Academia & Ideas Posted by Oaktown Girl, 28 Mar 2007 07:07 am

Why Can’t We Do It Backwards?

By Aaron Barlow

One of Philip K. Dick’s worst books, Counter-Clock World has events moving backwards while our time sense moves forward. We periodically regurgitate food that takes shape on plates that we remove, scooping into pots and pans, etc. And, of course, we shove… er… well… up our… uh, you get the picture.

Not everything moving in a direction opposite of what we expect is necessarily inane, of course—but we do tend to disparage anything that is “backwards.” But it may be that we have it a bit wrong. Hell, if Ginger Rogers can be lauded for ‘doing everything Fred Astaire did, but in high heels, and backwards,’ maybe there’s something to be said for it.

Since the explosion of online publishing possibilities, from blogs to on-demand book creation, there’s been little sense of direction at all in Internet publishing as a whole. Everyone heads where they will, but most of us still look offline for “real” publishing—even if we write extensively for the Web.

Why is that?

One reason: we’ve no way to separate the wheat from the chaff without a great deal of work. And few of us want to do that work (Does that make a second reason? You decide).

Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard this before (what am I, living in the past?): there are no gatekeepers on the web, so we can’t really take it seriously. There’s just no way to know….

Let me back up a minute. It used to be that the publishing process and business were geared towards creating a final product, something that, once offered to the public, was set in, well, if not stone, then type. Changes could be made, but they were discouraged—expensive! So, focus was on getting that product to market in a shape as close to perfect as possible.

The same process is reflected in scholarly publication. Get it all done first. Only then do you unleash it on the public and bask in the glow of a job well done. Oh, and snarl at those miscreants who can’t understand the beauty of your work. No reason to listen to them: the work’s done. The peer reviewers loved it (or, at least, didn’t object too strenuously) and the editorial staff was behind it. Besides, no one wants to go back….

Though none of that makes any sense on the Web, where something “published” can be changed with a minimum of effort and expense, we still hang on to a process that moves “forward” in the old sense, from idea to research/writing/experiment to results to review to publication.

Why does publication have to be the end, the goal? Why can’t it be the start?

Why can’t we start with ideas, move to publication, to review, to research/writing/experiment in light of review to new or refined ideas and back to publication?

Yeah, I know: most people are scared to put too much out there without preparation. They don’t want to look like fools or, worse, find they are passed over for advancement because of something they wrote that proved not to pass muster. And who’s to do the reviewing? People who comment on blogs? Are you kidding? Just think of all the backbiting. Who the hell are they, anyway, who would comment? Can’t trust ‘em. Could be anyone. This isn’t even backwards, it’s ass-backwards.

Get thee behind me, Satan! You’re still back in a pre-Web mindset. On the Web, we’ve little sense of direction anyway—so let’s experiment! Let’s pretend that our goal isn’t to turn knowledge into publication—but to do it backwards, turning publication into knowledge!

How to make it work, you ask? I really don’t know—and I’ve thought about it, imagining ways of utilizing the Scoop structure with its levels of recommendation… or of just opening things up and flogging as many people to the site as possible, hoping some will be sparked to say something that sparks the author…. But I do know this: the weight of numerous comments, and their diversity, will improve almost any research endeavor.

Let’s stop turning our backs on the new possibilities. Let’s forward backwards!

Or something like that.

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Responses to “Why Can’t We Do It Backwards?”

  1. on 28 Mar 2007 at 8:27 am 1. JP Stormcrow said …

    It is interesting to note that to some extent computer software does follow a backwards trajectory similar to what you describe (Open Source software in particular.) After it becomes public - and is used (a potential significant difference) - it usually undergoes all manner of refinements, to fix bugs, add features and enhancements etc.

    Computer science giant Donald Knuth (and part of Stanford’s glory, in contrast to the shameful association with D’Souza which I highlighted yesterday), illustrated this very clearly once in a discussion of his typesetting program TeX. He describes how after he had the idea and thought he could complete the work on a sabbatical. Instead it took several years to finish a formal “specification” which Knuth described as being similar in length and complexity to a longish paper on computational theory. Now if it had been a paper on computational theory, it would have gone through peer review, had a few errors corrected and clarifications made, been published and maybe had few more minor revisions made and there it would sit as an artifact. Insead, it had to be actually made to run on a computer and then have its behavior “verified” by users, all of which led to years more work and a series of extensive modifications. Basically it became a series of versions which ultimately led to one of the most reliable and “correct” pieces of software in the history of computing.

