Earlier this summer Desiree Rowe and Ben Myers, whose podcast The Critical Lede I cannot say enough good things about, invited me to contribute to a journal forum they're editing on "The Performative Possibilities of New Media." Given my interest in the politics of scholarly communication, I immediately jumped at the chance to participate.
Composing the essay took a little longer than I'd expected, but I think I've got a respectable version of the piece now in hand. It's called "Performing Scholarly Communication," and it reflects on the origins and possible futures of academic periodical publishing.
This is where you come in. I've posted the draft essay to one of my project sites, The Differences & Repetitions Wiki (a.k.a., D&RW), in the hopes those of you reading this might be kind enough to offer some feedback. You'll find "Performing Scholarly Communication" on the site, along with other essays I've worked on over the years. Don't hesitate to comment anonymously -- I'm completely cool with that -- and definitely take some time to poke around a bit. Oh, and by the way, the piece is pretty short, so it won't take you very long to read.
I mentioned back in July that I'd be rebooting D&RW, mainly as a result of the influx of advertising appearing on the original host site, Wikidot. Well, this is it. "Performing Scholarly Communication" marks the (dant-dant-daah!) GRAND OPENING of the new D&RW, which links directly off of this blog. Enjoy.
Thanks in advance, wise crowd, for reading and commenting on the draft of my piece. I hope you find something in there that intrigues you.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
David Harvey in Words & Pictures
I bet that silly notion of the "ivory tower" would disappear if all academic talks had a real-time cartoon accompaniment, like this one starring the Marxist critic David Harvey. Heck, maybe we should lobby Fox for a Sunday night animated series based on his work. The show could even feature guest appearances by Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek, and Toni Negri.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
How to Have Culture in an Algorithmic Age
Note: this entry was posted originally to The Late Age of Print on June 14, 2010. I'm reposting it here due to the surprising amount of attention it's received and because of its relevance to my readers here on D&R.
The subtitle of this post ought to be "apparently," since I have developing doubts about substituting digital surveillance systems and complex computer programs for the considered -- humane -- work of culture.
Case in point: about six weeks ago, Galley Cat reported on a new Kindle-related initiative called "popular highlights,"which Amazon.com had just rolled out onto the web for beta testing. In a nutshell, Amazon is now going public with information about which Kindle books are the most popular, as well as which passages within them have been the most consistently highlighted by readers.
How does Amazon determine this? Using the 3G connection built into your Kindle, the company automatically uploads your highlights, bookmarks, marginal notes, and more to its server array, or computing cloud. Amazon calls this service "back up," but the phrase is something of a misnomer. Sure, there's goodwill on Amazon's part in helping to ensure that your Kindle data never gets deleted or corrupted. By the same token, it's becoming abundantly clear that "back up" exists as much for the sake of your convenience as it does for Amazon itself, who mines all of your Kindle-related data. The Galley Cat story only confirms this.
This isn't really news. For months I've been writing here and elsewhere about the back up/surveillance issue, and I even have an academic journal article appearing on the topic this fall. Now, don't get me wrong -- this is an important issue. But the focus on surveillance has obscured another pressing matter: the way in which Amazon, and indeed other tech companies, are altering the idea of culture through these types of services. Hence my concern with what I'm calling, following Alex Galloway, "algorithmic culture."
In the old paradigm of culture -- you might call it "elite culture," although I find the term "elite" to be so overused these days as to be almost meaningless -- a small group of well-trained, trusted authorities determined not only what was worth reading, but also what within a given reading selection were the most important aspects to focus on. The basic principle is similar with algorithmic culture, which is also concerned with sorting, classifying, and hierarchizing cultural artifacts.
Here's the twist, however, which is apparent from the "About" page on the Amazon Popular Highlights site:
Using its computing cloud, Amazon aggregates all of the information it's gathered from its customers' Kindles to produce a statistical determination of what's culturally relevant. In other words, significance and meaningfulness are decided by a massive -- and massively distributed -- group of readers, whose responses to texts are measured, quantified, and processed by Amazon.
I realize that in raising doubts about this type of cultural work, I'm opening myself to charges of elitism. So be it. Anytime you question what used to be called "the popular," and what is now increasingly referred to as "the crowd," you open yourself to those types of accusations. Honestly, though, I'm not out to impugn the crowd.
To my mind, the whole elites-versus-crowd debate is little more than a red-herring, one that distracts from a much deeper issue: Amazon's algorithm and the mysterious ways in which it renders culture.
When people read, on a Kindle or elsewhere, there's context. For example, I may highlight a passage because I find it to be provocative or insightful. By the same token, I may find it to be objectionable, or boring, or grammatically troublesome, or confusing, or...you get the point. When Amazon uploads your passages and begins aggregating them with those of other readers, this sense of context is lost. What this means is that algorithmic culture, in its obsession with metrics and quantification, exists at least one level of abstraction beyond the acts of reading that first produced the data.
I'm not against the crowd, and let me add that I'm not even against this type of cultural work per se. I don't fear the machine. What I do fear, though, is the black box of algorithmic culture. We have virtually no idea of how Amazon's Popular Highlights algorithm works, let alone who made it. All that information is proprietary, and given Amazon's penchant for secrecy, the company is unlikely to open up about it anytime soon.
In the old cultural paradigm, you could question authorities about their reasons for selecting particular cultural artifacts as worthy, while dismissing or neglecting others. Not so with algorithmic culture, which wraps abstraction inside of secrecy and sells it back to you as, "the people have spoken."
The subtitle of this post ought to be "apparently," since I have developing doubts about substituting digital surveillance systems and complex computer programs for the considered -- humane -- work of culture.
Case in point: about six weeks ago, Galley Cat reported on a new Kindle-related initiative called "popular highlights,"which Amazon.com had just rolled out onto the web for beta testing. In a nutshell, Amazon is now going public with information about which Kindle books are the most popular, as well as which passages within them have been the most consistently highlighted by readers.
How does Amazon determine this? Using the 3G connection built into your Kindle, the company automatically uploads your highlights, bookmarks, marginal notes, and more to its server array, or computing cloud. Amazon calls this service "back up," but the phrase is something of a misnomer. Sure, there's goodwill on Amazon's part in helping to ensure that your Kindle data never gets deleted or corrupted. By the same token, it's becoming abundantly clear that "back up" exists as much for the sake of your convenience as it does for Amazon itself, who mines all of your Kindle-related data. The Galley Cat story only confirms this.
This isn't really news. For months I've been writing here and elsewhere about the back up/surveillance issue, and I even have an academic journal article appearing on the topic this fall. Now, don't get me wrong -- this is an important issue. But the focus on surveillance has obscured another pressing matter: the way in which Amazon, and indeed other tech companies, are altering the idea of culture through these types of services. Hence my concern with what I'm calling, following Alex Galloway, "algorithmic culture."
