Where marketers would never want to tamper

Here’s the thing: English professors don’t usually get asked to test drive and review cars. I’ve reviewed books, grant proposals, even web sites. Never cars.

Ah, this blessèd plot, this Internet.

Granted, I’m not an “English professor” — I have a Ph.D. in English literature, which means that I trained to become an English professor, but I’ve never made it even to the interview stage at the MLA convention. When people ask me what I do for a living, I often reply, “I have a Ph.D. in English literature.” Which is dodging the question. If I feel obliged to say what I actually do, I reply, “I work in various capacities on various projects having to do with technology and the humanities.” Or, of course, I describe my current project and position.

Really, I think, people expect an answer to the question of what I do that identifies who I am, an identity marker: “I am an assistant professor of English.” Honestly, even when I had a one-year teaching position at North Carolina State University with the words “assistant professor” in the title, I never claimed that as an identity. I’d say, “I teach English literature at NC State,” because I didn’t have a tenure-track position. What I am, professionally speaking (besides perennially underemployed, which condition applies to at least 50% of people with Ph.D.s in English literature) is still undefined.

Sometimes this lack of definition is decidedly stressful — I’d certainly like a permanent job with a permanent job title that I and others can immediately understand — but at other times, times like these, it’s actually kinda fun. I’ve never liked being categorized. (“Don’t LABEL me, man,” she said with a beatnik sneer.) I’ve been called a “poet” and a “musician” and a “singer-songwriter,” and those labels never feel right, either. Those are just things I do sometimes, and they don’t define me. “Grad student” was my label for a long time. I got used to that one, comfortable with it — too comfortable. Recently I’ve claimed “digital humanist,” though that term is arcane and hard to define. I define it as “someone with a humanities degree who’s interested in computers.”

Most recently, I earned another label: “blogger.” Someone named “Blogger Amanda French” was frequently cited in February’s hoo-hah about Facebook’s Terms of Service. Facebook, by the way, has since asked its users to vote on the new Terms of Service, and they (or some of them, anyway) approved the new ones. Gotta be honest here: I don’t much care. This was a good thing for Facebook to do, I think, and I’m especially glad as a former teacher of Intro to Composition that the new Terms are written in much clearer English. But who cares about my opinion? Not me. No pundit, I. I just like keeping up with technology news, and I do think that it’s important for us all to keep an eye on the tech companies (and all companies), especially as regards intellectual property and privacy.

What interested me about the controversy over Facebook’s Terms of Service was simply whether or not it was justified — whether or not the Consumerist’s claims that the Terms of Service were scary and horrible were true. That’s what led me to blog about it. I concluded that yes, the Consumerist’s claims or implied claims were pretty much true, and the hullabaloo therefore just.

I have reached, by the way, exactly the opposite conclusion about the swine flu hullabaloo, but fortunately there are already plenty of rational people protesting this particular viral mania for misinformation.

One label that I secretly like a lot and hope to deserve is “scholar,” and that’s what scholars do, I think: find out and tell the truth. Journalists do that too (ideally), but scholars get a lot more time to do it than journalists do, and scholars can seek out the truth about stuff that very few people care about at the moment. We scholars, bless us, can be as verbose and sesquipedalian as we like, and we can duck the current daily frenzy and spend our days humming through frenzies long turned to dust. That was my very favorite part of graduate school. While I was writing my dissertation, I got my investigation on, big time. Such fun.

And then I also had fun finding a way to write the truth in a way that was accurate, fair, compassionate, and interesting. The trick is always to balance the desire to be witty or shocking or alliterative or otherwise attention-grabbing with the mandate to be correct and thorough and just. Get out of balance one way, and you’ve got a tabloid; get out of balance another, and you’ve got a 1040 form. As a scholar, I want to be, oh, let’s pull a phrase out of the air, “engaging and authentic.”

All of which is a very long-winded way of getting around to telling you that since I’ve been christened a blogger, I am apparently entitled to receive e-mails such as this:

“I see that you like to write and tweet about social media, teaching, and blogging, and I am wondering if you would like an opportunity to document the experience of test driving a roomy and sturdy Ford Mercury Milan or a sporty yet stylish Lincoln MKX for a few days? It’s usually the car journalists who get to test drive the cars, but we’re looking for fresh perspectives and feedback, something a little more engaging and authentic. What do you think?”

