Disqus - Latest Comments for digitaldigs

Re: on having nothing to write

Ted Fristrom — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:08:51 -0000

I'm thinking mostly about how species survive within ever changing ecologies here. The more variety you have, the more likely it is for a species to survive when something changes. But that's precisely what "predictable" situations, "carefully constructed prompts" and "controlled testing" situations fail to produce, let alone measure.

Re: on having nothing to write

digitaldigs — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:21:36 -0000

An interesting definition Ted. (and sorry for the comment moderation, I'm getting killed with spam.) If advancement requires proliferation and variety, then we are advancing in myriad directions. I see your point though. To advance as a writer is to become able to make use of writing in a variety of ways. And then "advanced writing" is a course where students are asked to write in various ways? I suppose that would be a generic definition of such courses.

I wonder if advaned writing courses are giving way to more specific technical, professional, creative genres.

Re: close reading, open composition

digitaldigs — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:39:41 -0000

I understand where you are coming from Skydaemon. But I think I need to clarify a few things.

Your definition of close reading is a useful one. However, in my post, close reading is a term of art within English Studies that references a particular set of interpretation practices. It is much like sounds, and at least on the undergraduate level, it's the practice that results in essays with many quotations followed by particular kinds of analysis/critique of those quotations. The critical methods might vary depending on the theory at work (e.g. new criticism, feminism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, etc.), but they all share this close reading approach.

I don't see open reading/composition as an abandonment of the premise of communication. Generally, as writers, at the very least, we have the subjective experience of trying to convey some intention or message to our intended audience. Similarly, as readers, we have the subjective experience of trying to understand what a text is telling us. (We can explore how that subjective experience is produced and its relationship to the production of compositions at another time.) For 99%+ of messages this process is mundane and unproblematic. That's one of the reasons why symbolic behavior (talking, writing, etc.) is such a powerful evolutionary-cum-technocultural adaption.

Close reading in English Studies, from New Criticism onward, has never been for that kind of communication because it is a way of interpreting texts where the meaning is obscured (e.g., in a poem). Now it is arguable that meaning is indeed obscured, especially when one is going to rule out the argument that meaning is intentionally obscured by the author (which, while somewhat perverse in conventional settings, could happen, of course).

So students read a poem and can't understand it. What does that mean? It's much like you suggest, Skydaemon. The students are not the "legitimate audience" for the text. So it is not that the meaning is generally obscured; it's just obscure for those who don't know the proper way to read the text. A literature course is supposed to educate students to legitimize their readings, and new criticism was really a hack, a short cut to helping students produce legitimate readings given their abject ignorance of high culture.

When we move into the postmodern/cultural studies era, the sought-after meaning in the text shifts in a variety of ways where English scholars start investigating the cultural, material, and ideological forces at work in literary texts. Again, as with New Criticism, authorial intentions are moot. And, again, students lack the appropriate reading techniques to produce interpretations appropriate for the disciplinary context.

In our defense, I think all disciplines do this: they look at (pieces of) the world and produce knowledge that often makes little sense outside their disciplinary context. It would be hard for me to look at the discourse of economics or psychology and tell you if something is "true" or even useful. That said, I do believe, and have written here before, that I think the humanities, and English in particular, needs to connect back to the larger culture in a more powerful way.

But let me get back to the point you make. Your example of readings of the Art of War is apt. Obviously Sun Tzu isn't here to pass judgments. So the Art of War is popularly adapted as corporate strategy. How should we read this text? What happens if we read the text without access to the Taoist philosophy that runs through it? Meaning cannot possibly be "in the text" because meaning is a cognitive event registering in your consciousness. As a reader, one might have an ethic of trying to understand the meaning the author is trying to convey (of listening as I put it in my post above), but it just can't happen in the text itself.

Now I could take the Art of War, randomly select words or passages, and then write a poem inspired by them. That would be a composition based on a reading of Art of War. It might even be a great poem. And someone else might read that poem and gain insight into Sun Tzu. It's possible.

But generally we wouldn't accept that as an act of interpretation. (Umberto Eco, btw, has some good work on the limits of interpretation.)

What counts as a legitimate interpretation is a reflection of context. Read a novel for a library book group and go discuss it. What you say there won't fly for a literary interpretation paper in a college course. And your college course interpretation is likely to get eye-rolling (or worse) in your book group. Similarly a reading of Art of War as corporate strategy is unlikely to please your online Taoist discussion group. In none of these cases are we trying to be dishonest about our understanding of what the text is saying. Nor are any of these readings necessarily "wrong."

The idea of "open composition" is really about changing the discursive, communal practices and expectations of English studies. We practice close reading (this term of art). It has had its uses. But, in my view, it is a practice that is increasingly disconnected from the discursive networks we find elsewhere in the world. And I think we need to be more closely connected with those networks or we will find ourselves increasingly irrelevant.

Open composition is an opening gesture toward thinking about how English can study texts beyond close reading.

