Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers, and welcome back on this Monday morning!

There has been a lot of press about the downsides of emerging technology, e.g., “Is Google Making Us Stupid?“  and The Googlization of Everything. (As you can see, a lot of this press is directed against Google, though not entirely.)

However, could there be an upside to this technology?  Damon Darlin thinks so, in “Technology Doesn’t Dumb Us Down.  It Frees Our Minds.”

What do you think, readers?  Granted that changes are occurring, some for the better, and some for the worse, what are you thoughts on this?

A hat-tip to the Rowland Institute’s Library News & Notes for this link.

I was sent this link to a short piece of fiction, “Engineers’ Dreams,” which is a fascinating look at Google, artificial intelligence, and concepts like the Turing machine.  It really makes you think about Google and search engines, among other things, in a whole new light.

I include it on this blog because it is much in the same vein as using Batman and other pop culture figures to discuss philosophy and philosophical questions.

What do you think, readers?

Good morning, readers!

I’m choosing a provocative headline today, in light of Nicholas Carr’s recent article in The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?“  Carr’s article is a thoughtful look at how Google (and the Internet in general) is shaping and changing the way we read and interact with words, thoughts, and ideas, and not always for the better.

Needless to say, Carr’s article has provoked a firestorm of criticism, about some of which you can read here, here, and here*. All of these posts show that there are some very serious issues to consider here, and the very real potential for some terrible things to happen, if technology is embraced blindly and thoughtlessly.

Carr’s points are not minor, especially for those of us in academia, where the traditional liberal arts/humanistic model of education is undergoing change, and in some cases, dismantled, in favor of a more vocational preparatory model.  Furthermore, the changes that Carr suggests bear great relevance for philosophy and philosophical education — philosophy is a discipline that requires deep reading and reflection, something not fostered or encouraged by the Internet.  How does philosophy survive and adapt to this new environment?  Are there things we should strive to retain?

Thoughts, readers?  Where do you stand on this?  Do you think that Carr is right?  Or his critics?  Comment away!

Update 7/28/2008: Along the same lines — “Online, R U Really Reading?*,” by Motoko Rich, New York Times, 7/27/2008.

*A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for these articles.

Good morning, readers!

Found this morning on “American Libraries Direct”: a charming video, titled, “Libraries Are Gonna Make It After All.”  (Those of you who remember the Mary Tyler Moore Show may find it even more amusing.)

For those who think libraries are going the way of the dinosaur — sorry, folks.  Libraries — and books and physical media — will be here for the long term, in my view.

Good morning, readers!  I’m back from vacation and ready to begin blogging again.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I take a skeptical stance towards many of the prophets of the digital revolution, and think that the death of libraries and print media, like that of Mark Twain, is greatly exaggerated. Thus, I was please to discover — via Bookforum.com — an article by Robert Darton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library at Harvard from the New York Review of Books.

In this article, Darnton offers his view of the future of libraries in “The Library in the New Age.” It’s a great article, well-written, and offering a balanced view of the value of print and electronic media. It also notes that print will not go away any time soon, and that physical library spaces are more than mere warehouses of outdated media.

What do you think, readers? Do you think that Darnton is correct?

Postscript: After writing this post, I found this opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal, by L. Gordon Crovitz. Crovitz argues that e-book readers will help to lead us away from “info-snacking” to more sustained long-term reading, though in an electronic, rather than print, format. I’m not so sure. Pipe up, readers! What do you think?

Given the skyrocketing costs of journals, both in print and electronic form, the concept of open access publishing has been growing in popularity for a long time, especially in the sciences. By moving to this model, high quality research becomes more easily available and in a more timely fashion.

However, the humanities have been slower in adapting this model. While there are exceptions — like the journal, Philosophers’ Imprint, and the humanities sections of the Social Science Research Network — by and large there has not been as great a development of open access journals, books, and the like in the humanities.

