Hayles' book is a little tricky in terms of use because, as she states, the
book ultimately leaves the reader with a question, and more to the point,
it is a carousel of ideas bridging a lot of different topics,
bringing them into the conversation of scholarship in the digital age.
However, despite these difficulties, the distinct divisions listed in my
synopsis, provide a framework for potential uses.
The ecological portion of the book, as mentioned before, is a good section
for educators to read, as it provides plenty of discourse on the changing
humanities, especially as it relates to different kinds of readings.
Educators will find the studies she discusses on hyper reading fascinating;
in particular, the way she combats those who point to hyper reading as the
ruination of our minds. Furthermore, the first three chapters could serve a
graduate student coming to the field of the humanities well, given that it
paints a specific portrait of tensions in scholarship. And extending higher
up the food chain, administrators might also want to turn their attention to
these sections because their awareness is almost more important in shaping their
institutions and educational practices for times to come.
The technogenesis portion of the book is a little more complex and provides
more of the backbone to her call for a collaborative approach to the humanities,
as this is where she shows not only the necessity of change, but the awareness
that change is already happening due to our hyper reading culture. This section
provides strong theory conversation that scholars in the fields of education,
digital humanities, history, literature and rhetoric may need to side with, side
against or tweak as they work on their own projects discussing multimodality and
text interpretation in the digital age. Furthermore, this section of her book
accomplishes two specific tasks that these scholars may find interesting: an
analysis of TOC, a digital novel, which is essentially a close reading made with
digital awareness, and a comprehensive history of telegraph coding, filtered
through the theory of technogenesis. Scholars with specific interests in these
areas may find it necessary to examine her claims.
The database portion of her text is aimed more specifically at scholars
in the digital humanities, history and literature. Embedded in this section
is a discussion of two digital texts, where Hayles combines close reading
techniques with digital awareness as she did with TOC; however, a key turn is
her focus on databases and narratives, discussing the differences between data
and narrative and the reason that narrative will not go away. In this light,
this section takes on a large claim made by some in the digital age that
narrative is going by the wayside. She also discusses spatial reasoning in order
to validate her claims. Scholars working specifically with databases will most
likely find these sections helpful, whereas other scholars
may find these chapters hard to follow.
All of the above mentioned uses are only the major ways of utilizing this book.
The comprehensive nature of Hayles' writing makes it incredibly hard to
discern every function her book might have. Therefore, many different
individuals might find her text interesting for a plethora of different reasons.
Overall, I think readers are not going to leave the book asking themselves the
same question that Hayles believed she was asking.
Instead, Hayles' book implores the reader to dive further into the areas it covered.
Furthermore, it is a tough book to recommend a comprehensive read.
After the first three chapters, the level of interest narrows to specific
content that many may find outside of the scope of their study or too
hard to grasp. While the premise that she takes, to combine digital and print
reading methods and apply them to digital texts is compelling, her demonstrations
are less than convincing. Part of this limitation, however, is due to the fact
that her book is a traditional print text. The insertion of images aids in her
discussion of digital texts,
but it falls short when wrapping around the full capacity of digital text.
Another aspect of her book that makes it difficult to recommend is its sheer
scope. The book has three clear divisions, but within those divisions are a
plethora of other topics that this review could not begin to scratch. In its
entirety, Hayles' book felt like a series of papers on related topics, and the
continual signposting and chapter summarizing felt like an
attempt to convince the reader that
all of it did belong together into one book.
The only thing I can say for certain is that this book is not for the casual
reader.