In the old paradigm of culture -- you might call it "elite culture," although I find the term "elite" to be so overused these days as to be almost meaningless -- a small group of well-trained, trusted authorities determined not only what was worth reading, but also what within a given reading selection were the most important aspects to focus on. The basic principle is similar with algorithmic culture, which is also concerned with sorting, classifying, and hierarchizing cultural artifacts.
Here's the twist, however, which is apparent from the "About" page on the Amazon Popular Highlights site:
We combine the highlights of all Kindle customers and identify the passages with the most highlights. The resulting Popular Highlights help readers to focus on passages that are meaningful to the greatest number of people.
Using its computing cloud, Amazon aggregates all of the information it's gathered from its customers' Kindles to produce a statistical determination of what's culturally relevant. In other words, significance and meaningfulness are decided by a massive -- and massively distributed -- group of readers, whose responses to texts are measured, quantified, and processed by Amazon.
I realize that in raising doubts about this type of cultural work, I'm opening myself to charges of elitism. So be it. Anytime you question what used to be called "the popular," and what is now increasingly referred to as "the crowd," you open yourself to those types of accusations. Honestly, though, I'm not out to impugn the crowd.
To my mind, the whole elites-versus-crowd debate is little more than a red-herring, one that distracts from a much deeper issue: Amazon's algorithm and the mysterious ways in which it renders culture.
When people read, on a Kindle or elsewhere, there's context. For example, I may highlight a passage because I find it to be provocative or insightful. By the same token, I may find it to be objectionable, or boring, or grammatically troublesome, or confusing, or...you get the point. When Amazon uploads your passages and begins aggregating them with those of other readers, this sense of context is lost. What this means is that algorithmic culture, in its obsession with metrics and quantification, exists at least one level of abstraction beyond the acts of reading that first produced the data.
I'm not against the crowd, and let me add that I'm not even against this type of cultural work per se. I don't fear the machine. What I do fear, though, is the black box of algorithmic culture. We have virtually no idea of how Amazon's Popular Highlights algorithm works, let alone who made it. All that information is proprietary, and given Amazon's penchant for secrecy, the company is unlikely to open up about it anytime soon.
In the old cultural paradigm, you could question authorities about their reasons for selecting particular cultural artifacts as worthy, while dismissing or neglecting others. Not so with algorithmic culture, which wraps abstraction inside of secrecy and sells it back to you as, "the people have spoken."
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Higher Education: Let the Free Market Reign!
Great news for all of my readers who despise profligate government spending! My buddy Kembrew McLeod published a thought-provoking article in Tuesday's edition of the Huffington Post called, "A Modest Free Market Proposal for Higher Education Reform." In it, Kembrew outlines a compelling vision for ending the financial bloat that's endemic to today's public universities.
Among his proposals, he calls for corporate sponsorship of classes. Personally I'm looking forward to the day when the syllabus for my Introduction to Media class, which enrolls 250-plus students every fall, can finally say, "brought to you by the Walt Disney Company." Kembrew also suggests that undergraduates be given the green light to utilize paid-for research assistance companies, which makes a good deal of sense, really, for how else are we to grow the economy in tough financial times? My favorite idea of his, though, is to incentivize cheap graduate student teaching. Soon-to-be PhDs, Kembrew writes, ought to be able to outsource their doctoral dissertations:
Among his proposals, he calls for corporate sponsorship of classes. Personally I'm looking forward to the day when the syllabus for my Introduction to Media class, which enrolls 250-plus students every fall, can finally say, "brought to you by the Walt Disney Company." Kembrew also suggests that undergraduates be given the green light to utilize paid-for research assistance companies, which makes a good deal of sense, really, for how else are we to grow the economy in tough financial times? My favorite idea of his, though, is to incentivize cheap graduate student teaching. Soon-to-be PhDs, Kembrew writes, ought to be able to outsource their doctoral dissertations:
By no longer having to conduct original research themselves, graduate students will have more hours to spend in the classroom as adjunct instructors. Let's do the math. PhD-Dissertations.com charges $17.00 per page, which adds up to $3,400 for a 200-page dissertation (plus, their website states that, "A discount of 10% applies to orders of 75+ pages!"). Although this might seem like a lot of money, consider the fact that most colleges pay adjuncts roughly the same, between $3,000 and $4,000, for each course taught per semester. Therefore, by just adding one extra course to his or her roster, a graduate student can pay for an entire dissertation in less than one academic year--while at the same time serving the university's undergraduate teaching needs. Once this new generation of scholar/project managers enters the profession, there will be no more need for traditional professors.Since I'm an overpaid university professor who's contributing to all the bloat, I'll happily step aside to let someone with a bachelors or masters degree do my job for, say, seven or eight bucks an hour. But don't worry about me. I'll be lapping it up over at PhD-Dissertations.com, where at long last I can put my skills and experience to some real use.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Academic Publishing Roundup -- Communication Edition
Wow! I'm happy to report that my home discipline, communication, is finally making some strides in terms of bringing its book and journal publishing policies into the 21st century.
Last week, the International Communication Association (ICA), in Conjunction with American University's Center for Social Media, released its Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication. The Society for Cinema and Media Studies devised a similar statement of best practices way back in 1993 (it updated the document in 2009), so needless to say I'm pleased to see ICA catching up at long last.
These types of policy statements are vitally important for media and communication scholars, and indeed for scholars more generally. As more and more of our work engages words, sounds, images, and other artifacts drawn from the popular media, we need to be reasonably assured that we can criticize and, where necessary, reproduce content protected by copyright, trademark, and other forms of intellectual property law. That's exactly what these best practices statements do, in part by identifying a "community of practice" and carefully defining its -- in this case, scholarly -- customs. But it's not only about "show and tell." Reproducing copyrighted content in academic work is important to the scholarly process. How else would reviewers, other scholars, and anyone else who may happen to read our work assess the validity of our claims?
Academics routinely -- and often unnecessarily, I might add -- self-censor our work, for instance by opting to exclude images we're analyzing for fear we'll get sued by some deep-pocketed media giant. Heck, I've even done it myself. And that's why I'm such a champion of these best practices statements. They may not give us carte blanche to use intellectual properties in our work however we may see fit. They do give us a useful set of guidelines for making informed judgments about how best to proceed in these matters, though, plus they underscore how our own practices are in solidarity with others.