I think I love the Internet. Hee hee.

Ah, well. I told her that I was tickled by her offer (it still cracks me up), turned it down (politely, I hope), and warned her that I was going to write about her e-mail. I ought really to have sent her a link to technology journalist Rafe Needleman’s Pro PR Tips and a link to Merlin Mann’s correspondence with a hapless marketing intern. Merlin Mann, who’s one of the hilarities behind the podcast “You Look Nice Today,” is neither a journalist nor a scholar and can thus pull out the snark bazooka.

Analysis of this e-mail? First, the sender (or her boss) doesn’t understand social media and should at once read the Cluetrain Manifesto; second, she doesn’t understand who I am, despite the presence of copious information on this site suggesting that I am not at all interested in cars or car reviewing; third, Ford might want to look for a new New Media marketing firm; fourth, she’s being disingenuous to the point of dishonesty by writing that they’re looking for “fresh perspectives and feedback.” What led her to e-mail me, I know as surely as if I were kicked back with my feet up on her frontal lobe, was the fact that I have those 2,000 followers on Twitter and got those 30,000 views on that blog post about Facebook. Hey, look at me, I’m an influencer! Who needs a tenure-track job in an English department?

Marketers, beware. I like what I like, and I write what I want to write, and I write it on my own schedule. I cannot be bribed. I cannot be persuaded. I have internal tenure, and you cannot take it from me. And I am not the only one, out here on this Internet.

Digital MLA 2008: An epistolary meta-narrative

Since much of the writing I’ve seen about digital humanities at MLA 2008 has focused on how technology (especially Twitter) enlivened the conference, I thought I’d present here as best I could what the online scholarly conversation actually looks like. This is of course chiefly from my perspective, but I can guarantee that others are having similar conversations about and via the internet and social networks.

I’d like to make three things clear: first, excerpts from e-mail correspondence are reproduced here with permission — which raises an interesting question: have I violated copyright law by reproducing individual “tweets” here in their entirety without permission? One of the four factors that determines a fair use is the amount of the work used, and if (if!) an individual tweet is an entire work, then I doubt that my use of them would stand up as fair in a court of law — where, I hardly need add, I am certain I will never be brought by my twitilary correspondents.

Second, please be advised that this is an edited compilation. I’ve left out significant amounts of unrelated content in several of the contributions, especially those that took place via e-mail. I also added a few clarifying links. To make the whole post more readable, I haven’t marked my omissions and changes, except for ellipses where discreet. All the text that appears here, however, is verbatim and representative.

Third, and last, I do have some points to make about the online conversation I reproduce below, but I’d like to make those points in a later post. I also have further things to say about the non-Twitter-related panels and experiences related to the digital humanities at MLA. Please watch this space, as they say.


email Michael Hancher, May 24, 2008

The MLA sent to my office address a paper (!) acceptance for our Special Session. . . .

email Amanda French, May 24, 2008

Isn’t it odd how so many persist in using paper correspondence? I simply don’t understand. Great news, though, however delivered. I reiterate Eleanor’s thanks for your work.

I’ll bring my laptop (a Mac), and I will be using PowerPoint with backup screenshots, although chiefly I want a live Internet connection.

email Michael Hancher, June 2, 2008

Here’s the MLA’s reply about internet access. I had hoped for wireless, but apparently no guarantees even of that. What should I tell them?

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Fw: P.S. regarding arrangements for S57, “The Library of Google: Researching Scanned Books”
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2008 14:58:31 -0400

Please note that we do not generally provide live Internet at the convention because of problems that can occur with a live Internet session. We suggest instead that speakers tape their Internet session for playback at the convention.

