Obvious exits: window (to Trinity Tavern), beach (for a Copita), chat (to a Country French Salon).

Fred (ACW) materializes before your eyes.

Lanham (Electronic) says, "flowerishes." (35)

Burke (doodling) chuckles, "Dignity: the stuffing in a shirt."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "If it ain't broke, fix it."

Burke (doodling) grins, "It's bad magic to pick a fight, and sickening to avoid one"

Lanham (Electronic) says, "No formal cause without a material one."

Burke (doodling) giggles, "Pity the weeds in your garden all trying to make an honest living"

Eric (RhetNet Instagator) says, "Let passion be the achilles heel of grades."

Lanham (Electronic) says, "Cart and horse began to change places." (30)

Burke (doodling) raps out, "Rather think about the rules of rule than be the ruler"

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "Build the bridge while you're crossing it."

Weaver (keep the barbarians out!) says, "Language is sermonic."

Burke (doodling) and Lanham (Electronic) rofl then turn to you, waiting expectantly for you to toss in your own flowerish

Eric (academic calvinite) leaps to the occasion, crumpily:

anti-textbook

  anti-protocol

    anti-research

why anti-?

and why is Calvinball exactly what we're after?

Eric (academic calvinite) says, "Maybe I should start with why and get to why anti- Why attempt a web-based venue for collecting narratives about individual writing processes?"

Eric (academic calvinite) says, "Well, speaking for myself, it's worth doing because we can. This is a much maligned stance within the academy, a common basis, in fact, for urging caution in pursuing and incorporating/being-incorporated-by new technologies."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "Eric, m'man, you got the spirit.

Jester_Guest says, "We shouldn't do things just because we can!"

Fred (back in 1989) says, "Leap before you look."

Eric (academic calvinite) sighs at Jester_Guest and says, "How many times have we heard that often-unelaborated claim? Reflex leaping-without-looking is the kind of foolish thing foolish explorers do. It means accepting and even courting mistakes and failures. It means elevating learning as a higher goal than immediate success. It means accepting messiness in the interest of learning more. Wise scholars employ their prodigious critical thinking skills before proceeding."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "A planned web page, to paraphrase Hemingway, ain't no damn good. The world is full of people who plan things to ensure certainty (a futile quest but comforting to many folk). In reality, of course, plans are the stuff of argument, not what people really end up doing. We put forth plans to convince the faint of heart and the congenitally nervous."

                               +---------------------------+
Jester_Guest holds up a sign   | Prudence. Caution. Reason |
                               +---------------------------+

Eugene (Inculcator) says, "I'm with you. Most of my life I've been involved in groups looking to move forward, improve, expand, do new things -- they get all pumped up for progress, but when I come up with an idea, it's "Oh no, we can't do that. What will So-And-So think?" or some other reason not to consider something new. Geez, with an attitude like that, we'd never get anything done. I suppose I can understand why English departments are like that since dusty-musty is SOP, but it certainly shouldn't be that way with Computers and Writing. We're like the rolling stone; we gotta roll."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "People who actually do things don't do plans. They do something else that spins forth from complex levels within them. They "know" what's right without having to cut and slice up an imaginary future and present it on a tray. The "plans" they put forth for public consumption are like highway billboards for what they would have done anyway, almost unconsciously."

Eric (academic calvinite) proposes flowerishes of his own, counter statementing Jester_Guest with his own sign.

   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
   *  I want to help develop this writing process stew   *
   *  project because I want to see what happens.        *
   *                                                     *
   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Eric (academic calvinite) elaborates, "anti- is a tool of the foolish explorer, a way to get some leverage for the journey. It's a launching pad for journeys fueled by curiosity."