The other bit of good news is that Boston College's Charles (Chuck) E. Morris III has drafted a resolution calling on the National Communication Association (NCA) to revise its fees for licensing NCA-copyrighted material. In a preamble to the document, Chuck writes:
If you're an NCA member, you have until Tuesday, June 29th the add your name to the document. You can do so by contacting Chuck via email: morrisch@bc.edu. And hey -- if you're not an NCA member but you believe in the spirit of the resolution, why not go ahead drop Chuck a line anyway? I don't know if he can add your name to the formal list of signatories, but it can't hurt for him to be able to attest to support coming from beyond NCA.
Now, if only we could get NCA to adopt a best practices for fair use statement of its own. It's an embarrassment, frankly, for the oldest and largest professional association for communication scholars in the United States to lag so far behind its peer organizations.
Last week, the International Communication Association (ICA), in Conjunction with American University's Center for Social Media, released its Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication. The Society for Cinema and Media Studies devised a similar statement of best practices way back in 1993 (it updated the document in 2009), so needless to say I'm pleased to see ICA catching up at long last.
These types of policy statements are vitally important for media and communication scholars, and indeed for scholars more generally. As more and more of our work engages words, sounds, images, and other artifacts drawn from the popular media, we need to be reasonably assured that we can criticize and, where necessary, reproduce content protected by copyright, trademark, and other forms of intellectual property law. That's exactly what these best practices statements do, in part by identifying a "community of practice" and carefully defining its -- in this case, scholarly -- customs. But it's not only about "show and tell." Reproducing copyrighted content in academic work is important to the scholarly process. How else would reviewers, other scholars, and anyone else who may happen to read our work assess the validity of our claims?
Academics routinely -- and often unnecessarily, I might add -- self-censor our work, for instance by opting to exclude images we're analyzing for fear we'll get sued by some deep-pocketed media giant. Heck, I've even done it myself. And that's why I'm such a champion of these best practices statements. They may not give us carte blanche to use intellectual properties in our work however we may see fit. They do give us a useful set of guidelines for making informed judgments about how best to proceed in these matters, though, plus they underscore how our own practices are in solidarity with others.
The other bit of good news is that Boston College's Charles (Chuck) E. Morris III has drafted a resolution calling on the National Communication Association (NCA) to revise its fees for licensing NCA-copyrighted material. In a preamble to the document, Chuck writes:
The resolution seeks to regulate the prohibitively expense copyright fees charged by Taylor & Francis [publisher of NCA journals] in conjunction with NCA. Particularly alarming is that while for more than a decade NCA Executive Directors, who contractually have the prerogative to waive or reduce fees, intervened to make reprinted NCA journal materials affordable for high quality anthologies/readers of pedagogical and scholarly value, the current NCA Executive Director, Nancy Kidd, has prioritized profit and is allowing a dramatically higher fee.Basically, NCA jacked up its licensing fees about a year ago, a move that will price smaller publishers out of the business of republishing top-quality communication research. The change not only promises to whittle down the competition (leaving only giants like Taylor & Francis, Wiley-Blackwell, and Sage standing), but it's also inimical to the larger cause of scholarly communication. When Chuck writes that NCA is putting profits ahead of publishing, he's exactly right.
If you're an NCA member, you have until Tuesday, June 29th the add your name to the document. You can do so by contacting Chuck via email: morrisch@bc.edu. And hey -- if you're not an NCA member but you believe in the spirit of the resolution, why not go ahead drop Chuck a line anyway? I don't know if he can add your name to the formal list of signatories, but it can't hurt for him to be able to attest to support coming from beyond NCA.
Now, if only we could get NCA to adopt a best practices for fair use statement of its own. It's an embarrassment, frankly, for the oldest and largest professional association for communication scholars in the United States to lag so far behind its peer organizations.
Monday, June 14, 2010
World Cup...Fever?
Most of my friends seem to have developed World Cup fever, including those who, up until now, haven't shown any particular interest in soccer/football. I suppose that's how you end up with one in every two people on the planet watching at least some portion of the tournament.
But for those of you who, like me, are suffering from the opposite condition -- World Cup hypothermia -- I'm happy to share this most excellent clip from The Simpsons. Enjoy.
But for those of you who, like me, are suffering from the opposite condition -- World Cup hypothermia -- I'm happy to share this most excellent clip from The Simpsons. Enjoy.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Social Media Hour Appearance
Just a quick note to let y'all know that I'll be a guest on Social Media Hour on Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 1:00 pm EDT. The topic is privacy, transparency, and social networking sites. You can listen live by clicking here; the archived recording will be available here. Here's a complete description of the program from the SMH website:
UPDATE -- Here's an embed from which you can stream the entire episode:
SOCIAL MEDIA HOUR #59: PRIVACY, TRANSPARENCY, & ONE MORE LESBIAN
This week the show will explore the topic of privacy and transparency specifically looking at how social networks and social technologies/platforms are changing the standards of privacy … or are they? With the amount of transparency in today’s world, are people reevaluating what they share? Is that a good thing? Ted Striphas from Indiana University joins the program to discuss. Also on this week’s show, Shirin Papillon, the Founder & CEO of OneMoreLesbian – a media site that aggregates the world’s lesbian film, television and online video content in one place. What does this have to do with the other topic? Simple. An array of sites and networks have arisen catering to myriad special interest groups. You can find site and networks for just about anything … that’s not new. But think about it, you choose to visit a site and participate in a social network … that behavior is tracked – whether by Google or brands that may appear there. If you choose to post links or comment on posts, others see your participation – so suddenly your personal affinity for a particular group is now public, which means in the case of LGBT oriented content, you are now more out than you were before. We’ll talk about OML as a business and about its growth and what it means when it comes to helping further expose a wider audience to the gay community.Should be a blast! Please listen if you can.
UPDATE -- Here's an embed from which you can stream the entire episode:
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Scholarly Journal Publishing
My latest essay, "Acknowledged Goods: Cultural Studies and the Politics of Academic Journal Publishing," is now out in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 7(1) (March 2010), pp. 3-25. In my opinion, it's probably the single most important journal essay I've published to date. Here's the abstract:
I'm fortunate to have already had the published essay reviewed by Ben Myers and Desiree Rowe, who podcast over at The Critical Lede. You can listen to their thoughtful commentary on "Acknowledged Goods" by clicking here -- and be sure to check out their other podcasts while you're at it!This essay explores the changing context of academic journal publishing and cultural studies' envelopment within it. It does so by exploring five major trends affecting scholarly communication today: alienation, proliferation, consolidation, pricing, and digitization. More specifically, it investigates how recent changes in the political economy of academic journal publishing have impinged on cultural studies' capacity to transmit the knowledge it produces, thereby dampening the field's political potential. It also reflects on how cultural studies' alienation from the conditions of its production has resulted in the field's growing involvement with interests that are at odds with its political proclivities.Keywords: Cultural Studies; Journal Publishing; Copyright; Open Access; Scholarly Communication
Since I'm on the topic of the politics of academic knowledge, I'd be remiss not to mention Siva Vaidhyanathan's amazing piece from the 2009 NEA Almanac of Higher Education, which recently came to my attention courtesy of Michael Zimmer. It's called "The Googlization of Universities." I found Siva's s discussion of bibliometrics -- the measurement of bibliographic citations and journal impact -- to be particularly intriguing. I wasn't aware that Google's PageRank system essentially took its cue from that particular corner of the mathematical universe. The piece also got me thinking more about the idea of "algorithmic culture," which I've blogged about here from time to time and that I hope to expand upon in an essay.