Re: English Studies futures market

digitaldigs — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:16:01 -0000

As always Skydaemon, I appreciate your response. I fundamentally agree with you, though I may see a few points somewhat differently. Having taught and run a professional writing major for 8 years, I dealt with these issues head on. Of course many of the students at Cortland were interested in creative writing rather than technical or professional writing, but we always stressed the importance of combining instruction in writing with developing subject matter expertise. In short, the requisite knowledge for a computer programmer and a technical writer in the computing industry overlap but also differ. Few students will go from HS to competent technical writer in the space of a four-year degree; the same would be true in most technical fields.

I do think that the well-designed contemporary English major could offer students the flexibility to be prepared for an entry-level technical writing, marketing, or PR job, especially if the major is combined with a relevant minor or second major. Alternately you could flip it around an minor in English.

In terms of writing instruction, I have always felt that an English major ought to ask students to write in a variety of genres, media, and rhetorical situations. And develop the rhetorical skills to analyze and respond to new writing tasks. To do this you might include service writing, internships, and study abroad, along with a variety of in-class assignments.

That said, I agree with you in general about the things that English lit classes don't do. Of course, they were never intended to do such things. And there remains a fair amount of resistance across the humanities to altering the curriculum to pursue more direct professionalization. And while I see the point of professionalizing, in a real way, if English became a professionalizing degree it would really cease to be English. And maybe that's the future, but until then I have this other idea.

Maybe professional writing curricula ought to be a part of every English degree. I wouldn't argue against that. But I think that we still need to argue for the value of literary studies knowledge, methods, and pedagogies for undergraduate students. I know that the faculty in English believe in the value of their work. I also know they may have the tenure and academic freedom to turn away from making such an argument. But in the end students have voted and will continue to vote with their feet. Without the students, the discipline will die. So we need to explain to students the value of majoring in English.

In short. Imagine you're 18 and entering college for the first time. There are 100 majors to choose among. You think you know what English is because you had it in HS. That could work for us or against us. Fortunately, we have first-year composition as a place where we see nearly every student and where we have a chance to get our message out over one or two semesters.

So what do we say about English? What can you do here?
-you will develop your creativity and personal expression
-you will write in different genres and media
-you will learn about culture and communication through the study of literature and other media

You can combine English with another more technical or specifically professionalizing major if you want, but English should help you develop a deeper, broader cultural context for analyzing specific communication challenges and the general rhetorical and creative skills to be a successful communicator.

Is our discipline doing those things now? In some places and in some ways, yes. Do we have a long way to go and a short time to get there? Likely.

Re: is artificial intelligence a rhetorical process?

cynthiadavidson — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 10:46:28 -0000

I'm interested in the trickery as well as the "real thing." Isn't there intelligence involved in the use canned responses that facilitate communication, learning, and development of knowledge? Is rhetorical style perhaps related to this trickery? Certainly someone can be an engaging stylist yet have very little of substance to say.

The rhetrickery is a kind of social program that only comes under attack when the audience disagrees with the substance of the message or can't find any substance in the message.

Re: is artificial intelligence a rhetorical process?

digitaldigs — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:06:20 -0000

There are some really good thoughts here about the problems of developing AI and undoubtedly a central problem is the definition of "intelligence." I agree with Skydaemon that from a programming/engineering perspective, AI need not mean imitate a human and that in most cases where we have limited AI now, that would be undesirable.

I still think that demonstrating intelligence is a rhetorical performance. I can't know if a student is smart, but I can read her paper or listen to her in class and judge her to be so. All experienced teachers know the limits of this.

I like this definition of critical thinking as developing effective actions in the absence of clear criteria, defined objectives, or total knowledge (not that we ever really have the last one). When the actions called for are acts of communication, I would call that particular type of critical thinking rhetoric. B/c rhetoric has the old negative reputation (what Wayne Booth terms "rhetrickery"), it is easy to think of AI as imitation game as rhetrickery. When rhetoric is not "only" performance but also composition, then rhetoric becomes a practice of interface, and not just in the technical sense as with computer networks.

Rhetoric then is not just the process where through certain tricks I imitate intelligence. It is the process there through an interface/interaction with others I communicate, learn, and develop knowledge. And yes, perhaps this is poetics as well.

I would say that if you want to know what anthropomorphic AI is like then just look in the mirror. We are artificial intelligence, even though part of the process of cognition goes through meat, our intelligence is a techne, an artifact of human culture. Our human and human-like ancestors thought strictly meat-thoughts for tens of thousands of years. Then we developed symbolic behavior, and language that at least approximates the way we experience language, and (get ready) RHETORIC as we figured out how to use language to get stuff done. And AI was born. And networked thought was born.

We're it: the rhetorical AI.

Re: is artificial intelligence a rhetorical process?

Skydaemon — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:46:09 -0000

I actually think part of the problem with this whole discussion generally is that we lack proper definitions for the different elements of thought. We call everything intelligence, when really we mean a specific portion of what goes on in a mind.

For example, one very useful differentiation I like to use is between wisdom and intelligence. I define intelligence as processing power and logical ability. Wisdom on the other hand, is a result of context, largely gathered from experience.

Someone with intelligence, knows how to do anything that you give them all the information for.
Someone with wisdom, knows what to do without all the information being provided, filling in the gap from contextual memory and deduction.

