Technologies of Text (S12)

I came across an interesting blog post by Ben Schmidt, who works at Princeton, during my somewhat sporadic reading of DH blogs.  The post addresses a sentiment felt by some skeptics of DH, that it rejects books.  This post is in response to another post from a scholar that essentially describes fears that the digitization of books is putting too much control in the hands of corporations.  The corporations are deciding what context the book can be used in.  For example a paper book that I purchase allows me to write in the margins and photocopy certain pages, but this isn’t true for E-readers like the Ipad and Kindle.  These devices don’t allow you to print off pages, highlight, or write in the margins.  To those skeptics, this type of digital book is limiting the context in which I can use the purchased text.  Schmidt agrees that these E-books are a lousy deal, and that most Digital Humanists are against them.  He also compares the restrictions of an E-book as very similar to restrictions on physical books from a library, yet we applaud the increased access to information libraries allow.  The rights to a library book are restricted in that it is temporary access, we can’t write in the margins and a private/state entity decides what information is accessible.  Schmidt contends that, “DH is intensely, productively concerned with finding ways to keep gatekeepers from controlling access to texts.”

Many contemporary scholars argue that digital works are not as stable, permanent and safe from copyright infringement as a book has always been.  They argue that the control over the information (how it’s presented, what’s accessible, etc) is too broad.  Schmidt defends DH, saying, “No one that I know of is happily trying to ‘speed along… the obsolesence of the book’; rather, they are actively engaged in trying to find ways to retain the freedoms allowed by print culture while also taking a new opportunity to reevaluate its shortcomings. “  He also notes that most historians prefer prestige in publication over openness and accessibility, a sentiment I feel will change as our generation gets older and we move forward into the “digital age”.

Many other points of contention are addressed in his blog post, but one last interesting argument states, “the current academic system is like the church in all its censoring, rigidly hierarchical glory, the digital field more resembles the chaos of the early church. And that’s as terrifying as it is empowering.”  If we remove the intermediary of publishers entirely, then we are left with many individual voices that stand on their own.  Then, the individual readers decide what texts are read and most prominent, not some publisher or conference organizer.

Will we see the end of publishing formal texts during our lifetimes?  Or will the format and context simply change with the advent of completely digital/online journals?

Andrew J. Bacevich writes on http://chronicle.com in “The American Century Is Over—Good Riddance“, well, exactly that.

Bacevich starts with reference to seminal article in Life magazine from 1941 where the manifest of forthcoming “American Century” appeared. And so it did come, America became the dominant power in the World after WWII. The borderline-apocalyptic, epic rivalry of unmatched historical proportions with Evil Empire followed… Empire where I was born a citizen. The Empire seized to exist without a single gunshot (in Ukraine) and when I was four years old, I became a citizen of the new country. Of course, Bacevich does not write about me, he writes how American Century winded down and, finally came to its halt. Bacevich does not reach far for examples and points to Iraq and recession. Enough said. The greatest military power of the world cannot claim a conclusive victory in the “War on Terror”, and the economy that used to back this power looked down the abyss almost for a moment too long.

Bacevich bounces off the political rhetoric  of the day, saying that reminiscence of the “American Century” is hopeless.

I will side with Bacevich. Americans may think that rest of the World wants to be like them. That everyone wants to be The Joneses with riding lawn mowers, barbeque grills, convertible cars and beach property in Malibu. Yeah, who doesn’t want that? Ukrainians sure do. Ukrainian economy is more stagnant now than it was after the WWII ended. Life sucks there, at least for the 99%. The irony, however, is that Ukrainians live in the US of A already, but they have poorly implemented and dysfunctional replica of the America. Poor suckers have market economy, direct democracy, parliament and all the goodies of independent judicial and executive branches, have schools, universities, hospitals, airports, and etc, but nothing works. They don’t know how to live in the USA, even though they pretty much have all the stuff written on paper that Founding Fathers have established for the USA in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. My point? Ukrainians want the American Dream, but I very much wish they wanted the Ukrainian Dream. They have their eyes on what America exports so eagerly—luxury and illusions— but they  do not have neither moral nor political compass set. And if Americans think that they are the last hope of democracy out there, maybe, but the rest of the World could care less. Chinese (Ukrainians, Russians, etc) consume beer and hamburgers as eagerly as Americans, but Democracy, not so much.

In the second half of the article Bacevich diverges into the rant about epistemological fallacies of “American Strategists” and their inability to see what is obvious, at least to Bacevich, that “American Century” is over, and they, Strategists, are driving the country blind.

Bacevich is definitely onto something. The World had changed in last few decades more than it had changed in the last half century, and that passed faster than entire century before. If history teaches us anything, it is that future is very hard to predict, and only valid predictions are those made in hindsight and post-factually in history books.

I wonder what the World will become, but the role of America, whatever it will be, will be different than it used to be in the “American Century.” I hope for the better, though.