Please shoot me an email if you'd like a copy of "Acknowledged Goods." Of course, I'd be welcome any feedback you may have about the piece, either here or elsewhere.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
The Late Age of Print open source audiobook project
Listening to Chris Anderson's Free: The Future of a Radical Price on a long car trip got me thinking: why not make an audiobook out of my own book, The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control? And why not, like Anderson, give the digital recording away for free? The thought had barely crossed my mind when reality started to sink in. "You're no Chris Anderson," I told myself. "You don't have the time or the resources to make an audiobook out of Late Age. Just forget about it."
Well, I didn't forget about it. I figured if I couldn't make an audiobook myself, then I'd do the next best thing: let the computer do it for me, using a text-to-speech (T-T-S) synthesizer. The more I thought about the project, the more convinced I became that it was a good idea. It wouldn't just be cool to be able to listen to Late Age on an iPod; an audio edition would finally make the book accessible to vision impaired people, too.
And so I got down to work. I extracted all of the text from the free, Creative Commons-licensed PDF of Late Age and proceeded to text-to-speech-ify it, one chapter at a time. I played back my first recording -- the Introduction -- but it was disaster! The raw text had all sorts of remnants from the original book layout (footnotes, page headers/numbers, words hyphenated due to line breaks, and whole lot more). They seriously messed up the recording, and so I knew they needed to go. I began combing through the text, only to discover that the cleanup would take me, working alone, many more hours than I could spare, especially with a newborn baby in my life. Frustrated, I nearly abandoned the project for a second time.
Then it dawned on me: if I'm planning on giving away the audiobook for free, then why not get people who might be interested in hearing Late Age in on it, too? Thus was born the Late Age of Print wiki, the host site for The Late Age of Print open source audiobook project. The plan is for all of us, using the wiki, to create a Creative Commons-licensed text-to-speech version of the book, which will be available for free online.
There's a good deal of work for us to do, but don't be daunted! If you choose to donate a large chunk of your time to help out the cause, then that's just super. But don't forget that projects like this one also succeed when a large number of people invest tiny amounts of their time as well. Your five or ten minutes of editing, combined with the work of scores of other collaborators, will yield a top-notch product in the end. I've posted some guidelines on the wiki site to help get you started.
I doubt that I have a large enough network of my own to pull off this project, so if your blog, Tweet, contribute to listservs, or otherwise maintain a presence online, please, please, please spread the word!
Thank you in advance for your contributions, whatever they may be. In the meantime, if you have any questions about The Late Age of Print open source audiobook project, don't hesitate to email me. I'd love to hear from you!
Well, I didn't forget about it. I figured if I couldn't make an audiobook myself, then I'd do the next best thing: let the computer do it for me, using a text-to-speech (T-T-S) synthesizer. The more I thought about the project, the more convinced I became that it was a good idea. It wouldn't just be cool to be able to listen to Late Age on an iPod; an audio edition would finally make the book accessible to vision impaired people, too.
And so I got down to work. I extracted all of the text from the free, Creative Commons-licensed PDF of Late Age and proceeded to text-to-speech-ify it, one chapter at a time. I played back my first recording -- the Introduction -- but it was disaster! The raw text had all sorts of remnants from the original book layout (footnotes, page headers/numbers, words hyphenated due to line breaks, and whole lot more). They seriously messed up the recording, and so I knew they needed to go. I began combing through the text, only to discover that the cleanup would take me, working alone, many more hours than I could spare, especially with a newborn baby in my life. Frustrated, I nearly abandoned the project for a second time.
Then it dawned on me: if I'm planning on giving away the audiobook for free, then why not get people who might be interested in hearing Late Age in on it, too? Thus was born the Late Age of Print wiki, the host site for The Late Age of Print open source audiobook project. The plan is for all of us, using the wiki, to create a Creative Commons-licensed text-to-speech version of the book, which will be available for free online.
There's a good deal of work for us to do, but don't be daunted! If you choose to donate a large chunk of your time to help out the cause, then that's just super. But don't forget that projects like this one also succeed when a large number of people invest tiny amounts of their time as well. Your five or ten minutes of editing, combined with the work of scores of other collaborators, will yield a top-notch product in the end. I've posted some guidelines on the wiki site to help get you started.
I doubt that I have a large enough network of my own to pull off this project, so if your blog, Tweet, contribute to listservs, or otherwise maintain a presence online, please, please, please spread the word!
Thank you in advance for your contributions, whatever they may be. In the meantime, if you have any questions about The Late Age of Print open source audiobook project, don't hesitate to email me. I'd love to hear from you!
Monday, April 05, 2010
Easter egg hunt
It still may be one more day until THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT, but what would Easter be (even if a day late) without an Easter egg? I've placed one somewhere on my other blog, The Late Age of Print. If you find it, then you'll get to learn the news a full day before rest of the world.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Big announcement coming soon!
Something BIG is brewing over at my other blog, The Late Age of Print! I've finally managed to secure all of the necessary okays to go public with the news, which I'll be posting both here and over at Late Age on TUESDAY, APRIL 6th. Be sure to check back then...
Saturday, March 27, 2010
New look, same great taste!
You may have noticed that things look a little different here at D&R. After four-and-a-half years under the old blue, orange, and gray regime, I thought it was about time for a change.
The old template I was using started to seem, well, a little dated and generic, plus the star graphic that appeared in the upper left-hand corner began to smack of Texaco to me.
The new look makes D&R more visually consistent with the suite of sites that I maintain: The Differences & Repetitions Wiki; The Late Age of Print blog; and Bookworm, my academic website hosted at Indiana University. It's not just about preserving a consistent red, white, gray, and black color scheme, though. I'm also a fan of the Twitter feed that now appears prominently in the header.
So there you have it, the newly-designed D&R. I hope you like it! I may regret opening up this can of worms, but your comments on the new look are welcome. Gulp...
