Wednesday, March 28, 2007
MLA Report on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion
As a follow-up to last night's discussion about the future role digital and multimedia publication might play in our profession, I want to call your attention to the new MLA Report on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure. The Executive Summary report is troubled by "the state of evaluation for digital scholarship, now an extensively used resource for scholars across the humanities: 40.8% of departments in doctorate-granting institutions report no experience evaluating refereed articles in electronic format, and 65.7% report no experience evaluating monographs in electronic format." The Executive Summary goes on to recommend that "the profession as a whole should develop a more capacious conception of scholarship by rethinking the dominance of the monograph, promoting the scholarly essay, establishing multiple pathways to tenure, and using scholarly portfolios," and, "Departments and institutions should recognize the legitimacy of scholarship produced in new media, whether by individuals or in collaboration, and create procedures for evaluating these forms of scholarship." Those writing the report clearly understand that the age of networked scholarship is upon us, and they are troubled by the inattention of most departments to the changes we've been discussing, and the fact that our profession has yet to start sorting out how to "count" digital publication. The full report is available on the MLA website
Networked Publics Book Introduction
Mimi Ito has just posted a draft of the Introduction to the Networked Publics book we read earlier in the semester (i.e. the "Place," "Culture" and "Politics" essays). You can download it in .pdf format at her website.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Networked Scholarship and the Social Life of Books
I don't know about you, but I’ve found the readings for Tuesday night to be particularly exciting. Of all the material we’ve studied so far, this bundle of articles and essays deals most specifically with the impact of networked public culture on the academic world in which we live and work. The transformations in the production, review, distribution and consumption of academic scholarship envisioned in these articles is rather breathtaking, but at the same time they raise a set of vexing issues and sometimes traffic in rather questionable assumptions. Following are a set of questions meant to focus our discussion both on the exciting possibilities conjured up in these essays and some of the key issues they confront us with.
The first few articles I asked you to read provide background reporting on the work being done at the Institute for the Future of the Book. Some of this reading you’ve no doubt found repetitive, but it seems to me each short article contributes something interesting to the overall discussion, and, collectively, the articles provide us with a good sense of what the folks at the Institute are up to. The other articles focus more on a set of specific projects that try to make some of the general concepts concrete. These will be worth some particular attention. Here’s a list of questions or topics from the articles I think are worth our kicking around.
As always, feel free to start off the discussion with a posted comment ahead of our meeting.
From “The Future of Books”:
Is the book a “timeless piece of hardware” or a “device in need of regular upgrading” (and how comfortable are we with talking about books as “hardware” and “devices”)?
How attractive are “print-on-demand” machines like the “Espresso Book Machine” or Caravan Books? Are public access Napster or iTunes-like vendors the future of publishing?
What does it mean to talk about “the social life of books?” Is this a new way of thinking about books, or a way to adapt an old concept to new technologies? How socially networked do you want your books in general, and your academic books/articles in particular?
From “The Networked Book”:
This article shifts our attention from the problem of reading on screen to the advantages and pitfalls of “networked reading.” How important is this shift in focus? How interested are you in networked reading? Do you see it as something new, or as an extension of how we already read?
Vershbow (p.2) points out that when books are produced in networked social spaces “one notion that networked writers might have to give up is closure.” What does it mean to think of writing, peer-review, and publication as a single, fluid, open-ended, indeed, possibly never-ending process? Consider the following quote from p. 3 of “Publishing Trends: The Book as Place”: “What a revolutionary idea! A page or some other portion of a book is not complete unless the reader has commented on it. That means the author’s job is not only to write the book, but to engage the reader so completely that he or she joins the discussion. The reader is no longer anonymous and passive, but must step up and be counted, and the author has not successfully fulfilled his or her role unless that happens?” My question: why is this so cool?
From “The Social Life of Books”:
This article envisions the convergence of three technologies transforming the production of the book: scanning, searching, and open source wikis (p.2). Instead of thinking about Wikipedia, as we did last week, as a search tool, these people are thinking about Wikipedia as the model for a networked book. What are the possibilities and the problems here? How much sense does it make to even think about such productions as “books?” On this topic see also p. 3 of “Book 2.0.”
To what extent can the blog stand as an alternative to article and book publication (p.2, and this comes up in other articles as well)?
In the interview, Vershbow continually invokes environmental metaphors (“ecology,” “ecosystem,” “environmental,” etc.) in discussing open-source networked places. How applicable are these metaphors and how do they relate to our earlier discussion of the internet as a “place?”
Vershbow ends the discussion speculating about what kinds of books lend themselves to born-digital, networked status (“I am pretty certain,” he says, that “the main arena of intellectual discourse is moving away from print to networked, digital media”). Where do the humanities seem to fit in this shift? This question of course comes up in a number of the assigned pieces: to what extend does networked scholarship lend itself more to scientific than humanistic work? See, for example, p. 6 in “Book 2.0.”
From “Book 2.0”:
We should consider the questions raised by Ken Wissoker from Duke UP and others quoted on p. 7 who defend the current system. Do they make some good points, or are they just resisting the inevitable?
