As We May Think by Vannevar Bush was a sumptuous article that I had to read twice.  For a person to have such a grasp of so many varying fields, their present state of development and to be able to foretell by several generations where each field is headed with specific designs was stunning to me.  His understanding of how, “Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort” will revolutionize the various scientific fields is hyper foresight. I was taken by how prescient Bush was in the specifics of inventions that would occur in many areas.  He articulated so many specific examples that I had to remind myself of the date it was written.  Some examples that stuck out are: “The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut,” is the Go-Pro of today. “There have long been films with diazo dyes which form a picture without development, so that it is already there as soon as the camera has been operated,” foresaw the Polaroid by several decades. “Consider a future device for individual use, which is sort of a mechanized private file and library… (the) memex,” is the PC or smartphone. The list he included is much longer. For an individual to have such a grasp they must need to have a high vantage point only achievable after some focused and serious work.  I was struck by his knowledge, his grasp of the material at his disposal, and his easy going, articulate matter-of-fact manner with which he dispensed his nuggets of wisdom.

Reading the article a second time with its sheen somewhat faded due to exposure, I was a bit more critical.  Yes, he has some brilliant observations and predictions (ignoring the dated sexism.)  The first to come to mind is the catch-22 that is a bane of our present age: We are bogged down by specialization but need specialization for progress, he notes. How can we continue to specialize and yet contribute to the larger field of science when most everyone is telescopically focused and we publish much but don’t understand most. He states, “A record if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored and above all it must be consulted.”  And here’s the rub: nowhere in the piece does he mention how given the incredible achievement of the scientists during this period to have come together to work together and achieve a common goal (defeat an enemy) this focus, this comradery could be used for the benefit of humans.  We won the war; could we not have gone on to win the peace? Why progress for progress’ sake? Given the era he just emerged out of, why not think of humaneness?  Why not harness this incredible energy to solidify institutional, scientific codes or systems of humaneness- progress must serve specific human endeavor, e.g. eradicate hunger, build affordable homes, renewable cooking contraptions for nomadic peoples?  Reflecting of those ideas made the piece a bit different for me.  Yes, he was still prophetic, but, now, as a somewhat, detached scientist wanting to only progress for progress’s sake.  An element of hubris drifted in, something of a Victor Frankenstein element. Technology is not an altar to worship at but a toolbox only to be consulted conscientiously. This echo rang in my brain.

Deformance and Interpretation by Samuels an McGann reads like a treatise with all of the attendant aspects such a monograph involves, such as returning to it over and over, to gain insights, guides of action, ways of understanding, and novel techniques to use in the area.  This is definitely the case in this laden dissertation. The authors extend our ability to interact with an imaginative work. Instead of, “the usual object of interpretation (which is) ‘meaning,’” the authors postulate, “… alternative moves to break beyond conceptual analysis into kinds of knowledge involved in performative operations- a practice of everyday imaginative life.” They want the reader to gain new insight into a work by the act of poiesis rather than just dissection or criticism.  Because a creative work is open for performance, it’s also open to more. They give 4 possibilities for such an extension: reordered (reading backward), isolating, altering, or adding. They draw from history to show lineage of these ways of interrogating a text to help a reader open up more avenues than just plain meaning.  They refer to Blake who wanted this extension as well as Dickenson who wanted to discover what is possible from an imaginative piece to Dante for whom ‘meaning is a dynamic exchange than a discoverable content, and that the exchange is best revealed as a play of differences.” Several of the deformations made intuitive sense to me.  It is something I practice in a visual mode.  When looking at a photograph or a painting, I (when physically viable) turn it upside down.  This opens up new ways of looking at the piece.  New relationships, new compositional elements, new negative space elements show themselves. Following a footnote led me to a musical equivalent by John Cage in his Silences: Lectures and Writings where he deformes Satie and Varese.  This stimulated the grey cells a bit faster and I realized that this was the birth of what is now hip-hop.  The birth of hip-hop is rap where an individual practiced 2 of the methods mentioned- reordered and isolated the original creative piece to extract new meaning – poiesis! By ‘reading backward’ the LP or 12” and isolating certain sections, the ‘reader’ was able to create new meaning from the original piece. The process was exactly the same as that elucidated by Samuels and McGann. The original imaginative piece was used as a basis of poiesis rather than mere interpretation or analysis. Samuels and McGann offer a useful tool to add to my creative toolbox.