The old template I was using started to seem, well, a little dated and generic, plus the star graphic that appeared in the upper left-hand corner began to smack of Texaco to me.
The new look makes D&R more visually consistent with the suite of sites that I maintain: The Differences & Repetitions Wiki; The Late Age of Print blog; and Bookworm, my academic website hosted at Indiana University. It's not just about preserving a consistent red, white, gray, and black color scheme, though. I'm also a fan of the Twitter feed that now appears prominently in the header.
So there you have it, the newly-designed D&R. I hope you like it! I may regret opening up this can of worms, but your comments on the new look are welcome. Gulp...
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Cultural Studies Review goes open access
D&R readers in North America may not be familiar with Cultural Studies Review (neé The UTS Review [1995-2002]), but it's one of the most innovative cultural studies journals around. Now it gets even better: CSR has gone open-access, with all of the journal's content freely available online. Definitely check out the current issue and, while you're at it, why not troll through the archive?
Cultural Studies Review 16.1 (March 2010)
Special Issue: Rural Cultural Studies: Research, Practice, Ethics
edited by John Frow and Katrina Schlunke
co-edited with with Clifton Evers, Andrew Gorman-Murray and Emily Potter
SPECIAL ISSUE CONTENTS:
POETRY:
ARTICLES:
REVIEWS:
Cultural Studies Review is a peer-refereed open-access e-journal published twice a year (in March and September) by UTSePress. This is the journal's first issue as a purely on-line publication. You can view the journal here: http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj. Access is free, but you do need to register. Once you have done this, you can read the current issues, receive publication alerts for all future issues, submit articles for consideration on-line and, if you are willing, record your research interests for our referee database.
Register now, and keep up to date with the latest high-quality research and innovative writing in the realm of cultural studies. Queries: csreview@unimelb.edu.au
Cultural Studies Review 16.1 (March 2010)
Special Issue: Rural Cultural Studies: Research, Practice, Ethics
edited by John Frow and Katrina Schlunke
co-edited with with Clifton Evers, Andrew Gorman-Murray and Emily Potter
SPECIAL ISSUE CONTENTS:
Cultural Studies Review is a peer-refereed open-access e-journal published twice a year (in March and September) by UTSePress. This is the journal's first issue as a purely on-line publication. You can view the journal here: http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj. Access is free, but you do need to register. Once you have done this, you can read the current issues, receive publication alerts for all future issues, submit articles for consideration on-line and, if you are willing, record your research interests for our referee database.
Register now, and keep up to date with the latest high-quality research and innovative writing in the realm of cultural studies. Queries: csreview@unimelb.edu.au
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Beyond computing -- CFP from Culture Machine
CALL FOR PAPERS
THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES: BEYOND COMPUTING
Special issue of Culture Machine, vol. 12; http://www.culturemachine.net
edited by Federica Frabetti (Oxford Brookes University)
The emerging field of the Digital Humanities can broadly be understood as embracing all those scholarly activities in the humanities that involve writing about digital media and technology as well as being engaged in processes of digital media production and practice (e.g. developing new media theory, creating interactive electronic literature, building online databases and wikis). Perhaps most notably, in what some are describing as a ‘computational turn’, it has seen techniques and methodologies drawn from Computer Science – image processing, data visualisation, network analysis – being used increasingly to produce new ways of understanding and approaching humanities texts.
Yet just as interesting as what Computer Science has to offer the humanities, surely, is the question of what the humanities have to offer Computer Science; and, beyond that, what the humanities themselves can bring to the understanding of the digital. Do the humanities really need to draw so heavily on Computer Science to develop their sense of what the Digital Humanities might be? Already in 1990 Mark Poster was arguing that ‘the relation to the computer remains one of misrecognition’ in the field of Computer Science, with the computer occupying ‘the position of the imaginary’ and being ‘inscribed with transcendent status’. If so, this has significant implications for any so-called ‘computational turn’ in the humanities. For on this basis Computer Science does not seem all that well-equipped to understand even itself and its own founding object, concepts and concerns, let alone help with those of the humanities.
In this special issue of Culture Machine we are therefore interested in investigating something that may initially appear to be a paradox: to what extent is it possible to envisage Digital Humanities that go beyond the disciplinary objects, affiliations, assumptions and methodological practices of computing and Computer Science?
At the same time the humanities are not without blind-spots and elements of misrecognition of their own. Take the idea of the human. For all the radical interrogation of this concept over the last 100 years or so, not least in relation to technology, doesn’t the mode of research production in the humanities remain very much tied to that of the individualized, human author? (Isn’t this evident in different ways even in the work of such technology-conscious anti-humanist thinkers as Deleuze, Guattari, Kittler, Latour, Negri, Ranciere and Stiegler?)
So what are the implications and possibilities of ‘the digital beyond computing’ for the humanities and for some of the humanities’ own central or founding concepts, too? The human, and with it the human-ities; but also the subject, the author, the scholar, writing, the text, the book, the discipline, the university...
What would THAT kind of (reconfigured) Digital Humanities look like?
We welcome papers that address the above questions and that suggest a new, somewhat different take on the relationship between the humanities and the digital.
Deadline for submissions: 1 October 2010
Please submit your contributions by email to Federica Frabetti: kikka66it@yahoo.it
All contributions will be peer-reviewed.
****************************************************
Established in 1999, CULTURE MACHINE (http://www.culturemachine.net) is a fully refereed, open-access journal of cultural studies and cultural theory. It has published work by established figures such as Mark Amerika, Alain Badiou, Simon Critchley, Jacques Derrida, Henry Giroux, Mark Hansen, N. Katherine Hayles, Ernesto Laclau, J. Hillis Miller, Bernard Stiegler, Cathryn Vasseleu and Samuel Weber, but it is also open to publications by up-and-coming writers, from a variety of geopolitical locations.
****************************************************
THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES: BEYOND COMPUTING
Special issue of Culture Machine, vol. 12; http://www.culturemachine.net
edited by Federica Frabetti (Oxford Brookes University)
The emerging field of the Digital Humanities can broadly be understood as embracing all those scholarly activities in the humanities that involve writing about digital media and technology as well as being engaged in processes of digital media production and practice (e.g. developing new media theory, creating interactive electronic literature, building online databases and wikis). Perhaps most notably, in what some are describing as a ‘computational turn’, it has seen techniques and methodologies drawn from Computer Science – image processing, data visualisation, network analysis – being used increasingly to produce new ways of understanding and approaching humanities texts.
