What happens to writing when texts in 'a world on paper' are replaced by messages in 'virtual space?'

What happens to writing when texts in "a world on paper" are replaced by messages in "virtual space?"

Aspects of new electronic writing technology and some consequences for writing, text and communication.

The paper is a contribution to the workshop discussion on hypertext and discourse at the 1994 research congress of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies.

Introduction

The term 'world on paper' is taken from Eisenstein's (1993) work on the printing press as an agent of change. She points to the Alexandrian culture of learning and claims that it was not surpassed "until printing made it possible to put the 'world on paper' for all armchair travellers to see" (ibid:503). I shall not argue her instrumentalist view on the effects of printing here, but adopt her seminal term and put it up against my term 'virtual space' which is based on the popularized and commercialized term 'virtual reality' which associations are hazy and meaning blurred. To the term 'virtual' I add the concept of space which I hope to make clearer in due course.

But first some words about writing, which is a social system for reflecting upon and communicating about the world. In a very general way, to write is to create meaning about the world for oneself and for others. In this connection, however, I shall apply an instrumentalist approach which is limited but helpfull nevertheless. In a more limited perspective writing is a tool to organize, store and present information whether we write with a pen on paper, with a typewriter or with electronic information-processing tools. The writing technology we apply will influence the way we organize our information, how we store it, and the way it is presented to others (Gaur 1987). Whether we are aware of it or not, our writing is an interaction between ourselves as writers and the technology we make use of in the process. In that way writing has always been a physical activity, processing information with a set of tools.

All writing is applying some technology in the process of organizing, storing and presenting information. The writer may organize his information according to the conventions of print and store it on paper. He may also use an electronic writing tool that organizes data in a different way and stores it electronically as binary codes. No matter what technology a writer makes use of, it influences the process and product of writing, and adds something to what is being written.

Up to now writing in our Western culture has mainly been the use of the pen, typewriter and printing press, and the storing of the more or less finished product on the visual surface of paper. With new electronic communication tools, however, this is changing. The most obvious change may be that our texts are no longer necessarily the physical objects of the written paper, but as often electronically stored binary codes of which we might fetch copies and convert to recognizable signs in the form of pixels displayed on a computer screen.

I use the term 'sign' even though it sometimes might evoke what Eco calls a 'naive and non-relational notion of 'sign''. But he goes on to say that this notion should not be abandoned in ordinary language and in colloquial semiotic discussions, so I shall use it whenever it presupposes a correlational nature of the sign-function (Eco 1979).

Aspects of new electronic writing

There are four aspects of the new electronic communication technology which must be considered. One aspect is that of speed and capacity. Its processing speed and storage capacity is superior to that of earlier technologies. One of the reasons for that is the use of the rather simple system of binary coding. All information which is fed into the electronic communication system is converted into binary codes which are 929h73j decoded when the information is presented again. This opens up for a manipulation of sign systems, not only written verbal language as a sign system, but sound, colours, images, animation and video as sign systems as well. With this technology writing becomes a manipulation of several sign systems challenging the traditional concepts of text.

Another aspect of the computer technology as a writing tool is the organization of information in a non-physical electronic space. This represents a break with the present tradition of organizing and presenting information in printed articles and books as it opens up for new ways of organizing information. The print culture has given us standardized presentations and set norms of organization. The layout and rationalization of format, and presentation of printed information in books and articles are editorial decisions within an existing technology (Eisenstein 1993). As the thoughts of readers are guided by the way the contents of books are arranged and presented, the texts of writers are influenced by the potential for expression which the writing technology has. New communication technology will bring its own potential for expression which imposes new obstructions upon and opens up new possibilities in written communication.

As said above, the new communication technology opens up for a manipulation of several sign systems, and this is our third aspect. On the one hand we have the applications which allow the writer to manipulate with sound, graphics, aninmation and video as well as verbal language. The writing tool is the same for all, keyboard and mouse. On the other hand we have the opportunity to convert sign systems through speech and handwriting recognition programs. For speech, particularly, this is a very questionable process as all non-linguistic aspects of oral communication are ruled out. But this nevertheless points to the possibilities and potentials for manipulating sign systems.

