Customer Reviews

Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are without a doubt some brilliant ideas in this book. However, reading the book is a bit like mining for precious ore, you have to go through a lot of uninteresting rocks to get to the good stuff.

It would appear that the author had some serious ideas he wanted to publish and chose book format as conventional and lucrative. However, the book is a mish-mash of ideas that don't necessarily string together to form anything like a cohesive argument or narrative. While this non-linear presentation works well in cyberspace, it is a frustrating thing to deal with in book format.

It is heartening that a classics professor would tackle a subject like the change from print to electronic technology. His comparisons between the coming of the Internet and the rise of the codex in late antiquity are interesting. He clearly "gets" the Internet and doesn't consider it the big bad book-slayer.

The author sprinkles in some of his theories on education, particularly post-secondary. He poses interesting questions but provides no answers to those questions about the purpose of post-secondary education in the modern world.

Some of the ideas presented were compelling, the style of the book was difficult to handle, and his final comparisons between himself and Cassiodorus were a bit much. I could only give it two stars.

O'Donnell tries heroically to conflate the printed word and the hypertext of the present world. By feeding on the ancients for Latin and Greek sources, the author relates classical writings with those of the sacred scriptures. Aristotle meets Saul; Paul kibitzes with Cassiodorus.

O'Donnell himself is not sure where all this will end; it's too early in the first-half to hedge our bets, to see how far cyberspace (the "ether" as explanation for everything in the universe of nineteenth century Western thought; now monicled, "hypertext) will impact (that fatuous term of evaluations) the written or printed text. In truth, O'Donnell in spite of his Catholic, and catholic, reading of Aquinas, Aristotle, Horace, Juvenal, Apuleius, has no solid solution to the contexts: speech, memory, printed work, software; he's in a quandary, and apparently enjoying the fuzziness of the discussion. But nevertheless underlines the necessary undertaking of this word--hypertext forum.

This is an important book; get it; borrow it; read it.

Avatars is about the connection between the history of the written word and the upcoming of the increase in Internet technology and cyberspace. The book explains how the written word is being challenged by cyberspace and what cyberspace may look like in the future. O'Donnell is a very witty writer, who keeps the attention of the reader. Writing about the Internet can get tedious, but O'Donnell keeps an interesting style of writing for the reader.

J. J. O'Donnell is one those scholars whose learning is assumed rather than displayed. As a result, his brief approach to the long-terms effects of the computer revolution on reading and higher education feels like a bracing, sophisticated exchange of ideas. Like conversation, O'Donnell's thesis is not terribly unified or orderly. He often makes sidetracks from his focus on high technology and literacy into explaining such interesting things as how we choose our cultural ancestry instead of merely evolving out of it, the errors of current education, and perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about other avatars of the word such as St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and Cassiodorus. Great cover too.

O'Donnell is uniquely suited to write such a book and to indulge in such digressions. He is Professor of Classical Studies but also Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania. His purpose is to compare the transformation already begun within the electronic medium to earlier transformations such as those from oral to written culture in ancient Greece, the papyrus scroll to the codex manuscript, and the codex to the printed book. ... O'Donnell proclaims that interactive `hypertext' was the original form of written communication. In fact, the book as a form of authorized mass communication has allowed individual and community freedoms to dissolve and centralized authority to legitimize itself. `Control over texts had brought control over people' (p. 37). Books will never disappear entirely, he prophesies, because of the public's love for a good, self-contained, often fictional narrative. Scholarly tomes, however, will lose their influence and the libraries which contain them will have to radically adapt: `In a world in which the library will cease to be a warehouse and become instead a software system, the value of the institution will lie in the sophistication, versatility, and power of its indexing and searching capacities' (p. 61).

The greatest change in store, then, will be in the manner in which scholarly research is undertaken and written up. `The traditional monograph, with its sustained linear argument, its extraordinarily high costs of publication and distribution, and its numerous inefficiencies of access, is beginning to look more and more like a great lumbering dinosaur' (p. 58). No single point of view will do in our electronic postmodern utopia. The author must die and so must the enclosure of singular line of argument and conclusions declared by one mind to which all the world is expected to accede. `Instead of publication that says "This is how it is," we have a form of public performance of scholarship that asks "What if it were this way?" Publication of this sort becomes a form of continuing seminar, and the performance is interactive, dialogic, and self-correcting' (p. 136).The next generation of scholars - who will have learned `disorientation' of their assumptions, according to O'Donnell - may be the ones to actually listen to and learn from each other.

The question of consciousness is only hinted at but O'Donnell's stance here falls somewhat short of postmodern. Though he understands the way we remember is largely determined by our culture and communication system, he still accepts human nature, that is, human consciousness, as essentially stable and guided by the simple - and singular - motivations which drove our ancestors: `Technology will do what it always does: provide tools. Those tools may eventually shape their owners, but they are always assuredly instruments with which their owners may pursue their own aims' (p. 148). It may be that in an electronically communal, de-authored culture, individual memory will lose its egocentric center (which others have understood as the postmodern condition). In this scenario, individual identity may either become fragmented or become, as Ricoeur suggested, mutualized as `oneself as another'. If this is the case, then writing, codices, books, and the computer may do more than act as tools. They may instead have altered and be continuing to alter the nature of our self-awareness - human consciousness itself.

At first I couldn't imagine how someone specializing in Middle English History could have anything cogent to say about the Internet. To my surprise O'Donnell has a lot to say and he says it well in a tightly crafted book that takes the reader from the dawn of civilization to the present.

Contrary to another reviewer's comments, I found the predictive portions of the book well thought-out and insightful. With each past shift in information transmission, the world has undergone huge upheavals. We can expect no less as the paradigm shift of the Internet makes its impact felt in the decades to come.

Stay tuned...

This was an interesting book, but perhaps not what I expected. The subtitle "from papyrus to cyberspace" is a bit misleading, as the author tends to focus more on history - and how we as a culture have defined our historic traditions (why we equate Greeks and Romans to the exclusion of other pre-Renaissance traditions). Perhaps the author is just trying to build up our understanding of how history (particular literary history) is selected/manufactured, but I would much rather have seen more attention paid to "where are we -really-, and where are we -going" type of issues.

In his "Management Challenges for the 21st Century", Peter Drucker suggests that "Everybody today believes that the present Information Revolution is unprecedented in reducing the cost of, and in the spreading of, information-whether measured by the cost of a "byte" or by computer ownership-and in the speed and sweep of its impact. These beliefs are simply nonsense."

"Avatars of the Word" puts meat on these bones. For instance, it teaches that the flavor of modern opinions about digital preservation and authenticity-that these are better served by printed works on paper than by digital objects copied from place to place in computer networks-is hardly new. This has eerie similarities to 16th-century opinions about the transition from hand-written copies on parchment to versions printed on paper. Trithemius argued that paper would be short-lived and that hand-written versions were preferable for their quality and because they eliminated the risk that printed inauthenticities and errors would mislead people because all copies would be identical.

This book I found very enjoyable. It connects the past and the present in a sensible and imaginative way. The dream of the virtual library is an ancient one, the author tells us. O'Donnell is knowledgeable about world history and about his particular Irish heritage. I enjoyed reading the chapter for academics very much. I think that many peopel will find this book engrossing and educational. Bravo O'Donell!