Narrative (Dis)organization, natural philosophy, the weaving of words

Sadie Plant’s narrative—if it does, in fact, constitute one narrative—astounds me in the scope of its broad appeals to scientific history, theories of gender and sexuality, developments in cybernetic science and literature, and so many other tangential but almost always relevant tropes. Structurally, Zeroes and Ones presents a formatting and organization of content fundamentally unprecedented in the printed word. Hypertextual by nature, Plant’s narrative is spliced with quotations from hundreds of other sources, running the gamut from the theoretical to the historical to the scientific. I found these “blurbs” at once interesting, useful, and frustrating. The bolded blurbs were interesting mainly because they brought so many other texts to bear on the lines of argument and examples presented by Plant herself. She seamlessly incorporates other works into her narrative as a means of elucidating the intertextual connections between these works and her own work as well as between the bolded quotes themselves, shedding new light on old texts and historicizing her own words within the context of a larger field of study.

For this reason, Plant’s organizational schema was useful to me, allowing me to better understand her narrative in terms of the references that she used. In addition, the bold terms and quotations served to break the text into more palatable bits, an effect that itself reminded me of the computerization of knowledge and the transformation of books, theories, and equations into streams of informational code, zeroes and ones. While certainly useful and interesting, I found Plant’s organization frustrating in that I found myself at times not understanding either her references themselves or her reasons for invoking them at a specific time. For this reason, I would propose a hypertextual edition of the book, allowing readers to “click through” to each referenced person or work to evaluate the reference in its own context and determine how it comes to bear on Plant’s larger work. With this setup, the work of reading zeroes and ones might be more efficient and effective due to the ease of accessing “linked” information i.e. the bolded captions.

Focusing on the content of the book, I was intrigued by Plant’s weaving of the history of natural philosophy throughout her feminist account of cybernetics. At the time when Charles Babbage was building his adding machine, the word “science” had barely come into play, and Babbage himself was considered as much a “natural philosopher” as an engineer. What are the differences between science, natural philosophy, and engineering, and how do new ideas about cybernetics and computers conform to or call into question these categories?
I also found myself drawn to Plant’s discussion of textiles and the art of weaving, a skill that she equates with technology manufacturing as a site of widespread low-wage female employment. It seems that Plant is herself a weaver of words. Her work, viewed in these terms, can be seen as a complex patchwork of contemporary analysis stitched together by historical, scientific, and cultural themes that allow seamless transition between ideas of old and theory of new, between antiquated forms and new media.

I look forward to discussing how effective this work is, and whether people think that Plant’s organizational schema and unique style of “écriture féminine” are more or less helpful in advancing her ideas and creating questions and textual problems for analysis.