You had originally indicated that you would use screen shots for this session. Please let me know if you have any questions or if there are any difficulties in proceeding without live Internet.

email Amanda French, June 2, 2008

Ah, well, I can use screen shots. Thanks for asking.

twitter David Parry, June 6, 2008

Note to MLA: 1. You cannot “tape” the internet. 2. Having a conference without internet access signals your irrelevance. xrl.us/bmm2r 1:03 PM Jun 6th, 2008

flickr Amanda French, June 6, 2008

I know, right? Sheesh. We’re doing a panel on Google Books and I innocently assumed that I’d be able to do some live searching. Some assumption. The MLA harrumphed and ahemmed me out of that particular brand of contemporaneity. [link]

twitter David Parry, June 6, 2008

<rant>Maybe I’ll bring this to the MLA to “tape” the internet. xrl.us/bmm25 </rant> 1:11 PM Jun 6th, 2008

flickr Amanda French, June 6, 2008

I mean, what I have trouble wrapping my head around is that they don’t provide Internet. At all. I get annoyed at places (hotels, coffee shops, libraries, conferences) that don’t provide Wi-Fi. I’m used to that annoyance. “Why should I have to tote an Ethernet cable?” is my spoiled attitude. But even humble Ethernet access is too much for the MLA. [link]

twitter Amanda French, November 20, 2008

twitpic.com/mv8a – This is an actual option in the Modern Language Association’s member profile area. 10:22 AM Nov 20th, 2008

u_hard_knocks

twitter Catherine Pellegrino, November 20, 2008

@amandafrench OMG too funny. Thanks for capturing the screenshot! Will show it to husband ( & MLA member) C. 10:27 AM Nov 20th, 2008

twitter Amanda French, November 20, 2008

@cpellegr You are both very welcome. Funny, huh? Either MLA has a mole programmer, or they auto-generate that list, I figure. 11:36 AM Nov 20th, 2008

email Amanda French, November 21, 2008

Thought you might enjoy the following actual, factual institutional affiliation option offered to me the other day by MLA’s member profile update page.

All best wishes from the Department of Dashed Expectations (which, to be fair, might have been too high in the first place). www.flickr.com/photos/amandafrench/3048911802/sizes/o/

email Michael Bérubé, November 22, 2008

OK, that actual, factual institutional affiliation option sucks. Eggs. But how is the job and how are you doing? Or is that like asking, “other than that, Mrs. Lincoln?”

email Amanda French, November 24, 2008

You’re so kind to inquire. This job is actually lovely, although it’ll only last a year; it’s part of a grant-funded initiative to make the NYU Archives & Public History program more digital. . . .

. . . I finished a song the other day that I’m going to record and give away to the internet for reasons that will become evident. You can be the first to have the lyrics; you’re one of my very first “internet friends,” so this is dedicated to you among others.

All My Internet Friends

Monday afternoon I gave a presentation to the staff
Kicked off with a knock-knock joke to liven up the charts and graphs
That crowd
Never laughs out loud

But all my internet friends were tickled pink
They put animated smileys when they passed around the link
They said, Hey, girl, here’s another awesome thing we found
Sarah Palin getting smacked down
With a Prince song in the background
Better watch it quick before they take it down

Wednesday night I figured I’d go out and buy a DVD
Walked into a store and walked right out again immediately
This sucks
They want thirty bucks

But all my internet friends give things away
They just really like to make stuff even when it doesn’t pay
They say, Hey, girl, here’s a picture, here’s a poem too
Here’s a blog post, here’s a podcast
Here’s a song and here’s a lolcat
And an iPhone application all for you

Saturday I had a date with Dave the software engineer
Told him ’bout the time I got my headphones wrapped around my ear
I swear
He just didn’t care

But all my internet friends, they listen well
They make sympathetic comments when I say that I’m in hell
They say, Hey, girl, what’s your status
I say, Omigod,
I’m not sleeping, I’m not eating
I can’t take another meeting
With the clean, well-meaning morons at my job

There are those who say I spend a little too much time online
Sometimes I agree, but on the whole I think I’m doing fine
Click, buzz
I feel strong because

All my internet friends are here with me
Saying, Love and information want only to be free
And we’ll take no crap from anyone who says that they know better
We won’t stand for that because we all came here together
We’re remaining interwoven
We’re a net, and we have chosen
To be knotted tightly to each other
You be client, I’ll be server
We won’t ever have to be alone

email Michael Bérubé, November 24, 2008

The lyrics are just perfect– they basically sum up my relation to all my internet friends, too. . . . Most recent example: Saturday night in San Diego, a guy came up to me at a party and introduced himself as the commenter known as “fardels bear.” I greeted him with handshake and hug, and thanked him for sending me his essay on the history of debates over the concepts “context of discovery” and “context of justification.” It was like meeting a good friend– and he was good because an internet friend.

