Processing Tools

Lori Emerson in "A Brief History of Dirty Concrete by Way of Steve McCaffery's Carnival and Digital D.I.Y." in Open Letter 14:7 draws a parallel between the ethos of dirty concrete poetry making and the D.I.Y. movement as represented by the Homebrew Computing Club and the Whole Earth Catalog. In note #6 she quotes from from Fred Turner (From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism) who in turn quotes a reader of the catalog:

[...] I suddenly understood the Whole Earth Catalogue meaning of 'tool.' I always thought tools were objects, things: screw drivers, wrenches, axes, hoes. Now I realize that tools are a process: using the right-sized and shaped object in the most effective way to get a job done.

The emphasis is Lori Emerson's. The body text goes on after note #6 to characterize Carnival.

Carnival is open source concrete poetry. Put another way, the work is not so much about what is written than it is about a record of the labor of writing that's a kind of how-to guide to the labour of writing.

I can't quite figure out the function of the two spellings of labour/labor at play here. Except perhaps to project a temporal mapping on the pair: one encompasses past efforts; the other, what is to come.

And so for day 770
21.01.2009