    I agree that there is much to take advantage of in this flow. And of course the Wiki model does exploit this pattern. And to some extent subsequent discussions and spin-off papers (some by the same author(s)) in academia and others do as well [Consensus scientific opinion always has been a Wiki - just one with much attention paid to authorship of particular edits.]. I think the difference is that in traditional publishing (similar to art) the focus is on the one true artifact. On Wikis the artifact is entirely fluid, an earlier version (and the revision process) is there to be reconstructed, but it is certainly not the emphasis.

    I think that there certainly is much profit to be gained from moving some traditional publishing “flows” more towards software development/Wiki trajectories (and the Wiki may well be “private”.). However, I do think the Wiki idea needs to be augmented by some greater emphasis on particular revs, something like the software version model. So you would have say On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life v3.2 The biggest hurdle is cultural, - the assignment of credit/blame for traditional academic (and financial) status systems and IP constructs are a barrier. However, I do agree that there is potential for better, more efficient production and dissemination of knowledge with a mechanism like this, just as Open Source software has shown in the computing space. (I do think the Open Source software model will be be increasingly viewed as one of the truly revolutionary social ideas of the late 20th century.)

  2. on 28 Mar 2007 at 9:19 am 2. Jams said …

    Two things:

    1) Martin Amis wrote a book called Time’s Arrow that features an entity experiencing its host’s life in reverse. It came highly recommended. I’m glad to hear that it wasn’t as original an idea as I thought, because, well, I didn’t really like the book all that much. Too many pages wading through the protagonist bringing garbage into the house and extracting semen from various women. Apparently it all builds up to a “good part”, but I couldn’t endure it that long.

    2) A lot of writers do engage in a process much like what you’re describing. Workshops, friendly peer review relationships, and of course, the relationship between author and editor. These all have a write-it then rewrite-it sort of process, if not an outright rev-it and ship-it policy. Then there are authors like J.G. Ballard who seem to write the same book over and over again. And of course, the tradition of doing new versions of stories in different media, or sometimes plain old remakes. Wouldn’t it be odd if people wrote remakes of novels?

    Actually, Kathy Acker wrote a remake of Don Quixote , but I can’t really think of another example.

  3. on 28 Mar 2007 at 11:05 am 3. Thomas Allen said …

    As I recall, Michelle Malkin tried the “publish first, research later” approach.

  4. on 28 Mar 2007 at 11:59 am 4. JP Stormcrow said …

    As I recall, Michelle Malkin tried the “publish first, research later” approach.

    Well yes, there is that fine line between innovative and stupid.

  5. on 28 Mar 2007 at 12:46 pm 5. The Constructivist said …

    And I cross it every day at Citizen of Somewhere Else.

    Seriously, I think I stumbled upon Aaron’s backwards model last December when I started the blog to help me finish my book manuscript on Hawthorne. Although I’ll get more and better feedback when I get around to sending the chapters I’m working on to friends and colleagues, putting myself on a daily writing schedule and writing for multiple (mostly imaginary, thus far) public audiences rather than only for myself has helped me a lot. So I keep doing it. It helps that I already have tenure….

  6. on 28 Mar 2007 at 1:20 pm 6. spyder said …

    Why don’t we do it in the road?
    No one will be watching us.
    Why don’t we do it in the road?

    Perhaps the 3 Mustaphas 3 then?? Move forward in all directions, now.

    Then following JP’s referent, we have Beta versions of applications and programs to test and hack and mess with, so that they can become Alpha versions that are reliable and useful. Is going from Beta to Alpha hierarchially backwards, or forwards??? I can never tell.

    The city is outside pruning the trees today along the street. When they are done the trees won’t look any different in three years than they do now before they prune them. Round and round we go, all this work to stay in the same space place. This is not unlike trying to swim against a riptide, or against a littoral current; all this work to not go anywhere, indeed one of the best ways to work out. In fact it is such a good model, they now sell home workout pools in which you swim in the same spot for an hour.

    The faster you go, the rounder you get.

