One thing I’ve been thinking we should to talk about tomorrow night is how – and why – we ought to incorporate the study of “networked public culture” (especially its traffic in images and video, our current emphasis) into cultural studies as it’s traditionally conceived. This sent me back to During’s Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction because I wanted to review the section on “The Internet and Technoculture” (pp. 136-142). The first thing that struck me, of course, is how dated the discussion is. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that when the book was published in 2005 this section was dead on arrival. It contains a short paragraph on blogging, but there is nothing on social networking sites, YouTube, Flickr, or most of the issues we’ve found ourselves grappling with in this course. Grant it, these all kicked in after the book was finished, but that simply makes my point about how limited the book is as a format for scholarship on contemporary culture.
Of course this underscores one of the problems about the book or monograph we discussed last week, that in an age when electronic communication makes it so easy to disseminate research and publish our scholarship quickly the book is beginning to increasingly look like a stage coach in the age of jet travel. It seems to me this is unavoidably true for the field we’re calling “networked culture.” By its very nature this culture is changing so quickly that there is no way to write about it in book form. By the time the book came out, it would be irrelevant. The topic requires electronic publication along the lines of the Networked Public book or Gamer Theory. A book like During’s then, while it can prove valuable as a history of past practices, may be an increasingly useless vehicle for talking about vast swaths of contemporary culture and cultural theory.
One could argue that the other book we read, Convergence Culture, is in fact more timely and suggests the format of the printed book may still have some relevance. But the Jenkins book is dated, too, especially in terms of the T.V. shows and movies it discusses. I think his blog is the place to go for his best work, but then he’s got the credentials necessary to make his blog important. There’s a lesson here, perhaps, about where we might be headed in the profession of literary and cultural studies, at least for the time being as we transition: you establish yourself first through the conventional route of conference papers, published essays, and a book or two, but then when you get acknowledged prominence in your field you can move to a blog. This is what Jenkins has done, and what Michael Berube did (though he got exhausted and shut his blog down a few months ago). A Shakespeare blog run by Stephen Greenblatt or a Milton blog run by Stanley Fish, or one on the performance of gender run by Judith Butler, or Chicana/o studies by Maria Herrera-Sobek, these would all get immediate attention and become a conduit for the quick (i.e. instantaneous) dissemination of ideas. I know, this structure sounds elitist, based more on the power of reputation, perhaps, than the power (and freshness) of ideas, but I throw it out for you to kick around. Perhaps we’d be better off the other way around, with young scholars like yourselves free to publish their own ideas in blog or networked format (peer reviewed or otherwise) with an understanding that this is where the real action is taking place, where you’ll get attention, discussion, criticism, and some traction with having your ideas beginning to influence people in your field (quickly). But my main point is that as I look back at During’s section on “Technoculture” (the very title is passé, of course) it seems to me the field of contemporary cultural studies, like the field of media studies, may soon need to leave the format of the book behind.
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A pertinent April Fool's joke:
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/index.html
"A stack of Gmail Paper arrives in a box at your doorstep, and it’s yours to keep forever. You can read it, sort it, search it, touch it. Or even move it to the trash—the real trash."
First of all, I just have to say that I heart Michael Berube.
Now-- let's take Berube as an example. I think of blogging as a kind blackberry ownership. Remember the study that was done years ago when Blackberrys got all the flack for stressing out corporate executives? All of the sudden people went from 40 hour work weeks to 400 hour work weeks and why? Because they were never away from the office, they were completely available to their company and email at all times. So Blackberry became the corporate enemy. Execs thought they were getting a cool new gadget but what they were really getting was a big rolling office chair and chain. It was the networked public office. You could be at work when you were supposed to be video taping your son's baseball game and you were excusing yourself at dinner to return a really important email from your boss. Now, look at Berube. His blog has been very successful in terms of attention and participation, but it took up his every waking hour to the point where he had to shut it down. Blogs are a daily job. They require constant maintenance and monitoring. So you have a professor, who is teaching, and grading, and publishing, and now a slave to his blog? It's too much. I think that publishing two or three times a year is much less taxing than publishing something new every week (or night). This is supposed to be a mark of success? Fish or Butler could have a website but it would eventually have to be run by a third party (do you think that Tony Morrison runs her own website? Her publicity people do). Star scholars would have to staff their websites, bringing in guest bloggers in order to keep completely up to date. Most people really don't have that kind of free time. I think that it takes a special kind of person to take the time an effort necessary to run a fully functioning blog. Jenkins is an exception-- we are in his realm of expertise. He is interested in the blogsphere and in technology and convergence. He HAS to have a blog. But I wouldn't expect to see a Fish or a Butler blog coming up any time soon.
I also wonder about who it is we want to talk to/with when we blog. Our discussion has been limited to the academic sphere, but the exciting part (humble opinion inserted here) in blogging on networked public culture is the possibility of talking with users, gamers, technoartists of sundry types, along with academics. And, of course, profs can be gamers too, but there are many users who are not academics and are intimately involved with and invested in different n.p.c. platforms. (n.p.c= networked public culture NOT non-player character, you geeks.) Also, a techwise user like my little brother will read a dozen blogs a day but most likely isn't going to go to Borders and by a hardcover text on n.p.c. Blogs allow us to address both the theorists and the sculptors of npc.
Erin's certainly right about how much time blogging takes. I've learned that from just the little experience I've had with this one. The kind of individual blog Berube had going does take a lot of work, and some good bit of assistance. It may well be unreasonable to think that profs with a lot of other commitments are going to take up such a thing. But take a look at the "academic magazine" (interesting hybrid name) called "Flow" that Jenkins refrences in the blog entry we read for today. There's a link to it in the blog menu under "General Links." It appears to be a cooperatively run academic publication focused on media studies and TV geared for both an academic and general audience. This strikes me as an interesting model that fills the kind of space Julia envisions.
Re Julia's post, I've been reading some of the discussions on the groups at Flickr I highlighted. I've found just the kind of mix of people/users she conjurs up. For example, the discussions in the "Art and Theory Nobs" group about defining art are really interesting and bridge a number of discourses. Same thing goes for the comments on the Open Source podcast about Photography 2.0. There's a really interesting discursive mix there as well.
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