Bridging the Divide: Connectivity

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Image courtesy of naomi83
Wikimedia Commons

Digital writing further demonstrates the usefulness of the humanities through its emphasis on connectivity and its potential for a socially-mediated research process. In saying "digital writing," I do not mean simply using a computer to produce writing. Rather, it implies an entirely new writing environment--one that is integrally connected to the Internet and, as such, to a broad network of readers and contributors. It can thus, in some sense, be seen as more of a culture than a mode of production. This "culture" of connectivity, however, is proving increasingly vital in the modern economy, and scholars within the humanities will benefit greatly in seeking to harness the sociality of digitally-mediated writing.

Bridging the Divide: The Long Tail of Digital Scholarship

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Image Credit: Chris Anderson
Creative Commons License: Attribution 2.0 Generic

One of the most fundamental principles in coming to understand a modern mode of content distribution is that of the "Long Tail." The concept of the Long Tail is built on the idea of a left-skewed statistical distribution for content popularity, and basically, it proposes that providing "tail" content serves in increasing sales at minimal costs while providing for a much richer and more diverse content base. The Long Tail was first introduced in 2004 by Wired magazine's chief editor, Chris Anderson, who at that time applied the Long Tail specifically to the entertainment industry. Since that time, the concept of the Long Tail has expanded to embrace  banking, science, and a host of other areas, scholarship among them. Anderson noted that because songs and other forms of digital content facilitate inexpensive reproduction and distribution, producers and online media marketplaces could offer a much broader selection than could, for example, brick-and-mortar stores, which had to rely primarily on high-grossing, "hit" songs. Even on purely digital platforms, these mainstream songs account for the bulk of revenues, but because hosting and distributing "long tail" content is so inexpensive, digital marketplaces are finding that they can cater to both mainstream and more eclectic audiences. As Anderson notes on his blog, "As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare." For scholars writing on somewhat obscure topics like Anglo-Saxon poetic meter or the use of zeugma in the works of Alexander Pope, this ought to sound at least a little bit enticing.

Bridging the Divide: Ease of Distribution

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[Over to "The Long Tail of Digital Scholarship"]

Digital writing further substantiates the value of the humanities through its ease of reproduction and dissemination. Historically, the sphere of academic publication has been one dominated by scarcity. Publishers want to publish books, and scholars want to share their ideas, but at the end of the day, printing is costly, and there is only so much money to go around. That means that scholarly monographs and journals are limited not only in the number of physical copies that can be profitably produced but also in the overall form--the font size, margin spacing, and use of graphics.

With the onset of digital publication, however, academia has entered an abundance economy. In the past, even integrating black and white images or graphics into a text substantially increased the cost of publication, and widespread distribution of scholarly texts was prohibitively expensive. Modern digital technology has made it possible to easily and inexpensively incorporate not only pictures but music, video clips, surveys, and other forms of interactive media into scholarly and non-scholarly works. In addition, [long tail] dynamics have made it possible for even hyper-specialized works of scholarship to reach broad audiences in a number of different disciplines and on a much more global scale. Works that previously justified no more than five hundred print copies are being downloaded and utilized thousands and thousands of times thanks to online repositories and recent digitization efforts. These efforts are making knowledge more accessible for millions of users throughout the world, thus demonstrating to a broad audience the value of the humanities within a modern context.

Bridging the Divide: "Doing the Risky Thing"

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Even emerging forms like video games have the potential to

engage audiences in meaningful ways and contribute to a

contemporary understanding of art and literacy.

Screenshot from The Last of Us, by Naughty Dog, Inc.

Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic

The reality is that the Internet is not really a new form or an aberration within the spectrum of human interaction--it's just the next phase in a progression of human communication and thought. Writing has served as the dominant form of communication for thousands of years, but it is not the first mode of communication nor the last. Modern, digital paradigms are providing means for integrating a variety of engaging and instructive media resources into writing, and many scholars anticipate the day when such resources will find their place within the broad body of formal academic writing as well. In "Digital Media Studies Futures,"Ben Aslinger and Nina Huntemann suggest that the future will increasingly require writers to bridge disciplinary gaps and rethink literacy to incorporate non-textual formats like video games and film. Sally Pryor offers a similar evaluation of "integrationism" in her article, "Who’s Afraid of Integrationist Signs?" (651). Assessing the historically oral nature of early communication and the visual nature of early writing systems, Pryor suggests that audiovisual and written forms ought to be treated as “complementary facets of one integrated form of communication” (650). In the future it will be harder to define oneself as a scholar of film or writing or music because the concepts are converging, and only those who are able to adapt to these new media formats and writing styles will be in a position to promote the usefulness and relevance of the humanities in our age. We are, in some sense, entering into a new Renaissance, and those who neglect to take advantage of modern forms of digital writing will increasingly find themselves cast into a self-inflicted Dark Age. The world is changing, and with it, scholars and academics must likewise change, adapting to new circumstances and making use of new tools. 

Bridging the Divide: Works Cited

[Back to "Doing the Risky Thing"]

Works Cited

[Below are selected works available through paid online archives. All open resources are linked directly in the body of the blog posts.]

