Typology and Nostalgia

[Mole]

Here I am on the Typology site yet my immune system keeps going off. What's going on?

I think the answer's simple. Typology is a form of categorization. And categorization derives from print and the printing press. Yet we have left the printing press behind and we are now communicating electronically, instantly.

A book starts off with a word, then a sentence, then a paragraph, then a chapter, then a book, then a genre and then a library.

Books train us to think in categories for books are categorized. Hey, in a library what is the first thing you look at - the Category.

Categories are ordered and linear while the electronic media are instantaneous. So categories aren't much use in the electronic media.

And this I think is where I get my immune response from - we are using an electronic medium but thinking in terms of literacy and books.

So Typology is a form of nostalgia. And Typology is charming simply because we all understand it.

The problem is that Typology promises us understanding of ourselves, but the price we pay for being Typologists is that we are blind to what we are doing.

It's a peculiar thing that we prefer the comfort of nostalgia to the excitement of reality.

 

[poppy]

I think people with a preference for thoughtfulness and imagination will always enjoy nostalgia. Those of us that frequent internet forums are indeed a peculiar breed of people.

Victor I find your posts more enjoyable as time goes on, maybe I'm just getting used to you

 

[phthalocyanine]

probably the insanity slowly seeping in

 

[Sniffles]

MBTI is a religion fuh fuh fuh......

 

[Mole]

Victor I find your posts more enjoyable as time goes on, maybe I'm just getting used to you

How lovely you are finding my posts more enjoyable. I write them for enjoyment. And enjoyment shared is enjoyment doubled.

And my mother would tell me that most things depend on what you are used to, so I am pleased you are getting used to me.

I must admit it took a while before I got used to me, so you have stolen a march on me.

It's nice to hear from you.

Victor.

 

[speculative]

I think the answer's simple. Typology is a form of categorization. And categorization derives from print and the printing press. Yet we have left the printing press behind and we are now communicating electronically, instantly.

I *think* I get your gist, but I'm not sure. Doesn't categorization stem from language itself? Wouldn't something that defies categorization have literally no name?

And this I think is where I get my immune response from - we are using an electronic medium but thinking in terms of literacy and books.

Every forum I have ever visited has been organized like a library. There is a main topic that the forums centers around, with sub-forums that focus on subtopics of that main topic. Sometimes there are sub-sub-topics, and so on. Posts are moved to their proper category by mods (librarians) if they are posted in the wrong sub-forum. Or, am I misunderstanding and you're arguing that such structures should not be create online as they are no longer relevant to digital mediums?

The problem is that Typology promises us understanding of ourselves, but the price we pay for being Typologists is that we are blind to what we are doing.

So, we create type categories out of a longing for the sensation that nostalgia brings, and this blinds us to the fact that we are categorizing? I do not see that this is the case on these forums...

 

[Poki]

Isnt stereotyping a form of categorization that we all must fight to some extent because we all seem to break the stereotypes in some form or fashion.

Dont we all seem to fight some part of Typology because of stereotyping or categorization? Maybe this is your immune system being thrown out of wack or maybe this is what you were getting at.

 

[Mole]

I *think* I get your gist, but I'm not sure. Doesn't categorization stem from language itself? Wouldn't something that defies categorization have literally no name?

Every forum I have ever visited has been organized like a library. There is a main topic that the forums centers around, with sub-forums that focus on subtopics of that main topic. Sometimes there are sub-sub-topics, and so on. Posts are moved to their proper category by mods (librarians) if they are posted in the wrong sub-forum. Or, am I misunderstanding and you're arguing that such structures should not be create online as they are no longer relevant to digital mediums?

So, we create type categories out of a longing for the sensation that nostalgia brings, and this blinds us to the fact that we are categorizing? I do not see that this is the case on these forums...

Ask yourself - why isn't the telephone organized like a library?

And you can see it with Google. Google isn't organized like a library.

A library depends on print while the electronic media require no library.

