A Digitally Illiterate PhotoStory

Response to Collaboration, Literacy and Authorship

I am having a difficult time grasping (or maybe I should say "accepting") Moxley and Meehan's argument for collaborative writing and authorship. I'll allow that part of my reaction may be tied up in semantics, but mostly I think it stems from my understanding of the words "author" or "authorship."

For me, the concept of authorship is indeed solitary by nature. The dictionary defines it as: 1 a: one that originates or creates: source b: God and 2: the writer of a literary work (as a book). If we take these definitions literally there is very little room for an "author" to be multiple people at once. I think the essence if authorship is accountability and ownership: you, the writer, the originator, the source are solely responsible for the product you create in the same way that Christians believe God-and God only-created man.

Because I believe so strongly in this interpretation, and perhaps because I am a true proponent of "American-style" competitiveness and individuality, a lot of this rhetoric on collaborative writing being the way of the future falls on deaf ears. Overall, I can honestly say I don't see the benefit of leaving the solitary garret. I think collaboration for most forms of writing is overrated. Now that is not to say that I don't see the value of feedback or peer reviews or editors, it's just that I believe one of the biggest problems in the world of online writing is the lack of accountability for individuals.

In Part 3, The Wisdom of Crowds, Meehan and Moxley do acknowledge the fact that mindless "group think" and vicious, illogical language does seem to proliferate in collaborative writing situations, but they still maintain that knowledge claims developed by groups "may be wiser" than those developed by individuals. I think there are very few examples given that persuade me that that is the case. Yes, Wikipedia's group authorship does allow for a multitude of viewpoints and a sampling from several knowledge bases that may be left out of Encyclopedia Britannica, but it also allows for inaccuracies and ill-formed opinions. Wikipedia may flag a post as needing footnotes or verification, but those flags don't prevent a questionable post from being published.

A perfect, yet funny example occurred a few years ago when the NBC sitcom 30 Rock aired an episode when one of the lead characters was chose to play Janis Joplin in a film biopic. The character decided she was going to go "method" and personify Janis 24-hours a day to prepare for the role, so she consulted Wikipedia. The writing crew wanted to play a trick on her, so they basically took over the Wiki entry on Joplin and updated it with outrageous, false behaviors and traits that they hoped would lead to the actress humiliating herself publicly in the name of method acting.

For a full 24-hours immediately following the airing of that episode, fans of 30 Rock flooded the Joplin Wiki with hilarious, but untrue facts, mimicking the TV storyline. Eventually, Wikipedia had to lock down the entry and disable the use comment function. It was a funny instance of life imitating art and no serious harm was done, but to me it crystallizes the pitfalls of Wiki and collaborative writing.

My other primary issue is that we live in a society that it supposed to be a meritocracy. Individuals are rewarded for their own hard work and efforts. If we shift to a collaborative model, it becomes less possible to discern who is doing what and more importantly, who is capable of what. We laughed in class when Camille said she didn't want other people's mediocracy to mingle and ultimately bring down her genius, but on many levels, it is a fair point. The truth is, not everyone is on the same level and collaboration does not allow individuals to shine. It may be helpful for teachers or professors to share ideas and share syllabi, but if one teacher is infinitely more creative and has unique ideas for motivating students, that is their unique "brand." The greater good is important and should be stressed, but individuals do also have the right to excel on their own.

It may be an unpopular and arguably un-PC point of view, but individualism is a trademark and point of pride in the U.S. and throughout the Western world and should be maintained. Collaboration is for team sports, not composition, and should be left on the playing field!

Response to Visualizing English

There are several things in this LONG article that I found interesting, but most of all was the idea of the philosophical, cultural and practical battles raging within the discipline of English studies.

As I said in our last class when we were discussing the English Downfall video, I was not really aware that the consideration of how digital literacies should be incorporated into English studies was such a sore and combustible subject. Some of the lines in Stroupe's article drive the point home for me once again. In one section, "words," representing the old guard are described as "iconographically dead weight carried along on the energy of the images and design." In another section, someone refers to verbal literacy as being "buried under an amalgamation of literacies." And my favorite is the hand-wringing of those who ask what future can be expected for English majors?

I have a bit of a split personality on these issues. I do believe it is a sin for educators to produce students who cannot compete in the "real world." When I see college students and graduates who are not equipped with the tools needed to function in the professional world. At the most basic level, these tools are verbal and writing skills, as well as social and behavioral skills. In today's economy, I think it is impossible not to add computer and digital literacy skills to the list as well.

BUT... and this is a big BUT... I see digital literacy as not just the province of the English Department. Digital literacy should be a component of ALL school subjects, be it chemistry, math, foreign language, biology, literature or anything else. So for me, the argument is not that English should visualize itself, but that American education as a whole should visualize or digitize itself.

