Mar

30

potential academia

writing

What is this, anyway?

Is this thesis of mine an essay? Is it a blog? What genre does it fall under? What happens when, in a couple of weeks, I use Blurb to turn it into a book? Can it be categorized at all?

One thing that this project has accomplished is the muddling of publishing models, of what we think of when we think “academic research paper.” This was intentional from the beginning, but the process has made clearer the difficulty in moving from something traditional to something digital. Or, rather, in defining that something. There are clear differences in how I write here, in this online space, than how I have written research papers in the past.

I wouldn’t, for instance, say “y’all” in a paper, but I say it here all the time.

I probably wouldn’t cite Google results or Urban Dictionary, but I’ve done that here, too.

There are no chapter headings, necessarily, and it can be read in any order.

Some parts of this project could be skipped entirely, if you were so inclined.

In the coming paragraphs I will cite two books, and in both cases I will link to their respective Google Book entries, instead of giving you a citation in MLA format.

When we move between genres of writing, our writing styles change. Our intentions in writing in different spaces lead to different outcomes, to different types of work. When I write a paper for class, I am writing in a very clear voice for a very specific purpose. When I write something on Twitter, my voice changes, because the point of that platform is not the same. Through his Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau demonstrates just how changeable voice really is – how you can say the same thing over and over again and sound entirely different. I could have written my thesis in the form of a hard-copy, start-at-the-beginning, 12-point-font, 5-paragraph format essay. The same information that I’ve included in my blog posts over the last few months would have become a very different creature had they been presented in a traditional genre. Then, too, I probably wouldn’t be writing this paragraph at all, as research papers don’t generally lend themselves to reflective entries.

In his essay Brief History of the Oulipo, Jean Lescure writes: “What the Oulipo intended to demonstrate was that these constraints [of literary form] are felicitous, generous, and are in fact literature itself. What it proposed was to discover new ones, under the name of structures” (173). They explored the possibilities of literature through new forms and new genres.

The Oulipo wrote “potential literature,” literature whose form existed only in the imagination.

To borrow from their ideas, I suggest this project as potential academia.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not the first person to write academically in an online space, nor am I the first person to present an academic project in digital form. However, as a part of a traditional English program, what I’m doing exists outside of the norm. When we open academia up to its own potentiality, new things happen. Here, in my blog/thesis/experiment, something new happened. An exercise in style, of sorts, a blending of mediums that has resulted in something of which the academic value remains to be seen, since I haven’t actually turned it in yet (ah yes, value. “value.” more on this next time.). Value aside, however, the point is that classification doesn’t always work the way we think it should. Our preconceived notions of form are bendable, and it is, quite frankly, exciting to bend them.

Heretofore, a thing that was published was a very specific thing. Our day and age, and the potential for different publishing models that come with it, has created a new set of possibilities that weren’t previously available to us. Again, as I’ve said before, when we let ourselves try new things, new things happen. When we drop our ideas of what something like a thesis should be, we discover what something can be. “Should,” ladies and gentleman, is an ugly word. It is a word that I think the Oulipo probably disapproved of, a word that holds us to defined expectations and a narrow belief system.

The world can be our shellfish, y’all, if we let it.

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Mar

24

and how!

writing

As a follow-up to my last post, some quick thoughts on a few ways that programs can incorporate the digital world into their curriculum:

Collaborative Sites: Wikis, Google Docs, etc.

+ : brings new value and ease to the dreaded group work; displays real-time results; better tracking for profs.

Text Analysis: Wordle, etc.

+ : greater understanding of work; adds a new dimension of connection with the material; fun with visualization!

Online Presence: blogs, microblogs, website-building, etc.

+ : students will need a web presence in the future; drive to produce better work when it’s public; potential conversations with people outside of class about coursework.

Social Networking: Facebook, Twitter, etc.

+ : students already know how to use these sites; exploration of different potential for a familiar form; keeping in touch outside of class may spark more connection in class.

- : more time will have to be spent teaching and learning the tools; students may resist putting their work out for the world to see; higher levels of creativity needed by both students and professors when working with new methods.

(then again, these could go in the + column, too.)

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Mar

21

why digitize?

writing

I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of digital work in academic spaces that do not normally lend themselves to  this type of scholarship. There is a reason that Digital Humanities is a field unto itself – because it operates differently than the Humanities traditionally do. The boundaries aren’t necessarily solid and fixed, but there are distinctions that put them into two different camps.