Yet just as interesting as what Computer Science has to offer the humanities, surely, is the question of what the humanities have to offer Computer Science; and, beyond that, what the humanities themselves can bring to the understanding of the digital. Do the humanities really need to draw so heavily on Computer Science to develop their sense of what the Digital Humanities might be? Already in 1990 Mark Poster was arguing that ‘the relation to the computer remains one of misrecognition’ in the field of Computer Science, with the computer occupying ‘the position of the imaginary’ and being ‘inscribed with transcendent status’. If so, this has significant implications for any so-called ‘computational turn’ in the humanities. For on this basis Computer Science does not seem all that well-equipped to understand even itself and its own founding object, concepts and concerns, let alone help with those of the humanities.
In this special issue of Culture Machine we are therefore interested in investigating something that may initially appear to be a paradox: to what extent is it possible to envisage Digital Humanities that go beyond the disciplinary objects, affiliations, assumptions and methodological practices of computing and Computer Science?
At the same time the humanities are not without blind-spots and elements of misrecognition of their own. Take the idea of the human. For all the radical interrogation of this concept over the last 100 years or so, not least in relation to technology, doesn’t the mode of research production in the humanities remain very much tied to that of the individualized, human author? (Isn’t this evident in different ways even in the work of such technology-conscious anti-humanist thinkers as Deleuze, Guattari, Kittler, Latour, Negri, Ranciere and Stiegler?)
So what are the implications and possibilities of ‘the digital beyond computing’ for the humanities and for some of the humanities’ own central or founding concepts, too? The human, and with it the human-ities; but also the subject, the author, the scholar, writing, the text, the book, the discipline, the university...
What would THAT kind of (reconfigured) Digital Humanities look like?
We welcome papers that address the above questions and that suggest a new, somewhat different take on the relationship between the humanities and the digital.
Deadline for submissions: 1 October 2010
Please submit your contributions by email to Federica Frabetti: kikka66it@yahoo.it
All contributions will be peer-reviewed.
****************************************************
Established in 1999, CULTURE MACHINE (http://www.culturemachine.net) is a fully refereed, open-access journal of cultural studies and cultural theory. It has published work by established figures such as Mark Amerika, Alain Badiou, Simon Critchley, Jacques Derrida, Henry Giroux, Mark Hansen, N. Katherine Hayles, Ernesto Laclau, J. Hillis Miller, Bernard Stiegler, Cathryn Vasseleu and Samuel Weber, but it is also open to publications by up-and-coming writers, from a variety of geopolitical locations.
****************************************************
Monday, March 15, 2010
Differences & Repetions -- the wiki
Because I know blog readership has a tendency to ebb and wane, I thought I'd remind all of you about this site's companion, the Differences and Repetitions Wiki. I also have an exciting announcement to share.
I launched D&RW back in November 2007, initially as an experiment in collaborative and distributed or "rhizomatic" writing -- and antidote, I'd hoped, to the traditional, closed model of writing in the humanities. The first project, which is still active, began with an essay I drafted for a meeting of the National Communication Association. It explicates Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's enigmatic statement from their book, What is Philosophy?: "“We do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.” Rather than letting myself have the final word, I decided to make it an open and ever-evolving project; anyone who wants to edit, add to, or otherwise improve upon the piece is welcome to do so, along the lines of Wikipedia.
Currently there are two more projects hosted on D&RW: my piece on cultural studies and the politics of academic journal publishing, a slightly revised version of which should be appearing imminently in the journal, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies; and my essay on audience labor and the Amazon Kindle e-reader. Although neither piece is set up for public editing, anyone is welcome to leave comments, questions, or feedback on the project site -- anonymous or otherwise.
More than two years after launching the D&R Wiki, I'm happy to report that "We Do Not Lack Communication" continues to evolve. A pretty robust dialogue has also cropped up around early fragments of the journal publishing and Kindle essays, which I'd be delighted to see multiply on the fuller versions. Of course, this is all thanks to the many contributions of the D&R community. Please keep them coming!
It's pretty clear to me that there many more possibilities for engagement on D&RW, compared to your run-of-the-mill academic journal. And so finally, the big announcement: if YOU have a writing project that would (a) be of interest to readers of this blog and that (b) you'd like to see hosted on D&RW, send me an email inquiry. Let's open this thing up even more!
I launched D&RW back in November 2007, initially as an experiment in collaborative and distributed or "rhizomatic" writing -- and antidote, I'd hoped, to the traditional, closed model of writing in the humanities. The first project, which is still active, began with an essay I drafted for a meeting of the National Communication Association. It explicates Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's enigmatic statement from their book, What is Philosophy?: "“We do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.” Rather than letting myself have the final word, I decided to make it an open and ever-evolving project; anyone who wants to edit, add to, or otherwise improve upon the piece is welcome to do so, along the lines of Wikipedia.
Currently there are two more projects hosted on D&RW: my piece on cultural studies and the politics of academic journal publishing, a slightly revised version of which should be appearing imminently in the journal, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies; and my essay on audience labor and the Amazon Kindle e-reader. Although neither piece is set up for public editing, anyone is welcome to leave comments, questions, or feedback on the project site -- anonymous or otherwise.
More than two years after launching the D&R Wiki, I'm happy to report that "We Do Not Lack Communication" continues to evolve. A pretty robust dialogue has also cropped up around early fragments of the journal publishing and Kindle essays, which I'd be delighted to see multiply on the fuller versions. Of course, this is all thanks to the many contributions of the D&R community. Please keep them coming!
It's pretty clear to me that there many more possibilities for engagement on D&RW, compared to your run-of-the-mill academic journal. And so finally, the big announcement: if YOU have a writing project that would (a) be of interest to readers of this blog and that (b) you'd like to see hosted on D&RW, send me an email inquiry. Let's open this thing up even more!
Friday, March 12, 2010
Why "postscript?"
I've been thinking lately about Deleuze's essay "Postscript on Control Societies," published in the book Negotiations. I'm wondering if anyone knows why the essay announces itself explicitly as a postscript.
Now, I realize that Deleuze frames the essay as a response -- or really a critical rejoinder -- to Michel Foucault's explication of the "disciplinary society" in Discipline and Punish. It may well be, therefore, that Deleuze offers the piece on control societies as a postscript to Foucault's work.
I am, however, mistrustful of that interpretation. I trace my suspicion mainly to the last few lines of the "control societies" piece. There, Deleuze states that it's the job of "young people" to "discover whose ends these [aspects of control societies] serve, just as older people discovered, with considerable difficulty, who was benefiting from disciplines" (p. 182).
It seems to me that Deleuze, rather than composing a postscript, is actually outlining a research program. This conclusion would also seem to follow from the proliferation of critical research on control, neoliberalism, governmentality, etc. So would it be more apt, then, to call the essay a "prolegomenon " on control societies? If so, then what might have been Deleuze's motivation for labeling the piece a postscript in the first place?