Jester_Guest .oO( I thought that was my job)

Eric (academic calvinite) pastes a series of slides:

 -------------------------------------
| "I shall use 'edification' to stand |     Richard
| for this project of finding new,    |
| better, more interesting,   --------------------------------------
| more fruitful ways of      | "Edifying discourse is *supposed* to |
| speaking."                 | be abnormal, to take us out of our   |
 ----------------------------| old selves by the power of strange-  |
                             | ness, to aid us in becoming new      |
       Rorty                 | beings."                             |
                              --------------------------------------

Textbooks |_____\       These things, seems to me, are mechanisms for
Protocols |     /       defining limits, for closing systems in order...

 ---------------------------------------------------------
| (Edupage 25 July 96)                                    |
| SYSTEM TESTING BEGINS WHEN SYSTEM IS TESTED             |
| Complaining about the computer system that failed in    |
| the opening days of the Olympics to provide timely and  |
| accurate information about competitive events, journal- |
| ists asked Billy Payne, the president of the Atlanta    |
| Olympics Organizing Committee, "Why wasn't the tech-    |
| nology system tested?" Payne replied that "there is     |
| no way to duplicate the totality of the Olympic         |
| condition before the start of the games."  (Atlanta     |
| Journal-Constitution Olympic City p34)                  |
 ---------------------------------------------------------


                           -------------------------------------
Steve Krause:             | "A protocol, after all, is just a   |
                          | method for doing something, the     |
 -----------------------------------   "rules" of research; why |
| "Wouldn't that more or less be    |  would you want to re-    |
| the "Calvinball" of research      |  search without any pro-  |
| (making it up as you go along)?   |  tocol at all?            |
 ----------------------------------- ---------------------------

Eric (academic calvinite) says, "Calvinball *is* a protocol, even if it's an anti-protocol protocol. It might be the most appropriate primary rule under which to operate if what we want to do is *see what happens* as opposed to testing a hypothesis by pitting control results against variable results. Ya need protocols if proof is what you're after."

Eric (academic calvinite) says, "But we don't *have* to be after proof, do we?"

Beth () says, "I'm hoping that we will be edified by this experience. Maybe it won't be broadly applicable to anyone other that for those who directly participate, but we don't necessarily have to have as our goal changing the world. We don't really have to prove anything. 4 out of 5 dentists may recommend Crest, but how many dentists did you ask? Even the best empirical proof has its limits. Four out of five of *us* may come to see things in similar ways and may thus chose to change *our* practices -- that's important, too. " Four out of five of us" carries some persuasive weight, too."

Jester_Guest (resisting as usual) says, "So is this a cop out? where we don't hafta evaluate methodology cause it's all just too, too relative?"

Beth () says, "I think that this experience will help us to evaluate our methodology. It certainly isn't a cop-out."

Eric (academic calvinite) says, "We could just be after a new opportunity to edify and entertain ourselves. It's not a better or worse goal than proof, just a different one, one that employs different methods. It's an approach that is peripheral to the main business of scholarship (which is mostly about *knowing*) and maybe to the main business of pop culture (which is mostly about *amusement*). That's OK. The periphery is where it's at if what you want is relatively unfettered pursuit of curiosity."

Mick (eating tabouleh) says, "It seems to me that whenever we Computers-and-Writing folk start working on big projects that involve theory, someone hollers "hey, make sure we have a practical use for this!" and whenever we dare to create something with practical hands-on applications, that same someone (or her officemate) will then holler "Yeah, sure, but how do you justify this theoretically?"

Jester_Guest (facetious) sings to eir students, passes out crayons and teaches em to juggle. That otta do it. Yesiree bob.

Beth () says, "As I hope I've made clear, I am not in favor of "why ask why" approaches. A "study" -- empirical and objective and/or narrative and subjective -- in our field should lead to some kind of answer to "why." As far as I can see, our practice has too long been governed by a failure to ask why. Your hypothetical examples above ("we could sing them songs, make them play with crayons, teach them to juggle," etc. "in the hope that it might improve prewriting or outlook on life in general) gets to the heart of the matter for me. Why we make any pedagogical choice should not be so that it leads to better pre-writing (or writing, or revising) but that the pre-writing, writing, revising experience can lead to better experiences of singing songs, playing with crayons, juggling, going to the park, etc. -- what you call "life in general."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "I would like to see people in our field not worry so much about certainty, or silly measures of proof and accountability. "Proof" is just another way that people who control the criteria of "proof" have of asserting their authority and, usually, sustaining the status quo. The people who really change things ignore the prevailing idea of proof, or the prevailing idea of accomplishment, and go out and do what they know is valuable activity."