I’m in favor of blurring the line a bit; I believe traditional Humanities programs should embrace the inclusion of digital consumption and production into their coursework.

This is not a statement without controversy. Academia is not quick to change; new ways of doing things can certainly be challenging for those who are perfectly content with old ways. And, of course, new ways do not always equal better ways. There is risk in change. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t, and the value in discovering which is which is not always compelling enough to make us budge.

However.

This is one area where I believe the value exceeds the risk, and where I think we’ll be pleasantly surprised if we give it a shot.

Here’s why:

  • Because that’s just the way the world is going.

We’re living in a digital world. This is a fact. It is a fact that e-readers are selling like hotcakes and that people buy music from iTunes more than the record store. It is a fact that people text and send emails and don’t write letters with pens and paper nearly as often. It is a fact that we’re constantly connected to the cloud and that things we knew previously as nondigital objects now exist in pixels.

These things will not change because some of us are not satisfied with them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a fellow English student lament over the state of the written word and how the Internet is killing literacy, etc. I have lots of opinions about those arguments, but my point here is that, well, that’s just the way it is. The Internet is not going anywhere. Neither are e-readers or iTunes or any number of other digitized versions of things. We have moved into a new arena of navigation with our world, and a big part of that revolves around previously uncharted technologies.

We can lament, or we can take action. That action could be to rally against digitization, and certainly this is a legitimate option. Or that action could consist of trying out these new things and seeing what happens – embracing the facts of our new age and exploring the outcome. If we’re going to live in a digital world, we might as well see what all the fuss is about.

  • Because students can relate to it.

The majority of undergraduate students are in their late teens or early twenties. These kids have grown up digitally connected . They understand this stuff in a way that even I, only a few years older than them, don’t, because they’ve been doing it all of their lives. Sure, not all young people use the same tools, and not all of them are in love with the digital world. But they get it, and for many of them it is simply a way of life. I never questioned television growing up, because there was one in my home as far back as I can remember. There were (and still are) arguments against television, but for me it was just a staple of life. The same goes for kids today with the Internet, with Facebook, with blogs, with texting, etc. For them, there hasn’t ever been anything else.

If these are the people we’re teaching, shouldn’t we be speaking to their experiences? There has got to be value in using tools that students understand intuitively as a means of getting them more engaged with their work. Doing more new media work means that the people who are getting the education will understand it better, because we’ll be speaking their language. More understanding = better education, every time.

Not to mention, if the greater world is moving more and more towards the digital, these are skills students are going to need in the future. For those students who don’t yet have an intuitive understanding of the digital for whatever reason, they’re going to need it eventually. If it’s educators’ jobs to provide students with the skills they’ll need in the workforce, then this necessarily includes some level of competency with digital tools.

  • Because there’s always room for improvement.

The argument for the incorporation of digital tools is not an argument against traditional tools. Incorporation =/= replacement. It shouldn’t, at least, and if it does, there’s a good chance that whatever tool disappears was on its way out to begin with. But the suggestion that “going digital” means completely eradicating anything nondigital simply doesn’t make sense. Sure, I have a Kindle that I love, but I also have a huge bookshelf in my living room that somehow just keeps acquiring new books (some might say “stop buying new books when you already own dozens that you haven’t read,” to which I would say: “pooh-pooh”). They are both important, they both bring me joy, they both serve a purpose in my life. I don’t automatically stop going to Borders because I’ve started shopping at Amazon.

Having a Kindle improves my reading experience. I believe that digital work will improve the classroom experience. We all want our fields of study to get better, even if they’re already good. We want them to be the best they can possibly be.  It’s important to look at all the ways that bettering may be possible, even if some of these ways are far outside of the box that we’re used to.

  • Because if we do what we’ve always done, we’re going to get what we’ve always gotten.

Trying new ways of doing things leads to greater levels of discovery, greater layers of understanding. Certainly there are new revelations that come out of traditional methods – otherwise, we wouldn’t still doing them, right? However, when we continue doing the same thing, we get the same types of results. There are only so many destinations that the same path can lead to. If I always take the highway, I can only end up at places that the highway goes.

