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.

Midterm Paper Final

I tell you what - this paper was rough to start. I had ideas floating around, had my outline, had my notes, but nothing really stood out to me in terms of a "so what" for the paper. But after reading your comments and really thinking about the essence of socially optimized research and Moby Dick, I was finally able to finalize my ideas and hopefully I did that successfully.

Sometimes (and maybe most of the time...and I'm sure plenty of you fellow writers can relate to this) I get hung up on the details and semantics behind writing the perfect paper - something that will get me a good grade or stand out to be so impressive it's mind blowing. But that's just not realistic. I heard in an interview once with a writer that "you don't get it right, you get it written." I hear it all the time: just write it. Just do it. After I wrote this paper, something that was academic but perhaps not perfectly formal, I realized that by not holding up on those details (semicolon here or comma, full three lined sentence or short ones, direct quote or paraphrase) I was able to just enjoy writing the paper.

Here is the link to my paper. Feel free to read, respond, and/or argue against my ideas. Hope you guys had fun with your papers too!

Socially Optimized Voyage (Midterm Prewriting)

Here is my brief outline for what I'm thinking of doing my paper on:

Basically after talking about Socially Optimized Research in class last Wednesday, I got this impression that this is what Captain Ahab did preparing for his voyage to get Moby Dick. First he had to "tell people" about the trip. He searched high and low for different crew members to join him (even if they didn't initially know they were going on a trek for an unbeatable white whale) who had a love for the sea and training in whaling. Next step is "curating research." There's a quote in chapter 44 about how Ahab has "large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts" and books and and logs of sperm whale sightings. Then we have "searching new media and social networks" (content vs people) which to me would be the first mates (specifically Starbuck) who have more insight on this quest, but still aren't scholars on Moby Dick (this is a little different from my initial notes above - more specific and less about all the crew members who fit better in the "tell people" stage). In addition to that, I thought of the log and the line in chapter 125 and how Ahab went from a compass to "new media" using the log and the line to get pointed in the right direction again. Last is searching traditional scholarship. All the ship captains Ahab talks with during the voyage would, to me, be the traditional sources he would go to for specific information about the whale because these ships like the Rachel (ha I said Rebecca in my notes - ignore that) actually encounter the whale.

Anyway, I'm still working on an exact thesis statement and the "so what," but any thoughts? If you think I'm stretching it please let me know. Good luck to you all on your own papers! I've seen some really excellent ideas.