Download The Time Traveler`s Group Analysis

The Time Traveler’s Group Analysis
Andreea, Brian, Helen, Lindsey, and Todd
“Oh, bother” – somebody wrote incredulously on one of our surveys during the
class presentation of our project – “ANOTHER site about time travel? What’s this going
to be good for?” And indeed, however resistant we were to such demonstrations of
indifference in the first place, we had to admit that, the more we researched, the less we
found something compelling to say about scientific issues of time travel. Professional and
award winning web sites, such as the one by Professor Andrew Hamilton, a well-known
physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder, were fascinating and disheartening at the
same time, since they seemed to render our attempts at competence futile. What news
could we convey about time travel? No less Sisyphean was our attempt to gather all
representative examples of time travel in popular culture. Did not Paul J. Nahin
exhaustively achieve this task in his book, Time Machines? And if so, what more were
we hoping to accomplish?
Only later, after brain-racking analysis, it suddenly dawned on us what we
actually had been doing the whole time: we had been exploring the concept of time travel
not merely as a scientific phenomenon, but also as an ethical, psychological, mythical,
paradoxical, obsessive, and even entertaining issue. Indeed, not the concept of time travel
per se but its complexity was our main focus. In other words, what we were doing and -as we were delighted to find out, nobody else did -- was to explore the humanistic
implications of time travel.
This last-week revelation simplified most of our immense concerns with finding a
certain, well-defined audience whom we were supposed to address. By discussing the
humanistic implications of time travel, we were “simply” talking to humans as multiple
audiences facing the challenge to do the best we could to please the most of them (see
Lindsey’s section on Utilitarianism). Or, as Paul Nahin points out in Time Machines:
“You don’t have to be a dinosaur-steak fan or a movie producer to be fascinated with
time machines; criminals and lovers are likely to be interested too” (35).
Our main discovery, as we analyzed the psychological implications of time travel,
was that we humans are highly sophisticated time machines bound to function within the
limits of linear time. From a psychological point of view, therefore, our fascination with
time travel could be explained as an attempt to overcome these naturally set boundaries.
While analyzing the materials at our disposal by means of a spreadsheet, were able to
isolate several recurrent psychological reasons for time travel, such as self-blame,
escapism, love, etc. Here, it is important to point out that our results were primarily due
to the quantitative technologies we used, which rendered our results visible in an
organized form. These technologies saved us a lot of time, as we were no longer
completely contingent on memory and mental connections. The web design in each
section follows the pleasure principle, giving our readers the highest amount of freedom
we could think of. The web design in the psychology section, for instance, enables the
readers to jump from one headline to another, and invites them, therefore, to make
multiple connections between the issues under discussion. Whether this is an
enhancement or rather a distortion of our general argument as caused by the medium we
used, remains yet to be seen. Our main rhetorical concern centered around the ways in
which we could invite our readers to be part of the conversation about time travel, which
our different sections, visually divided by the points of the clock (affectionately termed
“widgets”) were attempting to provoke.
As we began working on our project, we decided that the first thing we needed to
do was to become familiar with time travel as treated in several media, and analyze its
salient features. We collaborated on formulating a series of questions that – as we hoped
– would allow us to classify various characteristics of time travel in types. Our questions
dealt with general information about the media and their publication as well as specific
classifications such as the type, the quality, and the means of the traveling through time.
Each of us looked at several time travel narratives, filled out the questionnaire, and then
we compiled the results into an Excel spreadsheet. Then, we listed the basic data in form
of abstracts, which could be adequately manipulated to show even smaller sets of data;
for instance, only those films which dealt with the paradoxes of time travel.
Additionally, this spreadsheet can be used to detect and analyze patterns and trends in
time-travel narratives. It also proved useful for finding relevant examples to flesh out our
writing in the other areas of the site.
It was difficult to reconcile the general scope of what we wanted to study with our
eventual goal of a cohesive and coherent web site. We spent a lot of time at the outset
discussing different metaphors we could use to organize our information in a compelling
manner, and to guide readers during their travel experience through our site. After several
increasingly obtuse attempts, we decided to use a clock as the overarching metaphor for
our site. The implicit ordering of information around the “widgets” allowed us to
prioritize our site’s content, and help the reader decide what might prove most interesting
to explore first. Ultimately, this metaphor allows the reader to consider both main aspects
of our project—time, and travel through time. McLuhan would be proud (or so we hope).
