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?
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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.
Idealistic Tinker Toy
Text modeling is creating a representation of something that we want to exist, particularly in a digital sense when discussing it in our Digital Humanities course. Jeremy’s term “toy” and Lora’s term “motherboard” as appropriate terms for text modeling aligns well with Willard McCarty‘s article and discussion on Text Modeling. Referring to Text Modeling as a “toy” is particularly significant and accurate because it as McCarty states Text Modeling is a model that is
by nature a simplified and therefore fictional or idealized representation, often taking quite a rough-and-ready form: hence the term ‘tinker toy’ model from physics, accurately suggesting play, relative crudity, and heuristic purpose.
This notion of the idealized tinker toy model implies a malleable structure and idea that we can play with and bring into existence. I think a good way of approaching text modeling is thinking about it as an abstract and ideal blueprint for a rough ideal tinker toy that we are trying to access and create. Text modeling existence begins as an intangible thought with heuristic and boundless qualities. As the process and model is manipulated and built into existence human error and subjectivity begins to take precedence. The interesting and unique feature of text modeling is the boundless quality of the initial thought process.
Markup & Hierarchy
Desmond Schmidt explores the difficulties and technical setbacks of markup in the humanities department in his article “The inadequacy of embedded markup for cultural heritage texts”. A couple of the major setbacks that Schmidt discusses and that we briefly talked about in class are the problems of hierarchy and subjectivity. To begin with Schmidt describes cultural heritage texts as “historical works that have become an object of study” (Schmidt 338). This definition implies unavoidable subjectivity and a system of hierarchy. Markup itself as Peter discussed in his seminar was primarily concerned with the layout, headings, columns, white space etc. It was not concerned with the content, however, this idea of markup has shifted over time and has become a way in which we interact and influence the text. As McGann has stated, the markup and punctuation influence the interpretation of the text. This subjectivity and interpretation speaks to the hierarchy of ‘cultural heritage texts’ because there is the assumption that a hierarchy inherently exists in texts. Schmidt describes this by stating that:
In OHCO the ‘ordering’ comes from the fact that texts are linear: the objects of which they are composed succeed one another, and the objects themselves are hierarchical because structures like chapters, paragraphs, sentences and prose quotations ‘nest inside one another like Chinese boxes’ (341)
He goes on to argue the significance of this is that this hierarchical ordering of content objects is flawed outside of the practical and digital computerization process. This has begun to be fixed and discussed in new ways, but the overlapping structures, multiple perspectives and hierarchies are still a major problem in markup. As we discussed in class how can we manipulate and refigure it or do we need to start from scratch?
Electronic Scholarly Editing
In Martha Nell Smith’s article, “Electronic Scholarly Editing” Smith declares that she is discussing “the effects and meanings of the kinds of electronic scholarly editing, work extending well beyond the spatial and typographically fixed limitations of the codex” (Smith). The class discussion and presentation on February 12th as well as Martha Nell Smith’s article on electronic editing presents the notion of differing and changing forms of editing and how they differ according to their application. As Smith’s quote above states, electronic scholarly editing introduces a spatially mobile form of editing opposed to the fixed form of editing a codex.
Acknowledging the fluidity of texts instead of insisting upon single-minded, singularly-oriented texts, “learning the meaning of the revision of texts”, as well as the revision of our editorial practices, creates an environment in which a “new kind of critical thinking based on difference, variation, approximation, intention, power, and change” can flourish and work for the common good (Smith).
In class we have talked briefly about different types of editing, such as author’s deliberate editing or “deformance”. The notion of deliberately obscuring meaning rather than clarifying meaning through the process of editing fits into this idea of fluidity and spatiality. The author introduces multiple interpretations, layers and meanings rather than attempting to achieve a singular meaning. James Joyce was mentioned as an example in class with the footnotes that actually give the reader more avenues of interpretation than a solid understanding as most footnotes in a Shakespeare play provides. In relation to electronic editing, however, this obscuring and layering of meaning cannot be achieved in the digital world since ambiguity is flattened. The need to make a choice rather than existing in a fluid, obscure and interpretative space makes it difficult to apply this type of editing electronically. What are the solutions? Are there currently solutions or is it something that needs to be created? Clearly there are a number of “bugs” that need to be worked out in the realm of electronic scholarly editing before we can overcome these problems.
Authoritative Texts: Codex to Digital
Jerome J. McGann’s article “A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism” examines the question of authoritative texts when the authoritative documents are absent. McGann discusses the problem of Shakespeare’s authoritative texts stating:
The state of the Shakespearean texts corresponded to the state of the classical and biblical texts in this respect: in each case the authorized documents were missing, so that critical editors were faced with the problem of sorting through the mediated texts which developed subsequently (17).
The shape of the 18th century editing and decisions around authority included editors choosing aesthetic changes, collaborative texts as authoritative and economic profit. Tonson, for instance, reprints Hanmers edition for a cheaper selling price. Since the 18th century textual criticism and scholarly editing procedures have become about finding the purest form of authoritative text rather than involving editors aesthetic preference.
This brings me to my next point about authoritative: As we have discussed in class the codex remains the preferred and “trusted” form of scholarly literature, while the online versions are considered second standing. Often times online versions of books will follow the same format as the codex, and as Lora mentioned in class – the original kindle was created to look like a book. This is interesting and important in the context of Shakespeare and authoritative texts because the Oxford edition of Shakespeare’s Complete Collection of Works exists in an online form and a book form, but the works included in each form differ. Works that are considered subpar, less Shakespearian or his collaborative works can be found on the online edition, but not in the codex form. This implies and reinforces the hierarchy between digital texts and codex texts. How does this influence digital humanities and the Shakespeare’s canon? Giving preference to one form over another hinders the progression of digital humanities authoritative presence in the realm of scholarly editing and textual criticism.
Applying Vandendorpes “From Papyrus to Hypertext” to Modern Day Video Games: I Click, Therefore I Have Freewill
In Christian Vandendorpe’s book, From Papyrus to Hypertext, Vandendorpe illustrates that the rise of the internet has caused us to move “from a mass-media culture to a participatory culture” (155). As a result, we read and engage differently with the codex, media, hypertexts and so forth. He examines this change and the results of this change best in his chapter “I Click, Therefore I Read”, stating: “Movement by means of mouse clicks gives readers a sense of control – insofar as the program allows them such control, of course – and a feeling of being able to give free rein to their impulses” (133). However, as we discussed in Wednesday’s class this sense of freedom is artificial – for example, our choices are restricted over time through “tailored” google searches. Dr. McDayter’s paradigmatic and syntagmatic axis reinforces this idea that our choices are limited – as we progress across the syntagmatic trajectory our paradigmatic choices decrease.
This sense of artificial control and participation can be applied to the “choices” and narrative of modern day video games. For example, in “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” you are given various “choices” to become either evil or good and these choices effect the narrative and the outcome of the game, which gives the player a sense of “control”. I’ve beaten the game as both “evil” and “good”, but the differences are slight. The changes exist in minimal details such as your skills, abilities, weapons, rewards, allies and so forth, but the overall narrative is predetermined and limited. You still exist within the narrative of the game – there are various obstacles that you must overcome to complete the game, but the interactions you have with characters is somewhat varied (typically four choices). Evidently, this idea that “I Click, Therefore I Read” or “I Click, Therefore I Have Freewill” gives readers and gamers a false sense of control – for we are limited by the games predetermined narrative regardless of our “choices”.
Digital Humanities 9101 