I have a saying I use sometimes. "Logic is the language of intelligence, analogies are the language of wisdom."

If you define wisdom as I do, this makes sense. Analogies are a way of imparting wisdom via shared experiences. You reference an experience the other person does know, and draw abstracted comparisons to a situation they haven't experienced before. The person doesn't necessarily take it at face value, but they understand what you're saying based on their existing contextual experiential knowledge, and have an automatic set of ideas about how to test if what you're saying is true, as well as how likely it is from already known evidence. Thus it is possible to transfer experiential understanding - which is wisdom - without the actual experience. This is largely the part that IQ tests do not capture.

So to address what you mentioned with encountering intelligence. I would compare written analogies and text, to the transfer of contextual infomation. I would compare algorithms and such, to also being contextual information. Formula's themselves are background info, they don't give you the ability to execute them. Practicing using the formula might develop your intelligence by moving your gears, but simply memorizing the formula does not.

Intelligence to me, is the actual logic processor. A piece of paper does not have a cpu behind it. A turing test does not have a logic program, it only references a lookup table for canned answers. Whether it can trick you or not does not make it intelligent, because it still does not possess a logic core. Intelligence, by definition, does not use a database. All data must be input.

I think we'd be well served to formally define these different areas of thought into different words with common meanings if we're going to get into understanding the mind sufficiently to build simulators.

As for the appearance of vs actual existance of cognition. I don't really see it as an important question, largely because I reject the Turing definition of intelligence. To me, trickery based on context is not an act of intelligence by definition. Information on a piece of paper is not intelligence, since that is merely context even if it's true. Intelligence is a processing act, not contextual information, which by (my) definition must arrive at an answer without needing non-provided context.

Systems can represent actual thinking if they get to a sufficient complexity to develop intelligence (logic processing), critical thought (judgement), and context (wisdom) usage and so on. This is not the same as sentience, in my view. It can still be a machine and be able to legitimately think. Also, I draw the parallel between algorithmic or brute force based systems, as a difference between smart learning vs dumb. Both qualify as thought though to me.

Re: is artificial intelligence a rhetorical process?

cynthiadavidson — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:05:37 -0000

Skydaemon is far more knowlegable about these models than I. I think your [playful] suggestion that intelligence is [only] rhetorical is telling--because the play is actually an insertion of faith in the reality of the other that underlies the empathy that allows us to acknowledge the presence of intelligence other than our own. Any conscious being that knows itself knows that as intelligence, right? But everything else is perceived through signs. We know the other through signs and through interaction. So the computer interface does become a riveting model for that.

I want to comment on something Skydaemon wrote about writing students (since that's what I do as well):
"When they do research for a paper, how do they differentiate between good and bad quality original sources? What specifically is it that let's them know Mad Magazine is an unacceptable authority if they ran across it in the library and it was unknown to them. Right now this is not codified and left up to individual discretion. I don't mean codified in terms of a list of banned items, but rather in terms of a list of evaluation criteria, without naming names."

This is a good question, but maybe even more if you flip it. What allows them to know the instance when Mad Magazine IS an acceptable source for a research paper? I don't think it takes great "intelligence" to omit Mad Magazine from research projects, but it does take "intelligence" (as in a complex and layered filtering/sifting/sorting facility) to use it in those rare instances it will work.

I think that sounded like it could be programmed too, actually--all of these "I know it when I see it" moments can actually be broken down into layers of criteria, if anyone wanted to do it.

Re: is artificial intelligence a rhetorical process?

digitaldigs — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:34:22 -0000

Thanks Skydaemon and Cynthia. One of the things I appreciate about blogging is how a somewhat off-hand blog post can generate responses that are much more thoughtful than the initial post. I am very interested in the ways that we think through and try to model intelligence. And I agree that such models often tell us as much about the person doing the modeling as anything else.

It makes sense to differentiate between the appearance of intelligence (e.g. the Turing test) and actual process of cognition. I am only somewhat playfully suggesting that intelligence is "only" rhetorical, "only" appearance. Unless we are cognitive scientists with fMRis in our offices, the only intelligence we encounter (besides our own) is in that appearance--the face, the text?, etc. Even the fMRI is appearance, a witnessing of cognition.

In the past I have remarked on subjectivity as interface, as desktop, as that which makes interaction and usability possible between humans--but then also as little more than a surface conceit that doesn't tell us much about what goes on under the hood. Of course that's just a trope turning us away from more humanist subjectivities. But the metaphor is easy to play with--plugins, software, memes/ideology as viruses and OS.

It's a fascinating (again, to me) recursive relationship how cybernetics offers models of the mind, and the mind offers models of AI. back and forth. I don't know if intelligence is "just" rhetoric but there's a lot of rhetoric floating about to be sure.

Re: a straighterline to higher education hell

digitaldigs — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:45:23 -0000

Bill. I agree with you that we can use media networks to free up FTF class time for activities that are best accomplished in meat space. Straighterline isn't that kind of product, or at least it wasn't when I wrote this article. As I think you are suggesting here, making these kinds of changes might result in new pedagogic challenges for faculty. I hope we rise to the occasion.

