Comments for Writing for Ants

Comment on Transitioning by tabulate

tabulate — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:59:32 +0000

tabulate says : I absolutely agree with this !

Comment on Transitioning by nadib al-islam

nadib al-islam — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:13:39 +0000

hello prof! how are you!? i am fine. i am confused about the part that you are leaving word press? the other day i saw you having a meeting with other professors about the website. you are a great writer. i dont know why you would stop! either you have no time or created a new website. please let me know! thank you and take care.

Comment on About by David F

David F — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 02:17:38 +0000

Hey Robert,

I was just reading this interview on Salon with William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and coiner of the phrase “cyberspace.”

http://www.salon.com/weekly/gibson2961014.html

And I thought of your Writing for Ants page mainly because of this passage…

******************

That’s drawn from a kind of roadside tradition in the south, of putting weird stuff in your front yard?

Yes. Folk art. A lot of it is what the French call “art brut” — a technical term.

When I started writing, I was influenced in some ways by an American film theorist named Manny Farber, who wrote a book called “Negative Space.” Farber made a distinction, which had a huge impact on me at the time, between what he called termite art and some other kind of art. The other kind of art was sort of the art of the academy, where you took a big slab and carved it out into something. With termite art, he said, you just start with a big slab and drill into it from every conceivable angle and the holes start connecting.

He made this wonderful argument that all the great stuff in American B movies that he liked was termite art. I think I had that running in the back of my head when I started writing fiction. And I was thinking the other day when I was looking at Web sites and following links around — man, this is some kind of mega-termite art.

Or even termite space.

Yeah — it’s termite space.

**********************

Anyway, thought you might like the interview.

Comment on Weekly Recap by Sarah A.

Sarah A. — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:56:58 +0000

cool about ning — we’re trying to do some stuff with it, too, so would be interested in seeing what you’re up to.

Comment on Weekly Recap by Adam

Adam — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:08:09 +0000

Thanks for the shout out! Consider yourself emailed, too. We’ll be in the city mid-July…

Comment on Weekly Recap by nadib al-islam

nadib al-islam — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:20:50 +0000

nice post Prof. Leston. i wished i had the capability of writing like you. your writing style sounds so professional. its really great to me. i will try incorporating your style of writing if you do not mind.
i was also wondering how everything jumped so quickly. maybe we were suppose to know that he was probably going to be greedy as usual.
well i totally agree with you on the fact that the movie is awesome. the sound effects were what separates the movie from the others. the sound effects are marvelous.

Comment on Nice New WordPress Layout (right?) by nadib al-islam

nadib al-islam — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:41:00 +0000

hey sir. i agree with you on the fact that the new upgrading is indeed impressive but another change for us as students which we need to adjust again. one thing I noticed was that the word count was gone. i tried to scheme through the whole page but could not find it. it will be harder for us to count all the words. i also think that we as account holders of word press should have gotten a notice in advance. well thats all i have to say about the upgrade. take care.

Comment on New Bloggers, Clunkee CMS’s, and Nings? by Marina

Marina — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:53:24 +0000

Ah, I see you are writing about us! I actually am getting used to the new system, and now I notice more and more that the net is teeming with bloggers!

Comment on Descarte, Foucault, and Resemblance. Theory Day 2 by cutter

cutter — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:29:33 +0000

Thanks, Alex. I guess it depends on which version of Kate Hayles you’re talking about. I’m glad to see that in -My Mother was a Computer- that she begins to turn towards Kittler’s thinking and recognizes that posthumanism isn’t necessarily an anti-body.

The section on technology and Descarte follows and I wind up speaking for a while on the role of mathematics, information, and memory. It’s this role of pure (though unaccessible) memory that is the remainder of the “prose of the world” and why math offers a link that the humanists lost a long time ago. (At least that’s what I think I’m doing . . . )

Comment on Descarte, Foucault, and Resemblance. Theory Day 2 by Alex Reid

Alex Reid — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:50:45 +0000

I think I see what you’re talking about here: this movement toward fragmentation. This is something that comes up in Kittler, right? The way the continuous script of handwriting becomes the staccato of the typewriter.

It is also interesting with Descartes, the proliferation of dualities–not only mind/body by the I who thinks and the I who “is.” All this in the name of securing a special wholeness for humans. Only to find this coming to crisis in cybernetics, as Hayles points out, where the continual effort to insulate human consciousness from machine intelligence backfires again and again.

Origins are always tricky though, as you know. Maybe its the insertion of the telescope between the eye and the stars that severs our continuity with (and centrality in) the universe. Maybe one goes back to earliest writing technologies. Nevertheless, there’s certainly something happening here with Descartes and tech.