  7. on 28 Mar 2007 at 1:21 pm 7. Seattle said …

    I’ve found myself with a dilemma almost everytime I’ve walked into a bookstore in the last 10 years or so. I’m faced with a plethora of books. I check for new books by authors I’ve enjoyed in the past. If they haven’t produced anything new, I’m forced to consider other options. Lots of those. More times than not, I’ve left without buying and a couple of times I’ve bought books and then WISHED I’d left without buying. Last weekend I bit the bullet and bought a couple of Dresden File books on someone’s recommendation. Hang in there, this is all leading somewhere. I sat down and read the first. Several chapters in, I was wondering what editor had let some of this tripe pass into print. Key term being ‘editor’. Fast forward to the present state of writing on the internet-usually editor free. The United States prides itself on providing basic education to everyone who will stay in their school seats long enough to absorb it. So we’ve got lots of folks capable of writing, but writing something others want to read? Without the benefit of an editor? Do writers need editors, the second eye? I understand Stephen King tried going without for a few books and then returned to using an editor. Being as I find even the edited hard copy being turned out trying, plowing my way through myriad unedited personal triumphs of unedited crap? I’m sure I’m missing all sorts of literary jewels, but I’ve not got the time.

  8. on 28 Mar 2007 at 1:21 pm 8. Jams said …

    And the bible! Yes, of course. I hear people are always making the most wonderful refinements. Could we say the bible was writen backwards?

  9. on 28 Mar 2007 at 1:54 pm 9. James Killus said …

    From http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0003499.html

    From Switzerland Dada spread to Germany towards the end of the war, flourishing mainly in Berlin, Cologne, and Hanover. In Berlin Dada was strongly political, the leading figures including Raoul Hausmann and John Heartfield, two of the great pioneers of photomontage, which they used to attack militarism and nationalism. In Cologne the leading figure was Max Ernst, who organized a Dada exhibition at which hatchets were provided for visitors to smash the works on show. In Hanover Kurt Schwitters created a novel version of collage using everyday refuse.”

    From the Wikipedia:
    The Man Who Grew Young is a graphic novel written by Ishmael author Daniel Quinn and illustrated by Tim Eldred. It was released in 2001.

    Plot summary
    The Man Who Grew Young opens at a funeral, but we quickly realize all is not as it seems. Rather than burying a body, the funeral involves digging it up. The corpse is taken to the hospital, comes back to life, and recovers from illness. We quickly realize that we are seeing a world in which time flows backwards - people are exhumed from their graves unconscious, come out of comas and are sick, recover, have careers, turn into children, and are reunited with their mothers. This is a world in which time has reversed itself and is flowing backwards.

    This is the case for everyone except the story’s main character, Adam, who goes on living for centuries without being reunited with his mother. The mystery is why this is so, and as the book goes on, the main character gets closer and closer to understanding why he has not yet grown young and “died.”

    The Leiber Controversy
    The Man Who Grew Young is eerily similar to a 1947 Fritz Leiber story called “The Man Who Never Grew Young,” which was published in The Best of Fritz Leiber as well as several other places. However, considering the fact that both stories take the idea of time flowing backward as a premise, it’s not surprising that similarities should arise. For example, the clearest way to illustrate the fact that time is running “backward,” is to stage a funeral scene in which a dead person is unburied and subsequently restored to life, and such a scene occurs in both stories. In both stories, people go from being adults to being children to being infants, and then return into the womb; how else could it happen? In each story there must necessarily be a distinct point in history when the arrow of time reverses itself; but that point is not the same in the two stories. Since history is repeating itself in reverse order in each story, Europeans must necessarily “evacuate” the New World and return to Europe by the year 1492.

    I myself have written one novella, which I reduced to novellete size by editorial request, only to then expand it to novel length in order to make some more money off of it, as well as to apologize to the characters that were given short shrift in the original compression.

    There is nothing old under the nebular collapse created by a supernova shock wave.

  10. on 28 Mar 2007 at 1:54 pm 10. Turbonerd said …

    Jams spelled out, in large, friendly letters:

    Could we say the bible was writen backwards?

    Oooh, snap!

    Whether it was or not, one would think that 2,000 years would be enough time to finish the damn thing.

  11. on 28 Mar 2007 at 2:00 pm 11. Amanda French said …

    Jams, people do actually write “remakes” of novels all the time, all the time now that we’re postmodern, anyway. Here’s a very partial list:

    Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, remake of Jane Eyre
    Peter Carey, Jack Maggs, remake of Great Expectations
    Alice Randall, The Wind Done Gone, remake of Gone with the Wind. There was a lawsuit over this one.
    And I think we can include Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a play, remake of Hamlet, doncha know.