Aslinger, Ben, and Nina B. Huntemann. "Digital Media Studies Futures." Media, Culture & Society 35.1

     (2013): 9-12. Sage Premier 2013. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.

DeVoss, Dànielle Nicole, and James E. Porter. "Why Napster Matters to Writing: Filesharing as a New
     Ethic of Digital Delivery." Computers and Composition 23.2 (2006): 178-210. Print.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. "Do 'The Risky Thing' In Digital Humanities." Chronicle Of Higher Education 58.6
     (2011): A96. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Oct. 2013.

Laquintano, Tim. "Manufacturing Scarcity: Online Poker, Digital Writing, and the Flow of Intellectual
     Property." Computers and Composition 27.3 (2010): 193-201. Elsevier SD Freedom. Web. 24 Oct.
     2013.

Liu, Alan. “The State of the Digital Humanities: A Report and a Critique.” Arts and Humanities in Higher
     Education 11.2 (2011): 8-41. Sage Premier 2013. Web. 22 Oct. 2013.

Pryor, Sally. "Who’s Afraid of Integrationist Signs? Writing, Digital Art, Interactivity and Integrationism."
     Language Sciences 33.4 (2011): 647-53. Elsevier SD Freedom. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

[Back to "Doing the Risky Thing"]

NaNoWriMo Day 2

This is just to let you know that I do get around
to writing some stuff for NaNoWriMo below.
Image by Greg Bayles, remixed from Wikimedia Commons

Dear Blogger,

They say NaNoWriMo is to get you writing. So, if I don't want to write my novel on day 2, does that mean I fail? Or is the whole purpose of this just to get me writing in general?

I slept in later than I ever have before today. I think it might have had something to do with staying up until some ungodly hour to make sure I got in my first NaNoWriMo post so that I wouldn't have a bad precedent, but I'm thinking I might have been better off just wriitng in the morning instead... if not for the dream... I don't usually dream, but when I do, it's usually either really profound and changes my life or is unintelligible until some future event and then kind of reminds me where I'm supposed to be going. I don't have just dreamy dreams. They're not happy. But last night, I found myself in a movie--some movie that I saw a long time ago--and for those few minutes I was happier than I have been in a long, long time. That's not to say that I'm not generally happy, but in that moment--I don't know what it was--I was just carefree and happy, and I felt like I had all of the answers to the questions that have vexed me this last while. Life just made sense, and I thought to myself, "Now, when I wake up, I can just go watch the movie, and I'll understand in real life, and I can be happy there, too."

Chapter 2, Pt 1: The Trial

Happy NaNoWriMo. I'm doing it this year. Rough day to have to start, but I got some writing out there, so I guess that counts for something. Will catch up on words tomorrow or Sunday. P.S. I'm finally writing a novel. Be excited. Maybe not about this chapter (it's intentionally dry for my own purposes), but be looking for stuff all this month, and if for some reason it lags, get on my case about it.

"There will be order in the council room!" The Speaker's ring pulsed white, and the room fell into an anxious hush as the other two tribunal members entered the room and assumed their seats at the front of the crowded hall. The Speaker himself could not have been older than fifty, though his hair, like the oculus shard on his ring, was white like the Northlands snow that my father told me about when I was young. The other two tribunes were younger, kinder, though their eyes spoke of years of judiciary training which had weighed heavy on their minds. The younger of the two, a woman, looked like she might have been from a different city, maybe Sarta, to the south, but it was difficult to distinguish her facial features through the customary black paint of criminal justices.

Catching the direction of my gaze, my court-appointed legal rep leaned toward me and whispered excitedly. "She's one of ours." My excitement apparently was restrained, because he slid he chair closer to mine and continued in subdued animation: "We worked for months to win her over. I honestly didn't think we would get her, what with her being from the south. You know how tight-fisted they can be, but we got 'er in the end. Just took a few trade licenses from our friend at the ministry of commerce. You know 'im--old codger by the name of... by the name... oh, doesn't matter much anyway. We got her."

The Speaker's voice boomed again across the hall. "This morning's case is that of Private Jonah Cross. The defendant will please rise." I felt an elbow jab to my ribs and clamored noisily to my feet. "Jonah Cross. You are brought here hereby accused by Commander Raga of the Salamander Legion on charges of endangering the success and well-being of your battalion, compromising of your mission, and willfully disobeying your commanding officer. The details of this mission are yet classified and will not be discussed at this time, but what have you to say of these matters? Private, how plead you to these charges?"

"Not guilty," I heard myself mumble. The third tribunal member, a slim, young man with honeyed curls of hair, gestured to me to take my seat, and I felt the hard wooden seat rise up beneath me as the legal rep leaned in once more:

"He's also pretty new, blondie over there, but you have nothing to worry about. We made he second largest contribution to his campaign last year, and my daughter played air tag with his son two or three weeks ago. I talked to him before the case, and he's on our side. He assured me that everything would go according to our plans.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

of snow, before he died. He used to tell stories about his missions along the Ivory Wall, skirting along the base of the snow-laden cliffs in search of the Alchemist's Road. They never did find it, though. Or him.

It's like Bara the merchant says: "One day they're here, and every other day, you just wonder and wait."