From “Publishing Trends: The Book as Place”:
A major issue running through many of these articles has to do with the role, shape, and future of peer review in an age of networked scholarship. This gets raised in the section here entitled “Peer Review on Steroids” (5-8) and is picked up in Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s essay, “On the Future of Academic Publishing, Peer Review, and Tenure Requirements,” as well as in “Toward the Creation of a New Scholarly Press” and “Rethinking Scholarly Publication.” How central is peer review to the work we do, and what do you think of the ways in which the authors of these articles try to re-envision and transform the process of peer review?
“On the Importance of the Collective in Electronic Publishing,” “On the Future of Academic Publishing, Peer Review, and Tenure Requirements,” “Toward the Creation of a New Scholarly Press,” and "Rethinking Scholarly Communication":
It seems to me that these three articles are worth particular attention because they’re about concrete projects aimed at transforming academic publication in a networked environment. Three of these are by Kathleen Fitzpatrick (and English Professor), and two of them have to do with the symposium on forming an electronic academic press held in April, 2006. These are worth some detailed discussion. The proposals for networked publishing in the essay "Rethinking Scholarly Communication” seem to pertain mainly to writing and publishing networked scientific scholarship, but we should be able to discuss how this apparatus can be adapted for the humanities.
The first few articles I asked you to read provide background reporting on the work being done at the Institute for the Future of the Book. Some of this reading you’ve no doubt found repetitive, but it seems to me each short article contributes something interesting to the overall discussion, and, collectively, the articles provide us with a good sense of what the folks at the Institute are up to. The other articles focus more on a set of specific projects that try to make some of the general concepts concrete. These will be worth some particular attention. Here’s a list of questions or topics from the articles I think are worth our kicking around.
As always, feel free to start off the discussion with a posted comment ahead of our meeting.
From “The Future of Books”:
Is the book a “timeless piece of hardware” or a “device in need of regular upgrading” (and how comfortable are we with talking about books as “hardware” and “devices”)?
How attractive are “print-on-demand” machines like the “Espresso Book Machine” or Caravan Books? Are public access Napster or iTunes-like vendors the future of publishing?
What does it mean to talk about “the social life of books?” Is this a new way of thinking about books, or a way to adapt an old concept to new technologies? How socially networked do you want your books in general, and your academic books/articles in particular?
From “The Networked Book”:
This article shifts our attention from the problem of reading on screen to the advantages and pitfalls of “networked reading.” How important is this shift in focus? How interested are you in networked reading? Do you see it as something new, or as an extension of how we already read?
Vershbow (p.2) points out that when books are produced in networked social spaces “one notion that networked writers might have to give up is closure.” What does it mean to think of writing, peer-review, and publication as a single, fluid, open-ended, indeed, possibly never-ending process? Consider the following quote from p. 3 of “Publishing Trends: The Book as Place”: “What a revolutionary idea! A page or some other portion of a book is not complete unless the reader has commented on it. That means the author’s job is not only to write the book, but to engage the reader so completely that he or she joins the discussion. The reader is no longer anonymous and passive, but must step up and be counted, and the author has not successfully fulfilled his or her role unless that happens?” My question: why is this so cool?
From “The Social Life of Books”:
This article envisions the convergence of three technologies transforming the production of the book: scanning, searching, and open source wikis (p.2). Instead of thinking about Wikipedia, as we did last week, as a search tool, these people are thinking about Wikipedia as the model for a networked book. What are the possibilities and the problems here? How much sense does it make to even think about such productions as “books?” On this topic see also p. 3 of “Book 2.0.”
To what extent can the blog stand as an alternative to article and book publication (p.2, and this comes up in other articles as well)?
In the interview, Vershbow continually invokes environmental metaphors (“ecology,” “ecosystem,” “environmental,” etc.) in discussing open-source networked places. How applicable are these metaphors and how do they relate to our earlier discussion of the internet as a “place?”
Vershbow ends the discussion speculating about what kinds of books lend themselves to born-digital, networked status (“I am pretty certain,” he says, that “the main arena of intellectual discourse is moving away from print to networked, digital media”). Where do the humanities seem to fit in this shift? This question of course comes up in a number of the assigned pieces: to what extend does networked scholarship lend itself more to scientific than humanistic work? See, for example, p. 6 in “Book 2.0.”
From “Book 2.0”:
We should consider the questions raised by Ken Wissoker from Duke UP and others quoted on p. 7 who defend the current system. Do they make some good points, or are they just resisting the inevitable?
From “Publishing Trends: The Book as Place”:
A major issue running through many of these articles has to do with the role, shape, and future of peer review in an age of networked scholarship. This gets raised in the section here entitled “Peer Review on Steroids” (5-8) and is picked up in Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s essay, “On the Future of Academic Publishing, Peer Review, and Tenure Requirements,” as well as in “Toward the Creation of a New Scholarly Press” and “Rethinking Scholarly Publication.” How central is peer review to the work we do, and what do you think of the ways in which the authors of these articles try to re-envision and transform the process of peer review?
