User:Kim/writing/Thesis outline draft (2)

This outline draft refers to the e-reader-server project proposal

step 1

1. What do you WANT to write?

[What will the text be about? (thesis). What do you want to explore? Be clear about HOW you want to tell your story.]

I aim to map a field of writing technologies an how they create power imbalances and authority of text (needs an example/ more specific) and draw a connection to practices of community and solidarity through the practice of self hosting a server on a device that is naturally a reader. This text will be written in close proximity with the server by interweaving writing and scripting.

2. Outline three key issues you want to explore.

1. low tech server, self hosting, repurposing hardware
2. technologies of text (authority, sabotage?)
3. community of texts

step 2

Intro (what is this text about?)

(what is my starting point?)

KI 1 = self hosting, low tech

This chapter will lay out the practice of self hosting as a political act, outline the politics and importance of repurposed hardware and low-tech approaches, adjacent to permacomputing and right to repair ideas and then move to the socio-technical qualities of the e-reader device.

KI 2 = technologies of text

Under this ambiguous title I imagine to examine how a) how reading and writing are themself technologies and b) how and what technologies we use to read, write and produce textual artifacts (text editors, telex machine proximity to terminal ...) and how these technologies(?) cultivate authority and feed into power dynamics. (I am lacking more specific reasoning here. An example I can think of is the Hollerith tabulation machine by IBM, a device used by the nazis to target and categorize groups of people into encampments and death. but maybe this is a bit too much of a leap. Possibly it could go more in to a direction of proprietary information in state and institution)

I would like to do this along the example of different (hypothetical) reading (and book keeping) devices such as e-reader (present), ancient multi-scroll, library of babel (?) .

An important emphasis: writing is reading is writing:

• writing / reading computers: Wiki Quote about Software with an attitude that favors writing over reading . "For a computer to read is to write elsewhere"
• writing / reading: "the true site of writing is reading" , "If every reading produces a text anew then the production of a text is the fundamental work of reading"

what does this say about us / our technologies? Possibly, the common distinction of both holds up hierarchy between writer and reader and therefore fosters capitalist models of authorship that treat knowledge as commodity

KI 3 = communities of text

from pirate care I am thinking of these two principles, which I would liek to use as starting points for this chapter:

1. Critical usership (technology)
2. Collective learning (knowledge production and circulation)

Communities of text acknowledge the interrelatedness of texts through referencing of other texts and ideas. This becomes apparent on the idea of feminist citation: outlined by Lauren Fournier as "mode of intertextual intimacy and identification" and after Sara Ahmed, "as a rather successful reproductive technology" . But communities of text also include the making of community around and through text, such as the practice of self-teaching/ self help through manuals.

Communities of text live and circulate through piracy, commons, shadow libraries-, and infrastructures (Harney and Moten: our relationship to the institution must be a criminal one ). Sabotage, as a strike against infrastructure poses a form of resistance against violent regimes that infest our means of communication, organization and preservation.

Highlighting the importance of resilience (of systems, documents), while pirate resources are ephemeral and urgent, I would like to draw a connection here to formats like e-pub because they are self contained and offline, but work with the technologies of the web.