. . . I’ll be at MLA, giving two papers and generally making trouble. Please say hello! By then I’ll have written my musical response to your song, titled “All My Rowdy Internet Friends Are Comin’ Over Tonite.”

email Amanda French, December 10, 2008

All My Internet Friends . . . the crappy audio version. When people say they record on their Mac, I don’t think they usually mean into the built-in mic with the Macbook sitting on top of the New Oxford English Dictionary, Candace Bushnell’s _One Fifth Avenue_, and Clive James’s _Cultural Amnesia_.

allmyinternetfriends.com/

technorati Michael Bérubé, December 10, 2008

Those of you who have been reading this blog for untold years upon years will surely remember the name of Amanda French, one of the wittiest commenters in what has been, since 1985, a most entertaining comment section. Yes, well, you knew she was smart and quick with a villanelle just when a hundred-comment-thread needs one most. But you didn’t know she could write songs and sing ‘em, now, did you?

The song is called “All My Internet Friends,” which is one of the reasons this post is titled “All My Internet Friends.” You can even click on “lyrics” on the “All My Internet Friends” web page and find out what all the lyrics are. My, this Inter-net is an amazing thing. And I would be lying—badly, sure, but what did you expect?—if I said that I don’t know exactly what structure of feeling Amanda’s singing about here. Which is to say, a little less convolutedly, that I am often very grateful for my Internet friends. [link]

twitter Brian Croxall, December 15, 2008

Is excited about the plans for the MLA Twitter panel. Now, how to spread the news? #MLA140 2:54 PM Dec 15th, 2008

twitter Amanda French, December 15, 2008 [deleted but still viewable]

Temporary death of MacBook on Friday night derailed my plans to continue writing my MLA Google Book Search paper this weekend. Oy. #MLA140

twitter Brian Croxall, December 15, 2008 [direct message]

We’re going to use #MLA08 for general MLA stuff and #MLA140 for the Twitter panel. (Hope that doesn’t sound too proprietary)

twitter Amanda French, December 15, 2008 [direct message]

Probably shouldn’t twitter the fact that I’m behind, anyway. 🙂

twitter Lisa Spiro, December 23, 2008

Anyone else headed to MLA? Give me a holler if you’d like to share a drink or meal. 10:30 AM Dec 23rd, 2008

twitter Amanda French, December 23, 2008

@lisaspiro Me! 🙂 See also @mlatweetup and its wiki at mlatweetup.pbwiki.com 1:08 PM Dec 23rd, 2008

twitter Lisa Spiro, December 23, 2008

@amandafrench: Awesome! Richard probably can’t make it to SF (durn airfare), so if you’re interested in sharing a hotel room lemme know 2:48 PM Dec 23rd, 2008

twitter Amanda French, December 28, 2008

Landed in San Francisco. Should be able to arise from this seat and deplane any day now. 4:07 AM Dec 28th, 2008

twitter Amanda French, December 28, 2008

Nice: Twitter as “ambient, aggregative text.” #mla140 11:44 AM Dec 28th, 2008

twitter Amanda French, December 28, 2008

Twitter panel ends on this note: brevity FTW. 🙂 #mla140 12:48 PM Dec 28th, 2008

technorati Alex Reid, December 28, 2008

As I’ve now made a regular practice, I was listening to Melvyn Bragg’s “In Our Time,” where this week’s discussion was on the physics of time. I then attended a panel with Dave Parry, Matt Gold, John Jones, and Brian Croxall on microblogging.