“On the Importance of the Collective in Electronic Publishing,” “On the Future of Academic Publishing, Peer Review, and Tenure Requirements,” “Toward the Creation of a New Scholarly Press,” and "Rethinking Scholarly Communication":
It seems to me that these three articles are worth particular attention because they’re about concrete projects aimed at transforming academic publication in a networked environment. Three of these are by Kathleen Fitzpatrick (and English Professor), and two of them have to do with the symposium on forming an electronic academic press held in April, 2006. These are worth some detailed discussion. The proposals for networked publishing in the essay "Rethinking Scholarly Communication” seem to pertain mainly to writing and publishing networked scientific scholarship, but we should be able to discuss how this apparatus can be adapted for the humanities.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Cathy Davidson on Wikipedia
As a follow-up to last night's discussion of Wikipedia you might want to take a look at Cathy Davidson's short and positive piece about Wikipedia published recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education. It's called "We Can't Ignore the Influence of Digital Technologies" (Volume 53, Issue 29, Page B20). She compares the accuracy level of Wikipedia favorably to other encyclopedias (and even scholarly books and articles), and points out that unlike print media, Wikipedia articles can be very quickly corrected. But beyond this, she insists we not think of Wikipedia as an "encyclopedia" at all: "Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia. It is a knowledge community, uniting anonymous readers all over the world who edit and correct grammar, style, interpretations, and facts. It is a community devoted to a common good — the life of the intellect. Isn't that what we educators want to model for our students?" She goes on to insist that rather than ban Wikipedia from college campuses (as was recently done at Middlebury College) we ought to "make studying what it does and does not do part of the research-and-methods portion of our courses." She argues that "instead of resorting to the 'Delete' button for new forms of collaborative knowledge made possible by the Internet" we ought to "make the practice of research in the digital age the object of study." Provocative stuff from an important American Studies critic at Duke University.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Hillary '1984'
In case you haven't seen it, here's the Apple/Hillary mashup video that's the YouTube scandal du jour. It ends with an obama.com reference, but his campaign has denied producing it.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Tomorrow Night on "Digital Textuality"
For the next couple of weeks we’ll be discussing digital textuality. This week’s readings are pretty general, focusing on some key projects of public interest involving the Google Print Project, online encyclopedias like Wikipedia and the newer Scholarpedia and Citizendium, and the digitalization of the OED. Next week we’ll be focusing more specifically on the impact of digital textuality on academic writing and publishing, exploring the future of the book and of the academic journal. I’ve added a bundle of links to key sites we’ll be discussing (see “Digital Textuality” in the right-hand menu). I’m trying to get a guest to join us for part of the evening, a good friend who is the editor of a major academic journal who can share with us some of her concerns about their digitalization.
Tomorrow night I’d like us to think about the future of online research in light of the developments discussed in the articles we’ve read. What does the Google Print project as discussed by Kevin Kelly suggest about the future of reading, research, and studies in the humanities? What are the possibilities—and the drawbacks—you see in the world of scanned and connected texts he conjures up? Let’s assume those guys in China succeed in scanning every printed text. Can literary studies then proceed without books? Will the “democratic” accessibility of every text outweigh the loss of the printed book? What are the practical, legal, and economic issues that have to be dealt with here? And what about what Kelly calls “the real magic” that will occur when “each word in each book is cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled and woven deeper into the culture than ever before” (pp. 3-4)? In what ways can you imagine this will transform the kind of research we do? How will that research adjust to the world of links and tags Kelly discusses (4-5)? If he’s right that someday books, and the words in them, will be deeply linked, so you can click on titles in bibliographies or footnotes to access the actual book or article that’s cited, where will the primary text leave off and the secondary text begin? Are we looking at another form of convergence in which the text and its criticism become a single, fluid, ever expanding entity? If books become “liquid” (p.5) in the way Kelly envisions what are the various academic applications you can imagine? And finally, what are the implications for academic work of the shift from the “hegemony of the copy” (p.6) which we might link to Benjamin’s age of mechanical reproduction, to the “value” of recall, annotation, personalization, editing, authenticating, display, marking, transferring, etc. Kelly associates with the post-copy age of links and tags (p.11, bottom)? Will search “change everything,” as he suggests in the final section, and if so, how?
Perhaps the scanning and linking of all books will create a virtual world that replaces the library, but for now we also need to think about the impact of wikis on research, so we’ll want to discuss a range of issues that come up in the articles on Wikipedia, Scholarpedia, and Citizendium (again, see the links to these sites on the blog). As teachers and researchers, how do we deal with Wikipedia? Are the more “scholarly,” “refereed” sites like Scholarpedia and Citizendium promising, or do you agree with the argument that they buy into elitism and spoil the “democratic” open-source nature of wikis? How can sites like Wikipedia sustain their open-source orientation and still be “reliable,” or is reliability here freighted with assumptions we ought to interrogate? You might check out this blog entry by Danah Boyd about Wikipedia. She’s always provocative. And finally, what’s to stop groups of scholars from creating their own, specialized wikis run by sets of scholar-constables?
