Ewriting Theories and Practices

The Electroscript Project

Professor Artur Matuck School of Communications and Arts Universiity of São Paulo, Brazil December 2010

PCST New Delhi India

A Manifest for Re-Information

RescriptingIntellectual Propertythrough Ewriting Theories and Practices

Key-words:

Digital writing Authorial processes Hybrid man-machine creation Intelectual propertiy Authors’ rights Informational ethics Knowledge politics

Ewriting as a new field of inquiry

Ewriting (electronic writing) is a developing field of inquiry generating theories, practices and computer applications that evolve and continuously redefine our perspective on writing.

Telecomputational tools

The whole idea of the computer as a writing tool is now associated with telecommunication.

Since writing through the computer cannot be isolated from networking, it is actually telecomputing that will provide for ewriting technologies.

Writing practices in the net

Writing genealogy is being redefined considering that mind-net interactions are now prevalent in writing processes.

Presently, an individual author is or could be in constant contact with social networks, writing applications and almost infinite resources distributed in the Internet.

Ewriting software design

Ewriting software design must provide forsimultaneous or alternate interaction with

- text-processing applications- autonomous machine-writing - distant or local co-writers - large data structures

Hybrid man-machine dialogues

Ewriting technologies must allow for

- optional or automatic data interaction - textual de-construction and - re-construction

Human Identity in Technowriting

As we approach the concept of ewriting, as we understand the potential for techno-induced writing tools

we will inevitably face the prospect of our human identities being transformed as consequence of hybrid human-machine co-evolution.

Human Identity in Technowriting

The human mind, as an authorial entity, is acquiring a different nature. It is becoming translocal, as writing fills cyberspace, as networks connect in authorial nodes.

We are becoming trans-individuals as co-writing develops into a widespread practice, enabling human thought to be almost instantaneously disseminated and eventually aggregated.

Hybridity as mind expansion

"Computers have been programmed to decrypt enciphered messages, convert text to speech, parse and act upon human speech, generate fonts, and even design patentable electronic circuits. There remains, however, much computers cannot do and may never be able to do without a body.

Hybridity as mind expansion

Despite such limitations the computer is an excellent extension of some deficient areas of human cognition, such as sorting large lists, mathematical calculations, memory and retrieval, and error correction.

Hybridity as mind expansion

If one combines those skills with human superiority in pattern recognition, adaptability, natural language processing, and the ability to distinguish irrelevant from relevant information, the computer and the human have a potentially powerful symbiotic relationship."

James Pullizi, UCLA

De-centering the human mind

Although the human mind will no longer be located at the symbolic center of creation and invention

it will be being endowed with highly superior abilities, preparing our species for the large-scale global challenges we will have to face in the immediate future.

E-written authorship as a planet-wide socio-machinic process

Writing, and by extension, thinking, science,

design, expression, artmaking, architecture, economics and philosophy will be more and more understood as

A dialogical process between human individuals, collective processes and machine-mediated actions.

E-written authorship as a planet-wide socio-machinic process

Once Ewriting becomes widespread and acknowledged in theory and practices

collective web-based writing, machine-assisted and machine-generated authorship will be investigated as human-developmental tools.

Netbred writing challenging Intellectual Property

The full development of those emerging forms of writing and thinking will challenge intellectual property theories presently enforced by legal systems.

They represent and actually act as insurmountable obstacles to the advancement of creativity, authorship and invention.

Netbred writing challenging Intellectual Property

Legal theories and legislations ingrained in almost unchangeable statutes restrain emerging collaborative authorship models and practices.

But if the vision of writing as a socio-machinic planetwide process prevails, current intellectual property values and legal theories will need to readapt.

They should not remain obstacles to thinking.

Netbred writing challenging Intellectual Property

They would be confronted in their ideology, assumption to large-scale control, and imposed authority. Finally, they would be proven to be obsolete tenets of an old mentality and would thus have to be rethought.

Current intellectual property values and legal theories will then be obliged to readapt to new forms of authorship involving inter-human and human machine integration.

Information as an interconnectable entity

As planetary net-integration evolves, ewriting processes will make so much use of datastructures and inter-communication that invention will be thought of as and realized through re-invention or co-invention.

Ewriting will then naturally challenge the present theoretical basis of intellectual property and authors’ rights since it will need to make full use of proprietary material.

Information as an interconnectable entity

We are now on the brink of a new conception of information which will demand a reconsideration of the underlying philosophies of creative acts, technologies and related rights.

Each new writing, invention, design or proposition is now beginning to be sensed, perceived and reconceived through its web-presence as a potential element in a larger textual construction.

Information as an interconnectable entity

Information would then be considered as re-information, as data-in-flux. It will be increasingly analyzed within new parameters such as availability, interconnectivity, formatibility, translatibity and disseminability.

Hardware, software, communication protocols and file formats will have to be redesigned to augment, improve and facilitate interconnectivity, aggregation and knowledge formation.

Information as an interconnectable entity

Texts as informational entities will have to be fully

interconnectable and legally free to interact so that new propositions can be conceived.

Then, the full potential of presently available and yet to be created communication technologies can be achieved.

Information as Matrix

Our reconception of the text as a matrix of interrelations, as a mind tool, as an indispensable social instrument

will lead us to conceive a new horizon for human thought processes.

The Electroscript as interactive writing

In the ewriting environment, our words, phrases, paragraphs will instantaneously reverberate through massive data structures that will provide us with immediate feedback.

Intelligent agents will interact with our propositions to pose us questions, alter our syntaxes and present complementary data.

The Electroscript as interactive writing

Ewriting tools will challenge deep-rooted cultural

habits at the base of our language and thought processes.

An intense focus on language will trigger in-depth research into new forms of textual processing.

Semion 1972

An International Symbol for Released Information Any information, text, image, project, method

or idea bearing this symbol can be reproduced, diffused, translated, applied or utilized

provided that the authorship and the source are

mentioned the information is respected in its integrity the purpose is not economic exploitation

Semion

SemionR 1997

An International Symbol for Re-Information

Any information, text, image, project, method or idea bearing this symbol

can be not only reproduced, diffused, translated, applied or utilized

but also modified, reformatted, interconnected and aggregated

so that newer information can be generated .

SemionR