Furthermore, it was difficult for us to bring together the problems inherent in
writing for the web: we wanted a consistent authorial voice throughout, although five
people were going to contribute to the text. Moreover, we wanted to ensure scholarly
rigidity and competence, but also make sure that what we produced was interesting
enough for anyone to read. Not surprisingly, meticulous copyediting was the only way
we could think to ensure that our text was uniformly fresh and engaging. A trickier issue
was that of scholarly merit. Citations of sources and bibliographies scattered throughout
the site were difficult to look up, and also problematic to maintain. We decided to keep a
single, site-wide bibliography and to embed source citations in HTML comments within
pages that warranted them. Readers are alerted to this process in the introduction, and
again in the bibliography. Again, the medium opened up new possibilities, and we were
learning to think technologically, as we were exploiting them.
Most importantly, we had to use the visual aspects of the medium for good
purpose. Early on, we decided that it was important to break up our text with graphics,
and we grew to appreciate the importance of using graphics to illustrate and strengthen
the points we were trying to make. For example, as we were organizing our subject
matter around the clock’s “widgets,” we discovered the necessity to come up with several
more subjects to “fill in” all of them. So in this sense, the content of our site was greatly
shaped by the medium.
In most ways, we feel that this development was a positive thing. Once again, the
medium was setting the task for us, and we had to promise ourselves, as well as the
members of the group, that we would be up to the exigencies of collaboration and mutual
dependency.
Some of us felt that it was during collaboration that these ideals broke down. The
standards of information mediated by technology are simply not the same as in face-toface group work. Also, there was a clear disparity in the technical experience of our
group. It was up to every individual to maintain his/her work in the realms of
responsibility and engagement, and to motivate oneself along with being motivated by
the group. This created even more problems, for if people only invest into group work
their main abilities, there is bound to be inequality of participation. In retrospect, perhaps
more clearly expressing individual proficiencies earlier in the project might have helped
alleviate the difficulties inherent in producing a singular product from a multiplicity of
persons and talents.
Inequality, however, is an issue without specific boundaries in terms of our
project, and one we faced with each step closer to completion. Our site required
disparate skills and content levels, and deciding what “equal effort” was turned out to be
less simplistic than it had seemed. The project is, of course, primarily a technical
achievement—information technology competency is required. With this understanding
and an analysis of skills, we found that one person was more qualified than the others to
perform technical maintenance of the project. This is not necessarily more valuable than
textual contributions or idea-phase site design, but it is an integral factor that requires
more time seated at a computer than other obligations. However, without the remaining
contributions to make meaning within the technical structure, all that time in front of the
screen becomes fruitless. The understanding implicit in this observation is that there is
no arbitrary measure of “work” in a project of this nature. Without clear rules about what
constitutes an egalitarian environment in terms of production, we were left to generate a
compromise on our own. The resulting relationship became one of mutual dependence
and connectivity. With a unified vision for a completed project, we all became alert to
any possible deficiency in developing areas of the site. Through a constant barrage of
email, we clearly expressed our concerns, received often-instantaneous feedback, and the
persons best suited to the task at hand were dispatched to correct the problem. The group
observes, individuals contribute, and the finished product is improved.
That finished product went through two definitive moments of revelation in
purpose and development. The first was our discovery of a nearly unconscious
commitment to the analysis of humanistic implications of time travel, but the second was
much more subtle in terms of content to be viewed on the site. We gained a new
perspective on collaboration as well as the use of information technology through our
constant process of communicative and productive compromise. Each difficulty we
dissected and overcame translated into a new understanding of how to effectively use
technology, as well as how to maintain a distinctive human presence in a product that
requires no physical craftsmanship and exists only as a series of electronic impulses.
Chronos Shrugged gave us the opportunity not only to analyze the relationship between
man and his budding array of electronic tools, it allowed us to directly experience the
nature of that constantly evolving relationship.