Writing Machines: Material Metaphors and Technotexts

Material Metaphors is a text which I dislike although I could not tell you why in particular. Despite not caring for this text there are a few points worth mentioning. With that in mind, lets get to metaphors.

Accordingly, "metaphor has been defined as verbal figure. Derived from a root meaning being across, it denotes the transfer of sense associated with one word to another" (Hayles, p. 23).
In light of Permutation City this text was written thus reading this article in entirity is requisite to grasp the article.

Otherwise, there following paragraph is cited because it basically wraps up the reading - for me at least.

"We are not generally accustomed to think of a book as a material metaphor, but in fact it is an aritfact whose physical properites and historical usages structure our interactions with it in ways obvious and subtle. In addition to defining the page as a unit of reading, and binding pages sequentially to indicated an order of reading, are less obvious conventions such as the opacity of paper, a physical property that defines the page as having two sides whose relationship is linear and sequential rather than interpenetrating and simultaneous. To change the physical form of the artifact is not merely to change the act of reading (although that too has consequences the importance of which we are only beginning to recongize ) but profoundly to transform the metaphoric network structuring teh relation of word to world" (Hayles, p. 23).

Changing lanes . . . Technotexts is the following article in this physical metaphor, sequentially. Technotexts is a term unfamiliar to me and I'd imagine that I'm not the only one. With that said technotexts are "literary works that strengthen, foreground, and thematize the connections between themselves as material artifacts and imaginative realm of verbal/semiotic signifiers they instantiate open a window on the larger connections that unite literature as a verbal art to its material forms" (Hayles, p. 25).

This article also defines what a writing machine is - in reference to the title. A writing machine "names the inscription technologies that produced literary texts, including printing presses, computers, and other devices. "Writing machines" is also what technotexts do when they bring into view the machinery that gives their verbal constructions physical reality" (Hayles, p. 26).

Multiple reading paths, chunked text, linking mechanism, html, vrml, directh, second-generation electronic literature, cybertext, and ergodic are key terms discussed in this text yet to define them would ruin the fun of reading this work. The citations above highlight what I found to be important in these texts. Neither of these texts interest me thus I found it difficult to write about this article besides in highlighting concepts worth being familiar with.