Re: vo-lut(te).ion

Shifting the strategy from the customary ground where arguments are constructed and fought with slogans (for or against the ‘revolutionary’ claims made in the name of new technologies, or whatever the issues at hand), the paper invites us to acknowledge the working of metaphors on their own claims to truth; starting with a discussion of the spatial implications of the revolution metaphor. This, in turn, provides a methodological ground for further analyses, leading towards identifying the epistemological requirements for the development of new forms of authoring and assessing the respective roles of authoring, designing and programming in a digital environment/platform [What is a (digital) author?]. The discussion is illustrated with specific examples of digital work [including the authors own multimedia typographic work ‘Re: (s) ist – ance(s)’], in which all efforts are made to place technology ‘at the service of the mind’. Throughout, the paper insists on the importance of acknowledging and examining the functional interactions between communication strategies, artistic forms and genres and the constraints of codes. Finally, the paper concludes with a few concrete methodological suggestions about how we might interpret and respond to the claims and counterclaims that digital technologies are ‘revolutionary’.