"Developing an Argument in the Digital Age"

Outline and links: 

We have loaded some materials on the moodle WITT site including the 2010 Horizon Report.

http://moodle.trincoll.edu

Want a Google Wave account?  Contact Dave or Greg after WITT and we'll set you up!

0. Introductions.

-historical and theoretical contexts

-years, decades of practice: info lit, digital publication, HT

-key shift: social media revolution->environment

-imbrication and William Gibson, or print monographs + Wave

1. digital argument: structure

(link to Prezi)

-unitary aspect

-distributed aspects

  a) spatial

     hypertextual: disaggregate compontents of argument (summary, review, etc)

• examples from liberal arts campuses: Planned Obsolescence, Government is Good (reflection)

     supplemental content (ex: books, Juan Cole)

     (first note on the general role of politics)

  b) diachronic

     developed in public

        blogging argument over time

        -link back to previous items

        -use tags, departments to organize

        ex: Open Source blog post sequence; In Our Time followup email

        ex: "Zombie Economics", John Quiggen (post)

  c) synthetic concept: networked book (IFTB) (and check those examples, as of 2005!)

  d) secondary or aura of media

    -integral with publishing platform (comments, wiki edits)

    -different platforms afford this differently

        mp3 player vs wiki

        cultural expectations   

     -different levels

          i. dependent on your work

          ii. associated with your person(a)

          iii. housed elsewhere

2. contours of the new environment

consumption and production shift, interweave

-info lit 2010: everything we already learned, plus...

• formal social media content (growing)
• aggregators
• live search
• new services
  • Microsoft academic search and Bing; Wolfram|Alpha; Google Wave
• visualization strategies continue to develop
  • example: word cloud analysis (example: economic language)
• curated social filters
• maturation of face-checking
• some Web 1.0 practices map onto Web 2.0 (one good discussion)

3. the power of storytelling

(an earlier, vaster version of this part in Powerpoint)

(Alan and Bryan's article, with many examples and links)