Information Prose :: A Manifesto in 47 Points :: Version 1.0

by Jeremy P. Bushnell, jeremy@invisible-city.com

26. Our daily thoughts appear whole only within contexts which run deep and often go unthought: were anyone to inspect the running ticker of our mental dialogue, much of it would seem to be fragments. Writing which purports to be interested in the complexity of other human beings must reflect this.

27. Incorporating uncited or decontextualized fragments and samples into a creative work brings a certain level of noise into the signal. This admittedly runs the risk of creating confusion in the mind of the audience.

28. The initial communication of new information always creates some confusion. But that confusion indicates promise to certain recipients.

29. There is no evidence that what audiences want most from a creative work is the clear transmission of simple information. Audiences will accept high levels of noise in a creative work if the creative work is achieving other effects or satisfying other needs.

30. "[We take] the text, with its unreliable transmission of information, to be a component of a larger system, that of cultural circulation, in which what seemed like a dysfunction at a first level of communication would turn out to be a positive element contributing to the complexity of the larger system." —William Paulson, The Noise of Culture

31. To remove it from a creative context for a moment, consider: one reason meeting new people is appealing is because they may know things that you don’t know, or they may understand things in a different way from you. The process of communicating with someone who thinks differently from you (because their thoughts are defined by different contexts) carries with it a necessary degree of noise, but the process of translating that noise into new meaning can be immensely rewarding, intellectually, emotionally, and creatively.

32. "[Disorder and noise] can become information to us, can bring us to more subtle forms of understanding, because it is the unexpected, the radically different to which we can respond only because we are already complex beings capable of yet more complexity." —William Paulson, The Noise of Culture

33. Experiencing characters in a work of fiction should be rewarding in that same fashion. Reducing the noise in the signal simplifies out human difference for the sake of accessibility and creates work that is pleasant but does not bring us to new understanding.

34. Information prose writers must write for an audience that finds noise and its attendant uncertainty stimulating. Much contemporary writing neglects them.

35. "[Young people] are more tolerant of being out of control, more tolerant of that exploratory phase where the rules don’t all make sense and few goals have been clearly defined. The hard work of tomorrow’s interactive design will be to explore that tolerance — that suspension of control — in ways that enlighten us." —Steven Johnson

36. Currently, the writers doing the most work towards some of information prose’s goals are hypertext writers.

37. Hypertext writers are not necessarily information prose writers, and not all information prose writers will seek to be hypertext writers, but hypertext has merits that should be considered by writers of information prose.

38. Some hypertexts consist solely of navigable webs of interlinked fragments. Some information prose writers may find this approach fruitful. But hypertextuality need not be incompatible with more traditional narrative. Utilizing hypertext does not mean that writers need to relinquish the many obvious merits of a linear story; the comfort of a prescribed order, of a beginning, middle, and end.

(to be continued)