This site is organized like a library because that is what we are used to.

Print has led us to linear, sequential thinking and ineluctably to the library.

Whereas in the electronic media everything happens all at once.

Think of the telephone. It would be ridiculous to think in linear sequential terms. Ring me by typing shortus into Skype and put it to the test.

 

[Mole]

Isnt stereotyping a form of categorization that we all must fight to some extent because we all seem to break the stereotypes in some form or fashion.

Dont we all seem to fight some part of Typology because of stereotyping or categorization? Maybe this is your immune system being thrown out of wack or maybe this is what you were getting at.

I think it is more fundamental. Print gave rise to libraries. While the electronic media gives rise to all-at-once tribalism.

 

[NewEra]

Don't understand the relationship between typology and nostalgia. I'm lost.

 

[Stanton Moore]

Ask yourself - why isn't the telephone organized like a library?

And you can see it with Google. Google isn't organized like a library.

A library depends on print while the electronic media require no library.

This site is organized like a library because that is what we are used to.

Print has led us to linear, sequential thinking and ineluctably to the library.

Whereas in the electronic media everything happens all at once.

Think of the telephone. It would be ridiculous to think in linear sequential terms. Ring me by typing shortus into Skype and put it to the test.

Sequential thinking led the human mind to the library, not the other way around.
Google is the front end for databases, which are repositories of information, similar to libraries.

 

[Mole]

Don't understand the relationship between typology and nostalgia. I'm lost.

There are three cultures - the spoken culture, the print culture and the electronic culture.

Perhaps you are confused because it looks like we are communicating in the print culture - after all there is print in front of us. Only it is not print it is etext, electronic text.

If we were using this medium for voice or video and voice, perhaps you would be less confused.

We are all highly trained in literacy here and so we are only comfortable with something that looks like text. Etext only looks like text.

We are moving into a new electronic spoken culture from print. So it is only natural we should look back with nostalgia to print.

 

[Mole]

Sequential thinking led the human mind to the library, not the other way around.
Google is the front end for databases, which are repositories of information, similar to libraries.

The content of the television is the theatre. The content of the telegraph is print. The content of any medium is the previous medium. It's important not to confuse the content of any medium with the medium itself.

So print is merely the content of the electronic media.

And in the same way libraries are the content of the electronic media.

And if I understand it, electronic databases are not organized like libraries. It's more like random access memory. Google is not categorized. You just type in, "Marshal McLuhan", and you get a hundred hits. Nothing like a library.

Focusing on the content of any medium is like driving forward looking in the rear vision mirror.

 

[Poki]

Don't understand the relationship between typology and nostalgia. I'm lost.

I dont understand the connection between his immune system and nostalgia. He said typology triggered a response in his immune system and the reason for the immune system response ended up being linked to nostalgia.

When you write how do you think? Did your thought start with nostalgia or typology? Did you try to link Typology to nostaligia or nostalgia to typology or did you start with one of the 2 and see where it took you or do you start in the middle? Just trying to figure out your thought pattern and if its linear, scattered, start in the middle and work out, start at both ends and work in, its interesting.

 

[Poki]

There are three cultures - the spoken culture, the print culture and the electronic culture.

Perhaps you are confused because it looks like we are communicating in the print culture - after all there is print in front of us. Only it is not print it is etext, electronic text.

But if you take it to the fundemental prupose we have voice which we hear and print which we read. Whether electronic or paper we still process it the same, there is no different process we must go through to consume electronic text vs printed text, it is just a matter of how it is stored and retrieved.

 

[Athenian200]

So, Victor, I'm curious...

Do you believe that electronic media and the tribal village is inherently superior to the literacy/library way of thinking in all ways? Or would you agree that sequential thinking and literacy is a better way of dealing with some things? I can't really see how taking away the abstraction of text is better.

I can read a lot faster than I can listen, and there's a certain security in having as much time to respond to something as I want, rather than being put on the spot and having to use my own voice rather than weaving a series of symbols into an interesting shape.