When we try something new, when we step off of our usual path, we have no idea what the outcome might be. The possibilities become endless, and the results will be different than they’ve been. They might not be earth-shattering, but they will be different. Different may not equal better, and in some cases it may not even equal valuable, but I’d suspect that in many cases we’ll be quite intrigued by what we discover. At any rate, we’ll be working with new information, and that in itself is valuable.

We gain tremendous insight when we take a step back and question what we’re doing. This goes for all areas of life, not just academia, of course. When we do a thing because that thing is what we’ve always done, we risk missing out on something important. Adding new models of investigating, accessing, and creating information into our studies means that students and professors alike will have more to work with and greater chances of stumbling into uncharted territory. Digital tools can, and will, help make this happen.

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Mar

11

stories + science = win

writing

[Because I am a giant nerd, this is what I wore tonight.]

I went to an awesome event this evening at the A2 Library – Story Collider. Ben Lillie and Brian Wendt, the guys behind SC, are hilarious and charming in person, and they’ve come up with a fantastic creation. The idea is this: most of the things you hear about science tend to be boring and sterile. But science is not boring and sterile, so let’s get people telling their own personal stories about science.

Recipe for success, that.

Tonight was the first Story Collider event (collision?) outside of the New York area, and I was excited to be present for it. The room was packed, and if the vibe of the crowd is any indicator, these guys are on their way to what will hopefully be a far-reaching adventure. The speakers were fabulous. I’m always impressed by people who can get up in front of a room full of people and keep the crowd going, especially when it’s not a subject-oriented gig, and they’re not professional speakers. These were just people’s own tales from their own lives, small slices of how science has effected them.

I love stories.

I think I may love personal stories more than anything else, in fact. There’s no greater joy I get from interacting with people than when I get the chance to hear about something someone really loves. Whether or not the thing itself interests me, I am always captivated by the energy that radiates when people get a chance to share something that matters to them. Story-telling is an incredible thing.

So, make those stories nerdy, stick me in a room with a bunch of other people who can’t wait to hear more, and you’ve got yourself a damn fine evening. If this is something that sounds awesome to you, too, they’ll be back on July 15th.

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Mar

11

words mean things: humanities

writing

HU·MAN·I·TIES     [HYOO-MAN-I-TEEZ]     N.

One of those most interesting things I found while looking into this word is that it is often defined by what it is not. The Humanities are not Math or Science. The Humanities are not based in quantitative methods. The Humanities are not [_____].

Ouch, y’all. When a thing is defined by exclusion, I get concerned.

Here are things that are Humanities: English, Literature, History, Art, Classics, Philosophy, Language, Law, Religion, etc. Sometimes the  social sciences: Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, etc.

Etcetera.

There is always an etcetera attached to definitions of the Humanities. It seems that we have a bit of a problem coming up with a comprehensive list of things that should be studied under this umbrella term. There is always an ellipsis at the end, hanging there, waiting for us to fill in the blank.

Here’s why: the Humanities are the study of things that are concerned with human nature. The word itself literally means “the multiple states of being human.” Humanities is all the different ways that people are people. The study of Humanities is the study of all of the places where people show up. That is a lot of things, y’all. The human condition is vast. The range of subjects that deal with humanity are… well, pretty much all of them, wouldn’t you say?

Except math and science. But don’t Math and Science deal with human nature? When we study these things, we’re arguably studying how they work in our human world. We’re humans, after all.

Here’s where the shading comes in. Because, yeah, everything that we study is tied to us. But not everything we study falls under the category of the Humanities. Presumably, when we study math and science, these things do not speak directly to the human experience. When we study molecules and numbers, we’re not studying how human beings interact with these things, necessarily, we’re studying the things themselves. When you interject human experience into something, what pops out?

Thought and emotion.

The texts that Humanists study were created with emotion by the brains of people.  Works of literature, paintings, historical records, religious documents, all filled with thought bubbles, attached to feelings. It may be a rudimentary distinction, but it’s the one hard-and-fast line I can draw between the things that are studied by Humanities scholars and the things that are studied by scientists. If we were looking at how Humanists and Scientists study, there would probably be a greater array of differences. But in what they study, in what this word means, that’s the clearest contrast. People feel and think, and then they document those things, and then Humanists come along to investigate what it all means. Simple, huh?

So although the perpetually attached “etcetera” gives the illusion of confusion to the definition of Humanities, it’s a lot more straightforward than it seems. The study of things, created by people, born of the very things that make us human in the first place: our hearts and minds.

