Regardless of whether or not they were intended by the author, there are two arguments that can be made in the online ‘text’ Star Wars, One Letter at a Time. These two arguments are derived from the fact that, displayed rapidly, one letter at a time, Star Wars(despite being a great piece of literature) is completely meaningless to us. The two reasons behind this are as follows:
1) The text is simply going by too fast.
2) The text is displayed in too little of pieces (single letters only) for us to process.
The first of these issues raises a point that Carr would certainly appreciate and agree with. In a world where time is money, where efficiency is everything, can we perhaps move too fast? If you sat down and stared at the rapidly flashing letters of the page, you would probably make it through Star Wars in pretty good time, but on the other hand you wouldn’t understand any of it. This is, in a nutshell, an exaggerated example of Carr’s whole point, that with new technologies (the internet), with new, instant, ease-of-access and a world of information right on the screen in front of us, our ability to focus and stay focused on what we are processing is declining. Carr describes the new medium as a “swiftly moving stream of particles”, which seems awfully familiar with the Star Wars page being discussed.
It was actually interesting that Carr used the term ‘particles’, because that is very relevant to the second issue. When we scrutinize a work in its smallest pieces, e.g. particles or individual letters, then we all too often miss the big picture. Of course, scrutinizing individual letters is another exaggeration of issue, but the point is still there. When we take a magnifying glass to the minutest of details within texts (as we are often taught to do in grade school) and try to force a hidden meaning onto them, we ironically miss the overarching lesson intended by the author. What is important is not the shape of Bilbo’s door or the color of Gandalf’s beard or exact word choice of Sam’s song, it is that the Lord of the Rings is a lesson of the corrupting nature of power and the desolation of war. This is not to say that small details are not important… one can think of them as pieces of a puzzle. It is pointless and petty to analyze every single piece and try to force meaning where there isn’t any. One should complete the work, step back, and then appreciate how all those little things come together to produce the author’s real intention.
This is of course just a blog post so I know that my arguments are weak and need better support/explaining, but these ARE the two main ideas that I would like to argue… I think that when I take more time to build on them (and bring in more of Carr) that they have the potential to be strong points
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