At one point in the article, Stroupe says "to suggest that English Studies should visualize itself is to argue that those at the prestigious center follow the lead of its more marginalized or controversial wings: technical communication, cultural studies, film and popular culture." To make this argument is groundless. There is room for all of those disciplines, but they don't have to exist as one, single discipline.

For me, that would be like making the argument one day that because cloning or in vitro fertilization have become the norm, biology classes should not spend time teaching students about natural conception and reproduction. Or saying because African American students in low-income backgrounds are more likely to use slang, all classes should be taught in Ebonics.

Disciplines like English do need to modernize and stay current and relevant, but not to the exclusion of core competencies. There is a way to modernize without radicalizing and it seems to me that some of the academic arguments for "visualizing English" are tipping towards radicalization at the expense of core competencies.

I think I am old-school and still want to see the "substance" before the "sizzle." Going back to the point made in the Petersen article, I don't care what the design and layout look like if the content is not there.

David Siegel's definition of a "new work paradigm" that depends less on individual writers or collaborators producing well-wrought verbal text and more on coordination of a team of technical, visual and verbal discourses leaves me cold. While I agree that there has been a shift beyond the place where only the words matter, the new paradigm focusing on the team only works when the foundation on which the team builds is solid.

Trailer for Helvetica documentary

Today's reading by Anne Wysocki on "The Multiple Media of Texts" reminded me of this documentary on the Helvetica font:

Response to 7/6 Readings

I am not a teacher, so a lot of the controversy and arguments surrounding digital literacy and new media in education is lost on me. But after viewing the English Downfall video, it really clicked and I feel my understanding of the issues jumped up to a whole new level.

In using Hitler and the analogy of a failing, desperate infrastructure fighting off "progress," the "author" allows me, an outsider, to see the argument in a framework that makes immediate sense. I don't have to be a composition or classic literature professor to understand that the debate is between the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, history and progress. The analogy was effective and made its point very clearly.

In the video rebuttal, the "author" is another English professor who takes great offense to the appropriation of Hitler and the Nazis. As a member of academia, he understands that people feel passionately about this particular argument, but he draws the line at using potentially offensive imagery to advance one's argument. He likens the original video to the hate speech used on talk radio by the conservative right.

I wasn't offended by the joking, sarcastic use of Hitler in the original video because I thought it was a clever use of images that are heavy with meaning to most people. By using the Nazis in their final desperate days, the English Downfall video was able to get its point across with virtually nothing lost in translation. Any one in any field, with no prior knowledge of the academic debate surrounding English and writing courses immediately understands both sides of the argument.

As a result, I thought Doug Shaw was being humorless and too serious in his rebuttal video. His call for civility in debate was a point well-taken, but his insertion of his personal family history with the Nazis seemed like overkill. I assume the English Downfall creator understands that the Nazi regime was horrible and that genocide is no laughing matter, but he used this extreme imagery to make a satirical point. Satire, like some of the best comedy, depends on being outrageous and pushing the envelope.

I was left feeling that Doug Shaw must be a real stick in the mud who doesn't "get it"... until I watched Doug Walls' "Case for Mindful Rhetorical Media Use" video. I thought Walls' deconstruction of the word "authentic" in relation to food and his bit on the Mexican restaurants was smart and astute and I was listening intently until he began talking about colonial rhetoric and slavery.

He rightly argued that colonizers instituted dehumanizing language and tropes to support their use of slavery and we were in sync until he used the graphics of little brown cartoon slaves in chains being thrown overboard into the shark infested water with the captions "This cruise sucks" and "I thought there was going to be a buffet." Suddenly, I was the stick in the mud like Doug Shaw because I thought this was totally glib and offensive and unfunny. I understood that it was satire like Hitler/Downfall but I truly didn't find it the slightest bit humorous.

I challenged myself to see if I was in the same position as Shaw where I was being "too sensitive" because of my race or personal history. Are we equally humorless? I don't know...

My Blog... and my Top Five

My new blog for this semester is up and running.

It's called The Black and the Restless.
http://theblackandtherestless.blogspot.com/


I've posted the explanations behind my fave five blogs there, but here's the list:


Harlem+Bespoke (www.harlembespoke.blogspot.com)
Racialicious (www.racialicious.com)
New America Media (www.newamericamedia.com)
Speakeasy (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/)
Midtown Lunch (www.midtownlunch.com)


I'm actually a fan of quite a few blogs so it was really tough to narrow it down to five!

my favorite norman rockwell painting

This is one of my all-time favorite paintings!