So, while reading “American Libraries Direct” last week, my eye caught an article about the new Open Humanities Press, from the Chronicle of Higher Education: “New Open-Access Humanities Press Makes Its Debut.” (A Harvard PIN and ID are required to view this article.)

As the article notes:

The nonprofit operation—described by those involved as “an international open-access publishing collective”—makes its official debut on Monday with a roster of seven already-established journals in critical and cultural studies and related fields: Cosmos and History, Culture Machine, Fibreculture, Film-Philosophy, International Journal of Zizek Studies, Parrhesia, and Vectors. Each journal already publishes in an open-access format, and each will retain full editorial independence. The press will provide editorial and technical-development services, using the Open Journal Systems software created by the Public Knowledge Project, and it will help with distribution and promotion….

Those involved with Open Humanities Press hope to expand beyond critical theory, perhaps even beyond journals and into open-access monographs, once the enterprise has a reputation for what Mr. Ottina called “rigorous academic quality.”

“Ultimately,” he said, “the goal is to get as much academic content into an open-access distribution model as possible.”

Even though the project is focusing on cultural studies at the moment — a topic likely of little interest to many of the analytically-oriented — I do think it’s something of which the analytically-oriented should be aware. Is there some way that we might get philosophy journals on this platform? Something to think about…

At left: Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), c. 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The report of my death was an exaggeration.
— Mark Twain, 1897.

Given how ubiquitous Google is in academic research, and in ordinary life, my curiosity was piqued whilst I was reading Bookforum.com several days ago.

The listing of articles included a link to one in Popular Mechanics: “How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It.” Raising an eyebrow, I clicked on the link, and began to read.

The author of this article argued that, with the rise of social network sites, like Facebook and MySpace, and the vague and ill-defined “Web 2.0,” search engines like Google would ultimately perish, because their model is too old-fashioned, representing an outdated model of the Internet.

In place of online searching, people will locate information through their social networks, or preference tracking such as seen already on Amazon.com. There will be no need for search algorithms anymore — your online network will provide you with the information you need when you seek for it.

Now, this is a contentious and controversial claim to make. For one thing, it falls into the trap of the “New is Good, Old is Bad” fallacy. For another, it claims that, in order for a new way of searching that embraces social networks, something must fall by the wayside, i.e., Google and its competitors. I’m not so sure that this disappearance is necessary — there seems, to me, to be an implicit and questionable social Darwinism behind this assumption. Why cannot both models co-exist, each with their respective places and uses? Why cannot a hybrid model or models emerge? And more: social networking is the fad right now, but will it be so in six months, as the novelty continues to wear off? Furthermore, one of the responses to the article gives a link to an article which suggests that many people spend very little time on social networking sites, which would thus limit their usefulness as a search tool. Finally, if one reads only research and suggestions that arise out of one’s social network, does this practice not have the potential to foster a confirmation bias?

I strongly recommend reading the comments at the end of the article. Some agree with the author, but many more disagree. What do you think readers?

Should we be thinking about new ways of searching, of conceptualizing and organizing online information? Absolutely. But does that mean we must throw out Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines to do so? I don’t think so.

In short: this article is more marketing hype and spin than anything else. The death of online searching as we currently know and use it, like that of Mark Twain in 1897, is greatly exaggerated.

From InsideHigherEd.com: Lindsay Waters, executive editor for the humanities at the Harvard University Press, writes “A Call for Slow Writing.” In this essay, Waters makes a case for establishing the journal article, rather than the book, as the standard for tenure, as well as working on improving the quality of writing in journal articles.

A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for this article.

At right: Engraving, 1812, “Leader of the Luddites.”

Regular readers will know my thoughts and views on e-books from earlier posts. Others know that I am a firm believer that libraries as physical spaces will not go away — in fact, I think they will continue to play an important social and educational role for a very long time.

Some may even think me a Luddite for holding views like these. Yet, this accusation simply isn’t so. If it was true, then why would I be blogging?

