English Professor Jerome McGann, of the University of Virginia, writes, “Electronic scholarship and editing necessarily draw their primary models from long-standing philological practices in language study, textual scholarship, and bibliography. As we know, these three core disciplines preserve but a ghostly presence in most of our Ph.D. programs.” Do McGann’s comments take on a special relevance now that a judge has limited the ambitious and commercial aspects of Google Books? What should be the future of electronic libraries and who should edit the texts in their new format? (I write more thoroughly about the issue here).
How can students and faculty create productive online identities? How should online instructors model for students as they create an online identity? What constitutes too much information in the world of Facebook and iPhones?
As a longtime progressive political blogger, I wonder about these questions: What is the future of blogging as more and more words and multi-media artifacts crowd the information highway? Can open source platforms, such as Word Press and Drupal, keep current and relevant against the continuing commercialization of the Internet? What about archival systems when it comes to saving a written political history without a hard copy?
#1 by Kurt Hochenauer on April 14, 2011 - 11:51 pm
Good points. Here’s a small example of this issue: I’ve long required students to build web pages in my classes using free page builders or, if they have the knowledge, basic html. In the beginning, students mostly used Geocities and then Google Pages. Now those spaces are no longer available and they use Weebly and Tumblr. Another question, then, becomes how much intellectual energy we should place in the specific commodification of the Internet versus how much we should push the overall process of adaptation. Should we learn new systems and applications even if we don’t need them specifically on a contemporary basis because they might be valuable to us in learning a future system or application?
#2 by Liz Grumbach on April 14, 2011 - 7:26 pm
I feel that the tension and anxiety surrounding social media springs from the exact questions you’re raising. I wish someone could (and maybe someone will!) answer these questions. Perhaps there would be something useful in creating a hierarchy of social media importance for our digital humanities needs. It seems like there’s a feel that blogs, facebook, and twitter will be around and expanding for years to come, yet it also seems impossible to determine what will last with the growing popularity of social bookmarking sites (friendfeed, anyone?), the move towards web-enabled televisions, and etc.
I definitely think a consideration of the pace of technology/media coupled with usability could be a jumping off point for issues involving the creation of online identity.
#3 by Kurt Hochenauer on April 14, 2011 - 4:20 am
Thanks for the comments here. I wonder, too, about the “proto-professional” (I like this term!) spaces of our students and even faculty. One question is this: How do we discuss issues like these in the hurried world of technology. Once we say something we think is definitive about Twitter, for example, then what happens when Twitter is not that important anymore? Or maybe Twitter will expand and remain an important component on the web for decades to come. What do you think?
#4 by Liz Grumbach on April 14, 2011 - 1:54 am
I feel like I’ve been struggling with the same issues in my experience as a graduate student working with undergraduate students. Often, they understand and are grateful for the opportunity to work on creating an online identity that reflects the proto-professional space they find themselves in at the university. However, I feel as if they have the exact same questions that you’ve raised. They are concerned about giving away too much or too little information. They are frustrated when the terrain of online communities continues to change.
I think your line of questioning is incredibly interesting. How can instructors teach by example in creating an online identity?
#5 by Rebecca Davis on April 12, 2011 - 4:36 pm
I think creating online identity is a valuable skill for both students and faculty, as well others working online.
#6 by amyschexnayder on March 31, 2011 - 6:14 pm
I’m interested in this!