that of
this course itself, Califia also tells
us that to understand our contemporary gold rush
we need to dig under the surface into deeper historical
layers. The "silicon rush" that all
the Seekers and Builders of present-day California
are after was not the first such "rush"
upon which the new world of California was built.
Embedding the modern story in real ground
was important; the search for historical certainty
is best done by "mapping" in a literal
as well as a metaphorical sense. As Philip
J. Ethington writes, Los Angeles suffers from
"unknowability": "Influential
writers on postmodernity such as Fredric Jameson
have named specific sites within Los Angeles
as evidence of a new condition, in which history
itself is effaced by the 'depthlessness' that
characterizes a core condition of the 'world
space of multinational capital'–the ultimate
source of ongoing exploitation and alienation.
Recent scholarship has singled out Los Angeles
as either unique among cities, or especially
representative of new conditions of urban
life and globalism." ("Los Angeles
and the Problem of Urban Historical Knowledge.")
Califia,
with its careful mapping of places, excavation
of the sediments of forgotten layers and
observation of remembered outcroppings,
records of the topographical and topological
features, is a defense against such erasure.
The "depthlessness" that has been
noted by some historians and cultural theorists
is one aspect of Southern California. But
the impression of shallowness is also the
result of looking with a traditional orientation
for hierarchies of meaning in a place that
is constantly shifting, creating a new surface.
There is something underneath, but the history
of Los Angeles tends to reveal itself through
a multiplicity of approaches. And, as Augusta
observes (The Journey West), "the
past is always with us."
Imagine, therefore, that what
we see on the surface
of California in Califia is just the top
if a deep set of geological
layers (animation).
The story of Califia—narrated in different
ways by the three main characters (Augusta, Kaye,
Calvin)—is a pilgrimage plot in which horizontal
motion,
as in any pilgrimage, stands in for a vertical
quest. In olden pilgrimages, the quest was for
transcendence on high. In Califia, the
quest is to mine deep below the surface of California
for the real treasure: historical meaning.
What are the layers of meaning through which the
characters mine as they follow their pilgrimage
across southern California?
Layer 1: Califia is
about the history of building of California (LA)
It is appropriate to use the word "pilgrimage"
in regard to the Califia because, put one
way the novel is about the vision-quest, the dream-quest
that built California and Los Angeles—or
"Paradise":
California, according to the novel, arose
as an act of imagination
California was the dream of the Seekers ,
Players ,
and Builders
California is the land of gold, water, energy,
media—and, most recently—silicon,
all empires built half on reality and half on
dream (i.e., the crazy mix of illusion and desire
and addiction that was the Spanish and American
grab for land, the gold rush, the oil rush,
the water wars, the newspaper and Hollywood
empires, etc.)
Compare such other works about the building of California
as Upton Sinclair's Oil! (1927), John Steinbeck's
The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and Roman Polanski's
Chinatown (1974). Or compare Sergio Leone's
film about the building of the West: Once Upon
a Time in the West (1968).
Virtual Reality: The Technology
"Two
major dimensions across which communication
technologies vary are discussed here as
determinants of telepresence. The first,
vividness, refers to the ability
of a technology to produce a sensorially
rich mediated environment. The second, interactivity,
refers to the degree to which users of a
medium can influence the form or content
of the mediated environment." (p. 80)
"Interactivity
is the extent to which users can participate
in modifying the form and content of a mediated
environment in real time. Interactivity
in this sense is distinct from engagement
or involvement as these terms are
frequently used by communication researchers
[ . . . ]." (p.
84)
Califia
and the Ethos of Networking
