Will stated in his post that, “McGann commented that, when the Google Books settlement occurred, scholars were not invited to the conversation, causing them to be left out of a very important discussion regarding the digital future of books.”
Which scholars were McGann referring to?? To me, the word “scholar” is a loaded term:). Is he referring directly to literary scholars – or is he including all types of scholars (educated as well as professionals) whose books/disciplines are a part of or covered by this project?
Also, I, too, find it funny that a video conference had technological difficulties. I guess this makes apparent our dependency upon technology to relay information in a timely and understandable manner, and also tests the limitations on our acceptance of such difficulties (as well, our view of the productivity of the delivery method of choice).
Overall, I am excited to be reading another Hayles book; one that everyone seems to regard as a corner stone for her theory. I think it will make more transparent her arguments, and possibly tie together some of the loose ends from class and this presentation/conference.
Thanks to those of you who were able to attend and bring back this information – I, for one, appreciate your summaries and applications of the information:).
Theories of Texts and Tech 
March 4, 2010 at 8:01 am
I have a question that I’ll pose as a follow-up to Terrie’s “Which scholars?” question. However, I need to preface this by saying that my question is a serious one. I might come off as being immature, unenlightened, irreverent, unappreciative, or worse. But if this class is helping us join a conversation, I can think of no better forum.
I’m curious to understand why McGann would even expect Google to have asked “scholars” before they acted. Google is a business, moving at the speed of commerce and trying to make and sell a product in a competitive international arena. Scholars, on the other hand, are a distributed, loose-knit pseudo-committee operating at the speed of, well, scholarship. That means each volley of response, rebuke, and rebuttal must wait for the peer-review and publication cycles. A “conversation” takes years.
Based on a cursory glance at the results of a search for “iPhone” on Google Scholar, most articles that are anything more than reviews or security analyses were published in 2008…for a device announced in Jan 2007 and released six months later. And whoops…in 2008, the iPhone 3G and iPod touch came out. By the time scholars had started their chat, the game had changed, and the topic of conversation was obsolete. Similarly, many of our conversations about the form of digital texts last semester were amorphous, constantly hinting at or explicitly highlighting “what the iPod did to music” that was apparently inevitable to happen to texts, but that the Kindle didn’t seem to do. This semester, I don’t recall a class meeting that hasn’t included a reference to the iPad, even though none of us has yet owned one, used one, or even seen one.
I find it amusing that academics studying technology and communication at research universities have technical hiccups when using technology to communicate. There’s clearly a disconnect between the technology, its implementation, and the analysis of its impact. Is it possible that, by spending so much time discussing and analyzing technology’s role in communication that scholars are among the least capable to use it in the here-and-now?
The overwhelming impression of scholars and their scholarship is that they’re embroiled in a process that is nearly defined by its slowness. Yes, that’s for a good reason, and yes, peer review is absolutely essential to good research and learning, but how does that fit in with corporate research and development? When I read that McGann was surprised that scholars hadn’t been invited, I had to choke back laughter. Scholars talk about what’s in the past, and scholars particularly in the humanities talk about the effect things have on the societies in which they exist. They can identify needs and suggest approaches, but I can’t imagine Google saying, “Hey, people who make your careers and reputation on the exclusivity of your printed media. We’d like to take all that, make it digital, make it accessible, and make it free. Whaddaya think?”
Filmmakers don’t ask Siskel & Ebert what they want to see; local chefs don’t ask Scott Joseph what he wants to eat, and self-help book authors don’t ask Dear Abby for her opinions before they write. Why should scholars have been asked about Google Books, and in what ways?
March 4, 2010 at 5:50 pm
I totally agree with you Chris! The reason I posed this question is for the same reason and possibly an even more practical one: what really constitutes a scholar? This becomes especially tricky in fieldwork where experience replaces/overrides education, or where education may not even be necessary at all. With that being said, would they be invited to the discussion, or is this an invite to the proverbial tea party only type crowd (to continue with Dr. Saper’s example)?! Technology itself is one of these grey area disciplines, and that is truly what peaked my interest;).
As for your comment on time, how relevant!!! We are a scholarly group of students, researching and working at technology’s pace. No wonder many of us are looking forward to spring break;). The pressure to maintaiiin schlarship in the digital age is something I would have liked to have heard discussed in a forum with Hayles, mainly due to her print/e-lit binary in _Electronic Literature_.