One of the points discussed there, in a wide-ranging conversation, was that microblogging changes our relationship with time, the whole instantaneous nature of the tweet and (for the haters) the potential for a slavish dedication to daily minutiae. Bragg’s guests were having a different conversation. There can be some question, in terms of physics, as to whether or not time exists as an independent phenomena. [link]

twitter Twitter search for hashtag #mla140

More about the MLA Twitter panel

twitter Amanda French, December 28, 2008

Also met Michael Berube f2f for the first time; awesome. Also his son Jamie. 3:42 PM Dec 28th, 2008

twitter Amanda French, December 28, 2008

Off to hear Mark Edmundson talk about “digital immigrants” and “digital natives”; he’s the wisest & reasonablest anti-tech thinker I know. 10:06 PM Dec 28th, 2008

twitter Amanda French, December 29, 2008

#mla08 Our panel on Google Books went great, I thought. It was much more concrete & coherent than many panels, & audience was interested. 5:02 PM Dec 29th, 2008 [my paper and slides] [Lisa Spiro’s slides]

twitter Amanda French, December 29, 2008

#mla08 I should say that the MLA panels I’ve seen this year have been very coherent & concrete. I’m just scarred from previous years. 5:03 PM Dec 29th, 2008

twitter Amanda French, December 29, 2008

#mla08 Off to the exhibit hall; hoping to run into Scott McLemee. I met William Germano last night, too, which impresses me. 5:05 PM Dec 29th, 2008

technorati Scott McLemee, December 29, 2008

Just ran into Amanda French at the IHE booth, over in the exhibit hall. She helped elucidate something that has puzzled me since yesterday — namely, that blog postings about this year’s MLA seem few and far between.

I wondered if it were a matter of some delay in things being picked up by the Google Blog search engine, or not enough people being able to afford to fly to the Pacific coast, or what.

Amanda’s response makes sense: It may be that most of it is taking place via microblogging, and Twitter in particular.

I signed up for Twitter earlier this year but have tended to ignore it, on the principle any more fragmentation of my attention would reduce it to the scale of subatomic particles; for example, quarks. But evidently other folks are MLA are able to handle it better.

Amanda explained that if you want to keep track with how MLA is being Twittered, you go to this site and do a search for MLA08. [link]

twitter Amanda French, December 29, 2008

If you’re at #mla08, you might want to follow or say something to @mclemee about Twitter. Now back to listening to the speaker. 🙂 6:56 PM Dec 29th, 2008

twitter Amanda French, December 29, 2008

The head of the Text Encoding Initiative is about to speak. He assumed there would be Internet. Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you. #mla08 7:30 PM Dec 29th, 2008

twitter David Parry, December 29, 2008

Looking forward to the MLA tweet-up at 6:00. Lobby of Hilton if you want to join. 6:26 PM Dec 29th, 2008

twitter Matt Gold, December 29, 2008

@Atrios We’re meeting at 6 by the bar near the main entrance to the Hilton. It would be great to see you! 6:30 PM Dec 29th, 2008

twitter John Jones, December 29, 2008

@mkirschenbaum You should come to the tweetup tonight: Hilton lobby bar @6 6:59 PM Dec 29th, 2008

twitter Brian Croxall, December 29, 2008

At tweetup #Mla08 9:00 PM Dec 29th, 2008

twitter Julie Levin Russo, December 29, 2008

so sorry that tweetup dinner took way too long and we missed most of @chutry’s expanded cinema panel! 🙁 #mla08 scheduling 11:16 PM Dec 29th, 2008

twitter Brian Croxall, December 30, 2008

Is pleased to now know someone (@projectjulie) that is one of Shelley Jackson’s words from Skin. 11:11 AM Dec 30th, 2008

technorati Jennifer Howard, December 31st, 2008

The 2008 MLA convention ended yesterday in San Francisco. Here, in the spirit of a new year’s best-of/worst-of list, is a roundup of highlights and low points from the meeting:

  • Attendance: 8,544 people registered, down from 8,900 last year, according to the MLA — a drop of about 4 percent.
  • Hot topics: hiring freezes and suspended searches, adjunct labor, Twitter.
  • Hot research topics: animal studies (file under “posthumanism”), digital editing, Twitter.