Edit 4/24. Found this on society6. I think it suits the article well =)

While on Twitter, I came across an interesting link.  There is a project called QRator at the Grant Museum.  QRator is a collaborative project between UCL’s Centre for Digital Humanities, Centre of Advanced Spatial Analysis, and the Museums and Collections.  QRator is essentially designed to get the public involved in many different aspects of the museum.  There are almost a dozen iPads around the museum where various questions are asked for the public to respond to.  Visitors can answer right on the iPads themselves or they can use their smart phones or computers at home to give their input.  The iPads not only create public interaction with one another, but it also allows for some research to be done on the visitors themselves.  Researchers are not only interested in the public’s opinion on the challenges that come along with running a museum and all its history, but they also want to see how visitors react and interact with the technology of the iPad itself.  Visitors don’t have to just answer the questions asked either.  They can get involved in conversations and express their opinions of the museum in general and the items they have in it.  The museum is only the second one in the world to have iPads permanently involved in displays, but is the first to have them open for public use.

I find the use of new technology to add to the experience of a museum setting is very interesting.  This project allows for the public to become curators and it puts a whole new spin on the learning experience.  It seems that the iPads are beneficial, but I wonder if it sometimes distracts from the exhibits.  I checked out some of the conversations and some guests took the objective seriously, while others did not.  If you take the time to search through the comments and look for serious answers, you can find some good material and views on the subject matter.  Some of the outlooks of visitors can invoke some deep thought on the issues.

It is hard to tell whether this project will be taken more seriously as time goes on.  I think the goal of the project is a useful one, but only if people have the right attitude towards it.  Being able to have conversations with such a wide range of people could really expand the experience of a visit to the museum.

Here are the links to the interview with the manager of the Grant Museum and to the QRator home page if you are interested in reading about it for yourself:

• http://blogs.nature.com/london/2012/02/15/the-museum-and-the-ipad-how-the-grant-museum-is-using-social-media-to-make-us-all-curators
•  http://www.qrator.org/

While I was reading Economy in Walden, I thought that the view of life as a series of experiments was really interesting. It made me think of myself in this class. I came into it not knowing what to expect and I know I’m not alone in the aspect that I am in constant discovery. I was browsing around Miriam Posner’s website and one of her projects stuck out for me. It was a video about Dr. Freeman who was famous for popularizing the transorbital lobotomy. Dr. Freeman would take pictures of his patients and use it as proof for the effectiveness of his treatments. The indicators of success would include having better dress,smiling, social awareness and proper gender indicators. This is the exact opposite of my interpretation of the beginning of Walden because he is trying to remove or at least become less integrated in society and sees simplicity as a goal for the duration of this experiment.

 The most important aspect of Posner’s work on this video was the question, “What works today that tomorrow will be embarassing?”. At the end of the video we learn that proof is inconclusive because criteria and acceptance of how we do things is ever changing. In Walden, we learn that there are four necessities for living: food, shelter, clothing and fuel. Is this enlightening? Or embarrassing? Is treatment a necessity of life? I’m sure at the beginning of Dr. Freeman’s career patients felt this treatment was necessary and that the photographs were sufficient evidence of effectivness. Presently in the psychological community Dr. Freeman is not highly looked upon and is frequently used as an example of why we need codes of ethics.

I read “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and thought on Posner’s question. Is Google going to embarrass us later because we are growing dependent on it? Is our capacity for technological developments detterant to our capacity to reason and learn independent of technology? What are we doing today that will be embarrassing or even unethical later?

Here is the link to the article where you can find Posner’s video http://www.sciencefriday.com/arts/2010/11/walter-freemans-photographs/

I’ve read Walden a couple of times in some of my favorite classes. Every time it has been a chapter here, a couple paragraphs there, etc. As Cordell said, it is dense and that first chapter can seem as dry as the bark on those trees in Concord. However…
I’m pretty excited to discuss it with the spin of technologies of text. It’ll be quite a different context than I’m used to for this book, but it realizing how it still applies. I really like Thoreau’s style and way of thinking. I agree with him when he emphasizes that keeping things simple is the preferable way to live. He points out that the basic needs of life include food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. So what are we supposed to take from this as a class? In the other classes that I’ve studied Walden in, we’ve talked about the value of going back to our fundamentals. One could argue that TEI or HTML are our fundamentals here, but to the basic web browser, it’s not necessarily essential to understand those things to get the complete your standard internet search. However, I can now appreciate and understand that just because I can search the internet, read pages, search specific names in those coded pages, it doesn’t mean that I’m self-reliant. I can try to appreciate the work that goes into what we know now as the internet.

Maybe another point we can take away as a class is that we need to remember the simple fundamental reasons why we use technologies today. Maybe these fundamental reasons connect to our simple needs in life? As humans, we need communication? I guess one could set up and learn about realty (shelter) online? We have to still live life in this century and use the tools we’re given, such as the internet, to “become one of the worthies of the world.” Sure it’s not living out in the nature on the berries and hunting squirrels, but I think we can take the privilege of internet and our modern technologies and utilize them for the fundamental needs of human nature, rather than abuse them.

