1. Cronon’s essay is about stories themselves and how they can be manipulated. Or as Cronon puts it, “My most visible narrative has of course been a story about storytellers who express their own times and political visions.” (p.1374) Cronon compares many different stories told about the Dust Bowl to show that no storyteller can divorce him/herself from their particular moment in time, or their particular biases. Two different storytellers can look at the same set of facts and come up with very different conclusions, as Cronon demonstrates with comparing and contrasting the Bonnifield’s account (natural disaster) versus Worster (failure of cultural adaptation). Cronon also argues that historians should be storytellers. “The principle difference between a chronicle and a narrative is that a good story makes us care about its subject in a way that a chronicle not.” (p. 1374)
2. Jenkins would agree with Cronon in that historians can interpret the past in very different ways, and that those interpretations, or stories, are reflections of a particular historian’s bias or political agenda. Jenkins and Cronon would also probably agree that the disregard for the stories of Native Americans in most stories told about the Great Plains is in service to a larger metanarrative, whether that be progression of humanity to an ever more perfect society, or capitalisms disregard for nature leading to the Dust Bowl. All histories told about the Dust Bowl serve some larger purpose. Jenkins would differ from Cronon in that I think he would argue that there is no such thing as an historical fact. Jenkins says “factual reconstruction is really nothing but construction according to the working ‘fictions’ of normal historical practice which, in turn, are the premises of [an untenable]…historical realism and realistic mimesis.” (p.21) Cronon would counter that there are environmental events that have occurred, and it is within our interpretation of those events that the contestation lies.
3. Murray’s book is titled Hamlet of the Holodeck because she argues that the introduction of cyberspace does not have to mean the end of narrative form. With each new technology, from bardic oral stories, to the written form, to movies, the narrative form has been in jeopardy but it has evolved to fit each subsequent technology. Cyberspace will be no different. She argues that people yearn for narrative stories, and they will not fall by the wayside.
4. I think Murray would be considered conservative because she argues for constancy; that is a continuation of narrative form, no matter what technology is used to present it. She is radical in that she is embracing the new technologies, but ultimately argues that the same narrative currents run throughout our society. Cyberspace may present new unique challenges since it has the potential to give users more agency to control the plot-line. I think Cronon would agree with many of her conclusions, and would agree with her that it is through narrative that the user is made to care about the events in a story, otherwise the events would just be a series of unconnected events with no causal ties. I think Cronon would agree when Murray says “agency is the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see results of our decisions and choices.” (p.126)
5. I think the critic has a point. Murray seems caught up in the potential for technology to provide new ways to present narratives, and she assumes that these narrative structures will continue into the future. Murray is reluctant to see any negativity about technology, and seems to assume that over time, the technology will evolve in positive ways. However, I think Murray is correct in many of her arguments that narrative form has evolved over the centuries as new technologies have become available. Why would cyberspace and digital technology be any different? Alarmists have panned every emerging technology. Murray points out that when television was introduced, similar arguments about the negative aspects of television were made, but narrative form has persisted.
6. Murray is very positive in her anaylsis of computers, and assumes that once the new technology has worked out all its “bugs”, then it can only make society better. She argues that technology will create immersive environments that can be used to give users agency in the narration. Manovich does not have nearly so utopian a vision. He states that “There is no reason to privilege the computer as a machine for the exhibition and distribution of media over the computer as a tool for media production or as a media storage device. All have the same potential to change existing cultural languages. And all have the same potential to leave culture as it is. In other words, computers do not necessarily change our culture. Both Murray and Manovich argue for the importance of “psychological engagement” (Manovich p. 216), or as Murray calls it “agency” within the mediums. I disagree with Murray since I do not necessarily think that once the technology has been around for awhile it will reach some sort of stasis that will be positive. However, I do agree with her when she says that we need to embrace the new technologies. Cyberspace is not going anywhere, and historians need to use this technology to tell historical narrative in new ways. But the problem that presents itself is this: how do historians do “good” history that is accurate, while embracing the new media and all the concepts that exist within it such as agency, immersion, and interactivity?