Now, I realize that Deleuze frames the essay as a response -- or really a critical rejoinder -- to Michel Foucault's explication of the "disciplinary society" in Discipline and Punish. It may well be, therefore, that Deleuze offers the piece on control societies as a postscript to Foucault's work.
I am, however, mistrustful of that interpretation. I trace my suspicion mainly to the last few lines of the "control societies" piece. There, Deleuze states that it's the job of "young people" to "discover whose ends these [aspects of control societies] serve, just as older people discovered, with considerable difficulty, who was benefiting from disciplines" (p. 182).
It seems to me that Deleuze, rather than composing a postscript, is actually outlining a research program. This conclusion would also seem to follow from the proliferation of critical research on control, neoliberalism, governmentality, etc. So would it be more apt, then, to call the essay a "prolegomenon " on control societies? If so, then what might have been Deleuze's motivation for labeling the piece a postscript in the first place?
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Going mobile
Great news! A good Samaritan, whose handle is "creiercret," recently uploaded the free, Creative Commons-licensed PDF of The Late Age of Print onto the document sharing site, Scribd. Here's the link to the PDF if you're interested in checking it out. The book has already had more than 200 views on the site, I'm pleased to report.Late Age has been accessible for free online for almost a year, so why am I so excited to see it appear now on Scribd? Mainly because the site just added new sharing features, making it easy to send content to iPhones, Nooks, Kindles, and just about every other major e-reader you can imagine. In other words, The Late Age of Print's mobility-quotient just increased significantly.
I may have some more exciting, mobility-related news about the book, which hopefully I'll be able to share with you in the next week or so. I'll keep you posted. Until then, be sure to check out The Late Age of Print on Scribd, and why don't you go ahead shoot a copy off to your favorite e-reader while you're at it!?
Monday, February 15, 2010
Harry Potter and the Simulacrum
I've been meaning to blog about this for a couple months now. An article of mine, which may be of interest to readers of my book, The Late Age of Print, was published in the October 2009 issue of the journal, Critical Studies in Media Communication (CSMC). Here's the citation, abstract, and keywords:
The strange thing about "Harry Potter and the Simulacrum" is that even though it's quite theoretical, it's also quite -- I'm not sure what exactly -- playful? comical? whimsical? In any case, it's probably the most fun piece that I've ever written and published. I attribute that largely to the bizarre court case at the center of the essay, which I swear must have been plucked from the pages of a Lewis Carroll story.
In a perfect world I'd link to a PDF of the article, but the journal publisher, Taylor & Francis, prohibits it. In an almost perfect world I'd link you to a post-print (i.e., the final word processing version that I submitted to CSMC), but even that I'm contractually barred from doing for 18 months from the time of publication.
Taylor & Francis charges $30 for the essay on its website, which to my mind is just ridiculous. Heck, a yearly personal subscription to the journal costs $81! So, if you're university-affiliated and want to take a look at the piece, I'd encourage you to check with your own institution's library. If you're not, I'm allowed to share a limited number of offprints with colleagues, and you can email me for one.
To complicate matters even more, the printed version of "Harry Potter and the Simulacrum" has the wrong copyright declaration. I signed Taylor & Francis' double-secret "license to publish" form instead of the usual copyright transfer. Despite that, the piece still says © National Communication Association, which is the scholarly society under whose auspices CSMC is published. Sigh.
Suddenly this is starting to sound like a Lewis Carroll story....
Ted Striphas, "Harry Potter and the Simulacrum: Contested Copies in an Age of Intellectual Property," Critical Studies in Media Communication 26(4) (October 2009): 1-17.There's a good deal of thematic overlap between the article and Chapter 5 of The Late Age of Print, which also focuses on Harry Potter and intellectual property rights. They differ, though, in that the journal essay is more theoretically focused than the book chapter; the latter, I suppose, is more historical and sociological.
This essay begins by investigating how and on what basis the boundary between originals and copies gets drawn within the framework of intellectual property law. It does so by exploring Harry Potter-related doubles that were featured in the 2000 trademark and copyright infringement case, Scholastic, Inc., J. K. Rowling, and Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. v. Nancy Stouffer. The paper then moves on to consider how, within the context of the case, the boundary line dividing “originals” from “copies” grows increasingly indeterminate, so much so that it becomes untenable to speak of either category at all. It thus investigates what happens when the figure of the simulacrum, which troubles bright-line distinctions between originals and copies, enters into the legal realm. Theoretically, the simulacrum would seem to pose a challenge to intellectual property law's jurisprudential foundations, given how it blurs what should count as an “original” or a “derivative” work. This paper shows that while this may be true in principle, powerful multimedia companies like Scholastic, Time Warner, and others can strategically deploy simulacra to shore up their intellectual property rights.
Keywords: Harry Potter; Intellectual Property; Copyright; Trademark; Simulacrum
The strange thing about "Harry Potter and the Simulacrum" is that even though it's quite theoretical, it's also quite -- I'm not sure what exactly -- playful? comical? whimsical? In any case, it's probably the most fun piece that I've ever written and published. I attribute that largely to the bizarre court case at the center of the essay, which I swear must have been plucked from the pages of a Lewis Carroll story.
In a perfect world I'd link to a PDF of the article, but the journal publisher, Taylor & Francis, prohibits it. In an almost perfect world I'd link you to a post-print (i.e., the final word processing version that I submitted to CSMC), but even that I'm contractually barred from doing for 18 months from the time of publication.
Taylor & Francis charges $30 for the essay on its website, which to my mind is just ridiculous. Heck, a yearly personal subscription to the journal costs $81! So, if you're university-affiliated and want to take a look at the piece, I'd encourage you to check with your own institution's library. If you're not, I'm allowed to share a limited number of offprints with colleagues, and you can email me for one.
To complicate matters even more, the printed version of "Harry Potter and the Simulacrum" has the wrong copyright declaration. I signed Taylor & Francis' double-secret "license to publish" form instead of the usual copyright transfer. Despite that, the piece still says © National Communication Association, which is the scholarly society under whose auspices CSMC is published. Sigh.
Suddenly this is starting to sound like a Lewis Carroll story....
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Where the Cylons will come from
I missed most of the SyFy (née Sci Fi) series Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009), though I managed to catch enough to know that I wanted to watch the new prequel, Caprica, from the beginning. I haven't been disappointed. With the pilot and two episodes now under my belt, it's safe to say that I'm hooked.