 

[Mole]

So, Victor, I'm curious...

Do you believe that electronic media and the tribal village is inherently superior to the literacy/library way of thinking in all ways? Or would you agree that sequential thinking and literacy is a better way of dealing with some things? I can't really see how taking away the abstraction of text is better.

I can read a lot faster than I can listen, and there's a certain security in having as much time to respond to something as I want, rather than being put on the spot and having to use my own voice rather than weaving a series of symbols into an interesting shape.

I don't think it is a question of superiority. I think the content of a medium is the previous medium. For instance, that theatre is the content of television.

So it is not a question of choosing one medium over another. All are coterminous, nestled inside each other like russian dolls.

 

[Mole]

But if you take it to the fundemental prupose we have voice which we hear and print which we read. Whether electronic or paper we still process it the same, there is no different process we must go through to consume electronic text vs printed text, it is just a matter of how it is stored and retrieved.

I think the process we go through changes us. And each medium changes us in a different way.

The print medium creates the literate individual and the electronic medium creates the etribe.

We create the medium then the medium creates us.

In fact the medium is the message.

You can find this beautifully set out in Marshall McLuhan's book, "Understanding Media".

 

[speculative]

This site is organized like a library because that is what we are used to.

This is an interesting point. In 1995 I used Yahoo!'s category links to find web sites of interest, rather than using a search engine, because there were so few web sites at that time. That was definitely organized like a library. However, Google's page consists mainly of the search engine box and does not feature such categorized links.

If this forum consisted of only a search engine box, I think that it would provide little value. What would I do, type in "MBTI" and get a link to every single thread in the forum? How would they be categorized then, by number of posts in the thread, number of times a search contained the thread as a result, etc.?

The value of a search engine box is that you already know what you are looking for, down to the level of detail where you can put "error code #1449595E" into quotes and find that it is an error in version 1.04a of your audio drivers that is making your video card create artifacts and that if you apply video card driver 3.44a patch it will fix it. If I just type in "computer audio" I will get all sorts of results; in fact, I will get so many that it will be nearly impossible to decide between them. There is no context provided for the results, except that Yahoo! flags which ones may contain viruses or malware.

The nostalgia I have is not for print; instead, the nostalgia I have is for the mid-90's world wide web. (It's not even called that anymore; I suppose it hasn't been that for a long time.) The mid-90's world wide web was not print, and it was not the library. It was chunks of information and thought contained in web sites that were just as relevant in relation to the sites they linked to, and were linked from, as they were in and of themselves. (They were sometimes referred to as "web rings," and you can probably still find some of these in operation although their potency has faded as few use them in this day & age.)

The Internet of today is more like the library; Google is the card catalog index where I must know exactly what I am looking for first in order to be able to find it, rather than proceeding organically through a series of interconnected links within an area of context. I prefer the world wide web over a search engine box. A world wide web is created by users based on the connectedness of concepts presented in context. A web has, and provides, context while a search engine box provides no context nor is it capable of doing so. What does a search engine box provides do? It provides ad space. Google ads are everywhere; this is why Google has won the "search box" wars and Yahoo! had to allow the partnership with Microsoft just to capture 30% of the search engine box audience. (Google has most of the other 70%.)

I've seen the ads for the new MS search engine Bing on TV lately. Perhaps I will try that out to see if it can provide context as it purports it can, or if it only provides grander ad space for marketing...

 

[Athenian200]

I don't think it is a question of superiority. I think the content of a medium is the previous medium. For instance, that theatre is the content of television.

So it is not a question of choosing one medium over another. All are coterminous, nestled inside each other like russian dolls.

Oh! Yeah, I see. So the Internet contains television, television contains theater...

Recording contains the band, the Interent contains recording.

The Internet could also contain books.

So basically, the Internet compiles most all of the previous mediums into a single place. Fascinating. No wonder it's so attractive to minds like mine.