N. Katherine Hayles: Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science (1990)

“At the same time that the study of nonlinear dynamics came into its own in the sciences, the focus of literary studies shifted toward local, fragmentary modes of analysis in which texts were no longer regarded as deterministic or predictable. N. Katherine Hayles here investigates parallels between contemporary litera­ture and critical theory and the emerging interdisciplinary field known as the science of chaos. She finds in both scientific and literary discourse new interpre­tations of chaos, which is seen no longer as disorder but as a locus of maximum information and complexity. The new paradigm of chaos includes elements that, Hayles shows, were evident in literary theory and literature before they became prominent in the sciences. She asserts that such similarities between the natural and human sciences are the result not of direct influence but of roots in a common cultural matrix.

Hayles traces the evolution of the concept of chaos and evaluates the work of such theorists as Prigogine, Feigenbaum, and Mandelbrot, for whom chaos entails an unpredictably open universe in which knowledge is limited to local sites and scientific models can never exhaust the possibilities of the actual. But this view does not imply that scientists have given up the search for global ex­planations of natural phenomena, for chaos is conceived of as containing its own form of order. Hayles envisions chaos as a double-edged sword: it can be viewed either as a recognition that disorder plays a more important role in natural processes than had hitherto been recognized or as an extension of order into areas that had hitherto resisted formalization. She examines structures and themes of disorder in The Education of Henry Adams, Doris Lessing’s Golden Notebook, and works by Stanislaw Lem. Hayles concludes by showing how the writings of poststructuralist theorists incorporate central features of chaos theory-such as an interest in relating local sites to global structures; a conception of order and disorder as interpenetrating rather than opposed; an awareness that in complex systems small causes can lead to massive effects; and an understanding that complex systems can be both deterministic and unpredictable.

Chaos Bound contributes to and enliven current debates among chaos theorists, cultural critics and cultural historians, critical theorists, literary critics interested in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, researchers in nonlinear dynamics, and others concerned with the relation between science and culture.” (from the back cover)

Publisher Cornell University Press, 1990
ISBN 0801497019, 9780801497018
309 pages
via author

Review: Tom LeClair (SubStance, 1991)

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See also Hayles, The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century, 1984.

James Nyce, Paul Kahn (eds.): From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind’s Machine (1991)

“Vannevar Bush, the engineer who designed the world’s most powerful analog computer, envisioned the development of a new kind of computing machine he called Memex. For many computer and information scientists, Bush’s Memex has been the prototype for a machine to help people think.

This volume, which the editors have divided into sections on the creation, extension, and legacy of the Memex, combines seven essays by Bush with eleven others by others that set his ideas within a variety of contexts. The essays by Bush range chronologically from the early “The Inscrutable Thirties” (1933), “Memorandum Regarding Memex” (1941), and “As We May Think” (1945), to “Memex II” (1959), “Science Pauses” (1967), “Memex Revisited” (1967), and a passage from “Of Inventions and Inventors” (1970). Bush’s essays are surrounded by four chapters that place his changing plans for the Memex within his career and within information technology before digital computing.”

Contributors include Larry Owens, Colin Burke, Douglas C. Engelbart, Theodor H. Nelson, Linda C. Smith, Norman Meyrowitz, Tim Oren, Gregory Crane, and Randall H. Trigg.

Publisher Academic Press, San Diego and London, 1991
ISBN 0125232705, 9780125232708
367 pages
via Marcell Mars, in the Unlimited Edition

Memex animation (1995)

Review (George P. Landow, The Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 1992)
Review (Matthew Wall, College & Research Libraries, 1992)
Review (Liam Murray, ReCALL, 1993)

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Kenneth Goldsmith in Conversation (2014)

“What is uncreative writing? What can writing learn from visual art? How does one write through art and culture? What is language and how should one speak (of) it in this digital age? How have the current technological developments shaped the contemporary scene and sense of poetics, aesthetics, and poetry pedagogy? What is conceptual writing and its relation to the international avant-garde movement? And after all, what is poetry? These are some of the questions addressed by Kenneth Goldsmith in the interview with Francisco Roman Guevara. This discussion – candid and provocative – is a helpful introduction to the ideas of a most significant “writerly” voice in the contemporary space of literary and cultural studies.”

With Francisco Roman Guevara
Publisher De La Salle University Publishing House, Manila, 2014
Critics in Conversation series
ISBN 9789715555968
50 pages

Publisher

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