What I’m trying to do when I write and argue along these lines is to separate out marketing hyperbole and spin from fact. I meet enough people who, seduced by novelty-for-novelty’s-sake, want to abolish libraries and destroy books and other print media, all for the sake of some ill-defined digital utopia built more on clouds of careless rhetoric than on the bedrock of fact and thought. (And let’s not forget the double meaning of “utopia”: “no-place” and “good-place,” with the irony intended.)

My point in all of these writings is to offer an argument for print media and libraries, based on fact and thought, not on rhetoric, sentimentalism, nostalgia, or an aversion for novelty. I do care very deeply about physical spaces and objects, and find myself increasingly uneasy with the contemporary fascination with the digital world’s quasi-Gnostic disembodiment of human experience and interaction.

With this preamble stated, let me repeat my view: when it comes to e-books and paper books, I don’t think we need to take a dualistic “e-media” vs. “print media” stance. There’s room for both kinds of media, and even for hybrid versions of the two. Likewise for libraries — let’s avoid a simplistic dualism of physical space vs. virtual space, and recognize that each has its place, along with hybrid versions that combine elements of both.

Okay, so you, the reader, are probably asking what set me off on this diatribe this week. It began when I opened last week’s edition of “American Libraries Direct.” Among the list of nifty librarian-related news items, I found a link to this post: “30 Benefits of Ebooks,” which was published on the blog, Epublishers’ Weekly. This list was offered in honor of “Read an Ebook Week,” in order to promote the reading of e-books:

Read an Ebook Week is a yearly event, and this year (2008) it runs from March 2 to March 8. To encourage the celebration of this little-known happening, here is our list of 30 Benefits of Ebooks. We love pbooks (paper books), and hope that they are never replaced by their electronic grandchildren. Yet ebooks are a worthy companion to their paper elders. Here’s how and why.

I’m glad that the author of this blog likes “pbooks,” and hopes that they will be around forever. Nonetheless, after reading the list, I must confess to being a bit skeptical still. I didn’t find many of the “30 Benefits” to be that much different from what I can get from “pbooks,” or superior to the point that I would want to purchase an e-book reader. For instance, here are two examples:

10. Ebooks defy time: they can be delivered almost instantly. Ebooks are transported to you faster than overnight shipping: in minutes or in seconds.

Well, for one thing, one can walk into a bookstore and purchase a paper book “instantly.” Or, I can go to a library and check out a book in the relatively same amount of time. For another, I find that this demand for instant gratification to be, well, infantile.

11. Ebooks defy space: ebooks online can be read simultaneously by thousands of people at once.

Umm… so can paper books read offline. Thousands of people can read a paper book simultaneously — witness the Harry Potter phenomenon. Is the e-book’s ability to be read simultaneously really a benefit? Or are we just seeing something that already exists dressed up in a different — which does not necessarily mean “better” — guise?

I’d argue that many of the other benefits can be challenged in a similar fashion, as being not “new” per se, but only the same old thing in new clothes. And while these new clothes do offer some fascinating variants on old themes, which we should explore, consider, and sometimes embrace, claiming that these variants are “benefits,” “improvements,” or “differences” is just marketing spin.

Now, here’s where the future of libraries gets involved. Libraries and books and all of that are changing and evolving, there’s no doubt about it. This state of affairs is not a bad thing. Indeed, it’s all to be expected.

Some aspects of books and libraries will, undoubtedly, pass away, others will change into forms we can’t foresee, but many things will stay the same. E-books, pbooks, hybrids — who knows what else? And the spaces in which we read, store, and interact with these media and each other will change, too, but not vanish.

There was a great point about this change in a recent article in Slate.com. In “Borrowed Time: How Do You Build a Public Library in the Age of Google?“, Witold Rybczynski looks at the future of the public library in a a slide-show essay about the architecture of libraries. He concludes:

Ross Dawson, a business consultant who tracks different customs, devices, and institutions on what he calls an Extinction Timeline, predicts that libraries will disappear in 2019. He’s probably right as far as the function of the library as a civic monument, or as a public repository for books, is concerned. On the other hand, in its mutating role as urban hangout, meeting place, and arbiter of information, the public library seems far from spent. This has less to do with the digital world—or the digital word—than with the age-old need for human contact.

