Talk:Introduction: The Foundations of a Cybernetic Discourse

Notes and feedback

March 13 2021

Thanks so much for offering to take a look at my text:

The Fabulous Loop de Loop. A cybernetic discourse as read through seven feedback machines. A project by Steve Rushton

Readers’ protocol

Please spend 2.5 hours looking through the wiki.

https://hub.xpub.nl/fabulousloopdeloop/index.php/Main_Page

At this point I need to know if it makes sense as a project. I am taking nothing for granted, I would like to know what you think the project is and how you navigate it (what kind of reader does this text produce?).

Please give written feedback of no more than 500 words

I hold your opinion very highly and value your insights. Please be as direct with me as possible about the text. Please signal any structural problems you find and I'f be happy to get general notes on style. I am invested in improving it and need an honest opinion.

The “chapter outline” and “users’ guide” might be good ways into the central issues driving Floop

Here: https://hub.xpub.nl/fabulousloopdeloop/index.php/Chapter_Outline

outlines the "story"

and here

https://hub.xpub.nl/fabulousloopdeloop/index.php/User_Guide:_The_Fabulous_Loop_de_Loop

I discuss my methodology

I won’t catalogue the list of things I intend to correct. Suffice to say, the citations [references] need a lot of work. The Bibliography is here:

https://hub.xpub.nl/fabulousloopdeloop/index.php/BIBLIOGRAPHY–FABULOUS_LOOP_DE_LOOP

My best wishes

Steve

FEEDBACK:

SOL: The fabulous loop de loop -  Feedback notes, 

Hi Steve, Thank you for inviting me to be a reader on this project, I am delighted to be along for the ride, and enjoyed the reading. I followed your time guidelines of 2.5 hours, broken down as follows. 0.5 hours reading the chapter outline and the user guide. 2 hours reading the chapters and navigating the site as a general user. I am going to break my feedback down into the following categories, which are a bit baggy and overlapping but hopefully make it clearer to read… I am a bit of a Wiki Naif, I don’t have much experience with them, so perhaps some of these issues are not complex for more accustomed users, I image issues of navigation and layout will be less of an issue, but hopefully this helps give feedback more as I experiences it as a general reader. This feedback is going to sound a bit tough as I am focussing on points of friction I encountered while reading. Overall, particularly in the main body text the user experience of the site is fluid, the text style is clear and consistent, and the reading experience is good. Where I try to be specific but will probably get wordy below is in trying to articulate difficulties or suggestions about navigation, particularly in how the User Guide, Introduction, and Chapter Outlines relate to the body of the text.

SITE: Navigation Parallel Texts Layout Design 
TEXT: Specific page-by-page points Style Coherency Content 

ERRORS: I was not reading for spellings, fragmentation or typos, but where a few jumped out at me I will try and locate them in a page to edit, if this is something that is helpful. I don’t expect this to be comprehensive and I assume you’ll pass this through a copy checker anyway. I’ll try to interpret my own notes for placement and list by Page, and surrounding text. This may be easier if I had edit privileges, but then I may be wrongly reading something as a spelling error in places anyway. I’ll try to put them at the bottom of a segment of text referring to a specific page. But my note keeping wasn’t the best. 

SITE: Navigation by section: 

CHAPTER OUTLINES Chapters (?) On the whole, as a reading experience I found that I didn’t use the index/menu much except to reference where I was. I clicked through page to page at the bottom of each chapter. That said however I think there is a bit of irregularity in how terminology is used for describing chapters and…. Sections? Books? This also is a bit confusing, especially in the chapter guide where you refer in some segments to “the chapter” and in some to “this chapter”. By this I mean, is “the Governor” a chapter? Or another designation? Is “the Vapour Engine” a chapter? My reading is that the Vapour Engine is a chapter, and they are within the… Section? Of the Governor? I may be missing something here, but I found it a bit unclear when using the chapter outline whether each piece was describing the whole section of the smaller piece (again, e.g. describing “the governor” or describing “the vapour engine. There is a bit of irregularity about this across the site I think. Chapter Outline navigations - in reference to my confusion about what is a chapter - perhaps a style difference on the page, such as indenting the sub-sections, as they are in the menu with the arrow, will help to clarify the status and structure of the sections? I wonder about a structure image - like the Haekel tree diagram, that differentiates by trunk, branch, and leaf, or something to help visualise this? Using the main page I think the introduction to cybernetic discourse should be the first Link on the home page. I also think the chapter outlines should be here. For the more naive reader there is terminology that the introduction lays out well and clearly without which the chapters are a bit harder. I didn’t read the introduction until after the first chapter and I regret this. Parallel Texts. I could not work out if I was meant to be able to navigate the parallel texts or if they only exist in direct reference to the main body text. It would be nice to have a map or a nest structure visible when in a parallel text page that shows its place. e.g. at the top “the governor>vibrations>dynamic psychology…. 