Tomorrow night I’d like us to think about the future of online research in light of the developments discussed in the articles we’ve read. What does the Google Print project as discussed by Kevin Kelly suggest about the future of reading, research, and studies in the humanities? What are the possibilities—and the drawbacks—you see in the world of scanned and connected texts he conjures up? Let’s assume those guys in China succeed in scanning every printed text. Can literary studies then proceed without books? Will the “democratic” accessibility of every text outweigh the loss of the printed book? What are the practical, legal, and economic issues that have to be dealt with here? And what about what Kelly calls “the real magic” that will occur when “each word in each book is cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled and woven deeper into the culture than ever before” (pp. 3-4)? In what ways can you imagine this will transform the kind of research we do? How will that research adjust to the world of links and tags Kelly discusses (4-5)? If he’s right that someday books, and the words in them, will be deeply linked, so you can click on titles in bibliographies or footnotes to access the actual book or article that’s cited, where will the primary text leave off and the secondary text begin? Are we looking at another form of convergence in which the text and its criticism become a single, fluid, ever expanding entity? If books become “liquid” (p.5) in the way Kelly envisions what are the various academic applications you can imagine? And finally, what are the implications for academic work of the shift from the “hegemony of the copy” (p.6) which we might link to Benjamin’s age of mechanical reproduction, to the “value” of recall, annotation, personalization, editing, authenticating, display, marking, transferring, etc. Kelly associates with the post-copy age of links and tags (p.11, bottom)? Will search “change everything,” as he suggests in the final section, and if so, how?
Perhaps the scanning and linking of all books will create a virtual world that replaces the library, but for now we also need to think about the impact of wikis on research, so we’ll want to discuss a range of issues that come up in the articles on Wikipedia, Scholarpedia, and Citizendium (again, see the links to these sites on the blog). As teachers and researchers, how do we deal with Wikipedia? Are the more “scholarly,” “refereed” sites like Scholarpedia and Citizendium promising, or do you agree with the argument that they buy into elitism and spoil the “democratic” open-source nature of wikis? How can sites like Wikipedia sustain their open-source orientation and still be “reliable,” or is reliability here freighted with assumptions we ought to interrogate? You might check out this blog entry by Danah Boyd about Wikipedia. She’s always provocative. And finally, what’s to stop groups of scholars from creating their own, specialized wikis run by sets of scholar-constables?
Digital Video: "www.movies.now"
Just back from Barcelona and playing radical catch-up, but I see that Sunday's New York Times has a set of timely articles on the digital reproduction and distribution of films we'll certainly want to incorporate down the road in our unit on digital video. Reading them over quickly, I see that what's going on here in the world of video parallels a number of developments discussed in the digital textuality material we'll be discussing tomorrow night. A.O. Scott's article, "The Shape of Cinema, Transformed at the Click of a Mouse," for example, envisions a world in which every film, like every text, is always available 24/7 for viewing, distribution, mashing-up, etc. What he envisions is something like the Google print project applied to film, but he also discusses how the online distribution of film is going to make a lot more so-called "obscure" films available for viewing.
Manohla Dargis, in "The Revolution Will Be Downloaded (If You're Patient)", also discusses the emerging possibilities for the online distribution of independent films (once hardware and bandwith problems are solved). She talks about her experiences downloading some films and provides links to a number of emerging cinema sites (as does a third, companion article, "Little Films on Little Screens (But Both Seem Set to Grow"). She celebrates the portability digital technology provides (you can watch downloaded films on your laptop, desktop, phone, i-pod, etc.) and doesn't waste much time on nostalgia for the "big screen." There's a parallel here with the articles about digital textuality, of course, where die-hards worry about the fate of the book. Will people really read texts that aren't in book form? Will people really watch films that aren't on a big screen at the multiplex? How much pull will the old delivery systems have, or will portability trump our ingrained viewing/reading habits?
Manohla Dargis, in "The Revolution Will Be Downloaded (If You're Patient)", also discusses the emerging possibilities for the online distribution of independent films (once hardware and bandwith problems are solved). She talks about her experiences downloading some films and provides links to a number of emerging cinema sites (as does a third, companion article, "Little Films on Little Screens (But Both Seem Set to Grow"). She celebrates the portability digital technology provides (you can watch downloaded films on your laptop, desktop, phone, i-pod, etc.) and doesn't waste much time on nostalgia for the "big screen." There's a parallel here with the articles about digital textuality, of course, where die-hards worry about the fate of the book. Will people really read texts that aren't in book form? Will people really watch films that aren't on a big screen at the multiplex? How much pull will the old delivery systems have, or will portability trump our ingrained viewing/reading habits?
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
YouTube and Professional Sports Programming
In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins continually returns to the question of whether or not sites like YouTube will be able to remain driven by users or will get cannibalized by big corporations who want to appropriate the site for their own uses. Evidence of the delicate dance going on between YouTube and these corporations can be found in today's New York Times article, in the sports section, about the creation of an NBA channel on YouTube. The article reports that
"The deal creates an N.B.A. channel on YouTube (a tunnel through which the league will send authorized video); sanctions fans’ uploads (while still allowing the league to reject those it wants removed); and lets users post videos that show their best moves, which will be compiled into a weekly top 10 and shown on the channel."
Note how this deal ivolves a trade-off on all sides: YouTube gets the prestige of an "NBA channel," fans get to post their own videos, but the league can regulate the content. Lose, lose, or win, win?
"The deal creates an N.B.A. channel on YouTube (a tunnel through which the league will send authorized video); sanctions fans’ uploads (while still allowing the league to reject those it wants removed); and lets users post videos that show their best moves, which will be compiled into a weekly top 10 and shown on the channel."
Note how this deal ivolves a trade-off on all sides: YouTube gets the prestige of an "NBA channel," fans get to post their own videos, but the league can regulate the content. Lose, lose, or win, win?