One of my favorite quotes from Economy:

“Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves,
dispel the clouds which hang over our brows,
and take up a little life into our pores.
Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor,
but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world.”

For the collaborative project, my partner and I are researching “The Valley of the shadow” archive, which gives you access to details of life in two American communities before, during and after the American Civil War. It’s intention is to focus on and bring to life unheard/unseen stories, documents, pictures, diaries, and unsung heroes of this era.

To me, the best part of this archive is the letters and diaries that you can read from the various different people, from wealthy senators all the way down to the prisoners on death row. It sheds an entire different light on how people used to live and what they found most meaningful and important in their lives. It also showed me that we can learn a few things from our ancestors who clearly knew how to live and make this world work better than we know how to.

The following is an excerpt from Sarah Cordelia Wright’s diary, most of the entries are during her year at school in Staunton in Augusta County, Virginia. She is just 17 years old.

Jan. 1st 1853

We have been spending our holy-days8 down town & I have had a very nice though quiet time; but now I am obliged to return to the V. F. I. to again prepare for our daily labour. It is a solemn thought when we look back and see another year has fled, & we are one year older than we were the last, we should inquire of our hearts to know if we are any better than we were the last. How many of our friends & acquaintances have passed from this world, & yet we have been spared. How thankful should we be that we have been spared, and should we not show that we are thankful.

I chose this excerpt mainly because It moved me how a 17 year old girl is very focused on the years passing by, how she is already counting her years, and wondering if she has grown into a better person than she was. She reiterates how thankful she is to be alive, remembers those who have passed on and rants a little about how unappreciative humans can be for a life that they should not take for granted. I find it interesting because a lot of 17 year old girls in this day and age ( obviously not ALL of them) are focused on other things that in my opinion, never would have even crossed the mind of Sarah Cordelia Wright. I’m talking about things such as:

-”Mom, I hate that shirt, I need more clothes, all my friends have the cutest stuff and I have NOTHING to wear this morning!”

- “OMG, did you hear!? Jake cheated on Steph with Megan!”

- “What the heck did she do to her hair?”

-” I hate school, i’m so sick of learning this stuff that I’m never going to use in life-”

-” I cannot wait for the party tonight! I hear there’s a keg, text me!!!!!”

If you haven’t figured it out, I’m agreeing with most of our grandparents generation by saying that “kids these days” have different priorities. Again, I don’t mean to single out an entire generation, this is just based on what I saw in my high school 99 percent of the time.

I don’t think any kid in school in 1853 would have been complaining about getting an education, HAVING clothes to wear nonetheless “needing” more, or making plans to go to keg parties. Keep in mind this is during a war era, where money, food and the essentials were scarce for many and the world didn’t seem like such a great place to live. What impresses me is throughout her diary, she almost never complains about anything and always writes things about how beautiful this world is, how lucky she is to be alive, and how much she appreciates her family amidst the hard times that they are going through.

I really think the younger generations, mine included, need an attitude adjustment and to be reminded just how lucky we really are to have all of the things that we do. If you could take a 17 year old from 2012 and put them in America 1853, they wouldn’t even know what hit them.

Here’s some more of her Diary if you want to take a look!

http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/papers/AD9000

Already, after reading a little section of Walden, I had a wide-range of thoughts running through my head.

As I normally do before I read any book, I scan through the pages to see the format and illustrations (if any) of the book.  And this edition of Walden is unlike any other book I have ever read (even though the list of books I have read is microscopic compared to others in this class…).  Nevertheless, I have never seen a book that includes as many comments along the margins as it includes actual text from Thoreau.  When I am reading a book, I am one of those people that cannot easily comprehend both text and footnotes at the same time.  By referring to the margins every other line, it is hard to develop a rhythm because of the constant “stalling” that is caused by the side notes.

The next thing I thought about after reading the first part of Walden was the amount of time it must of taken Cramer to add all of these little references and corrections.  I found it hard enough to read Thoreau’s work by itself… and then to look at the thought and research Cramer had to put into this book; that, alone, is overwhelming for me to even think about.  This requires immense amounts of knowledge (of the author and his environment) going into the reading.

I could imagine the way Cramer edited this book could be similar to the ways we, as transcribers, may have to contribute for our digital projects.  We have to inform the readers about the culture at that time and make references to other sources in order for them to maximally understand what they are reading.  This, in itself, would take a significant amount of time and then to be able to present these additional remarks in a way that flows with the actual text/data would be an even harder task.

I think it will be interesting to see if we, as a class, will go over the structure of this book (edited by Cramer) as much as we look into the material and meaning of the text, itself.  But overall, since I find this book to be a challenging read, I look forward to the discussions that follow.

Y’all,

I just wanted to write a short note to say I’m thrilled with your engagement on the blog so far. I don’t get a chance to comment on every post (there are 25 of you posting nearly every week), but I do comment here and there and I read each post. You’re bringing new things into our class discussions, delving into issues we only touched on in class, linking to interesting articles and resources‐keep up the excellent work here!