The fourth aspect of the new communication technology is the implications of local and global electronic networks. Electronic networks open up new possibilities as they drastically reduce time and distance in written communication. Local and global networks give writing what the telephone has given speech. It is possible to communicate written language, graphics, images and film with the same speed and interaction as previously has been reserved for sound only. Hypertextual, multimedia networks as e.g. World Wide Web, not only connect people but also information from the various databases of the electronic world. As an example, an article written in such a system can give all the references in extenso by activating a link to each particular reference.

These four aspects, capacity, organization of information, several sign systems, and electronic networks, are some general potentials of a new writing technology. How these potentials are developed will vary according to the culture in which this technology is put to use. It is important to remember that such a development is affected by economic, social, and political formations. The writing tools that become available always come with 'ideological price tags' (Kaplan 1992). But it is not within the scope of this article to embark upon a general criticism of this particular technology. I shall limit myself to give an outline of some applied functions of it and discuss some consequences for the concepts of text, writing and communication.

3. The concept of text

What then about the concept of text in this electronic environment? The concept of text has traditionally been applied to verbal messages only. Some include both oral and written verbal messages, while others, in what we might call a common sense tradition, reserve the text concept for handwritten and printed texts, or text as a physical object. With a new electronic writing technology on our hands the concept of text must be reconsidered.

In its broadest sense the concept of text refers to messages of any code, not just verbal messages, and a message might be generated by several systems of cultural codes (Nöth 1990). A pragmatic definition places the concept of text or message in the context of communication, and in a semiotic communication model the focus is mainly on the text (or the message) itself, and its interaction with its producing and receiving culture. Its concern is with the generation and exchange of meaning; the role of communication in establishing and maintaining values, and how those values enable communication to have meaning (Fiske 1991:189).

In a semiotic communication model the text is a sign, while Hjelmslev prefers to talk about the sign function, which is the internal or external function of the sign. There are two sides (or planes) of the sign function: content and expression, which he calls functives (Hjelmslev 1974). The first is the verbal aspect or meaning potential of written language, while the second is the visual aspect of writing, the expression potential. There is a relationship of what Hjelmslev calls 'solidarity' between the sign function and its two functives, and there is never a sign function without both being present at the same time, they presuppose each other.

The expression potential, or the visual aspects of writing, change according to the technology of writing or presentation which is being used, and there are different potentials of expression in different communication technologies. The potentials of text as a sign function depend upon the choice of technology used in the communication.

Non-linguistic signs in writing

When we speak we communicate by means of both linguistic and non-linguistic signs. We speak the words, but we add intonation and stress, pauses and gestures among other things. These non-linguistic signs are not available to writers. Traditionally a writer works with visual signs only, and not auditive ones. In our culture and time the writer's signs have mainly been communicated through the medium of paper. The electronic writing and presentation technology has, however, introduced new media and a wider range of non-linguistic signs. In the following I shall present the main non-linguistic signs used in writing when using a specific hypertextual multimedia writing tool. In my presentation there are ten of them altogether, and the first is the element of space.

1. Space

Writing with a hypertext writing tool emphasizes the fact that writing is a visual and spatial activity and experience. The writer uses space as a sign because he or she manipulates space when writing. The writer is not writing on a page, but can position text (or messages written with other sign systems than verbal language) anywhere in a space which is accessible from the graphic monitor of the computer. What we see on the display when writing or reading on a computer is limited by the dimensions of the hardware and the functionality of the software. In most text processing programs the space is equivalent to what we traditionally call a page in an article or a book, while desktop publishing software operates with spaces found in the graphic industry, what has previously been the spaces of the printing press. These are all limitations imposed by the tradition of printing on paper. The same limitations are not always present in the electronic space. Electronic space introduces a new concept of space whether we for the time being call it cyberspace or virtual space.

2. Nodes

Nodes are containers of information. They are the things which we can link to and from (Nielsen 1990), or the smallest piece of an electronic hypertext that can be addressed by a link (Berk et.al 1991). We can say they are the enclosed spaces in which we write, and they might be of two types. Either they are enclosed spaces or boxes presenting messages or parts of messages. Or they are enclosed spaces which include other spaces like in a series of chinese boxes.

