Dr. Burton's chapter in "Writing about the Humanities in the Digital Age" is his manifesto. I was kind of relieved to learn that even he had his misgivings when he began having his students write blogs. I don't blame him in the slightest. But his arguments, when he made them, were made with a lot of courage.
I have never seen myself as a tech-savvy person. I never wanted to be one. However, this is impossible because I live in an age when it is impossible to disconnect oneself entirely from the internet and computers. Not only is technology more convenient, it has gotten to the point where disconnecting oneself from these technologies means disconnecting oneself from everyone else.
And I always thought this was tragic because I believed that texting, social media, and internet pastimes were bad because my parents didn't use them. Well, bad might be too strong a word, but unneccesary.
But, when I was in Dr. Burton's Shakespeare class this winter, I opened up not only because blogging and social media use was required for my class, but because by using these tools I learned that digital communications can BE a tool that can benefit an individual's academic studies. Like a whaling ship's tackles and hooks can be used to open up a whale and harvest its valuable blubber and oil, the internet can be a tool to harness, pry open, and harvest information about a research topic. It made the digital age not only easier to accept, but welcome. I realized that the internet is not just advertizing and social forays--it's a TOOL.
The difficult part about Dr. Burton's Shakespeare class was gathering social proof. Somehow I never got around to talking about my research paper with my Medieval Club friends, my coworkers didn't understand what I was talking about in the first place when I wanted to talk Shakespeare, and I was also extremely anti-social because I never saw anybody outside of work and club and school and my best friend had left on a mission and left a cold, drizzly November in my soul from January to March. However, I did take Dr. Burton's advice about posting my thesis statement and paper outline on Facebook, and it paid off big when I went to my grandpa's funeral in March and I was able to talk in person about my paper with a cousin who had followed my paper updates on Facebook, and that turned into a good bonding experience for us (oh, and by the way, that cousin is expecting a baby now). So what it amounted to in the end was the right communication tools, perseverance, and my grandfather's timely passing. And that's why crowdsourcing and social proof is important, because you just NEVER KNOW when someone has the right answer for you.
And moreover, tonight on Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., this topic actually came up: no one person has 100% of the solution, but 100 people do.
Postscript
Themes I am discovering: digital technology as a tool; long tail of crowdsourcing/social proof; changing opinions
I'm glad to hear something cool came out of your social proof from an earlier class. In some ways I think I just didn't phrase my questions right (or my Facebook friends just weren't the right audience), but I had a hard time getting responses before when I tried a couple of years ago.
ReplyDeleteYeah, i think that was my problem, too. And I've always been socially inhibited.
DeleteThis idea of social proofing and getting feedback on our work as we are working on is a really useful tool. I think that sharing ideas can only improve our work because we can build off of different ideas. Crowdsourcing and social proof are two forms of collaboration that have already started to change the face of scholarship.
ReplyDelete