[link]

twitter Twitter search for #mla08

More about the 2008 MLA Convention

technorati Cathy Davidson, January 2, 2009

I also heard about an aphorism of Barbara Ganley’s that Dan Cohen passed on in his blog and in a tweet, asking others to “discuss”: “Blog to reflect, tweet to connect.” That is fascinating. Because the “ambient intimacy” (another fantastic term) of Twitter does feel to me like connection, and I was fascinated to hear about the different ways the panelists used Twitter not only to connect with one another, but to gain a snapshot into forms of group knowledge. One panelist talked about following all of the Twitter feeds using the word “Michelle” during Michelle Obama’s convention speech, and what that was like, reading it all, left and right and everywhere, as it was happening, a shower of opinion, and a far more sophisticated slice of audience response than the CNN sliding audience monitor on the bottom of the screen. [link]

technorati Matthew K. Gold, January 3, 2009

Before the conference had even started, a bunch of my contacts on twitter had begun to connect with one another. We arranged a tweetup by setting up an account on twitter. We created a wiki page and encouraged convention-going twits to list their presentations on it. We bemoaned the fact that so many of the panels we wanted to attend were scheduled at the same time. (And by “we,” I mean a loosely connected set of people who identified themselves as being members of both the MLA and Twitter. There was very little structure involved, and the community, such as it was, was very open).

Before we even arrived, then, the conference had begun. [link]

technorati Chuck Tryon, January 2, 2008

As I mentioned in an update to my previous post, I’d like to spend some time thinking about microblogging in general and Twitter in particular. As the election season deepened, I became a much more avid Twitter user, and the Twitter panel at MLA, reviewed here by media scholar Cathy Davidson, covered many of the strengths (and concerns) about Twitter. As the panelists pointed out, a number of critics have argued that Twitter fosters an unhealthy narcissism and that it prevents deeper reflection. However, these readings often focus only at the level of the individual “tweet,” which taken out of context can seem a bit navel-gazing. Instead, the panel helped to provide a language for thinking about the connective elements of Twitter and its larger role in aggregating knowledge. To be sure, this aggregation could (and probably will) be used in some form of data mining–imagine what the two major political parties could do with all of this year’s election tweets–but the “ambient intimacy” of Twitter can be used in a variety of powerful ways, as Shaun Huston and Nick Rombes point out in a couple of recent posts. [link]

technorati John Jones, January 5, 2008

Next, [I] examined Twitter through the work of compositionist Fred Kemp, arguing that microblogging creates new kinds of aggregated texts that must be understood as collective entities rather than in their individual pieces. Thus, any one “tweet” may not make sense outside of the larger discourse, that is, the larger collective environment, in which that tweet was made. The various ways in which individual tweets can be aggregated, however, destabilize those collective environments since information can be arranged and rearranged in many different ways.

[I] argued that this leads at least two conclusions. First, debates over the value of internet communication services like blogs, Facebook, or Twitter can be usefully viewed as debates over how to value the texts these services generate and what constitutes the boundaries of those texts. Kemp states: “The value of written conversations … lies in the organic and open-ended nature of knowledge making they display, not in their transmitted factual increments, which are usually, and crudely, termed information” (187, orig. emphasis). When critics attack the worth of Twitter, they are, more often then not, focusing on the “transmitted factual increments,”—that is, singular tweets—rather than examining the non-traditional texts created by these individual tweets. [link]

technorati Sybil Vane, January 8, 2008

Partly I suspect I found MLA so tolerable because I attended exactly one panel. And I chose it wisely, veering away from my own stuffy field and instead going to the Twitter panel. It was excellent, a good rundown here. Not only were the presentations themselves engaging, but the panel as a whole felt radically more productive than the typical conference panel because the presenters decided to limit themselves to about 5 minutes of speaking so as to allow more time for actual conversation. And then THEY DID. These academics, they spoke for about 5 minutes! It was awesome! I can actually follow something for 5 minutes. The ensuing conversation was so smart and dialogic I felt like everyone was engaged at a level one doesn’t often see at these things. Which was sort of the point of the entire discussion about how twitter works. So bully to them for doing a great job. [link]

technorati Negar Mottehedeh, January 8, 2008

As I look out at the faces of the students in my classroom I realize that it’s not the technology nor the networking that is daunting, though overwhelming to start. I know that if I can learn to be a bird on a wire and twitter tweet tweet o_O, so can they.