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Mar

07

words mean things: digital

writing

DIG·IT·AL     [DIJ-I-DL]      N. or ADJ.

There are 19 definitions for the word digital in the OED.

There are 10 on Urban Dictionary.

When I type “define: digital” into Google, it gives me 15 definitions on 12 different sites.

For our purposes, most of the Urban Dictionary definitions can be thrown out. The digital I’m looking for doesn’t have anything to do with drugs, sex, or slang. It’s also not connected to the band Joy Division, as one Google entry suggests. So then, what is it?

The root of the word is digit: a finger, a toe, a number less than ten, a single unit of measurement. One thing, that can be used for counting.

This very simple word has come to represent an entire structure of things, a cultural phenomenon so ubiquitous that we barely think about it. Digital cameras, digital television, digital media, etc., etc., etc. When I look at the clock on my coffee pot to check the time, I don’t think: “that is a digital display.” I think, “clock,” or more accurately, “oh crap I’m late.” There is a clock in my coffee pot, y’all. And I don’t have to do anything to make it work save for setting the proper time initially. That’s a little strange, don’t you think? Except, no, it’s really not strange at all these days.

So, digit. Fingers → coffee pot. How did that happen? 1s and 0s, y’all. Behind most digital objects is a vast array of 1s and 0s, a web of information that is invisible to the majority of us. Strings of code that are made up of single numbers.

The digital aspect of a thing is what’s inside it, not what we see. When we look at “digital X,” the X is the thing. The digital is what’s inside of the thing, creating what we see. We call tangible things digital, but they’re not. I have a Kindle, for instance, a digital library. The Kindle itself isn’t digital, is it? It’s a physical object that I hold in my hand. I could throw it across the room, and if it shattered what would be laying on my floor would be bits of plastic, not piles of binary code. This label - digital - is naming something that is hidden from view, that exists within other things.

It’s a weird concept. We rely so heavily on digital objects, but we can’t actually see them. Not really, not unless we’re programmers and we know how to find what we’re looking for. The rest of us interact with our devices and take for granted that the stuff inside will work. Unless we know how to manipulate the digital goo, it’s inaccessible to us. Does that mean things are more digital to some people than to others? If I can make the goo do things, I am interacting on a greater digital level than if I am simply accessing the surface layer of it.

In his book Mechanisms (2008), Matthew Kirschenbaum writes that within new media studies, “the graphical user interface is often uncritically accepted as the ground zero of the user’s experience” (34). His point is a little different from mine – he’s talking in large part about the physical makeup of computers – but the basic concept is the same. We call objects digital and yet most users don’t ever see beyond the readout. We’re not actually interacting with the digital stuff, we’re interacting with the representation of the stuff.

So: Dig·it·al. 1s and 0s – invisible  and often inaccessible goo. Something most of us will never actually see, but which we nonetheless take for granted. Piles of code that make up the things on which most of us rely every single day. Not the thing – the stuff behind the thing.

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Mar

05

words mean things

writing

(via)

We use words all the time without stopping to think about what they mean. There’s nothing wrong with this; it’s a necessity of communication. If we analyzed every single word we used, we’d never actually get around to saying them out loud. We’d spend our days with dictionaries glued to our hands, furrowed brows, and very little verbal interaction.

But when we define things, when we label them, it’s a good idea to know what we’re saying. If we call a thing X, then we need to know what X is, how it relates to the object (or concept), and why we’ve decided that’s the best word out of all the other ones we could have chosen. Signifier, meet signified. Those of us that are charged with choosing the signifier (whether the charge is formal or informal, conscious or unconscious) should be aware of what our choice does to both the object and the label. There are consequences, both good and bad, of word choice.

When a label has been attached to a particular thing for a long time (“long” being subjective), we stop questioning where it came from. We take for granted that everyone knows what we’re talking about. We don’t stop to wonder if the context has changed, if the thing has changed, if the word’s popular meaning has changed. We just use what we’ve always used. For good reason, of course, because changing labels isn’t easy, and it’s certainly not always necessary. But knowing the limitations of our definitions is important.

So, a new and ongoing series here at geeksplore: “words mean things.” The dissection of word choice and labels that we use. The close reading of definitions that we don’t normally question. Where do these words come from? How have they been used historically? What are the consequences of that particular word over any other? What’s hiding there, in plain sight, that might help us know better what we’re saying?

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