Caprica provides an origin story for the Cylons, a cyborg race created by humans who later attempt to annihilate their masters. That may sound pretty de rigueur as far as the sci-fi genre goes, but here's the twist: we learn that each Cylon's "being" -- his, her, or its unique identity or essence -- is actually the aggregation of a human individual's medical records, purchasing patterns, educational transcripts, voting records, electronic communications, and other personal information archived online. The Cylons are, in other words, the walking, talking, informational avatars of the human race.
It was with all that in mind that I happened upon the clip embedded below, which is from the February 2, 2010 episode of The Colbert Report. The title, "Cognoscor Ergo Sum," translates from the Latin as, "I am known, therefore I am." How apt. In the segment Colbert spotlights Blippy.com, IJustMadeLove.com, and other websites that allow people to reveal and record the intimate details of their daily lives. Blippy lets you broadcast what you've just purchased using your credit card, and where. IJustMadeLove allows you shout from the electronic rooftops when, where, and how you've just done the nasty. (Yes, I wish I were making that one up.)
There's been all sorts of talk for years now about the vulnerability of information online, and it's no surprise given the proliferation of networked databases that identity theft has emerged as one of the foremost crimes of our time. What's even more striking to me, however, is how Caprica and the Colbert clip together seem to shift the meaning of -- and even up the ante on -- identity theft.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that we humans are poised to give rise a line of super-machines intent on wiping us out. What I am suggesting, though, is that we can only begin to imagine how and for what purpose the digital data trails that we leave behind today will be used in the future. I like to think about it this way: when I started college, how could I have anticipated a rash of photos and videos surfacing close to 20 years later on Facebook? Heck -- there was barely an internet back then, let alone affordable scanners or even the idea of social networking.
Leave it to popular culture, then, to register one of the critical questions of this new decade: how does a society plan for an information future that may well be unfathomable, technologically speaking?
Caprica provides an origin story for the Cylons, a cyborg race created by humans who later attempt to annihilate their masters. That may sound pretty de rigueur as far as the sci-fi genre goes, but here's the twist: we learn that each Cylon's "being" -- his, her, or its unique identity or essence -- is actually the aggregation of a human individual's medical records, purchasing patterns, educational transcripts, voting records, electronic communications, and other personal information archived online. The Cylons are, in other words, the walking, talking, informational avatars of the human race.
It was with all that in mind that I happened upon the clip embedded below, which is from the February 2, 2010 episode of The Colbert Report. The title, "Cognoscor Ergo Sum," translates from the Latin as, "I am known, therefore I am." How apt. In the segment Colbert spotlights Blippy.com, IJustMadeLove.com, and other websites that allow people to reveal and record the intimate details of their daily lives. Blippy lets you broadcast what you've just purchased using your credit card, and where. IJustMadeLove allows you shout from the electronic rooftops when, where, and how you've just done the nasty. (Yes, I wish I were making that one up.)
| The Word - Cognoscor Ergo Sum | |||
| |||
There's been all sorts of talk for years now about the vulnerability of information online, and it's no surprise given the proliferation of networked databases that identity theft has emerged as one of the foremost crimes of our time. What's even more striking to me, however, is how Caprica and the Colbert clip together seem to shift the meaning of -- and even up the ante on -- identity theft.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that we humans are poised to give rise a line of super-machines intent on wiping us out. What I am suggesting, though, is that we can only begin to imagine how and for what purpose the digital data trails that we leave behind today will be used in the future. I like to think about it this way: when I started college, how could I have anticipated a rash of photos and videos surfacing close to 20 years later on Facebook? Heck -- there was barely an internet back then, let alone affordable scanners or even the idea of social networking.
Leave it to popular culture, then, to register one of the critical questions of this new decade: how does a society plan for an information future that may well be unfathomable, technologically speaking?
Monday, February 08, 2010
Oprah has landed
It's always intriguing for me to see how life influences the direction of one's work. When I was growing up in the 1980s, 4:00 p.m. meant one thing: The Oprah Winfrey Show would be on the television set in my home. Sometimes my mother would take a break from cooking to watch the show in our TV room. If the meal was complicated, she'd just turn the TV up and listen from the kitchen. Either way, 4 pm meant that it was her time -- and consequently my time -- with Oprah.
Plus or minus two decades later I published an article on Oprah's Book Club in an academic journal called Critical Studies in Media Communication and, later, a chapter on the same subject in my book, The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control (Columbia University Press, 2009).
Because I've been ensconced in Oprah for so long, both personally and professionally, it's difficult for me to understand why people refuse to take her seriously. I suspect a lot of it has to do with offhanded impressions about the The Oprah Winfrey Show, television talk shows in general, or indeed Oprah herself. Honestly, I don't have much tolerance for critics who disparage or dismiss the Oprah phenomenon without studying it intensively, in all of its complexity and over the long-term. I don't embrace all-things-Oprah by any means, yet it seems pretty clear to me that she's transformed and even enriched U.S. culture in countless ways.
I'm excited, therefore, to see this week's edition of the media blog In Medias Res devoted to the theme of Oprah. Here's the lineup:
You can expect to see me leaving comments on IMR throughout the week, since, clearly, this is a topic that's been with me for a good long while. I'd encourage you to chime in, too. In the meantime, enjoy the Letterman-Oprah-Leno ad from last night's Superbowl.
Plus or minus two decades later I published an article on Oprah's Book Club in an academic journal called Critical Studies in Media Communication and, later, a chapter on the same subject in my book, The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control (Columbia University Press, 2009).
Because I've been ensconced in Oprah for so long, both personally and professionally, it's difficult for me to understand why people refuse to take her seriously. I suspect a lot of it has to do with offhanded impressions about the The Oprah Winfrey Show, television talk shows in general, or indeed Oprah herself. Honestly, I don't have much tolerance for critics who disparage or dismiss the Oprah phenomenon without studying it intensively, in all of its complexity and over the long-term. I don't embrace all-things-Oprah by any means, yet it seems pretty clear to me that she's transformed and even enriched U.S. culture in countless ways.
I'm excited, therefore, to see this week's edition of the media blog In Medias Res devoted to the theme of Oprah. Here's the lineup:
- Monday: "Stories of O: Oprah's Culture Industries" by Kimberly Springer
- Tuesday: "Too Big to Fail" by Janice Peck
- Wednesday: "For the Sake of the Children" by John Howard
- Thursday: "I've Been Rich and I've Been Poor: The Economics of Oprah" by Vanessa Jackson
- Friday: "Oprah's Got Beef?: Alleged Matriarchies and Masculinist Rhymes" by Kimberly Springer
You can expect to see me leaving comments on IMR throughout the week, since, clearly, this is a topic that's been with me for a good long while. I'd encourage you to chime in, too. In the meantime, enjoy the Letterman-Oprah-Leno ad from last night's Superbowl.
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