Re: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the writing classroom

digitaldigs — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:26:20 -0000

I agree Ted. I actually think there are a number of reasons for this. The "E" in TED may stand for "entertainment," but a number of the talks deal quite directly with education. I've shown the Ken Robinson talk several times in classes. However, more importantly, many of these talks address the subject of creativity, including the Gladwell speech you mention. So there's a lot there that speaks to our concerns.

Needless to say (but said anyway), they are also often excellent examples of good rhetoric at work.

Re: should we teach composition in composition?

digitaldigs — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:35:08 -0000

Thanks Derek. I agree with you here. Of course TA-delivered FYC is only one flavor and not the most common across higher education. Two-year and comprehensive 4-yr colleges have different challenges, which can also vary greatly depending on how much they rely upon contingent faculty (not that contingent faculty are necessarily better or worse than TT faculty, but they are obviously in a different institutional position).

Anyway, I agree that the fear with TA-delivered FYC is that it occurs in the kind of cynical context you describe, where the faculty don't care about it except as a way to fund their graduate students. In such a situation, no one would win. The grad students don't get the kind of teaching experience that they need, and certainly the undergrads aren't receiving the kind of curriculum we'd hope them to get.

Derek, I think you're also right on about the best possibility... where TA's are converted. Not necessarily converted to become "rhet/comp" specialists, but where they come to see that value of teaching writing and the value of rhetoric as a foundation for humanistic pedagogy. Just as the cynical version arises from a department ethos (or lack thereof), the best version also relies (I would think) upon a department commitment to the value of composition for both the undergrad students and the graduate TAs.

As to how that ethos would be expressed, I don't think I could say. That is, I think individual faculty would need to figure it out individually. We wouldn't need to agree (which is a relief since that's not likely to happen), except beyond the recognition of this basic ethos.

I think ... maybe... even Fish and I could get that far... That we could both recognize that teaching composition is something that ought to be done well and that we ought to put some more energy toward that goal.

Re: Michael Wesch on the YouTube identity and the history of whatever

digitaldigs — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:16:38 -0000

Twitter has me think of Benjamin, in particular the notion of how fascism offers us "freedom of expression" as a substitute for social power: life style instead of life, or the introduction of aesthetics into politics as he puts it elsewhere. From a Deleuzian p.o.v., of course, one couldn't imagine the tweet or the YouTube videolog as a free: there are many forces at work there. Indeed we might think of Web 2.0 apps as confessional technologies (a la Foucault), as exemplars of the repressive hypothesis par excellance! (Though maybe all of that is a little too easy).

No. I would say that as long as one is imagining freedom and democratic participation in the conventional ideological way, these technologies are crap: bread and circuses at best. The trick with expressing oneself otherwise is in recognizing first that the fantasy that authentic self exists and can be mediated always falls apart, that it relies upon perpetual ideological and technological reassembly. Without reassembly it's all just ones and zeros, voltages, light waves, etc.

Thanks re: the design. It seems to be getting positive feedback.

Re: creativity, composition, and the internet socialist/socialist internet

Skydaemon — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:47:42 -0000

Regarding music and copyright.

Clearly, copyright has no impact on the ability of people to make digital copies and share for free. Everything out there is already available for free. Maybe I don't see the deterrent you refer to. The laws are ultimately unenforcable. Consumers have clearly declared that they are no longer willing to work with the abusive monopolies that control the music world.

-Consumers want the right to not be controlled and dictated to by a monopoly about how they can use their products after they've acquired them.
-Consumers are not willing to pay monopolistic pricing well above the value they actually realize.
-Consumers are not willing to buy batches of songs when they only want one.
-Consumers want it to be digital and have open compatibilities with various hardware they may own.
-Consumers don't want to re-purchase the same song every 4 years when they come out with a new cassette, or CD, or whatever else they dream up just so it can be compatible with modern hardware. Planned obsolescence is BS and not a valid business model for companies that want to have a future.

The only thing copyright is effective in stopping is the creation of business models which don't rely on monopoly powers or abusing customers to work. Copyright doesn't fix anything, but it does prevent us from moving on to new viable models.

So the question is, in a world with free music, why would anyone pay a subscription fee, or give extra tips to artists directly?

1) They want to support the artists, especially if they know that money will improve their work in the future, or cause more of it to be made. If you pay new artist X money, maybe they will make you another song, or perhaps it will be a higher quality. This is essentially a new business model, like a charity or NGO, where you are paying in order to cause an effect and support things you appreciate. It's stems from a desire to give back for that which you appreciate, and to encourage more of what good things you find in the world.

2) Quality additional services and access to new artists that would otherwise be excluded. This includes having quality song uploads. There is a cost to having to figure out whether the junk you're downloading is just spam, or a mislabelled song, or if it's only half a song or whatever. There is a benefit from having a single list of songs from known sources (artists) which you can develop some trust with.

Also, maybe you can see a listing of what the artist thinks is good music, or find other users on the system that have similar preferences to you and thus gain a benefit from being able to locate unknown music you really like with more ease.

