P-wire

Now these practices are seen as the precursor of generative computing and digital poetry — that is, as an early form of database-driven, user-generated work. But I love the thought of more deeply and meaningfully historicizing these practices, stretching back to the commonplace cut-ups of the early modern period. And earlier. On the surface, there probably isn’t a lot in common between a crazy pomo heroine addict like Burroughs and a finicky, seemingly obsessive-compulsive English lawyer like Caesar living at the turn of the seventeenth century. But think about it: they both lived in increasingly mediated cultures; they both consumed a lot of media in and for their work; they both dealt with information overload. It’s not so strange that they both (or rather both of their media cultures) would find their way the same strategy for traversing, consuming and digesting the glut of textual information they had to deal with on a daily basis. The printed book comes to us as a manufactured (and now industrialized) object; it seems only human to want to personalize it, customize it.