Wednesday, March 14, 2001

A Book Examines the Web and the Words Used to Describe It By JESSICA LUDWIG "What are we talking about when we talk about the Web?" is the primary question asked by the essays collected in Unspun: Key Concepts for Understanding the World Wide Web (New York University Press, 2001). Each of the 13 essays in the book focuses on a term -- like "cyberspace," "identity," or "community" -- that has become a buzzword associated with the Internet. The collection aims to reverse the spin and analyze the Web's potential to change contemporary culture. The book looks closely at popular misconceptions about the Web. "There's the stereotype that you can lose your identity -- it's not true," says Thomas Swiss, a poet and professor of English at Drake University who edited the collection. "There are a lot of classes that have sprung up across a range of disciplines that are seeking some text that looks at language about and of the Web," adds Mr. Swiss. He says that this book, unlike other, more theoretical texts, is directed toward students in their second undergraduate year and higher. In putting the collection of essays together, Mr. Swiss says he wanted "to use terms that come out of culture and then read those terms into the Web to explore how they have found each other." To that end, he asked 13 authors who have written about the Web -- including editors and professors of new media, political theory, and English -- to expound on a word. Most of the writers looked at their topics from a cultural-studies perspective, with an emphasis on the Web's development. "Hypertext" examines how new the concept of nonlinear narrative is to literature, for instance, while "Political Economy" looks at the Web's beginnings in the U.S. Defense Department. The book focuses on terms that are often used in discussing the Web -- like "community" and "identity" -- and then treats more-specialized words like "multimedia." Words like identity, community, and gender "become invisible because they're used so often -- no one seems to bear down on them," says Mr. Swiss. "The language of how people think about the Web really shapes what the Web becomes," he adds. In the chapter on the word "race," Lisa Nakamura, an assistant professor of English at Sonoma State University, cautions users of the Web to be aware of its organization. She asks: "What structures of organization mediate users' experiences with the Web, and how do these structures contribute to the ways in which race is depicted and envisioned on the Web?" She notes that Web portals and search engines, for example, produce hierarchical and rigid lists, with gender, race, and age as categories separate from one another. In "Identity," Jay David Bolter, a professor of new media at the Georgia Institute of Technology, looks at the new genres of the personal Web page and the Webcam. He writes, "The Web and associated Internet technologies, together with television and radio, provide us with genres and forms that suit our preference for multiple, shifting, and highly mediated representations of identity." The Web produces a "networked self" where hypertext links signify group affiliation, he says. Unspun, which was published in February, is available from New York University Press for $14.50. A companion Web site for the book is located at http://www.nyupress.nyu.edu/unspun Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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