Monday, February 19, 2007
Discussion Questions for Jenkins, Chapters 1-3
Collectively, these chapters extend discussion of the transformation of the relationship between production, consumption, and distribution in networked public culture we encountered in the readings from last week. Perhaps the best metaphor for all of this is Pierre Levy’s metaphor of the “circuit” as outlined by Jenkins (95). According to Jenkins, Levy believes the “’distinction between authors and readers, producers and spectators, creators and interpreters will blend’” to form a “circuit” of “expression.” In TV shows like Survivor and American Idol the circuit is formed by knowledge communities that track and influence the production and consumption of shows like Survivor, and by voting that actually determines the narrative shape of American Idol. The chapter about The Matrix has more to do with the emergence of transmedia storytelling and the franchising of narrative across various media platforms. Here the circuit is between multiple, coordinated authors, on the one hand, and the participation of knowledge communities in what we might call fan culture. The underlying question in these chapters, it seems to me, has to do with what shape drama and narrative will take in a networked world in which production, consumption, and distribution become almost indistinguishable, and in which participation from the bottom up collides with the power of brands and franchises to exert power from the top down.
Some questions to think about for tomorrow night (as usual, feel free to comment on this blog ahead of time):
1. On p. 28 Jenkins references Michael Trossett on the concept of “narrative pleasure.” Is spoiling a form of narrative pleasure for spoilers, or is it aimed at ruining narrative pleasure? How much ambivalence is built into the whole business of spoiling (on both the part of the spoilers and the networks who try to manipulate them)? Is spoiling an adversarial activity or a form of participation in the show? Perhaps we can connect this discussion of narrative pleasure to the discussion of narrative in the chapter on The Matrix.
2. To what extent do the Survivor spoilers, in terms of their embodiment of “collective intelligence” and “knowledge communities” (27) constitute subcultures or undergrounds in terms of our discussion from last time? What do their activities, and the way they’re used by the network, suggest about the fate of networked culture as a location for underground or subversive activity? On p. 64 Jenkins claims that American Idol presents us with a “fantasy of empowerment” based on the idea you get to decide who wins. To what extent is our sense of empowerment in networked culture a fantasy?
3. Both Survivor and American Idol are examples of so-called “reality television.” What is reality television and how do you account for its emergence and popularity? What social, cultural, and political changes help explain its emergence? How is the interactive element of these “reality” shows connected, if at all, to interactive cultural experiences online?
4. Jenkins presents The Matrix as a transmedia form of “storytelling” and as a “franchise.” What is “transmedia story telling” and what does it mean to call it a “franchise” and its various elements “products?” (See pp. 94-6). Does transmedia storytelling further the commodification of art? Are we moving into an age of franchised narrative in which narrative pleasure is inextricably connected to marketing?
5. On p. 96 Jenkins draws an implicit distinction between our fascination with how The Matrix (and, by extension, the other shows he’s discussed) operates technically and culturally, and whether it’s “any good” in aesthetic terms. This opens up a whole can of worms worth discussing, i.e. do interactive, networked, transmedia forms of narrative have aesthetic merit, or is this the right question to be asking. Does the shift toward interactivity, knowledge communities, and collaboration represent the development of new and more compelling narrative forms, or the dumbing down of those forms for the sake of interactivity? Will we soon be able to speak of the “narrative industry” as Horkheimer and Adorno could speak of the culture industry? For more on the topic of narrative see in particular pp. 118-19. Where is narrative headed, according to Jenkins?
Some questions to think about for tomorrow night (as usual, feel free to comment on this blog ahead of time):
1. On p. 28 Jenkins references Michael Trossett on the concept of “narrative pleasure.” Is spoiling a form of narrative pleasure for spoilers, or is it aimed at ruining narrative pleasure? How much ambivalence is built into the whole business of spoiling (on both the part of the spoilers and the networks who try to manipulate them)? Is spoiling an adversarial activity or a form of participation in the show? Perhaps we can connect this discussion of narrative pleasure to the discussion of narrative in the chapter on The Matrix.
2. To what extent do the Survivor spoilers, in terms of their embodiment of “collective intelligence” and “knowledge communities” (27) constitute subcultures or undergrounds in terms of our discussion from last time? What do their activities, and the way they’re used by the network, suggest about the fate of networked culture as a location for underground or subversive activity? On p. 64 Jenkins claims that American Idol presents us with a “fantasy of empowerment” based on the idea you get to decide who wins. To what extent is our sense of empowerment in networked culture a fantasy?
3. Both Survivor and American Idol are examples of so-called “reality television.” What is reality television and how do you account for its emergence and popularity? What social, cultural, and political changes help explain its emergence? How is the interactive element of these “reality” shows connected, if at all, to interactive cultural experiences online?
4. Jenkins presents The Matrix as a transmedia form of “storytelling” and as a “franchise.” What is “transmedia story telling” and what does it mean to call it a “franchise” and its various elements “products?” (See pp. 94-6). Does transmedia storytelling further the commodification of art? Are we moving into an age of franchised narrative in which narrative pleasure is inextricably connected to marketing?
5. On p. 96 Jenkins draws an implicit distinction between our fascination with how The Matrix (and, by extension, the other shows he’s discussed) operates technically and culturally, and whether it’s “any good” in aesthetic terms. This opens up a whole can of worms worth discussing, i.e. do interactive, networked, transmedia forms of narrative have aesthetic merit, or is this the right question to be asking. Does the shift toward interactivity, knowledge communities, and collaboration represent the development of new and more compelling narrative forms, or the dumbing down of those forms for the sake of interactivity? Will we soon be able to speak of the “narrative industry” as Horkheimer and Adorno could speak of the culture industry? For more on the topic of narrative see in particular pp. 118-19. Where is narrative headed, according to Jenkins?