3. Links

Links connect nodes, or they are pointers from one node to another. They indicate that there is a relationship between the node that is the source of the link and the link's target node. The visual, graphic representation of a link is either a highlighted word or phrase, a button or an icon, or other graphics e.g. a visual line connecting the nodes (ibid:554).

The nodes may be linked together in various ways. There can be a linear linking, where the writer of the text signals a traditional sequential way of reading which we are familiar with from printed books. The linking might also produce an hierarchical presentation of the text indicating the super- and sub-organization of information.

A third way of organizing text through linking is the hypertextual model. Hypertext has been defined as the technology for non-sequential reading and writing (Nelson 1987), and this is the way we read when we read a book by way of the index or an encyclopedia by way of key phrases. A text that is organized hypertextually is like a web of information through which a user or reader can move either by following established links or by creating new ones.

4. Views

Hypertext programs provide several ways to view text. One way is to reduce or enlarge what is displayed by means of a zooming function. Another is to make the window that the user works in larger or smaller or even have more windows open at the same time.

Most hypertext programs enable the user to manipulate with different text views by ways of icons or drop-down menues. The user may choose to work in a view which displays the web of nodes and links. When working in that view, the user may manipulate the nodes and the links to form new sequences or connections. This is the view that presents the hypertext structure of the text.

Another view presents a list of node names. This is equivalent to a table of contents and to the view you have when using the outline tool in text processing programs. Lastly the user may view the text as a graphic representation of the hierarchic structure of nodes and sub-nodes, as it is possible to create nodes within nodes for as many levels as may be practical (Bolter et. al. 1993).

5. Colours

Colours have of course always been a resource to writers, but more or less fell out of use with the coming of printing. When colours are used in the presentation of written language, they are used typographically in addition to or as substitutes for other typographic devices mainly for emphasis, to differentiate and make things stand out from the rest. Colours may also be used to create coherence between various parts of text that is written in the same colour, and for the same purpose they are used in graphical views of hypertexts.

6. Sound

Sequences of sound can be part of text and may be activated by pressing a button. In this way written text is not just visual, but auditive as well, as the sequences may be speech, music or other digitalized sound. For verbal language it means that the non-linguistic signs of speech, e.g. stress, intonation and pauses, become part of the written text. Bringing in the auditive aspect as a new expression potential in writing gives a new dimension to the concept of text.

7. Graphics

Graphics have always been part of written text. In our Western culture the illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages are outstanding examples of advanced integration of graphical and typographical signs. An early specimen is the Book of Kells in the Hiberno-Saxon style from around 800 A.D.

The introduction of printing led to an almost exclusive development of the typographical sign based on an alphabet. Writing in the Western world became synonymous with the use of typographical signs. The use of graphics and pictures in writing slowed down the printing process and made it more expensive, so the use of these sign systems was discouraged.

With electronic writing it is not only possible to integrate non-linguistic images as parts of the text. Such items are also easily produced with the appropriate applications, and they may be as easily imported from picture data bases and clip-art archives.

8. Icons

Icons in the context of electronic writing and presentation are systematically coded pictures and images. Normally they constitute a culturally recognized sign system with a strict regularity, and the signs are clearly distinguished from each other. Iconography has long traditions in visual communication of messages, and is today used for a variety of purposes, examples can be shop and traffic signs. An important point about these signs is that they are meant to be understood by speakers of all languages.

The software industry makes use of iconic signs in order to label functions and improve the interface of applications. For the writer with an electronic writing tool the iconic sign system is a supplement to the linguistic code and increases the expression potential of writing.

9. Animation and video

Many definitions of writing argue that writing leaves stable, visual signs on a surface. From what has been said above, the idea of a writing surface makes little sense with electronic writing technology, and the term 'writing space' (Bolter 1991) has been introduced instead. Also the visual signs are not necessarily stable. What is displayed on the computer screen is a transient representation of a digital code. There is no element of permanence in electronically displayed text.

The transitoriness of electronic writing is emphasized by the fact that the text might include elements of animation and video films. In addition to the visual representation of what we experience as stable or static sign systems, like linguistic and iconic signs, the text can also be made up of sign systems paradigmatically characterized by movement. This is a non-linguistic quality that has been ascribed to among other things facial expressions, gestures and body language. Now this expression potential does not only belong to the linguistic code of speech, but to the code of written language as well.

