Comments on d i a p s a l m a t a: Digitizing Dead-end Branches

How important you think the experience is will aff...

2011-05-09T15:48:53.406-04:00

How important you think the experience is will affect whether or not you think it *is* technologically possible -- since, arguably, at some point you haven't "digitized" the object at all, anymore than snapping a photo of a book sitting on someone's desk about 30ft from you means you've "digitized" the book.

a volvelle is technologically possible in digitize...

2011-05-08T12:21:57.527-04:00

a volvelle is technologically possible in digitized form. but, as with printed book and digitized, is it the same experience?

I've been accused of violating the laws of sea...

2011-05-08T07:50:22.247-04:00

I've been accused of violating the laws of searchability/citability in most digital projects/webtexts I've ever produced, so I'll be the first to admit it's something I, for whatever reason, don't tend to consider. I feel like I could have (and thought about) linking each image to its unique twitter thread; and I feel like I've seen conversation threads that pull a feed to create an in-post conversation; but you're right that the general ethos of a twitter conversation doesn't lend itself well to archiving. Maybe it shows a kind of resistance to archivization in the same way these books resist digitization.

Thanks for the comments -- not only is it good food for thought, you've caused me to change the ending of my talk!

I agree that there is a lot of human labor and som...

2011-05-07T11:44:55.586-04:00

I agree that there is a lot of human labor and some incredibly sophisticated reflexive thinking going on from very many quarters, I just worry that it might not leave a trace. The referencing and archiving of Twitter is a good example: how do you cite (and re-thread) a Twitter conversation? The most common approach is the screen capture that you have used, but it makes the content unsearchable. In fact if you click on "show original post" at the top of this page you'll see the central portions appear as follow:

With this in mind, I asked Twitter: what aspects of book or print culture resist digitization? A few answers:
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I think one could suggest that this contributes to the elisions you discuss, rather than countering them. I was similarly unconvinced by a recent Alan Jacobs post in which he half suggested that tweeting may be a better medium for academic debate than blogging. Again - not for as long as it can't be properly cited. And I would also put forward that the speed at which Twitter operates is problematic, and a very powerful determinant of what can be said on Twitter and by whom.

By way of example, one of my fixations is that a key advantage of print books over electronic books is that they take space (it is after all their ultimate digitization-resisting aspect). I'm not confident that I could mount that argument on Twitter; and furthermore I suspect that the decisions that libraries make about divesting themselves of physical holdings in favour of electronic holdings proceeds at Twitter-speed and with the kind of argumentation and counter-argumentation that suits the bias of electronic media. In fact I think we need to ask ourselves more to what extent it's even possible to critique digital ideology from within the digital medium, or if in fact the critique gets subsumed and contributes to normalizing and legitimizing the transition. The digital archivist may well be the best suited subject position from which to ask that question.

Sorry, that was messy, I clearly have to ponder a lot more, but thank you for this in the meantime.

Have you written a post about this? I remember som...

2011-05-07T08:39:23.843-04:00

Have you written a post about this? I remember someone in my feed writing on archiving twitter that I wanted to link, but couldn't find it.

In any case, I'd be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on the matter. I agree it's a flippant statement -- actually, I think the whole post here is a bit flippant (I was trying to use blogging to kick me out of writer's block) -- but there is a kind of "human labor" component in social media that seems to counter the elisions in digital archives of books.

(Also, if I had tken part in that discussion my co...

2011-05-07T03:09:26.084-04:00

(Also, if I had tken part in that discussion my contribution would have been: you cannot press a flower between two web pages.)

"Obviously a simple Twitter feed isn't th...

2011-05-07T03:07:47.965-04:00

"Obviously a simple Twitter feed isn't the same as producing a new kind of archive -- or maybe it is."

Even to the extent that tweets are now archived (by the library of congress, by Google), I have serious doubts that they can be meaningfully accessed. I value the conversation, but am still doubtful that it has a temporal dimension.