Comments on: Introduction: Obsolescence

By: SA #20: Fitzpatrick « Text and Medium

SA #20: Fitzpatrick « Text and Medium — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:27:06 +0000

[...] at times, and of necessity, to outweigh scholarly merit in making publication decisions” (link). Why is it troubling that market values are having such an impact on [...]

By: carrual

carrual — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:38:47 +0000

Your final point about reading practices –– and “mainstream” as well as specialized discourses about the purported decline of certain ways and habits of reading –– seems most provocative in this opening paragraph, and I find myself wanting to hear a bit more of your argument on this score up front in the introduction.

By: Thoughts on Seneca Falls as seen through four lenses of interpretation… « Digital History — Spring 2010

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:48:06 +0000

[...] Of course, the intertextual nature of the digital offerings means that the reader could quite easily perform their own research on the feminist-abolitionist connection by consulting the primary and secondary sources in the hyperlinked footnotes, or by following in-text wiki links to the biographical pages of women and men active in both movements. As would be expected, the best digital offerings (Wikipedia and Britannica) were extensively hyperlinked, allowing the reader to branch off at any point to learn more about individual people, places, and events pertinent to the Convention. Like Thomas and Ayers’ The Differences Slavery Made, the interactivity of the digital medium allows the reader to (in theory) control the parameters of the educational experience, easily going above and beyond their initial exposure to the ideas presented. Although the book related the interconnected nature of the two movements most skillfully , digital media has room for expansion that print media simply cannot match, even if publishing companies were thriving in the way that Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s Planned Obsolescence so ably shows they are not. [...]

By: Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Kathleen Fitzpatrick — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:52:29 +0000

I’m also always a bit dubious of statistics like “14-17 words,” particularly when they’re tied to such huge value judgments (i.e., long, slow modes of concentration are always preferable to multi-tasking, fast scanning for key information, etc). Your point about “integrators” is spot-on, I think.

By: franc004

franc004 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:24:40 +0000

Dana Goia, the head of NEA spoke at my university last night and we discussed the fact that in the first study at least, journalism and creative non-fiction didn’t factor into the survey. He also cited the stat that online readers only read an average of 14-17 words before moving on as evidence that we are losing literacy–but the argument does nothing to address the non-linear ways people, especially younger ones, perceive narrative and text–how what media researchers term “integrators” compile narratives from a variety of media.

By: michaelroy

michaelroy — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:37:04 +0000

Do you intend to engage with new business models for scholarly communication such as the public library of science model? And by the time this makes it to press, the whole google books settlement will be resolved, which will be a game-changer in many respects.

By: michaelroy

michaelroy — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:06:06 +0000

I wonder at what point in the argument you might want to connect the purported obsolescence of the book to other technologies whose obsolescences are also predicted. In particular, I wonder if there are linkages to the elite forms of liberal education as practiced at (for example) the school that employs you (us) and how the internet is challenging that particular practice. (I’ve not read ahead; I imagine you’ve already noted this somewhere.) This questions ties into some of the work that Cathy Davidson is doing at HASTAC, where she is playing with ideas about how virtual institutions are parasitic upon the physical institutions that sustain them.

By: idealrealist

idealrealist — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:45:50 +0000

This argument is reminiscent of a Foucauldian discussion on knoweldge and power and is a terrific starting point.

By: Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Kathleen Fitzpatrick — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:53:15 +0000

Oh, certainly — as all such declines, we’ve always already been in it. But here I’m pointing to the specific use of the phrase “crisis in scholarly publishing”; perhaps I should dig a bit further and see how far back I can find it used…

By: Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Kathleen Fitzpatrick — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:51:55 +0000

The phrase is kind of metaphorical shorthand for a much more complex idea which is actually the subject of my first book. I’d love for you to read that one, if you’d like to know more.

By: CarlosElio

CarlosElio — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:14:49 +0000

Can “cultural wildlife preserves” be evaluated? Do they exist? Are they effective? The phrase has a seductive flavor, but I am not convinced such a thing exists. Deficiencies in math education in the US have been noted with some regularity. International tests attest to the deficiencies, so it is ascertainable. However, if the claims have created a wildlife preserve, the species has not recovered yet.

By: Dorothea Salo

Dorothea Salo — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:41:46 +0000

Well over a decade ago? I remember hearing of serials cancellations when I was a child, 30 years ago or thereabouts.

By: Julie Levin Russo

Julie Levin Russo — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:20:09 +0000

There’s a delicious irony in the fact that the decline of a digital heyday was tied to a decline in print media, and it might be worth underscoring. I think (after reading 2 pages) that part of your point in this book is that the relationship between print and digital publishing can be mutually sustaining rather than adversarial, and this is a nice fable for how their fortunes are linked. (Expand a bit and split the paragraph.)

By: Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Kathleen Fitzpatrick — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:01:51 +0000

Thanks, Amanda! I agree with you about the Google results ploy, I think; I’d pulled that number for a talk I was giving, but I don’t think it’s working here.

By: amandafrench

amandafrench — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:31:38 +0000

I’m never fond of the “x thousand Google results” ploy; it’s too easy. You’ve got good sources here; I’d rely solely on those. Or you could recast it as an imperative: “Google ‘crisis in scholarly publishing’ ” …

And I’m also very much enjoying the book so far, the lovely prose, the sheer damn sense.