10. Text norms

A new potential of expression and new rules of writing are established through the introduction of new writing and reading technology. Nobody thinks about explaining to a reader of a book how this book is to be read, or how to find one's way through the book. There are established conventions for those procedures, and when we talk about text we call these conventions text norms (Berge 1993). A text norm is the social dimension of text. It is how users agree to apply and respond to text. Text norms are usually the result of an historical development, and we may take them so much for granted that we become blind to their cultural and historical reference.

All readers know how to open a book and how to navigate by means of table of contents and pagination. It is different with electronic texts. Most readers are unfamiliar with such texts, and people generally don't know how to get an overview of the text and how to find their way into it and out again. Most writers of electronic texts or programs know this, and they try to create interfaces that are user-friendly. But there are still few standards and commonly agreed upon rules as to how such interfaces should be, and the reader might find that each new program has its own unique interface. Even though the printed book took a couple of hundred years to develop standard formats, electronic books must delvelop such standards within not too long as the production and distribution of such books increase rapidly.

The functions of writing

A general functional distinction of language has been that between language as action and language as reflection, what Halliday calls the pragmatic and mathetic macrofunctions of language (Halliday 1978). As a general distinction this is applicable to both speech and writing. Writing has both the function of interpersonal action and that of individual reflection, it is a way of creating meaning both for oneself and for others. There is, however, in addition, a need for a more specific outline of functions connected to the uses of writing. Such functions are the memory supportive, the distancing, the reifying, the social control, the interactional, and the aesthetic. These are microfunctions of writing.

Most of the earliest writing we know, that of the Sumerians dating back to 3500 BC, is accountancy, i.e. lists of property. The function was to support the memory of the rich (Ong 1991), and the 'memory supportive function' is still perhaps the most important one for all literate people. This is the function of Memoria in classical rhetoric; a mnemonic function which later has been elaborated upon by both students and teachers in their efforts to memorize and teach important knowledge. This function serves both reflection and action, and is greatly improved by the additional non-linguistic signs of electronic writing.

Another function of writing is to expand the communicative range. Writing, in contrast to speech, enables communication over distance in both space and time (Coulmas 1992:12). Coulmas calls this the 'distancing function' and writing a 'distancing medium' which separates the three components of written communication: writer, reader and text. Global electronic networks clearly expand the communicative range and strengthen the distancing function of writing. It might be said that writer, reader and text get together in a virtual space, but in real, physical space the distance between them increases.

The fact that writing is a distancing medium means that what is being transmitted assumes the quality of an object (ibid.). Coulmas claims that this 'reifying function' of writing makes text into something that is both stable and tangible, a depersonalized object in its own right. As we have already seen, this is not so in electronic writing. Text which is written in a computer is not tangible but 'virtual', and it is not necessarily stable either, at least not in an interactive global network. The reifying function of text is challenged in electronic writing, and I shall return to that below.

The 'social control function' of writing (ibid:13) relates to the fact that we are surrounded by a lot of socially important forms of written communication that set the norms for and regulate social conduct. Examples are laws, contracts, the identification and registering of community members. The state of this function depends upon the depersonalized authority of the written text and is closely related to the reifying function. It is a question whether this authority of writing is weakened when the reifying function seems to be so.

Then writing has an 'interactional function'. Together with the 'social control function' this is an aspect of language as action. Writing makes possible coordinated action through e.g. letters and instructions and thus regulates behaviour indirectly over distance in time and space. This function too must rely on the authority of text as a stable and permanent object and is sensitive to conceptual change. When the authority of text weakens, the interactional function becomes weaker as well.

Lastly we have the relationship between the expression potential of a text and its 'aesthetic function'. The medium of writing as it appears in different technologies and cultural contexts creates certain genres and cultivates its visual expression. We find this in the genres that are typical to writing, e.g. the novel, and in the art of calligraphy (ibid:14). It is likely that new writing technology with new possibilities for storing, organizing and presenting text might create both new genres and new art forms. Examples here are hypertext novels and 'virtual realities'.