Dimming the lights enough for them to see the screen, I look into their eyes one more time and it’s like a jolt of electricity going down my spine. I suddenly realize that my challenge is not the material. My challenge is to have my students get that they are a contribution: “Give me some change!” *” I’ll touch you” Odd or even: each one of them is a contribution. I am that I am the difference. [link]

technorati Lisa Spiro, January 11, 2008

I’ve certainly had my moments of skepticism toward the larger purposes of literary research while sitting through dull conference sessions, but my MLA experience actually made me feel jazzed and hopeful about the humanities. That’s because the sessions that I attended — mostly panels on the digital humanities — explored topics that seemed both intellectually rich and relevant to the contemporary moment. For instance, panelists discussed the significance of networked reading, dealing with information abundance, new methods for conducting research such as macroanalysis and visualization, participatory learning, copyright challenges, the shift (?) to digital publishing, digital preservation, and collaborative editing. . . .

. . .This was my first MLA and, despite having to leave home smack in the middle of the holidays, I enjoyed it. Although many sessions that I attended shifted away from the “read your paper aloud when people are perfectly capable of reading it themselves” model, I noted the MLA’s requirement that authors bring three copies of their paper to provide upon request, which raises the question what if you don’t have a paper (just Powerpoint slides or notes) and why can’t you share electronically? And why doesn’t the MLA provide fuller descriptions of the sessions besides just title and speakers? (Or am I just not looking in the right place?) Sure, in the paper era that would mean the conference issue of PMLA would be several volumes thick, but if the information were online there would be a much richer record of each session. (Or you could enlist bloggers or twitterers [tweeters?] to summarize each session…) After attending THAT Camp, I’m a fan of the unconference model, which fosters the kind of engagement that conferences should be all about—conversation, brainstorming, and problem-solving rather than passive listening. But lively discussions often do take place during the Q & A period and in the hallways after the sessions (and who knows what takes place elsewhere…) [link]


“Who knows what takes place elsewhere” . . . an excellent note to end on. –AF

Results 1-1 of 1 for “is google making us stupid”: No. (0.27 seconds)

The other day I got an envelope in the mail, a grave, serious-looking envelope that seemed never to have heard of junk mail. I did know it was unsolicited, however, because this responsible piece of correspondence announced itself as being from The Atlantic. I opened it, and, as I had surmised, it was a grave, serious, highly responsible invitation to subscribe.

I might actually take them up on it at some point. The only reason I opened the piece of mail to begin with was that I had read Nicholas Carr’s piece “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and I found that article interesting. Wrong, but interesting.

Carr’s article has been making the rounds, especially on Twitter, which is where I first heard of it — because, as I mentioned, I am not in fact a subscriber to the print version of The Atlantic. (Yet.) First, an eminent wit made gentle fun, then Tom Scheinfeldt offered an opinion, and then someone else seemed to think that my own reading habits might be considered an example of the kind of thing Carr is talking about.

In case you haven’t guessed, the implied answer to the question is “yes.” Yes, Google is making us stupid. Surely, though, it was some Atlantic editor who came up with the title. I imagine said editor leaning back in his chair (I imagine him male), leaning back in his chair, I say, in his large office in the Watergate, the mighty Potomac and all Arlington, VA spread out behind him, expostulating, “Now, see here, Nicky, we’ve gotta have a title for this piece that grabs ya. Something kicky. Something that all the bloggers will leap on, ya know. Controversial, that’s what sells mags and ups page-hits these days.” I refrain from imagining slicked-back hair and a bushy black moustache. That would be going too far.

The title and the article clearly come from the brains of two different authors — or if the title was indeed Carr’s idea, then he must have been channeling some such cunning editorial incubus. For one thing, Carr’s real subject is the Internet, not Google, though he does offer up Google as “the Internet’s high church” and thus its moral arbiter and exemplar. For another thing, a more important thing, while Carr may wonder whether the Internet is making us stupid, he offers support for a rather different thesis: that the Internet is changing the way we read. We now read faster and shallower, we’re easily distracted, and, if we’re Nicholas Carr, we’re beautifully lyrical about it:

And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Now this, as far as it goes, matches my own experience (as far as that goes). I too have noticed that I’m more easily distracted than I used to be when I’m reading or writing. Carr reports on his blog that he’s been “flooded with emails and blog posts from people saying that my struggles with deep reading and concentration mirror their own experiences.” I’ll even say that I worry about it, too. Some days I can feel my brain filling with scraps of information as though with confetti, and I want nothing more than to sit down with some Elmer’s in an empty kindergarten classroom and paste all the bits together into a semi-coherent whole.