3) Convenience. Why search the internet for quality copies when it's all in one place.

4) Promise of future song access and timeliness.

5) Ability to interact with the artist. What if your subscription allowed you to talk to the artist and give direct feedback to them about their song. Maybe you can get an updated song uploaded with changes, or help the artist to get better, or vote on what you'd want to hear from the artist in the future.

And so on.

The point is, there is a lot of room for fundable business models which make both artists and consumers happy. The space between abusive and restrictive monopoly, and underground warez sites contains a lot of area that could support real business. Some of which allow people to get paid for creating content, and for making services that enhance consumption and delivery of it.

Ultimately the one which is successful will be the model in which consumers are willing to gravitate to en masse.

You might say, but you can make a business that gets paid without paying artists. See reason 1, 2 and 5 above for why funded models can be successful, as examples of why models which have the support of artists and fund them, have value.

The only thing that blocks us from trying to find these new models, is copyright. Copyright makes the monopolies gatekeepers (from which there is little to no benefit, and consumers have already declared that they prefer underground economies to). It cannot stop consumers from acquiring music for free, it can only stop paid businesses from existing.

The fight over copyright is about whether monopolies have the right to levy charges just for being monopolies, and whether they can dictate to consumers the terms of usage. This fight is already over. The consumers chose the underground economy over that, and the monopolies have already lost this fight. By definition, the monopolies have lost their monopoly powers as they can no longer restrict access or dictate terms. The future cannot be dictated to consumers, it is now about choice and value.

The sooner governments ditch support for the monopolists, the sooner we move on to new viable business models and services which work for everybody.

Re: creativity, composition, and the internet socialist/socialist internet

digitaldigs — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:35:06 -0000

I'm assuming that the real engineer is getting paid to oversee this three-year apprenticeship. And that this student will be receiving a broader education, outside of the narrow field of this particular career, in some other venue where people are getting paid to teach him/her? Meanwhile the engineer is likely only going to be training that student to accomplish limited tasks that meet up with the particular work that engineer is doing for his/her corporation. Is that going to be a sufficient education?

I guess here's my point about education. Hypothetically, you could get an education by downloading syllabi, reading the texts, listening to podcasts on iTunes U, etc. Maybe you could even throw in some kind of social networking of students. Maybe you even hire a mentor to shepherd you through the process and its still way cheaper than college. Then you have some certifying agency that uses testing or portfolio review or something to verify that you merit a degree of some sort.

Thinking in terms of a humanities degree. In my experience, the chances of a student passing even a minimal portfolio review in an English degree without close mentoring from faculty is fairly slim. Let's say that maybe 20% of the students who get degrees now could pull it off. And their educational experience would be diminished by following this route. B/c not everything you learn is on the test or in the essay you write.

Still, then you could stick that student as an apprentice with a PR firm or marketing or publishing or whatever. And I'm sure they would learn things. However, we know the old saying about those who can't do, teach. That may or may not be true. However I will say that just b/c you can do, doesn't mean that you necessarily can teach well. An apprenticeship may or may not be valuable. It certainly would not equate with an education in the humanities.

I guess as an educator, I think I provide something of value that you aren't going to get for free online. Maybe the outlier student can educate him or herself using the resources and communities of the Internet, but the vast majority of students require teachers. If that weren't the case then we would have replaced colleges with libraries a century ago.

And this is my main point. If we accept the premise that we are entering an economy where more citizens will need more education then I think we are looking at moving in the other direction, of offering a larger institutional support structure for higher education.

Re: creativity, composition, and the internet socialist/socialist internet

digitaldigs — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:55:21 -0000

I will accept your description of what's going on with open source. I certainly won't pretend to be an expert there. I will say that I think the model of collaboration associated with open source (fictional or not) would work for academic research in the humanities b/c the fundamental ethos of our scholarly practices is to share widely with the culture.

I'm not sure about the music example. If copyright didn't exist, what would stop someone from making digital copies of the music and sharing it for free? Without copyright (or something virtually identical to copyright) there would be no legal recourse, right?

Re: what do you mean I agree with Mark Bauerlein?

digitaldigs — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:55:43 -0000

Skydaemon, I appreciate the problem you describe. I think the value of teaching undergraduates about cultural studies (and I would put the feminist analysis of advertising images under that larger umbrella here) ought to be to provide them with methods for understanding the complexity of communication. For good or bad, such analysis does not result in absolute, verifiable, repeatable results. Sounds like you may not have had the greatest of classes on the subject though.

I've been giving more thought to this. And I think one of the difficulties Bauerlein opens up has to do with the issue of "returns." How do we measure returns to know if they are indeed diminishing? What returns could we ever ascribe to humanities research? In the quote I use from Bauerlein, he mentions Hamlet, so I'll stick with that for a moment. I suppose we could say that if one believes that Hamlet is an important literary work in our culture, then one would also value research that helps us to better understand the play. There are a lot of ifs and judgments in there. Perhaps the average man in the street would accept those premises, at least not to the point of paying people to do this work. But that's probably been the case for many decades.

