Kairos: The CompRhet NetRag

Chambered Nautilus Breaks Open

In reviewing Kairos, I run into the usual hypertext barrier before I ever begin. How do I apply the term "critique," indicating analytical evaluation of works assumed self-contained or static, to the mutable and endless Kairos. (Faint sounds of Bolter chuckling in the background.) Brilliant criticisms noted early in the semester are moot with the publication of volume 2.1, but adaptations in 2.1 improve Kairos. Its editors should continue to make needed improvements, even though the navigation guides must change with every issue.

As we must consider navigational aesthetics while successful online publications are being worked out . . .well, here goes: Jason Teague, Production Manager of Kairos, has created links to two versions, framed and non-framed. The framed version provides little room to read. It's claustrophobic, although I do like pulling material in from frame 5 on the right side. That process has a human-friendly feel, like pulling the next book from the shelf and plunking it on top of another.

However, overall, the cover page is dark, murky, and crowded, especially on a 15-inch screen. It might look better on a larger screen, but Kairos editors can hardly expect their readership to run right out and buy 22-inch monitors! The black and red bits are hard to read, and the colors befit a hypertextual horror story. In all, the cover page reminds me of Victorian slums, red brick buildings with black alleyways where the reader wanders lost into the fog.

The Kairos cover page contrasts greatly with the scientific and technical communities' publications, which tend to be simple, clean, straightforward, and remarkably linear! Check out MIT's various pages for the Media Lab, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and the online journal Sci.Opinions... an experimental interactive humanist magazine. I wonder why we humanists complicate and obfuscate just because the possibility exists, in addition showing off that "We can do technical, too! See what we built!" In the case of the Kairos shell, to paraphrase Pope, the graphics don't seem an echo to the sense. Rather, the opposite. The divided screen is confining and confusing. By choosing to read in the new, non-framed version, I felt set free--as if I could get a larger mental view of the content. Aaah, I embrace online mutability!

With the new issue, 2.1, the Inbox and Pixelated Rhetorics have been changed into Kairos Interactive, which provides instant online feedback to discussion or places in the journal. To get to Kairos Interactive, one clicks on an icon typical of Kairos's graphics; small and complex, it doesn't meet the simplicity and good contrast criteria for icons. Much better is the moving icon of a page corner lifting at article's end; this is a real invitation for the reader to interact.

Within Kairos Interactive is net.Thread, a thread-based discussion server. Although net.Thread is neatly slotted and categorized, it may be spread too thin to survive. If there's one extant characteristic of wired dialogues, it's certainly not neatly defined categories. This feature, so far, lacks the messy exuberance of, say, the ACW listserv. I'm afraid net.Thread is doomed to the musty storage cupboards of Kairos.

Production Manager Teague has also added External Links Pages to act like annotated bibliographies of all external links in hypertexts. This is to compensate for entrapment in the chambered nautilus, as well as for changed or dead links, which obviously frustrate readers.

CoverWebs with overviews are a necessity in hypertext space because the reader doesn't know where and when the material stops (if it does). The Michael J. Day CoverWeb overviewing MOOs and MUDs had clear, clean boxes for the overview and contributors. In the new issue too, 2.1, the overview was very helpful.

Now sometimes Kairos links don't work. That's very frustrating. During one of my readings the current issue wouldn't load, and I had to read what was available. Similarly, while reading Stuart Moulthrop's "Hypertext '96 Trip Report," I found a thread I wanted to follow for my research. Stuck on his webpage, I had to repeat the whole thread! (Ariadne at least had more sense than to let Theseus back into the maze! It's hard to go home again in Kairos.) Such a situation makes one long for the print version--portable, non-electric, curl-up-withable. . . .

Some of this stuff I could read in half the time with much less trouble and eyestrain, had I the journal before me. But would I subscribe to the print journal? No. Would I walk over to the library to get the print journal? If I did so, would I be able to locate it on the shelf? Doubtful. So, in spite of its drawbacks, Kairos has my firm stamp of approval.