From Networks to Networks: MTV in the Age of YouTube
Networks used to be built, owned, and controlled by media conglomerates and were synonymous with single brands: ABC, NBC, CBS, then later, PBS, MTV, HBO and Showtime. These networks produced shows and viewers consumed them. It was really as simple as that. Some, like Nickelodeon and MTV, became branded as networks appealing to a particular demographic. In the 80s and early 90s, for example, Nickelodeon was the primary single destination for kids, as MTV was for teenagers.
All this has changed with the rise of networked culture. In the world of networked culture networks aren’t built and owned by mega corporations but are developed by tech savvy young people like those who started MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, networks that aren’t commercial but social. And the network doesn’t just consist of one of these sites but is made up of all of them. We put together our own networks on sites like Facebook and through the browser bookmarks we collect. When I look at the tabs running along the top of my browser I see “My Sites” which contains all of the sites I’ve created and those I subscribe to (from Blogspot to Netflix to Flickr and YouTube). I see a “News” tab, a “Shop” tab, an “Entertainment” tab, a “Travel” tab, a “Politics” tab, a “Blogs” tab, and so on. These tabs, collectively, constitute my network. It’s a network I’ve constructed and control. It connects me to other users who share my interests and keeps me up-to-date and entertained in the ways I want.
This transformation from a world of corporate networks to user networks is characteristic of the world of convergence Henry Jenkins writes about in Convergence Culture. The nature of the changes he’s writing about are dramatized in an article in today’s business section of New York Times about how, in a multi-device, multi-platform, multi-channel world of online convergence 16-year olds have stopped flocking to the MTV network and have started building and programming their own networks. As a result, the article reports, MTV “has suffered a decline in ratings and cultural cachet.” MTV was a brand with an edge until “competition for its core demographic started coming from all fronts, from video games and social-networking Web sites to amateur clips on YouTube.” Now “consumers come up with their own reality narratives” and have, in effect, taken over the means of production. And the old networks are struggling to respond along the lines outlined by Jenkins. The article quotes Christina Norman, MTV’s president, as saying that “It’s true that our viewers are telling us that they want an experience beyond linear television . . . MTV has a history surrounding the consumer with both long-form and interstitial content, and I think we can deliver on a two-way relationship with our audience.”
How far behind the times can you get? As Jenkins makes clear, shows like “Survivor” and “American Idol” have been delivering on this two-way relationship for a long time, and one wonders why it took MTV so long to figure out it had to catch up. Interactive programming is clearly the wave of the future for television, but is it a future already killed off by online networks? Check out the article.
All this has changed with the rise of networked culture. In the world of networked culture networks aren’t built and owned by mega corporations but are developed by tech savvy young people like those who started MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, networks that aren’t commercial but social. And the network doesn’t just consist of one of these sites but is made up of all of them. We put together our own networks on sites like Facebook and through the browser bookmarks we collect. When I look at the tabs running along the top of my browser I see “My Sites” which contains all of the sites I’ve created and those I subscribe to (from Blogspot to Netflix to Flickr and YouTube). I see a “News” tab, a “Shop” tab, an “Entertainment” tab, a “Travel” tab, a “Politics” tab, a “Blogs” tab, and so on. These tabs, collectively, constitute my network. It’s a network I’ve constructed and control. It connects me to other users who share my interests and keeps me up-to-date and entertained in the ways I want.
This transformation from a world of corporate networks to user networks is characteristic of the world of convergence Henry Jenkins writes about in Convergence Culture. The nature of the changes he’s writing about are dramatized in an article in today’s business section of New York Times about how, in a multi-device, multi-platform, multi-channel world of online convergence 16-year olds have stopped flocking to the MTV network and have started building and programming their own networks. As a result, the article reports, MTV “has suffered a decline in ratings and cultural cachet.” MTV was a brand with an edge until “competition for its core demographic started coming from all fronts, from video games and social-networking Web sites to amateur clips on YouTube.” Now “consumers come up with their own reality narratives” and have, in effect, taken over the means of production. And the old networks are struggling to respond along the lines outlined by Jenkins. The article quotes Christina Norman, MTV’s president, as saying that “It’s true that our viewers are telling us that they want an experience beyond linear television . . . MTV has a history surrounding the consumer with both long-form and interstitial content, and I think we can deliver on a two-way relationship with our audience.”
How far behind the times can you get? As Jenkins makes clear, shows like “Survivor” and “American Idol” have been delivering on this two-way relationship for a long time, and one wonders why it took MTV so long to figure out it had to catch up. Interactive programming is clearly the wave of the future for television, but is it a future already killed off by online networks? Check out the article.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
More on Obama and Facebook
Today's Washington Post contains an article on the proliferation of Facebook pages dedicated to mobilizing support for Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. The article exemplifies some of the possibilities discussed in the "Networked Democracy" essay we read. There is also some discussion of what I think is the more interesting story, the appropriation by Obama's site of the MySpace/Facebook social networking format. It remains to be seen whether this device will translate into something that really propels his candidacy, but it's certainly something worth keeping an eye on.