I wanted to be able to access these texts on their own but did not seem to be able to. Navigating back from parallel texts - two points. 1. Is it possible to float the back-link so it stays visible in place on the right when you scroll down the page? 2. this is perhaps minor and complex to code, but I found it weirdly disorientating that when you link back to the main text the page adjusts so the parallel text link is at the top and the text continues from that point. This is perhaps a result of me reading the text quite quickly for this process, and but I would find it much easier if, when going back to the main text, the page adjusted so the parallel text link appeared about half way down the page and I could re-situate myself in the main text. I needed to read the Introduction before the chapter outline in order to understand some terminology, but that wasn’t the way round they appear on the menu - also I think that the Introduction and the chapter outline should be represented on the home page, along with the main sections (repeating this point in navigation and text) 

NEXT CHAPTER BUTTON: I mostly navigated through the text with the next and previous buttons. It felt like a more familiar web and reading movement that way. I think that it would be helpful for this to reflect the structure seen in the side bar menu a bit more. So that when you get to the end of a section, if possible, it would lead to the front page for the next section. So that it goes cybernetics - dynamic psychology -> M. SPECULARIX And so then you affirm the structure of the project. Moving through the texts this way is fluid, and an enjoyable read, but I would like to be presented with the section front pages within that to situate myself as reader. 

GENERAL NAVIGATION THOUGHTS / recap On the whole when reading the navigation is fluid page to page. I think some clarification of the status of chapters and sections would be helpful. Being led to the introduction first is necessary. This should be on the home page and above the user guide and chapter outline in the side bar. Being able to see and navigate the structure of the parallel texts would be good Returning from parallel texts would be more natural (for me) if a. The back-link floats with you down the page b. The return point puts you back with the parallel page link half way down the page when you return to the main text. Actually this point about the return point being in the middle of the page is relevant for footnote returns also. DESIGN I have few pointers on the design. I think that readability is good, the principal issues are design/ navigation choices about floating elements or fixed elements for navigation. It may be that coding these so apparently similar but functionally different elements is a pain - i.e. having one rule for the parallel text connection as fixed to the main text and a different rule for the return link. Layout General layout is clear and helps in reading. I like being able to reference the menu structure on the left while reading, even if I am not really using it. 

TEXT: Here BOLD ITALICS are page names, italics are sections within that page. I read through the body text, navigating by the next page links at the footer turned out to be the more natural way I moved through it. I obviously didn’t finish the whole thing in the requested time - I read the first section - the Governor and the first chapter of section two, along with the parallel texts from that. I needed to read the Introduction before the chapter outline in order to understand some terminology, but that wasn’t the way round they appear on the menu - also I think that the Introduction and the chapter outline should be represented on the home page, along with the main sections (repeating this point in navigation and text) 

CHAPTER OUTLINE I think there were a couple of fluctuations in style here that are maybe a result of academic and non-academic translation but which I found a bit confusing. Mostly these involve three things. 

1. Moving between active and passive voice - the first example of this is in the opening segment here “The Fabulous Loop de Loop examines how Butler's premise extends into the twentieth century.” I thought this was a bit unclear, as it follows the introduction of ideas and named outputs by other people, and it is unclear whether you are referring to “the fabulous L de L” as an already existing thing in the world (which you later introduce), created by someone else or this very project that we are in. It may be that placing this as the bottom after “across natural and social sciences” would make it clearer that is it a lead into the project that I am reading. Or it may be that using active voice, as in “In the FLDL, we examine how….” 

2. You then later describe yourself as writer doing things actively, but use both “we” and “I” - as in we will read, and I establish. I think this may be a matter of bringing things across from academic text, but it would be nice if it was standardised. 

3. It is not clear in this whether you are making the division between chapters, you sometimes refer to a chapter as ‘the chapter, and sometimes as this chapter, and while its possible to work it out, it makes it a bit unclear whether the overall section - such as the governor - is the chapter, or the individual page. The vapour engine As you’ve introduce Butler, then called him by Butler already, reintroducing as Samuel Butler seemed odd, perhaps - this may be because I was using the text not as intended. I read this page through as a single text - in effect a synopsis of the project as a whole. 

In Butlers 2 issues, I would list the issues then put your own work after them. i.e. have a+b then 

“The key concern of Butler, which is evident across the texts we will discuss in this chapter, is the evolution of consciousness. In opposition to the idealism of the time, Butler argued, mind and matter are indivisible”

This is a style formatting thing that recurs through this page, that its not completely standardised how you are referring to people (obviously made complex by there being family relations in there also). Sometimes first and second name, sometimes only first name, sometimes only surname. 

USER GUIDE Methodology This is a style choice I’m pointing at and I completely welcome the point being denied. You choose to lead by negatively determining what method you are not using. I propose that it may be clearer to positively describe what method you did use. Thats all. Spelling. You spell Terrane instead of terrain I think. 

INTRODUCTION Spelling: As I follow this track, I will depart form - should be from I think (I appreciate the use of train themed metaphor here)

THE VAPOUR ENGINE ERRORS: > “My emphasis” on quote which contains no emphasis > Gregories father (see chapter *) - no chapter link VIBRATIONS This is a content question. I was thinking through this about blind spots - how the apprehended variation in the moth is a visual system, and how this variation is articulated in a specific moment, when eugenics are part of the discourse, in relation to human / western culture and racialised subjectivities. By this I mean, I think its an interesting spot to reflect on how specialisation, capability, and variation are being pathologised in tandem with cybernetic and codifying propositions.