Oscillators

Thoreau didn’t know much about oscillators.

He did, however, know about magnetism:

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say.

—Walden, “Economy”

In another of those surprising synchronicities, in The Electronic Word Lanham uses Thoreau as an example of the CBS (Clarity, Brevity, Sincerity) mode of identity construction. The grounded assumption behind this is that "things to say" come from inside, rather than through intercourse. However, as Diane and Loren’s dialogic reading of Walden suggests, there is in play an oscillation between “romantic individuality” and humans as social creatures. What interests me most about this statement by Thoreau is that it neatly defines the reaction of big “J” journalists to the phenomenon of blogging; they are functioning under a similar assumption. Facts are objects to be mined and refined, and are not created through social interaction. The discourse pool is just a pit in which to drop your magnet and pull out a nugget. There is no excuse, these days, for this mode of thinking. At least Thoreau had an excuse.

The vacuum tube hadn't been invented yet. Fleming created the diode in 1904, but it wasn’t until Lee De Forest invented the audion tube (triode) in 1906 that tubes became an active device. An extra part, known as a grid, could modulate the current traveling across and inject feedback to create either amplification or oscillation. Though tubes have been largely replaced by solid-state devices, the basic principles remain. The difference between an amplifier and an oscillator is slight: changing a few component values can affect the transformation. The hard-wired circuits can be identical. Keeping amplifiers stable is tricky— they always want to oscillate.

Metaphorically speaking, I think this is the sort of crossroads that the spread of personal communication on the Internet represents. The challenge, of course, is stabilizing the oscillation to productive ends: much like the oscillation at the core of radio, TV, and above all, computers. Too much feedback, and it becomes nothing more than a high-pitched whine that doesn't do much but run away. Oscillation begs for control, something to stabilize it so it doesn't run away and overheat all the component parts. It needs a resonant frequency, or alternately, a clock. Ever hear the term clock speed? It’s the oscillator at the heart of your computer. Without this synchronization, you couldn't compute at all.

Electronic communication is constantly stepping up in clock speed, but oscillation is still apparent in a world before active devices. Diane was astute to point out the oscillation operative in Thoreau between withdrawl and emergence. It’s just that his “operating system” was geared toward privileging one pole of that oscillation. I suspect that is what the Internet is deeply changing; knowledge is coming from both centers of activity. Lanham argues that the operating system of humanity must be changed in order to keep pace with the active, electronic world. The rigid “print” operating system can't be sustained much longer. Like the 640k ceiling of MS DOS, it has got to go. However, that doesn't mean that some programs will continue to run because they are useful in the new environment. Some degree of compatability is possible. Books can live on, but the thinking that generates inflexiblity in texts as if they are opaquely telegraphing messages, must change. The new world is see-through. The emperor has no clothes.

Part of the shifting perception in rhetoric is the return of the sophistic world-view embracing rhetoric's epistemic (knowledge producing) function. The oscillation of conversations does not just (re)present knowledge already present inside people. It creates new knowledge, which only grows with each sharing. Electronic communication can be not just an oscillator, but an amplifier. That’s the point that the big “J” folks miss entirely. It seems like they only pay attention when the high pitched whine of war or tech blogging hits their ears.

Makes me glad I read all those biographies as a child (Edison, De Forest, Robert Goddard, etc.), and took apart lots of old electronic devices. Maybe I wasn’t wasting my time building a theremin in my reading class in Junior High. My teacher, realizing that I was already reading at college level, gave me an electronic project kit to play with. Electronic metaphors are good for electronic communication.

A social grid, evolving through blogging, can act as a means of controlling resonance. It can contain, at least briefly, those moments of resonance which allow for amplification. We all both impose on (constrain) each other in productive amplification as well as trigger (excite) runaway points of oscillation. But it always starts with modulation and feedback, things which are far outside the magnetic realm of the telegraph.