But even so, even though Carr’s article is smarter (yes, smarter) than its title, even though my own experience matches Carr’s and that of his readers, even though I too find my new distractibility troubling and at times inconvenient, even so, I’m not sure that melancholy is the way to go here. For one thing, childishly: I like the internet. I don’t want to believe that it makes me stupid. For another, pragmatically: I don’t know what we could do about it as a society if it were true. Personally, I definitely see the benefit of no-internet times in my day, and I’ve become pretty good at policing those times so that I can focus on reading or writing, those high-concentration activities. Sure, that’s a boundary that I never used to have to set, but as a trade-off, at least I have a room of my own now (at home, anyway), unlike, say, Jane Austen, who, legend has it, used to have to write her novels “in the general sitting-room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions.”

For another thing, and more importantly, Carr has entirely left out one of the key apparatuses of the Internet: contribution. As it happens, I just saw Idiocracy, and that’s a vision that would give anyone pause. Carr’s article seems subtly to point to just such a future for our bedumbening culture. But, crucially, there’s no internet in that moronic dystopia, and indeed it’s difficult to see how there could be. There are live monster truck rallies, and there is certainly television, as if in perfect, colorful illustration of Clay Shirky’s thesis in “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus” (video here). It is a nightmare of passive consumption, and therefore the Internet in all its participatory glory cannot figure there. The Internet is a place where thousands of anti-Brawndo sites and comments and images and videos and e-mail petitions would appear thirteen seconds after the government passed the policy to water the crops with a sports drink. Contribution, creation, is not only a social good, it’s a way to learn. Not just because other people can comment on what you’ve contributed and potentially modify your thoughts, but because the act of creation itself involves a crystallization of what exactly it is that you think.

Also, Carr’s comparison of Google’s project to Taylor’s is seriously borked. Taylor’s “scientific management” was a system of controlling people, and specifically people’s bodies. It was (is) a system that almost literally aimed at making a human body into a cog in a machine for the purpose of capitalist production, a system totally not down with the thesis that we are stardust, we are golden. Carr writes that “What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind,” but what that analogy lacks is the factor of power. Taylor’s managers could and did and do order their workers to stop performing complex acts of complete craftsmanship and instead perform one repetitive motion or set of motions hour after hour after tiring, soulless, painful hour. The structure of power dictated that the workers had to do this or be fired. Google, by contrast, has no power to command us. As an employer, Google notoriously gives its engineers an immense amount of physical freedom and comfort, in fact, but that’s not what Carr is talking about here. Carr seems to feel this same sense of coercion, weirdly, from the internet generally: “Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened,” he writes, “hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.” Let’s get this straight: for all its real flaws, Google does not order people to Google. Hyperlinks do not propel you toward them. The Internet does not force you to surf.

Carr’s article, as I’ve said, is very interesting, and I’m glad it appeared — it’s a question that needs to be raised, this of distractibility. What I’d like to see, however, somewhere, somehow, is a more detailed analysis of exactly what it is we’re being distracted by on the internet. I know that one thing I tend to be distracted by is precisely the urge to check, to verify: What does this word mean? Does the article hyperlinked to really say what the linker says it says? I know that another thing I tend to be distracted by is the urge to contribute, to comment: Why yes, that’s right! No, I disagree. Another distraction is the urge to share: Hey, Tom would be interested in this. This is just like that thing he sent me the other day. It’s hard for me to believe that any of these kinds of distractions, as inconvenient as they are, are making me stupid. I return to that image of confetti: to me, the internet consists of a shower of invitations to subscribe, to inform myself, to read, to think, to share, to write, and while it’s a bit loud and hectic and the trombones are a bit annoying, well, it’s a celebration, after all.