It has been easy for me to become infused with the ideas, terminology, and mind space created by working on this project.  I have tried, however, to hold back a part of myself and ask continually how something would sound to someone uninitiated to Gregory Ulmer’s world view, which he calls “electracy.”  To that end, I find it important to have a couple of places in which I explain my relationship to Ulmer and the material I have uncovered in myself through this project and how those things relate to the world I live in and want to live in.

Ulmer has termed this kind of project a “mystory.” He says, “The point to keep in mind is that the mystory is an autocommunication, addressed first to yourself, as a self-portrait” (243).  The book leads one through four life areas, which Ulmer calls “the popcycle”; in each one, memories, feelings, associations, emotions, and anything else are called upon to uncover patterns both personal and societal:  “The pattern forms at the level of repeating signifiers—words and graphics...with details that address the senses” (6). “The method is to “tune” the four (or more) discourses of the popcycle into a composite scene, by finding a thread of whatever sort at whatever level of detail that runs through and crosses the boundaries of these different dimensions of experience” (106).

I am a convert to Ulmer’s plea for a world that needs to return to associative, connective thinking.  This philosophy is like a homecoming for me.  After having tested many springboards in my life that seem to veer off in directions I don’t quite expect, this one fits, at least so far.  I am old enough to know that that may change, but I am also mature enough to recognize a feeling that feels right. 

That said, the tagline for much of what I and you can read in Ulmer’s Internet Invention is “Huh?  I’m not quite sure I get this!”  I think his work is remarkable—it is difficult, it is full of sighs, of recognition, and of utter bewilderment, in all the senses and tangents that those feelings can mean.  Reading Ulmer’s book is like doing your own personal six degrees of separation exercise, but it is not a game (though it can feel like one). 

 

 

 

 

 

Ulmer I: Ulmer and Me

All references are from Gregory L. Ulmer’s Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy, New York: Longman, 2003.