I came across this video linking social media and loneliness. I thought it was an interesting video in the context of our class, and the development of social media in the digital world.
http://www.mobiledia.com/news/189649.html
What y’all think?
Month: April 2014
From D. F McKenzie’s ‘Sociology of the Text’ to The Present Day E-Book: Building a Foundation of Digital and Social Tools
We have talked extensively about E-Books throughout this course so it is only appropriate that we end off with an in-depth discussion about e-books with an attempt to tie in as much of the other course material as we can without overloading and crashing. The e-book represents the new electronic, social interface materiality that has changed the way we interact and read “texts”. We have discussed this in length from numerous angles. In particular, the introduction of the e-readers and e-books introduces new social and electronic tools. Galey touches on this by connecting the evolution of the e-book to D.F McKenzie’s “sociology of the text”. D.F McKenzie’s sociology of the text brings us back to the beginning of the term and through this connection we can see the trajectory of the course, the questions, concerns, problems, tools, and development. The e-book as a “new materiality” encompasses a new material where the social, digital and technological tools and interface of D. F McKenzie’s idea of ‘sociology of the text’ is at the forefront. The introduction of e-books and e-readers impacts how a text is created and received because authors and readers “are never left alone in the same room” (213). Here we can see how D. F McKenzie’s ‘sociology of the text’ which he defines as “verbal, visual, oral, and numeric data, in the forms of maps, prints, and music, of archives of recorded sound, of films, videos, and any computer-stored information” (13) can be applied to today’s technological and digital world. The “sociology” aspect of McKenzie’s term “directs us to consider the human motives and interactions which texts involve at every stage of their production, transmission, and consumptions” (15). Galey’s statement that authors and readers “are never left alone in the same room” demonstrates that the e-book functions within this definition. The social and digital world has created and reinforced this sense of community, collaboration, constant social feedback, and human transmission. The basis of this connection I am making is to show that we have taken D. F McKenzie’s emphasis on the social interaction and have created a social platform through digitality. The development of this platform has introduced new tools and has altered the way that we interact with texts because they exist both in the digital world and physical world. The e-book is growing in popularity and constantly being modified as new Kindles, Kobos, and iPads are released, and we respond to these changes through our readings.
Codex to Digital: Commonality, Transferability, and Sociability
Almost every major textual imitative today is structured around three overlapping notions of sharing: commonality, transferability, and sociability. We want people to read the same thing we are reading (commonality); we want to be able to send other people what we are reading (transferability); and we want to be able to talk to other people about what we are reading (sociability) (Piper 84).
Andrew Piper’s book “Book Was There”, reading digitally, and the discussion on GoodReads in relation to the commonality, transferability, and sociability notions of sharing and “social reading” in a social and digitalized world influences how we share “books”. Piper’s chapter on “Sharing” addresses the transformation of “sharing books” based on social media’s influence and comes to the conclusion that the social and digital advancements fundamentally challenges what it means to share. In the final section of this chapter Piper suggests that “sharing books” is largely influenced by the ability to preserve a work of art in the codex form and physically giving and sharing the codex. I think this raises a number of questions: How do we connect with the physical codex? How do we connect with the digital form of a book? Is part of sharing and connecting with a book built into sharing the physical copy of a book we have read numerous of times in numerous locations? I have particular books that I have read numerous times throughout the years and the feeling and connection I have with them is in part based on the physical presence. Sharing these copies of books is a different experience, and to share them with a friend means I am sharing a particular experience with another friend based on the physical copy of these books. The “sharing” is not the same as “sharing”, or more accurately copying, a digitalized document or text while keeping a copy for myself. Evidently, the commonality, transferability and sociability of a physical codex versus a digital text hold very different meanings and weights. Can we evaluate or measure the commonality, transferability and sociability of the codex and the digital text on the same level? For as Piper says “[s]haring is more difficult than you think” (83).
The Social Edition: FanFiction
‘Social Editing’ and ‘Social Editions’ in the digitalized world has created a forum for community based, active social participation and response to “living” or ongoing texts. Originally ‘Scholarly Editing’ was completed by a single editor within a closed tight-knit group of scholars; however the introduction of digital and social media has presented this opportunity for collaboration, rapid movement, and wide-spread accessibility for the public. This change creates new opportunities for the public to apply traditionally scholarly practices and tools to digitalized and social networks. As Siemens et al states in the article “Toward Modeling the Social Edition: An Approach to Understanding the Electronic Scholarly Edition in the Context of New and Emerging Media”:
three modes of citizen scholarship – contributory, collaborative, and co-created – in each, the traditional scholarly community of practice is extended to include public expertise while still valuing the experience, resources, and tools already in place; based on experience with humanities projects that have had extra-academic appeal and active engagement, many in our community have highlighted ways in which digital scholarships can welcome the contributions of participants from outside academe, via means of control and regulation that are not wholly foreign to the processes used by humanists traditionally (Siemens et al 450)
These tools, practices and ideas have begun to appear in less academic social networks, such as FanFic sites. FanFiction, such as J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter seriesand other various book series and television shows have amassed large volumes of online FanFic stories and sites. This type of ‘Social Editing’ reworks established texts and narratives by taking general aspects of the narrative and rewriting the stories slightly differently. The websites become a “site” of collaboration and social participation of ongoing “live” texts that develop the established narrative in alternative ways. Clearly the forum influences and allows the public to access these alternative narratives and respond with their own versions, or comments. This type of interface and social forum introduces a new platform of ‘Social Editing’ that allows this creative and collaborative dialogue on a widely accessible forum that did not exist in traditional ‘Scholarly Editing’. So how does FanFic, social media, and widely accessible social editing change and apply to ‘Scholarly Editing’? How is ‘scholarly editing’ influenced and changed by the introduction of digitalized and collaborative ‘Social Editing’?
“Reading” Faces
As we’ve extensively discussed throughout our Digital Humanities class – accessibility, interactivity, and precision have become the face of new materialities in the digital and technological web interface. The way we access and interact with one another has become increasingly more “in your face” with social media, and online social sites, such as Facebook, twitter, linked-in, instagram and so forth. These online social profile sites are a form of new materialities in the sense that they give us access in a new digital format to present a subjective “reading” of ourselves. One of the major components of these social profile sites is putting up pictures, such as profile pictures. Recently a new facial recognition technology has begun being developed, which “will mean users will almost never have to tag their own pictures and Facebook will do it for them” (Baliga). The article I have included details the development and process stating the “technology will create a 3D map of facial features and create a colorless model to narrow in on specific characteristics” with an accuracy of 97.25%. Clearly this “reading” of a person’s face through this technology is unlike how another human “reads” or recognizes someone. This form of “new materialities” creates an interface of “reading” faces through a technological interface and coding, much like the way a computer “reads” a text document.
Digital Humanities 9101 