Comments on: The antiphilatelist http://snarkmarket.com/2010/4810 The stomping grounds of Tim Carmody, Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson. It's a long-running conversation about media, journalism, technology, cities, culture, design, books, music, movies, the future and the past. Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:20:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 By: Tim Carmody http://snarkmarket.com/2010/4810/comment-page-1#comment-8274 Tim Carmody Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:29:40 +0000 http://snarkmarket.com/?p=4810#comment-8274 I got really into file marks when I was working on office technology; stamp cancellations would be a special case of these, notarization stamps might be another. Internal office marks sometimes were just abbreviations, meaning something like "OK," "return," "copy before sending," "burn this copy," "send." Cornelia Vismann argues that these marks are like little speech acts; they don't just record that something has been done, they actually effect that thing into being. With documents in particular, they trigger all sorts of algorithms -- think of the mailroom scenes in <em>The Hudsucker Proxy</em>. Actors that become the evidence of action and its legitimacy. I got really into file marks when I was working on office technology; stamp cancellations would be a special case of these, notarization stamps might be another. Internal office marks sometimes were just abbreviations, meaning something like “OK,” “return,” “copy before sending,” “burn this copy,” “send.”

Cornelia Vismann argues that these marks are like little speech acts; they don’t just record that something has been done, they actually effect that thing into being. With documents in particular, they trigger all sorts of algorithms — think of the mailroom scenes in The Hudsucker Proxy. Actors that become the evidence of action and its legitimacy.

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