So who gets to make the valuation of research? Academic freedom suggests that faculty do. That if something gets accepted for publication then it is valuable. But that freedom comes with responsibility. If we can't responsibly recognize that we have exhausted the useful study of our subject matter (and I'm not necessarily saying that we have), then perhaps we do not deserve the freedom we are given.

However, I actually think the question of "returns" is not the best frame. Because you could say that the primary return for research is tenure. And people keep doing research and keep getting tenure. So in that sense the returns are not diminishing. Of course the returns implied by Bauerlein are more intellectual and abstract. However those are much more difficult to measure by this economic analogy.

I think it might be more useful to think about this situation in terms of an information-network problem, where the situation in the humanities is an extension of the larger media network challenges we face. In short, we are buried in data. We produce far more than we can seem to consume. And there are two reasons for that.

1. Our motivation for publication comes from the material rewards we receive in tenure and promotion more than it does from a recognition of a real exigency for communication. We have to publish. We have to publish in a particular venue.

2. The "long tail" distribution of readers. Let's say there are 3000 specialists in a field. 500 of them write articles in a given year. Let's say you could read one article a week. That would give you an average of 300 readers. But it doesn't work that way because of the 80/20 rule, which means that articles in one or two main journals will be read by almost everyone and the rest of the articles by very few people. And you might think that's because those main journals have the best articles or the ones most relevant to the reader's particular concerns. But I think that's highly unlikely. It's more of a network effect than a rational process.

So I think the real question is how do we expand the readership for humanities research? In a historical moment of globalization, information explosion, and communications revolution, it ought to be a no brainer that the humanities can provide insight into our changing historical, ethical, aesthetic, and rhetorical contexts. These are forces that have brought us into war, shaken our economy, and shaped presidential elections. They are important. On a more personal level, they will shape the work we do and the communities in which we live.

And I don't think it is our job to pass judgment on these matters. But the humanities research can provide broader contexts to people as they make these decisions. Our research can offer a range of methods to people so that they can approach issues from different perspectives. And we can help people understand how to use the communication technologies that are available to them.

We can do this in the classroom. We can do it in the workplace. And we can do it through media networks.

These are rhetorical challenges, and we ought to rise to meet them. We can still write to each other in our journals, but we also ought to be reaching out with our writing more.

Re: creativity, composition, and the internet socialist/socialist internet

Skydaemon — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:33:05 -0000

Even though it's a separate issue, I'll make a point on the following:

"We're never going to get the quality of movies or books or music without people able to make a living doing these things. So I think Lessig's argument is that we absolutely need copyright to ensure that these things are possible."

I'd agree with the first statement, and totally disagree with the second. I can think of a number of business models for the web and various creative works, all of which are utterly destroyed by the presence of copyright. I really do not think the ability to develop a living doing these things openly is going to be possible until copyright is scrapped or ignored. I see it as a requirement to ditch it.

I'll give an example. Picture a subscription music service. Where you pay say $200 a year for access, in return you get access to the entire body of all music produced ever. What you listen to or download is tracked and measured for the purposes of funding artists who register when their music is listed. 90% of the funding is divided into say 4 tiers. Funding is divided amongst all the artists who make it to a given unique person access count tier. So if you get 1000 listens/downloads by unique people, you get a share of the first tier worth of money (a quarter of subscription amount), if you make it to 10,000 you get a share of the next 25% tier, 100,000 you get the next tier, 1,000,000 the next tier. Take another 5% and use it to improve specific voted on artists who should be able to move up in calibre with a big of support or something, let the customers vote on the talent to support. Maybe these tiers aren't perfect but you get the idea. Assuming you got 10 million people to subscribe, you'd be distributing $2billion this way, with $450 million per tier and $100 million for up and coming artist development.

Introduce copyright, and this whole model is instantly unviable. Now you have no money to start up the service, and you have to fight through thousands of contract disputes with artist representatives where they want to strangle you before you get your first customer. Invariably, you can't offer a good service, and you're wrapped in restrictions that suck enough that you predictably fail.

I'll point out 2 more things.
1) Artist groups are popping up very much like the above right now, songs, art pictures, you name it, and they're doing it either for nothing, or as part of a contest. And in some of these cases they're used as portfolios for artists interested in work. For example, it's common for flash game programmers to negotiate with songwriters from these groups to provide music for their next flash game and so on. It really helps for making distributed development possible. Essentially it's creating artist bizarres or markets, sort of flea market style where you can shop for talent to help you build a new work. Quality is not a matter of having professional backing, it's a matter of making powerful tools available publically and creating an incentive system which rewards quality and shows a path to achieving it. These artist bizarres often have comment oriented customer feedback systems so the artist can learn what was liked or what needs work.
2) Copyright is designed to support corporate infrastructures that surround artists, not the artists. I'd suggest that assuming large corporate infrastructures are needed to produce quality is not a guaranteed bet. I admit that individuals have difficulty finding the time, resources and equipment to do it. But I also think that there is a possibility of advancing the power of tools, distributed team formation to help, and real benefits from opening the arena up to wider competition from people that were previously excluded.

