I recorded the entire presentation. I plan on trying to post it for everyone to hear. However, it is a bit choppy. But, I went online and found the video that we missed by Janet H. Murray. So, please enjoy.
Murray recorded statement from the “Future of Digital Studies” conference.
March 1, 2010
Theories of Texts and Tech 
March 1, 2010 at 2:48 am
Thanks, Camila! Glad to hear you recorded it. I recorded audio too, but it’s poor quality and I didn’t start it until towards the end of Hayles’s presentation =(
March 3, 2010 at 2:04 am
Thank you so much for posting this! I became a fan of Janet Murray when I read Hamlet on the Holodeck. In truth, any writer who puts the name Hamlet in a book title is bound to get my attention. I’m a sucker for the Bard. But Murray is also a great writer who shares a lot of interesting perspectives that I enjoy.
I found Murray’s discussion of human vs. machine very enlightening. In this video, she insists that we should not mystify the computer and its binary language that essentially means nothing to us as humans. Even though the computer has its own language and processes, Murray points out that it is created by humans and is therefore our own raw material that needs to be invested with meaning.
She says that we should “look at media as extensions of the ancient, culture-forming activity of shared attention.” For example, when we are babies, we simply point at things to share attention with others. The hyperlinks and other media we use are our modern, digital methods of sharing attention, and Murray suggests that we should find new ways to represent the codes and processes in computers that will “allow us to know what we’re pointing at.”
Perhaps it’s because I’m not a programmer, but I find that I have, and many of my friends and colleagues also appear to have, mystified the machine over time. It is, to many of us, a separate entity with which we strive to be able to live and communicate comfortably. We think more of the computer as another being with its own personality (how many people do you know who have named their computers?) than a box that has been programmed by other people to assist us with our communication. I wonder if Murray’s suggestion that we should find a representational structure for the processes would really aid in that de-mystification, or whether computer users would continue to perceive the mystical in the machine.