In closing, I just don’t see the e-book as being the inevitable next step in the evolution of the book such that the print form goes the way of the dinosaur and vanishes forever, or only exists as a relic in a museum — this sounds a bit too much like bad social Darwinism, in my view. I don’t see libraries being abolished as spaces, though I do think they will continue to change while retaining some of their earlier functions and features. Finally, I think recklessly running to eliminate paper books, library spaces, and the like without stopping to think and consider what we’re actually proposing to do is a potentially disastrous move to make.

What do you think, readers? Am I a hopeless Luddite?

Postscript – In the “American Libraries Direct” blurb listing the link to “30 Benefits of Ebooks,” there was also a link to “Put Not Your Faith In Ebook Readers,” by Cory Doctorow. It’s an intriguing take on the current state of e-books from someone who is a big fan of e-books and electronic reading.

At left: A map of the places that Christian visits during his journey in John Bunyan’s book, Pilgrim’s Progress. The map is taken from a 1778 edition printed in England. Click on the image to see a larger version; the Slough of Despond is in the lower left-hand corner, just above the City of Destruction.

For those of my readers who are more inclined to post-modernism and Jacques Derrida, today’s post may be of interest to you — for all others, I ask that you keep an open mind, as I return to my roots in Continental philosophy. But, I must warn you: we’ll be walking on the edges of the Slough of (Post-Modern) Despond as we make our way to Hypertextopia. So make sure to bring your philosophical hip-waders, so as not to get overly muddied with and soaked by post-modern sludge.

The development and implementation of hypertext in the mid- to late 20th century, especially with the rise of the Internet, changed the way that many people viewed and thought about reading, writing, and researching. No longer bound by traditional linear narrative, hierarchical categories, or print media, people could move through and enter into print and electronic texts from a multiplicity of points, perspectives, and directions.

In the 1990s, the use of hypertext took on an intriguing form: “hypertext fiction,” which Wikipedia describes as follows:

Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links which provides a new context for non-linearity in “literature” and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next, and in this fashion arranges a story from a deeper pool of potential stories. Its spirit can also be seen in interactive fiction.

The term can also be used to describe traditionally-published books in which a non-linear and interactive narrative is achieved through internal references. Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire (1962) and Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela (1963; translated as Hopscotch) are early examples (predating the word hypertext), while a common pop-culture example is the “Choose Your Own Adventure” format of young adult fiction.

I remember hypertext fiction and writing being all the rage during my undergraduate days. Those days were the early, heady ones of the Internet, during the height of political correctness and the ascendancy of post-modernism and deconstructionism in English departments, literary theory, and literary criticism.

At that time, in the early 1990s, advocates of hypertext fiction and writing made all sorts of predictions about the death of the book, the author, and linear narrative. Moreover, they took joy in manipulating and altering “texts” — i.e., taking a canonical edition of a work of fiction and rearranging or altering words or the order of words in that work. Usually, this involved restoring sections from manuscripts, early drafts, or variant printings or editions of that work. The justification for doing so was the claim that there are neither authors nor narratives, so anyone can alter a text to whatever format s/he pleases, regardless of authorial intent or decision, and offer it as an equally valid and worthwhile version of that work.

In all honesty, this practice seemed, to me, to be more a lame attempt by second- and third-rate writers to “prove” that they were “superior” writers than the great masters of fiction. They could manipulate a text with impunity, with no author to challenge them — since most of the authors were literally dead — and pronounce their work just as “good as”, if not “better than” the original. In my view, this is not only the practice of a coward and a hack, but also ironic and self-defeating, since post-modernity is partly about challenging the existence and validity of hierarchical categories such as “good” and “better than.”