"As you know, even open source software relies heavily on experts who are also making a living doing these things and are sometimes paid to work on open source."

To begin with, open source is kind of a joke. As far as I am aware, it was mainly put forth as a marketing gimmick by specific companies, and there is little to nothing open source about them. A number of companies produced it as a way of breaking out of a rut they were in where they couldn't sell their hardware. They believed that giving away the software would lead to a viable hardware business and break the competitive disadvantage stranglehold they were under. Many of these companies lost and are losing a lot of money under this approach, and don't look viable long term. See the recent collapse of Sun, which was on the verge of bankruptcy (which would've wiped out Java and mysql among other things). The only reason these still exist is because Oracle needed Java enough to buy them (Oracle has written several utilities, front end access layers in Java and needs it to buttress against becoming beholden to Microsoft). Even so, there is no guarantee that Oracle will share Sun's desire to continue open source projects, and could easily convert them back into the commercial sphere or discontinue unneeded ones. If Microsoft had bought Sun, Java would be history. Keep in mind in tech, the DOJ cannot reverse a takeover like that. If the dev team flees because MS tells them they're finished, it's dead whether MS ultimately takes it over or not. Dev teams are fragile, and the legal process is poorly suited to the flexibility and speed needed to keep them alive in hostile situations.

Exposed corporate code source would be closer to it than open source, and miniscule amounts of the work is done by outsiders on most big projects. To say nothing of the source gatekeepers controlled by corporate HQ. Much of open source work is akin to outsourcing QA and some minor bug fixes with a review process by corporate engineers anyway. As a rule of thumb, if you cannot check in changes, you are not really part of the team. There are legitimate open source projects, but few amount to anything meaningful. I really think open source will largely die when it's main corporate backers go under.

Re: creativity, composition, and the internet socialist/socialist internet

Skydaemon — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:23:18 -0000

Ah, the "reasonable person" test is something from our legal system here (Canada). I didn't intend for that to sound special. Most of our laws hinge on a reasonable person interpretation, meaning that you aren't stretching to make a ridiculous argument that only some freakish individual could believe. It's not so much a hinge of the discussion, as it is a way of eliminating extremist or distorting viewpoints from twisting legal interpretations to their own ends. Kind of like throwing out the outliers of possible opinions.

You're right if you're suggesting that near the borderline between socialism and capitalism would be a grey area requiring discussion. Again, from our legal system we deal with this grey area via case law and precedent. Essentially tests are established on a case by case basis which are used to inform future cases. So tests might include a test of necessity for economic viability, or that social benefits of collective action exceed the sum of the parts, or maybe a test of economic national comparative advantage.

The separation line ultimately gets specifically drawn by these tests, so they are the hinges. When I put viability forth, that is intended as the key test for example (it could be a combination of tests rather than a single one). In my mind, capitalist collective action isn't done for mutual benefit, it's only done for viability. But then again, I don't have any issues with accepting some degree of socialism (Canada recognizes itself as having adopted some light socialism which we're fine with as long as the collective benefits remain worth it). So if you classify education and healthcare as socialism, that wouldn't really bother me much. To me, that just means that we've agreed that we do those things not because it's needed for viability, but because it has a benefit to do so collectively (cost, standardization, quality, wide access) which we agree has met the standard of being worth doing.

To me, in order to say public education is capitalistic, you'd have to demonstrate that the economic system would not be viable without the public version. In the modern globally competitive world, you may even have a shot at making that case if you could prove that costs or characteristics of a private system would break your economy. If not having it public, disadvantaged you to an extent where you couldn't compete and your economy was not viable long term, then maybe you might be able to call it part of capitalism. But under the viability test, that would be the case you'd have to make. Arguing that we should because it's beneficial wouldn't be good enough.

The point of these tests is to frame the discussion to that which actually determines the line, rather than broad irrelevant neverending arguments.

Interestingly in Canada, health care is not argued any more than education is. Even our conservative parties support it. Then again we acknowledge ourselves as a light socialist system anyway. I find it interesting that the american discussion of the public health care option is as limited as it is. I'm not sure if americans realize it, but our healthcare system up here has attached systems such as transfer payments. Our provinces literally pool up money and distribute it in a direct handout to poorer provinces, nominally for the purpose of ensuring consistent healthcare standards across the nation. Direct wealth transfers to support consistent entitlement systems, how's that for socialism.

Regarding training. The trust doesn't come from the manner of teaching, but rather the enforcing of standards and testing. Would you trust that engineer if he studied on his own, but came in and aced every single test offered by the school system?

If you told me that engineer had to survive rigorous testing which was somehow secured from cheating, I wouldn't see a big difference between that and where we are now. in fact, if his report card was changed from an overall "grade" to individual grades by specific skillset I might find it more interpretable.

Most professionals produced by schools are not given an assumption of trust when first hired anyway, partially due to grade inflation effects, and people lying on resumes about jobs and education they possess --happens more often than you'd hope. We've been in a prove-it job system for a while. It also flows from the skills taught not being perfectly aligned to actual practice in business, so there's some additional integration anyway. I'd imagine that engineer ends up effectively apprenticed his first years as we do with most other highly skilled specialists. If you look at doctors, programmers, engineers or just about any other specialist skillsets, nearly all have informal apprenticeships or mentoring programs of some type.