MySpace and Identity Production
Dana Boyd has what looks like an interesting essay on how MySpace functions as a site for identity formation. Boyd is an interesting digital culture critic. I heard her on a program on Open Source a few months ago. If you want to check out her work take a look at her extensive writings on her blog, apophenia. She has a Best of Apophenia page that collects her writing under a set of pretty interesting subject headings. Worth a look.
Networked Publics Conclusion Now Online
Kazys Varnelis, one of the co-authors of the essay "Networked Place," has published a concluding chapter to the Networked Publics book. You can find it on his website, which is full of interesting essays, including one about the Prada store in Los Angeles. I haven't read either of these pieces yet but will try to do so during the break.
Monday, February 12, 2007
A Few Questions for Tuesday Night
Place Essay
How well does the spatial metaphor work for talking about the web? Does it make sense to talk about networks as places?
The “Networked Place” essay links networks to Habermas’ notion of the “public sphere.” To what degree does the web function as a public sphere? Who has access to it? Is it class or culture bound in any way? The “Networked Democracy” authors claim the web provides “broad availability” as a place for deliberation. Is this really correct? To what extent do “the digital divide” and cultural differences related to online practices qualify these claims?
To what degree does the network get characterized as a “place” for identity formation? What are some examples?
Culture Essay
This essay focuses on the converging relationship online between cultural consumption and cultural production, with a particular focus on music. What are the key aesthetic, ethical, and legal issues that come up here and how do we begin to sort them out?
How can we link Benjamin’s discussion of the loss of the “aura” to this discussion of cultural production? What happens to “originality” and “authenticity” in the kind of work discussed here (DJ Dangermouse, Deconstructing Beck)?
Why do the authors see mashups and remixing as “post pomo” (p.2)? Couldn’t a case be made that remixes and mashups simply build on and extend forms of creativity central to postmodernism or even modernism? (Think “The Waste Land” or Ulysses, for example).
Jenkins on Convergence Culture
Jenkins points out (p. 13) that media critics call the tools we use to access content “delivery technology.” What are the implications of thinking of the book as a “delivery technology?”
Jenkins cautions against reducing “media change” to technological change because that “strips aside” something “cultural” (15, top). What’s he getting at here?
A major issue that circulates through a number of the essays has to do with the tension between the web as a user-driven medium that generates content from the bottom up and as a medium large corporations want to appropriate and control for their own purposes. Jenkins treats this as a kind of paradox on pp. 17-19. To what degree is networked public culture susceptible to appropriation and control by corporations that dominate traditional cultural forms? This could be connected to the question raised on the bottom of p. 1 of the networked democracy essay: Is the internet “convivial?” Does it empower people and make the medium difficult for elites to control, or not?
Democracy Essay
The political remixes discussed in the essay (pp. 15-16) are entertaining, but do they really have any real political force or power?
The authors claim the web provides “broad availability” as a place for deliberation. Is this really correct? To what extent do “the digital divide” and cultural differences related to online practices qualify these claims?
How well does the spatial metaphor work for talking about the web? Does it make sense to talk about networks as places?
The “Networked Place” essay links networks to Habermas’ notion of the “public sphere.” To what degree does the web function as a public sphere? Who has access to it? Is it class or culture bound in any way? The “Networked Democracy” authors claim the web provides “broad availability” as a place for deliberation. Is this really correct? To what extent do “the digital divide” and cultural differences related to online practices qualify these claims?
To what degree does the network get characterized as a “place” for identity formation? What are some examples?
Culture Essay
This essay focuses on the converging relationship online between cultural consumption and cultural production, with a particular focus on music. What are the key aesthetic, ethical, and legal issues that come up here and how do we begin to sort them out?
How can we link Benjamin’s discussion of the loss of the “aura” to this discussion of cultural production? What happens to “originality” and “authenticity” in the kind of work discussed here (DJ Dangermouse, Deconstructing Beck)?
Why do the authors see mashups and remixing as “post pomo” (p.2)? Couldn’t a case be made that remixes and mashups simply build on and extend forms of creativity central to postmodernism or even modernism? (Think “The Waste Land” or Ulysses, for example).
Jenkins on Convergence Culture
Jenkins points out (p. 13) that media critics call the tools we use to access content “delivery technology.” What are the implications of thinking of the book as a “delivery technology?”
Jenkins cautions against reducing “media change” to technological change because that “strips aside” something “cultural” (15, top). What’s he getting at here?
A major issue that circulates through a number of the essays has to do with the tension between the web as a user-driven medium that generates content from the bottom up and as a medium large corporations want to appropriate and control for their own purposes. Jenkins treats this as a kind of paradox on pp. 17-19. To what degree is networked public culture susceptible to appropriation and control by corporations that dominate traditional cultural forms? This could be connected to the question raised on the bottom of p. 1 of the networked democracy essay: Is the internet “convivial?” Does it empower people and make the medium difficult for elites to control, or not?
Democracy Essay
The political remixes discussed in the essay (pp. 15-16) are entertaining, but do they really have any real political force or power?
The authors claim the web provides “broad availability” as a place for deliberation. Is this really correct? To what extent do “the digital divide” and cultural differences related to online practices qualify these claims?
