Anchored in Humanity: Digital Insights in Literature

Studying literature in the traditional way is a key to powerful insights into digital culture. It's because literature and digital culture stem from the same thing: people. The literary tradition has a long history of delving into the human condition through its forms, and it helps people better understand the effects and biases of digital culture in and among humanity. Here are a couple of examples of insights I have seen this semester.

Our classmate Aleesha saw correlations between Pinterest and her literary study of Moby Dick. Her questions about the identity (e.g. genre) of the novel Moby Dick prompted questioning and a project about how the individual and collective pins of a person's Pinterest board reflect (or don't reflect) the identity of the pinner. Kayla pointed out how Captain Ahab deliberately gathered people around him and sought the advice of his peers in going after the whale. With their help, he succeeded. Sure, you could say that that was the way everyone had to do things, back in the day, but - it was effective. 

What literary study helps us discover can and should change digital habits. The amount of information online and in print is overwhelming, like the amount of organisms in a world of ocean. As well as consulting his fellow captains for up-to-date information on Moby Dick, Ahab had on hand with him more traditional aids in his search: "yellowish sea-charts" and "piles of old log-books" (177). These print resources were also invaluable to him in making his "reasonable surmises" (177) about the route of the white whale. Recognizing the limitations of each method, Ahab used both textual information and social research and proof to accomplish his goal. While many Web users might be tempted to favor either a search engine or asking people for help to find what they are looking for, we would do well to follow Ahab's example and use social and mechanical ways to find what we want. 

Aleesha, Kayla, and I are digital natives, but studying Moby Dick gave us valuable insights into our world.