Beth () says, "It follows then that we question writing itself and the role it plays. Is our "end" writing, or is writing a "mean to an end," some other end? Actually, I don't think our "end" is better experience of juggling or playing with crayons or singing songs. I think our end is a rhetorical end, one that transcends the written word. I think it's the quality of communication, and quality of communication directly affects one's experience of "life in general" insofar as the social/civic dimension of life is where we're alive much of the time."

Mick (eating tabouleh) says, "The coolest thing about working in hypertext is that the theory is "always already" co-happening with the practical application."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "Of course they make a lot of mistakes, and, joyfully, such people tend to shrug at failure, allowing disappointment no dominion. They have this feeling, this really strong feeling, almost impossible to articulate, that mistakes are the friendly seeds of eventual success."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says,"Bureaucrats writhe at such a concept. Unlike us, they are terrified at the prospect of the future, wanting to fix the future into some kind of cattle chute. We, I think, feel we can handle whatever comes down the pike.

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "There's an element of real heroism in what people on rhetnet and acw and kairos do. We all spit on John Wayne, of course, but I've almost accidently seen a few of his movies on cable recently, and he never ever had a plan. Our kinds of heroes, like Kevin Costner and Tom Cruise and Robert Deniro and Al Pacino -- they always have plans, and we can see it in their intelligent eyes, and glory in how their plans play out to their inevitable finale."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "But old John, he just did what he knew was right, slouching through to victory. His persona was silly and his politics foolish, but he had an intuitive understanding of what gets things done, at least in America."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "And that is confidence and courage, both of which English majors lack in spades. We harangue ourselves to death, splashing about in words and abstractions, trying to pump up our spirits to actually doing something, while others are simply making things happen."

Jester_Guest wonders if *e should just not bother to teach writing then.

Beth says, "Again, beware of inferring from my desire to critique our practice and to ask "why" teach writing that I don't think we should teach writing."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "Bogey, an alter-ego preferable to big John, was no good at being noble, at least in the Victor Lazlo sense, but he had an action-ethic equal to the nobler guys, and somehow -- and "somehow" is the key -- made good things happen."

Beth says, "Like Eric, I don't know "where" our endeavor might lead, but I feel less in need of assurance on that score than others may feel. I think we should move forward with the kind of spirit that says to us "let's see where this leads." Once we "get there" we can critique our journey, decide whether or not it was worthwhile after all. I'm interested in what this may reveal in the wide-angle kind of way Eric suggests, distortions and all."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) says, "I don't understand why people don't try exciting things more, especially intelligent and educated people. They act as if they have something to lose. They only thing academics have to lose is a culture that does not value them. We spend so much time protecting a status quo that really doesn't like us."

Fred (metaphor mixmaster) decides it is time for a sign:

	+--------------+
	|   We   are   |
        |    weird     |
        +--------------+

Before Eric (RhetNet Instagator) runs off to do more InstaWebigating, he plants a sign. Grinning jesterly, he invites you to add to the invention stew-pot

Jester_Guest . o 0 ( I thought that was my job)
Jester_Guest does *eir job by holding up a sign, inviting you to...

Or flower away on elists

Is it plagiarism? or is it Memorex? by thread

MOO with the TechnoRhets at Tuesday Cafe

Netoric's Tuesday Cafe

Obvious exits: path (to Conversation Foothills), window (to Trinity Tavern), beach ( for a Copita), tete a tete (to a Country French Salon), garden (to Reflections Onna MOO), study (to A Tale of Some Teachers), work rooms (to MOO && Theory),