  12. on 28 Mar 2007 at 3:41 pm 12. christian h. said …

    I suppose Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the basis for the film of the same title? I enjoyed that one a lot. In fact, probably due to post-modernness it’s a “remake” in more than one way, in that one might very well say it’s Hamlet backwards.

  13. on 28 Mar 2007 at 3:59 pm 13. Jams said …

    Examples noted!

    There’s this weird twitching nerve at the back of my mind, telling me that everything is, to one degree or another, a reversioning of previous efforts. They range from outright plagiarism to obscure references buried deep within the midriff of a text, and everything in between. Maybe, collectively, we’re simultaneously editing toward a single grand work, and writing off into radical tangents for later editing. Sort-of a churning explosion of fusion and fission.

    Maybe the WAAGNFNP doesn’t have to choose between fission and fusion, but rather, should embrace a more synergistic obliteration.

  14. on 28 Mar 2007 at 5:16 pm 14. opit said …

    Ding.Ding! Jams seems to be thinking of the “million monkeys” scenario.Either that or “there’s nothing new under the sun”.

  15. on 28 Mar 2007 at 5:55 pm 15. JP Stormcrow said …

    … there’s nothing new under the sun

    Actually I think James got there first last in #9 with There is nothing old under the nebular collapse created by a supernova shock wave.

    Hmmm, we seem to be going in circles back to yesterday’s post. The disturbances on the Internet tubes are getting very powerful yesterday. Can they be started after it’s too early?

    Here’s Billy Preston debuting some relevant commentary.

  16. on 28 Mar 2007 at 7:46 pm 16. Jams said …

    No no. The great work will never be reached. That’s what’s so great about it.

  17. on 29 Mar 2007 at 8:17 am 17. black dog barking said …

    Not only do the InterTubes enable backwards doing (and forwards undoing of errata etc), they bring new potential opportunities of expression to the It of “Doing It Backwards”.

    Dr Knuth’s TeX (JP, #1) converts a NotePad editable stream of text into typeset printed pages. Handy for those few for whom the production of type is a problem, a wee subset of us. Didn’t seem like a big deal at the time either, especially as popular computing was moving away from text towards graphics-based user interfaces.

    But in many ways, Dr Knuth’s project to compute a typeset book from a formatted textual description is a model for the set of processes that deliver this pseudo-page to my computer monitor.

    Right-click and View Page Source (FireFox) (View Source, Internet Explorer; Source, Opera; ??, Safari) to see the text stream that your web browser program converts into this screen page. Now, imagine the typeset equivalent of right-clicking.

  18. on 29 Mar 2007 at 12:18 pm 18. spyder said …

    Wow. Billy Preston, and he isn’t even a Reverand yet. Gotta love doing the time warp again.
    And Amanda wrote: people do actually write “remakes” of novels all the time, all the time now that we’re postmodern, anyway.
    Last week, a month from now, while i am watching Tavis Smiley interview a famous (in the past perfect future) amurkin novelist about her latest book, she sayeth: “All of my novels are rewrites of the classic novels of the Great Books canon.” I say-said-will say to myself that this seems to be an interesting way around the intellectual property copyright protection argument.

  19. on 29 Mar 2007 at 8:46 pm 19. JP Stormcrow said …

    A few stray thoughts on this thread.

    It has been a while since I read it, but I would recommend Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery by Imre Lakatos for a readable yet profound discussion of how Mathematics actually “advances”, that stresses “backwards” and “open” elements of the process. (and besides, I think it is time for everyone to move on from misreading Kuhn to misreading Lakatos.)

    Now, imagine the typeset equivalent of right-clicking.

    Love the image. I had not thought about how TeX itself was an enabler and not just an exemplar. That is one of the compelling aspects of computing, how it all builds on explicit engineered layers. Looking backwards down the stack, it has that “It’s turtles all the way down feel” until, Poof! suddenly your past the logic gates into electronic properties of materials.

    I say-said-will say to myself that this seems to be an interesting way around the intellectual property copyright protection argument.

    Yes, A.A. Milne is so busted for ripping off the Disney IP Terrorism Bear, he definitely owes them big time. I’m glad he’s dead.