The “Cut-up Method” and its Presence on the Internet
“The cut-up method brings to writers a collage,” which is Burroughs’s idea that using the cut-up method has no limitations as to where the method can be applied. Internet technology is much like the collage which Burroughs discusses in his article “The Cut Up Method of Byron Gysin” because web pages, videos, search engines, and some news web pages all mirror the form of a cut up collage. As crazy as it sounds, the internet is snippets, tags, and parts of other web resources, which stem from other online resources. The internet does not have a hierarchical order because an internet user has the freedom to explore web sources and pages in the order they wish, much like a collage can be compiled in any order.
With the implementation of blogs to our course content, I have explored the internet in collage form because I have linked to outside sources and incorporated them into my personal collage, which is my blog. As I worked on my blog, I seemed to have gotten off topic and failed to take advantage of the full purpose of a blog because I had difficulty understanding the underlying concepts underneath it. However, when I read Burroughs’s article I have a tighter grasp on blogging because cutting something up resembles what we should do on our blog, even though this idea is not directly alluded to in the article. What makes the Internet so innovative and revolutionary is we can afford ourselves the opportunities to explore information in any order, format, or location that we wish. We can have a cut-up internet experience, or an organized one because the power is literally in our hands.
Even when we GOOGLE something, the cut-up method is present online because, GOOGLE cuts certain information and brings it to the viewer is sometime of order, which may vary based on what you are searching. The fact different types of information are available to us via search engines affords us the opportunity to choose how and what kind of information that we want, similar to constructing a collage. If I attempted to list all the different ways the internet incorporates the cut up method as a theme, it would be endless because the internet is consistently being altered then rearranged by other people to their personal liking.
November 4, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Practice what you preach! I think your points about the “cut-up” or “collage” experience of the internet is accurate, but instead of telling us, show us. Where are the links in your post?
Half the point is to talk about it, but the other half is to do it.