This blog is about the actual application of cybertools to an actual writing project, kind of a "reality show." Currently, I'm working on a biography, and I use different applications to gain different angles on my work. This blog will detail the process as I go along in real-time. What's new here? Ask Werner Heisenberg. No, don't bother. This anecdote will do. One day, long ago, while using an ancient program called "Framework," I sensed the software writer's intellect (a fellow named Robert Carr) entering into my writing process. That was a shocker, and I think I picked up a few I.Q. points along the way. I also realized that my computer had become my intellectual prosthesis. I suppose brainy IT schools study the phenomenon of "user-producer interaction" in the abstract; I'll check Google Scholar and let you know. But since I'm so busy, and I think the idea is so important, I'll just blog about what's actually taking place between my thoughts and the process of digitizing and transforming them into a biography. To return to the Framework anecdote for a second, this experience of working with (or maybe against) another intellect through software sent me on a quest. At first I looked for the ultimate outliner: Tinderbox. But that wasn't enough. I wanted a connection tool: DEVONthink. But that wasn't enough. Maybe taken together as a tool shed... I began to recognize that when a writer employs sophisticated software, it affects his or her output. Hello, Heisenberg. Software, I decided, might be a way to break out of the thinking box I had grown into over the course of my career and education. So, let the blogs begin.
Here's my bio. My name is Jeff Shear. I am the author of the book, The Keys to the Kingdom, which was an investigation into a weapons deal between the US and Japan (the FSX), published by Doubleday in 1994. I have been a Fellow at The Center for Public Integrity, in Washington, DC where I was one of several key contributors to the book The Buying of the Congress, published by Avon in 1998. Before that I served as staff correspondent for National Journal, with regular venues at the White House, Congress and Treasury. I have written scripts for the National Geographic Channel, Discovery, and The History Channel. I am currently working on a biography about an American woman who spied for the British during World War II, to be published by Raincoast Books.
The Intellectual Prosthetic and Billboard
Let's try this notion a slightly different way — the "Intellectual Prosthetic" as a connection machine, a billboard, and advertisement for myself, the new era of publication, from words to pixels and bytes. Thus, the intellectual prosthetic morphs the word and the language. Exploring we go!
May 16, 2009 Posted by BentWrite | Commentary | | No Comments Yet