So how about that then. Do you trust an engineer who trains on his own in sophisticated video games, who can ace all the testing material in secured tests, and ends up apprenticed to a real engineer in his job for the first 3 years before being given real responsibility?

I'd argue that isn't inherently worse than what happens now.

Re: creativity, composition, and the internet socialist/socialist internet

digitaldigs — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:01:46 -0000

Thanks Skydaemon. I agree with much of what you say. There's an interesting turning point in your definition of the differences between capitalism and socialism where it hinges on what a "reasonable person" would think. We socialize the police force and the military (though we also have private versions of both). Education is largely, though not entirely, socialized and less so at the tertiary level. Health care... well, you know. The entire premise of a capitalist market economy rests on the concept of private property, which requires a state legal system, including enforcement.

I think we agree with Lessig is saying that the conventional understanding of socialism includes a centralized govt bureaucracy and that Kelly's idea is not that. So calling it socialism is a little strange.

I would note that a hybrid economy need not be a free economy. It's true that there are still issues with monetizing social networks, but at least in theory it's possible to make money in a hybrid economy. Indeed, that's what makes it hybrid rather than just a sharing economy.

I for one don't think you can get a decent education in a sharing economy. Exactly who does one imagine will provide my kids with a valuable consistent education for free? Who is going to educate an engineer you'd trust to build a bridge for free? Sure the information, the textbooks if you like, might be free. But who is going to provide the actual labor of teaching? If there was no labor involved, we could have just sent our kids the library decades ago.

We're never going to get the quality of movies or books or music without people able to make a living doing these things. So I think Lessig's argument is that we absolutely need copyright to ensure that these things are possible. As you know, even open source software relies heavily on experts who are also making a living doing these things and are sometimes paid to work on open source.

I imagine hybrids will emerge in some industries moreso than others. I think higher education is one of those places since in many respects it is already a hybrid economy. If we were able to recognize and value that across our culture, then I think we'd all be better off than we have been over the last 30 years where the pressure to move toward marketplace logic has really damaged universities.

Re: Chronicle Article on the Internet and Student Writing

digitaldigs — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:17:15 -0000

Thanks Jill. I have had similar experiences. I don't use Facebook like my students do. My wife is way more into it than I am. My interests in social media are more professional than personal. I think you make a good point that b/c you write about technology you find more connections here. I do think, however, that the other humanities will slowly come on board with social media.

Re: product orientation in the age of networked composition

digitaldigs — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:10:58 -0000

I can agree with this Charles. I guess my question here is: what relationship pertains between feedback from which students might learn and feedback which leads to a more polished final product? Do the two have any necessary relationship? Would having students pay for surface-level copyediting interfere with their learning? We put so much energy in FYC into error correction. At least this is what we always here, right? Laments about long hours of grading or correcting.

What would happen if we just took the "correcting" business out of the instructors' hands? Would we get a better pedagogy in return?

Re: taking speed seriously in English

digitaldigs — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:45:03 -0000

Thanks Skydaemon. You offer some real insight into the changing compositional practices of programming. The simple fact is that speed has never been part of the academic ethos, let alone the humanities or English Studies. To the contrary, we have looked upon speed as unethical and characterize the market forces that demand speed of other professions as anti-intellectual.

Personally I find these moralistic arguments are falling somewhere between "wanting" and "uninteresting." They are "wanting" if one sacrifices other ethical-moral commitments that might be met through speedy intervention. But more importantly (at least to me), they are uninteresting because what I want to consider here is how speed creates an intensification of cognitive processes that leads to something new. I can't say what that new thing might be, so I can't place a value judgment on it (even if I wanted to, which I don't).

I do wonder if digital scholarship might incite some of the compositional practices you describe in programming. Sometimes a change in media can really shake things up. On the flip side, we don't need to be increasing the production of scholarship. We already have a glut! What we do need is to change the dynamics of scholarship, whether that means digital or not, though obviously I think it means digital.

Meanwhile I think your proposition of faculty writing in parallel to be a radical one. Of course we produce essay collections somewhat in this way, but here you're talking about something much more collaborative. The tough thing would be to find a half-dozen scholars in the humanities who would be willing to subordinate their differences to a common goal. Of course this happens all the time in virtually every other walk of life, but humanities professors are wired that way.

I think that's one of the major obstacles we face in building digital, collaborative scholarly communities.

Re: Chronicle Article on the Internet and Student Writing

digitaldigs — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:44:27 -0000

Not a problem. I understand how that is. We've all been there.

Re: taking speed seriously in English

bonnie kyburz — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:31:14 -0000

I think we agree re: speed. And I think that Katz is making a similar argument about speed, that is intensifies in ways that show us (upon reflection) that we are truly, as Burke would have it "rotten with perfection" (again w/ the nazis). Thus, it *is* wasteful, in more ways than one.

very interseting. thanks for engaging.

blk