Friday, February 09, 2007
Networked Presidential Campaigns
Take a look at this video Barack Obama sent round today to people who signed up on his website. It provides a sneak preview of his announcement tomorrow that he'll be running for President. Listen carefully to his description the role his website will play in the campaign, especially the way his people will apparently be adopting social networking as a format for linking up and mobilizing supporters . This is all connected to the discussion in one of the essays we'll be talking about on Tuesday, "Democratic Deliberation and Mobilization on the Internet." This isn't meant to be an endorsement of Obama's candidacy, of course. What's interesting here is how his campaign is going to mashup myspace social networking and the power of individual blogs. Have a listen. If you want to see the reformatted website with the networking capabilities Obama describes it's now up and running.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us
Check out this fabulous video introduction to what we'll be covering the rest of the semester, all packed into a tight 2 1/2 minutes. Thanks to Steve Jones for sending it our way.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Back to the Future
Click on this image and read the caption. Too cool. Just e-mailed to me and I'm told it's in image from a 1954 Popular Mechanics Magazine. I'm missing that steering wheel on my Macbook!
Convergence in the Technoculture Industry
Two side-by-side articles in this morning's New York Times caught my eye. The first, "A New Boss at NBC, and Even Newer Issues," is about the challenge Jeff Zucker will face as he takes over NBC in dealing with the digital revolution that is moving much TV content online to sites like YouTube. The second is about a deal Wal-Mart has made with all six major Hollywood studios to begin selling downloadable movies online. The convergence of these two articles on the front page of the business section dramatizes how shifting systems for delivering televsion and film programs are disrupting traditional business models. This is a classic contemporary example of conversion, where two media that decades earlier converged in our living rooms -- TV and film -- are now converging online. This isn't just business news, of course, since the changes discussed in the two articles are bound to have a long-term impact both on how we experience visual entertainment and the aesthetic forms that entertainment takes.
If you don't have a New York Times subscription you'll find links to both articles at the top of the News section of the course website.
If you don't have a New York Times subscription you'll find links to both articles at the top of the News section of the course website.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Plans for Tuesday Night's Class
We’ll spend the first half of our time on Parts 5 and 6. They deal broadly with how cultural studies critics theorize personal and cultural identity (for purposes of our discussion I think it makes sense to approach sexuality, gender, and the concept of “queer” as identity categories along with race and multiculturalism). The theoretical approach here is generally poststructuralist and narrowly deconstructive, i.e. essentialist or foundationalist conceptions of identity, race, culture, gender, and sexual orientation have given way in our own time to social constructionist models based on a deconstruction of the nature/culture binary. Much of this may be familiar from introductory or advanced level theory courses you’ve already had (our Introduction to Graduate Studies, for example), but we will certainly spend some time dealing with questions you’ve got about 1) the theoretical concepts During reviews in these sections, and 2) how the topics he covers translate into major issues of practical interest to cultural studies critics. If you want to post questions here that would be great.
After the break we’ll spend the remainder of our time on Parts 7 and 4, in that order. Part 7 discusses the general interest in “popular culture” among cultural studies critics, and Part 4 deals with specific examples of popular forms of interest to cultural studies critics—TV, music, and “technoculture” (the list is by no means exhaustive, of course). These two sections, taken together, make for a nice transition to our study of popular culture in the form of networked public culture. As such, it seems to me we’ll want to orient our discussion of these sections around how the landscape of popular culture has changed in the few years since During wrote his book. How has TV changed, and to what extent is it marked by its convergence with the web? With regard to music, building on the foundation During reviews, how would we want to approach the study of music given developments related to its online use During doesn’t discuss? And finally, his section on “technoculture” is a brief, early sketch of the terrain we’re about to cover. We should try to talk briefly about some of the key developments that have transpired since the publication of his book as a way to begin to frame some of the topics we’ll be covering the rest of the semester.
Feel free to post questions – and suggestions about specifics you’d like to see us cover – by using the comments feature here. I’m outta here for the Super Bowl.
After the break we’ll spend the remainder of our time on Parts 7 and 4, in that order. Part 7 discusses the general interest in “popular culture” among cultural studies critics, and Part 4 deals with specific examples of popular forms of interest to cultural studies critics—TV, music, and “technoculture” (the list is by no means exhaustive, of course). These two sections, taken together, make for a nice transition to our study of popular culture in the form of networked public culture. As such, it seems to me we’ll want to orient our discussion of these sections around how the landscape of popular culture has changed in the few years since During wrote his book. How has TV changed, and to what extent is it marked by its convergence with the web? With regard to music, building on the foundation During reviews, how would we want to approach the study of music given developments related to its online use During doesn’t discuss? And finally, his section on “technoculture” is a brief, early sketch of the terrain we’re about to cover. We should try to talk briefly about some of the key developments that have transpired since the publication of his book as a way to begin to frame some of the topics we’ll be covering the rest of the semester.
Feel free to post questions – and suggestions about specifics you’d like to see us cover – by using the comments feature here. I’m outta here for the Super Bowl.
The Racial Politics of Being "Articulate"
Another news story this week bears on our discussion Tuesday night of race and idenity, of course, and that's Sen. Joseph Biden's remark that in Barack Obama we finally have an "articulate" (not to mention "clean") African American leader. There is an intelligent discussion of this incident in today's NEW YORK TIMES.
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