Some of the extremists of political correctness that I encountered saw hypertext fiction as one more blow to the phallocentric and patriarchal hegemony of old, dead Caucasian males over writing. Hypertext fiction, to these extremists, was all part of the post-modern liberation, part of the establishment of a glorious non-hierarchical utopia of post-industrial, post-capitalist, post-everything culture and society.

If I seem a bit sarcastic here in my reconstruction, please forgive me. Having lived through the excesses of post-modernity and political correctness, and the sheer silliness of many of their claims, I find that my Gen X sarcasm often flows from my pen… no, wait… pixels… when I describe and criticize these excesses.

In all fairness, though, the views of extremists do not represent the whole or the best of post-modernism. Indeed, post-modernism has raised valid and insightful critiques of power, paradigms, and structures in many areas, and these critiques that should be taken seriously.

But, I’ll get off my soap box now, and stop pontificating, so that we can return to our regularly-scheduled posting.

While doing my usual early-morning ritual of blog-scanning earlier this week, I came across a fascinating post from if:book on a new hypertext writing site, Hypertextopia. Here is the opening of that post, describing what Hypertextopia is:

We were recently alerted, via Grand Text Auto, to a new hypertext fiction environment on the Web called Hypertextopia:

Hypertextopia is a space where you can read and write stories for the internet. On the surface, it looks like a mind-map, but it embeds a word-processor, and allows you to publish your stories like a blog.

The site is gorgeously done, applying a fresh coat of Web 2.0 paint to the creaky concepts of classical hypertext. I find myself strangely conflicted, though, as I browse through it. Design-wise, it is a triumph, and really gets my wheels spinning w/r/t the possibilities of online writing systems. The authoring tools they’ve developed are simple and elegant, allowing you to write “axial hypertexts”: narratives with a clear beginning and end but with multiple pathways and digressions in between. You read them as a series of textual screens, which can include beautiful fold-out boxes for annotations and illustrations, and various color-coded links (the colors denote different types of internal links, which the author describes). You also have the option of viewing stories as nodal maps, which show the story’s underlying structure.

Yet, in spite of this glowing introduction, the rest of the post becomes a bit more critical. The author, Ben Vershow, and the accompanying comments, offer an interesting commentary on the limits of hypertext fiction and why it is generally more interesting in theory than and practice. There’s also some very interesting discussion of hypertext fiction in relation to Jorge Luis Borges, who is often viewed as prefiguring the Internet era in his writings.

But, let’s be clear: I am not against hypertext fiction, or hypertext in general, not at all. Nor are Ben Vershow and the commentators to his post. Hypertext and hypertext fiction are good things. Indeed, hypertext in general has opened up all sorts of possibilities in organizing, accessing, and moving through information, possibilities that would have been unthinkable just a short decade or so ago. And hypertext fiction is one way of reconceptualizing how we actually engage with and move through texts and digital media. As Vershow concludes his post:

Grumbling aside though, Hypertextopia offers much to ponder. Recontextualizing a pre-Web form in the Web is a worthwhile experiment and is bound to shed some light. I’m thinking about how we might play around in it…

Readers who remember my post from last week on the new forms of reading and books suggested by Howard Gardner might find parallels in that post to the discussion here.

I think that the perspective that I’m critiquing is a simplistic chase after novelty, one that assumes that anything “new” is “good,” and, by extension, “better” than what is “old.” For me, what Vershow’s post illustrates is how some of the predications about the effects of the Digital Age have not come, and are not likely to come, to pass any time soon. Soothsayers are not always right in their predictions. And, merely pursuing novelty for novelty’s sake can be fruitless, at best, and dangerous, at worst.

So, readers, here’s my prediction: books and linear narrative are not going away any time in the near future. They will continue to co-exist with new forms of literature and writing, like hypertext fiction. So you don’t need to toss out your print collection just yet, nor do you need to get mired in the Slough of (Post-Modern) Despond on your way to Hypertextopia. That, at least, is my view on the topic. And that, along with a few dollars, will get you a medium coffee at a local coffee shop here in the People’s Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Do you agree?