User:Kim/writing/Thesis outline draft

This outline draft refers to the GitPub 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 write a text that is concise, yet playful in its form. It will be about the role of meta data in (post) digital publishing practices. I will explore historical developments in the production of text by looking at early forms of markup such as marginalia and the pecia system , different digital characteristics for instance source code comments or protocols and will finally propose version control software for (collaborative, experimental) writing and making public. The meta data of the present text is a crucial part of the text and the process of writing itself.

2. Outline (three) key issues you want to explore

1. hiddeness (veiled, closed source, seamless) in present day technology/ interfaces but also in the sense of invisible labor (in writing, rendering, reading?)
2. paratexts
3. labor
4. how do we publish together but apart from platforms and bloated applications? or
5. infrastructure (?)

step 2

Intro (what is this text about?)

In this text I will examine the role of meta data in publishing practices through the lense of invisibility and separation of labor. I will look at historical developments in the production of text through early forms of markup such as marginalia and the pecia system and consider different digital characteristics for instance source code comments or protocols

Later I will turn towards specifically including meta data in digital/hybrid publishing projects, not only as means to an end of production but making them part of the text, the body of work at hand.

In the last part of the introduction I will define meta-data (or what ever terminology I come up with for this), and a contextualize my interests in-, and wider relevance of this text.

Key issue 1 = chapter 1 (invisibility)

ambiguity of visibility: its not always be good to be visible / legible (to whom? / whose benefit?)

1. include "the right to opacity" bc visibility must be understood contextually. could "right to opacity" also have implications for this specific technology / practice of publishing i am discussing?
2. write about being legible, bc meta data is additional text (for whom?) write about machine readability and indexing / scraping

invisibility of 'software' and todays invisibility of interface , culture of compliance (resulting from prescriptive technologies) – todays user condition (vs "programmer")

also had some ideas about interfaces . whats their role here?, bc thats how we see (inside) and interact with a computer?

Key issue 2 = chapter 2 (Paratexts)

Paratexts: historically conceptualized for print / literature (include page numbers, headers, pre-and post faces, footnotes and other marginalia ...) - possibilities for digital paratext?, What implications do paratexts hold for present day digital / hybrid publishing? >> "paratext mediates between text and reader", what mediates relation between text and user?

Paratext is, rather, a threshold, (p 2) A Zone not only of transition but also transaction (p 2)

KI 3 = Labor

labor: holistic- vs prescriptive technologies and division of labor (here also: using early markup "pecia system" enabled division of labor in print production) resulting in opaque processes and culture of compliance, refer to php key text and its point about server side writing and invisible labor

Key issue 4 = chapter 4 (publishing otherwise) (infrastructures)

i feel this chapter should contain more of my own stand point / towards (end) thesis
why am i writing about this?

• pushing against fragmentalization of: user / developer, against hidenness / black box of today technology,
• accepting notion of hidden, hides non canon histories and voices in technology, hides uncertainty and inconsistency
• highlighting that writing technologies (print and digital) have contiguous history and are not opposed to another

away from proprietary, bloated platforms and applications. highlight necessity of agency and collective autonomy both in the creation process and over public objects. discuss adjacent tools and attempts (octomode etc). making the hidden visible as possible breaking with closed of/ invisibility discussed in 1 - present git and version control. excurs into history and version control, socio-cultural embededdness of git, present gitpub.
maybe the last chapter could also have a rather infrastructural focus through which we arrive at the git software and gitpub? what would my take or understanding of infrastructure be in this context? it does relate to paratext in the sense of enabling circulation, it also mediates a relationship/ action, just as infrastructure does

• git is interesting bc it is connected to labor of programming (especially the writing of commit -m) it carries quite a lot of invisibility in itself

the program is part of the writing

making apparent software, process, how we write but also are written by technology

Conclusion

• meta-data in publishing as a possibility for resisting (invisibility)