Quality Swings

Of course, Kairos differs from print journals in the tone of the content and composition. As do most of the wired communications we've looked at this semester, Kairos slides to the insouciantly clever, off-the-cuff end of the scholarship scale. Though as Janice Walker has remarked, perhaps readers who do not submit material, cannot realize the amount of editing (read "work") involved.

That brings us to the review board, an intelligent answer to those academics who insist that online scholarship is a bastardly free-for-all. Kairos aims at inclusivity: "If the text is rejected at this stage, the Editor and/or Editorial Board will provide extensive commentary for further revision." Kairos offers commentary and feedback for would-be scholarly writers. This process makes a change from having to know well guarded academic passwords to print journals.

On the other hand as Michael Joyce says of the web, Kairos can be "about advertisement and self-promotion. It's isolating and onanistic." (qtd. in Moulthrop's Trip Report) For instance, in "Beyond the MLA Handbook: Documenting Sources on the Internet," Andrew Harnack and Gene Kleppinger were baldly critical of Janice Walker's MLA approved Style Sheet for online documentation. "We note difficulties . . . with her citation of some Internet source information. Other style sheets are similarly inadequate]. In our essay . . . we recommend better models [my italics]." Purportedly academic dialogue turns into an advertisement for themselves! Interestingly enough, Walker's reply link at the end of their letter doesn't work. A plot perhaps? However, I was able to go into the table of contents for it--one advantage of the frame set-up--to read her dispassionate and reasonable reply.

Articles in Kairos veer from sophisticated, cool, scholarly to personal, over- and under-written. One may say then Kairos is fairly inclusive, sometimes with varying results. For instance, the CoverWeb, "Online Writing Labs: Should We? Will We? Are We?" swings from sophisticated, scholarly and informative through propagandistic and on to whiny. Stuart Blythe in "Why OWLs: Value, Risk and Evolution" writes an efficient hypertext defining theories of technology. Knowledge of these theories is a must for anyone interested in technorhetoric. Jane Lasarenko does everyone a favor in "PR(OWL)ing Around" by cataloging OWLs. Her cleverness in using bird-owl as a conceit makes the list entertaining and informative, so that I won't soon forget that resource for my students.

On the other hand, I object to J. Paul Johnson's "Writing Spaces: Technoprovocateurs and OWLs in the Late Age of Print." He uses the terms of guerilla warfare: "subvert," "contact zones." Why the move to hypertext and online writing has to be viewed as war, is beyond me. As Janice Walker pointed out in "Fanning the Flames: Tenure and Promotion and other Role-Playing Games," the Establishment doesn't have to be revolutionized; vital fringe activities will eventually gain their places in academia. But perhaps Johnson was posturing. Even so, he also gets a prize for the most Latin and Greek roots, prefixes and suffixes in one sentence.

Finally, Camille Langston recounts "The complex Process of Creating an OWL." This article's tone fairly shouts "wounded pride" and "personal (as opposed to professional) frustration" with her university's policies. Yet, there it is--in inclusive Kairos.

An outstanding example of what Kairos can provide is Stuart Moulthrop's "Hypertext '96 Trip Report" found in New Briefs. Moulthrop presents a forum for writers and readers to explore. His report is keyed at three levels: one version is in plain words, a second has HTML enhancements, and a third is in JavaScript. Click your pick.

Issue 2.1 announced that publication of Kairos will probably take place twice a year now, instead of three times. This is really no change in amount of material, Greg Siering and Mick Doherty assert, as Kairos has "unbounded bindings." The editorial board has decided to attach publication dates to conferences. At one time, this would have been called "riding someone else's coattails" and decried. Now, however, it is beneficent collaboration. I wonder whether this decision will reinforce communication studies' self-referential characteristics.

Finally, Kairos is adolescent. It's alive and growing enormous. It's going to be gangly and pimply at times. It's strident, self-proclaiming, rebellious--in tone, more than in essentials. Scholarly and flexible, it fulfills all of its early promise and will improve. May it never repress. . . .