What is evident from this discussion of the functions of writing, is that technology influences both writing as individual reflection and that of interpersonal action. The distancing, reifying, social control, and interactional functions are all interpersonal, while the memory supportive and aesthetic functions are both interpersonal and individual. As far as I can see now, the interpersonal functions of language are met with serious challenges in the electronic technology of writing. Not only are the concepts of text and writing shaken. The question is as much what sort of communication we shall have.

Consequences for communication

The electronic writing and presentation technology is a communication technology. It influences our concept of writing as communication, and there are various models of such communication.

Process models of communication, and of writing as one type of communication, go by and large back to the Shannon and Weaver model of the late 1940's (Shannon and Weaver 1949). The transmission of messages was looked upon as a linear process, and their model was a tool for reducing the technical problems of noise in various channels of communication. However, the model was adopted as a general model for communication studies, and even though it has been greatly changed and improved upon (Nöth 1990; Berge 1994), the basic concept of communication as transmission of messages has to a large extent been retained (Flower & Hayes 1981).

While process models have traditionally been concerned with the transmission of messages, and often through stages in a process, a semiotic model focuses primarily upon the text itself and its interaction with its object and the users, both producers and receivers. It is concerned with the generation and exchange of meaning, and a divergence of meaning is not regarded as a failure in communication but as a reminder of social and cultural differences. It is not the process which secures successful communication but the situation of the communication and the society around it (Fiske 1991:2-3).

In a semiotic communication model writing is a way of creating meaning for others by representing the world through signs. The text is focused upon as a sign, and all users, whether producers or receivers, writers or readers, speakers or listeners, are, in the Peircian sense, replaced by interpretants. The interpretant may be looked upon as a bridge between the sign and what the sign represents, the object. But at the same time the interpretant is the process which defines the sign, and that process creates new signs. It means that we do not operate with dyads in a communication process, and the reader is as important and as active as the writer in the negotiating of meaning. The meaning, or semiosis, is a result of a dynamic interaction between sign, interpretant and object, and this interaction is located socially and culturally in time.

Process models of written communication make a distinction between writer and reader, or encoder and decoder. Semiotics focuses mainly on the text as a sign or collection of signs and the meaning generated in the semiotic process. The interpretant is the mental concept of the user of the sign, whether this user be speaker or listener, writer or reader, painter or viewer. Decoding is as active and creative as encoding (Fiske 1991:42). This is highly relevant to written communication in electronic media. The traditional roles of both writer and reader are challenged. In a hypertextual environment they both become encoders and decoders at the same time in the process of negotiating meaning.

Conclusion

One of the sign functions of the linguistic code of writing was, according to Hjelmslev, the visual aspect, or the expression potential. This is, however, an aspect that is no longer just visual. With electronic writing technology the expression potential is both auditive and spatial as well. One may say that the visual sign system is familiar from handwritten and printed documents through illuminations and typography, and spatiality has always been present in the form of layout. But there is little doubt that the range of expression potential is wider, and the inclusion of the auditive aspect opens up a new dimension in writing. To say that writing approaches the expression potential of speech is, however, too quick a conclusion. In this new technology it is the distancing function of writing that seems to be strengthened, especially if it is used increasingly as a tool to replace face-to-face contact.

It is of course to be argued whether this manipulation of sign systems on the computer is still going to be termed writing. But we might keep the term until a better one surfaces. It is likewise questionable whether the product of this activity is going to be called text. If we keep the expression, we are in line with a wider text concept where text is a meaningful message generated by several systems of cultural codes both linguistic and non-linguistic (Nöth 1990:331).

As for the communicative function of writing, the new technology changes the roles of both readers and writers. The active and intrusive reader is able to choose his or her way through a text, and may annotate and create links between texts written by others. It is not that the reader changes the text of another, as has wrongly been feared, but the autonomy of both text and author is reduced in the electronic environment. The technology encourages intertextuality and discourages reification of texts. Landow talks about 'the convergence of poststructuralist conceptions of textuality and electronic embodiments of it' (Landow 1992), and this affects both the autonomy of text and the authorial mastery of it. So the writer loses communicative control while the reader gains a more independent and autonomous role in the construction of meaning. Both reader and writer as actors in the communication process recedes into the background while the semiotic process of the generation of meaning becomes the foreground. This is another way of saying that in our present cultural situation the interpersonal functions of writing are weakened in the electronic communication technology.

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