2b.ii The uses of e-books
The discussion above outlines a range of features pertaining to books and e-books. Tangibility is more strongly associated with the book as a physical artifact, while hybridity is more strongly associated with digital texts. Browsability, searchability, and referenceablility are also dramatically enhanced in digital media. Examining this list of features, it is clear that e-books are particularly well suited to the needs of researchers (information seekers and those engaged in text analysis). It is not surprising, then, that research and development efforts related to e-books in the humanities have tended in the direction of developing searchable digital archives and databases, establishing a method of encoding digital texts to ensure compatibility among archives, establishing a new knowledge economy related to scholarly electronic publication, and so on.
Other research areas concern the affordances of digital media for collaborative knowledge production, and for the literary arts. The first of these, and one that is less thoroughly scrutinized than others, collaborative knowledge production, is increasingly facilitated by various emerging forms of social software, such as wikis and weblogs. The most obvious example is Wikipedia, a popular web-based free-content encyclopedia that maintains an open policy regarding contributions. Wikipedia’s model for contribution clearly interrogates notions of authorship and intellectual property rooted in print culture. It is worth noting that this is not a new model: it is one that was displaced by the formalized diffusion of academic writing, which saw its genesis in seventeenth-century Europe. Before our current methods of inquiry and knowledge diffusion were shaped, notes Siemens (2002), knowledge exchange and the advancement of scholarship was facilitated in large part by personal dialogue and the circulation of private manuscripts and correspondence, with the emphasis being on “ensuring that valuable ideas circulated and became part of growing, documented, bodies of knowledge" (Siemens, 2002, p. 3). Siemens suggests that the argument for proceeding ad fontes (going back to the sources) is compelling in suggesting that we might turn again “to earlier models of scholarly exchange . . . and consider their possible relationship, even if only metaphorically, to what we now refer to as ‘new’ types of scholarly exchange that are made possible by the electronic medium" (p. 3). The impact of such a model for future knowledge production and diffusion activities in the humanities should be examined.
The second research area referenced above, electronic literature, refers to “works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer" (ELO, 2006, ¶2). Electronic literature includes genres such as hypertext fiction, reactive poetry, and blog novels. Older forms, such as hypertext fiction, have their roots in text adventure games (such as Will Crowther's 1975 Adventure and Infocom's Zork) and Bantam's Choose Your Own Adventure series of children's books. Emerging genres such as reactive poetry, on the other hand, intermingle literary arts and multimedia design. Often presented as Flash files, works in this latter class employ animated images and text accompanied by sound, in an effort to produce visually dynamic pieces. We will study further the nature of these emerging genres, and how readers interact with them.
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