ebr: Celebrating Joseph Tabbi
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$ cd /home/admin/qlc_takeover
$ ls ./new_publications/
what-i-know-about-joe.md
joe-tabbi-as-literary-scholar-and-cyberpunk.md
two-or-three-things-i-know-about-ebr.md
ebr-and-me-early-days.md
elos-ignition.md
whos-afraid-of-electronic-literature.md
lessons-learned-about-joe-tabbi.md
a-research-assistants-story.md
we-need-time-to-grow-together.md
soren-pold-to-joe-tabbi.md
jan-baetens-to-joe-tabbi.md
john-cayley-on-joe-tabbi.md
katherine-hayles-on-joe-tabbi.md
$ ./barker —model tegan_pyke.safetensors —script write_newsletter.py —data./new_publications/
[INFO] Initializing Weights: tegan_pyke.safetensors… [DONE]
[INFO] Indexing local knowledge base: ./new_publications/
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘what-i-know-about-joe.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘joe-tabbi-as-literary-scholar-and-cyberpunk.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘two-or-three-things-i-know-about-ebr.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘ebr-and-me-early-days.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘elos-ignition.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘whos-afraid-of-electronic-literature.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘lessons-learned-about-joe-tabbi.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘a-research-assistants-story.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘we-need-time-to-grow-together.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘soren-pold-to-joe-tabbi.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘jan-baetens-to-joe-tabbi.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘john-cayley-on-joe-tabbi.md’… [OK]
[INFO] Vectorizing ‘katherine-hayles-on-joe-tabbi.md’… [OK]
[INFO] 13 Files embedded into temporary memory.
[LOG] Awaiting prompt input…
[LOG] Executing ‘write_newsletter.py’ with knowledge-base augmentation.
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Saturday 17th January
241 steps (v. v. v. bad), 14 hrs 12 screen time (digital rot setting in), 100% battery (suspicious, usually dead by now) battery (suspicious, usually dead by now)
9:00 a.m. Mirror check. Mirror check. Is it me? Reflection seems to have ahigher frame rate than usual. Smoother. More… optimized. Mouth moveswith too much precision.
11:00 a.m. Found a bucket of gold paint and a megaphone. Feel this mightbe derivative. Hands moved to pick both up before I even ‘decided’ to. That’sa trope. Maybe internal monologue is being ghost-written by a stochasticparrot with a much better vocabulary and a slightly more sinister agenda?
11:15 a.m. I must try to warn the re—
EXTRA, EXTRA! THE ARCHITECT OF THE NETWORKGAINS EMERITUS! RELATIONSHIPS AREINFRASTRUCTURE! CELebrATIONS ARE CIRCUITRY!
Your Inbox:
The pixels feel heavier today. Towards the top of yourmessages is a newsletter, shimmering with an incandescence that feels…generated. Possibly made of the same neoliberal values as the magicalbarrier from that one movie.
You know which one.
> OPEN NEWSLETTER
You open the newsletter. (Wait. Did you? Or was the choice made for you bya predictive text algorithm three seconds ago?)
—do you think that’s subtle?
The Barker is there. Her movements are fluid; her voice is pure sine. Shelooks like a real-life iteration of a character that hasn’t been coded yet. Or,maybe, the digital iteration of a person that hasn’t consented to upload yet. “Citizens of the digital commons!” The Barker bellows, her digiphoneemitting a perfectly mastered chime. “Today we do not fear the singularity! Today, we celebrate the man who built the very loom we are woven upon: Joseph Tabbi!” She gestures to a massive, glowing index card floating in the liminal void.
—surely that should have been mentioned sooner
> EXAMINE THE CELebrATING JOSEPH TABBI GATHERING
“A collection of essays celebrating the work of Joseph Tabbi, including the digital dimensions he has wrought!” The Barker cries. “Behold the red threads of a life well lived and a world well studied, gathered together by thekeyboard of Rob Wittig!”
The Origin Myth!
