Yikes!
J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Wed, 02 Dec 1998 17:06:29 -0500 (EST)
A friend of mine sent me the following post--titling his e-mail with the
above Subject Line :)
I actually agree with some of what this guy's...eh...saying, but I still
think Yikes! Sums it up best :)
Jim
Subject: Re: 12.0314 confinement, loss, growth
In a sense, what we're doing when reading is downloading a program.
Because of our capacity for running the subroutines as we go, we feel
we're comprehending the text, but actually we're simply compiling and
running the subset of the program consisting of sentences read up to the
present moment along with associations and references ("links" if you
will) unique to each of us (but in some cases, perhaps many cases, common
to a reading community). Once we have read, say, Paradise Lost and set
down the book, we can now run the entire program (which requires those
"natural tears" for its full impact) almost as a kind of extratemporal
(as well as hypertextual and experiential) gestalt. The poem is never
actually on the page, except as code, perhaps analogous to machine
language; it is something, different upon each downloading, that moves
from author to reader, and lives fully only in the life, individually and
collectively, of its readers -- of whom the author is but
one.
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