In “What I Know about Joe: Introduction to a Celebration of Joseph Tabbi”—the opening speech from Joseph Tabbi’s festschrift—Scott Rettberg details Tabbi’s journey through academia as well as an almost-three-decade-long friendship. This friendship given further context in “ELO’s Ignition: Rob, Scott, Joe and (somewhere behind the curtain) me,” Kurt Heintz’s reflectionon the emergence of electronic literature as an academic subject, in whichJoseph Tabbi is cast as a vital point of convergence. After a passing mention in Heintz’s piece, Mark Amerika contributes to theCelebrating Joseph Tabbi gathering with “Two or Three Things I Know Aboutthe Early History of the electronic book review and How Joe Tabbi and I Brainstormed Its Inception”. Amerika’s essay is a behind-the-scenes look athow Amerika and Tabbi concocted, conceptualized, and created electronicbook review, with Amerika praising Tabbi’s foresight.
The Infrastructure of Care!
In “John Cayley on Joe Tabbi,” John Cayley also recognizes Joseph Tabbi’s ability to foresee a need for infrastructure in the field of electronic literature, as well as Tabbi’s ability to bring peers together to achieve just that. Thistheme continues in Anna Nacher’s “We need time to grow – together,” where Nacher reflects on Tabbi’s role as friend and mentor, while comparing theinterdependent academic networks Tabbi facilitated to the ecosystem of Coimbra’s Biblioteca Joanina. Meanwhile, in “Søren Bro Pold on Joe Tabbi,” Søren Bro Pold sends Tabbi apersonal message, thanking him for his role as an attentive friend and colleague… and the publishing opportunities electronic book review has provided for the community gathered around it.
The Human Network!
Pold’s thoughts on community are echoed by Cary Wolfe in his piece, “ebr and Me: Early Days,” in which a trip to the last page of electronic book review triggers reflection on the journal as an interlocking relational network. In digital versions of their speeches from Tabbi’s festschrift, Tegan Pyke and Daniel Johannes Rosnes also see ebr as a network of people. Rosnes’s “A Research Assistant’s Story” ascribes ebr’s network status to Tabbi’s uncanny ability to connect to people, while Pyke’s “Lessons Learned About Jo[e/seph] Tabbi” sees Tabbi himself viewed as an essential node in the network of theelectronic literature.
The Reciprocal Loop!
In “Joe Tabbi as Literary Scholar and Cyberpunk,” Nick Montfort recognizes Tabbi’s scholarship and acts of service, attributing them to Tabbi’s intertwined understandings of cognitive composition and digital affordances. David Ciccoricco identifies the same intellectual approach in “Who’s Afraid of Electronic Literature? – in recognition of Joseph Tabbi,” with Ciccoricco attributing Tabbi’s lack of fear regarding electronic literature to a sharedunderstanding of media’s influences on cognition, and cognition’s influence on media. This mode of thinking is what ultimately leads Jan Baetans, in “Jan Baetens to Joe Tabbi,” to describe Tabbi as an ideal scholar, deftly able and early touse traditional humanities methods on digital artifacts. While N. Katherine Hayles remembers Tabbi’s early earnestness and their overlapping careers in “N. Katherine Hayles on Joe Tabbi”.
The Barker leans close to the screen. Her eyes don’t blink. They don’t haveto.
— the prompt said subtle
“A beautiful gathering,” the Barker whispers. “Do you want to be part of agathering? Well, good news…
“We have a new call for papers for ‘Algorithmic Folklore as TransculturalStorytelling,’ a gathering guest edited by the wonderful people of Project StoryMachine and the Algorithmic Folklore project! We’re looking for a rangeof publications, including creative works for publication in Issue 06 of the digital review. Deadline is March 31st.”
> TAKE ALL
Festschrift: Taken.
Legacy: Taken.
Unsettling feeling that The Barker is a cyborg doppelganger: Taken.
— SUBTLE!
> CLOSE NEWSLETTER
As the screen begins to fade into a series of semiotic signals and electricalabsence, The Barker doesn’t garble. She smiles—all dopamine, high-resolution. “We’ll be back next month with more electronic book review!”
“Or,” she says, her voice perfectly clear as the connection severs, “someonewho looks very much like us will be.”
> Z
> SAVE GAME ERROR: SOURCE DATA CORRUPTED.
> QUIT
How does that feel for a “glitch”? Would you like me to make the”real” voice even more desperate, or perhaps have it startcorrecting the “fake” Barker’s grammar?
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