The Author Amidst Digital Armageddon

I really like my thesis topic.

I'm told it's not exactly rare, but not exactly common either. Somewhat more unusual, I gather, is that the thesis project I considered undertaking at the very beginning of my MA is mostly what I've come to a close with. I count myself lucky. An early proposal for the topic for my first class at UM-Flint was titled: "From Paper to Processor: The Novel at the Onset of Digital Armageddon."

The basic concepts have stuck around, but I realize the then-title reflects the very issue I've come to anticipate my finished product will heavily explore: we are a fearful lot. We are definitely a hearty bunch, us humans. We adapt, move on, and soon barely notice changes, but not before pulling a collective Chicken Little moment first. At the first sign of change, no matter how well-supported history's assurances are that we'll survive, we pretty much lose our collective shit.

Back in early 2009, as the Kindle was nearing release, all we heard was fire and brimstone about the future of the book: the publishers would die, taking the tried-and-true champion of the author with them; the book would be quickly pirated and widely disseminated, robbing publishers (oh, and authors too .. yeah..) of livelihood; good novels would suddenly have to wade neck-deep among unfiltered dreck in the absence of official gatekeepers; e-readers would borrow your car without refilling the gas tank; animals would rise against man now that they could secret away digitized manifestos underneath their beds and food bowls for reading in stolen moments.

Being that I enjoy reading and hope to eventually finish writing a book and see it through to publication, I must have taken too seriously the collective freakout that the paper book was on borrowed time, and thus confused the novel as a concept with its medium of dissemination. So my title reflected the message I was hearing: the Novel at the Onset of Digital Armageddon. 

Now at the beginning of 2011, with several versions of the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony Reader (still the worst name of the lot) all behind us, I've come to realize the novel will be just fine. Even the iPad will probably have a second version out by the time I turn this thesis in. Sure, the medium is changing, but the novel isn't under siege. Digital Armageddon is happening, but its the author who is already standing in the midst of the biggest change. To tip my hand on my final product just a little bit, I am beginning to think the changes are for the better.

While I think the single most-obvious benefit the Digital Armageddon holds for the author -the expansion of readership/exposure - outweighs the faults, there are questions to answer:

• While the author won't go away, what must they give up and what will they gain? 
• How will commercial definitions of "profitable" be refined, and what share of profits will authors come to expect? 
• How will piracy be tolerated, systemically and individually. What examples can book publishers draw from the music and game industries.
• What kind of independent market will take off? For example, there are many inexpensive and free titles available to e-readers to help swell their catalogs, but what system can we develop to better match a reader to their interests as the sheer volume of available work explodes?
• How does the role of author as an artist (think ar-teest) stand to be redefined? Will the physical novel remain as an ivory tower for only the truly accomplished and celebrated authors to isolate themselves in?

I'm constantly tempted, as I continue research, to go off on fascinating but ultimately tangential side-quests: the history of e-reading; the technology of e-reading; the implications for education of e-reading growth; what ultimate economic implications will unfold as the industry shakes out suddenly-unnecessary jobs because revenue moves from physical to digital; the frustrating sensory je ne sais quoi surrounding the physical novel that will take several generations to shake out; and fanciful imaginings of reading in the future. I am constantly reminding myself of my focus, including an admonishment that occupies the top of the first page in my document of research notes and random tidbits:

No Matter How Interesting Other Issues May Be –

DO NOT FORGET That the Primary Subject of this Paper is

THE AUTHOR

What a pleasant frustration to have.

Relaunch: An unfocused manifesto?

Today I relaunch my blog. Started first as a class requirement for Fall 2009 English 513: Issues in Digital Rhetoric at University of Michigan-Flint, this will hopefully scratch the itch I've been having to talk about what I'm working on apart from what I hope to make official (turned in/published). The original title of the blog was, for some reason I can't quite fathom now, "pixelated prose." Not sure where I was going with that. In the time since completing the course, my thoughts on digital rhetoric (a term I still feel misses out on the unwieldy range of topics I'm interested in, yet for which no better alternative exists) and associated issues have greatly expanded. My applications to five PhD programs in Michigan, Maryland, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia all emphasize my interest here as much as in composition theory.

I'm keeping original posts made from class, as they are markers from earlier on in my digital rhetoric journey. One theme appeared early on, and I believe is worthy of bearing the title for the relaunch. The new title of the blog, "The Digital Naturalized Citizen," is based on a personal response I had to Marc Prensky's "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants." To grossly oversimplify Prensky's thoughts: if we apply the metaphor of citizenship to how we integrate with the larger digital world, two groups emerge:

• the Digital Natives, or those who have lived from so young an age in a world where continual use of sophisticated technology, multimodal electronic communication, and the constant reinvention of the digital landscape are simple facts of life
• the Digital Immigrants, relative newcomers to the digital world, for whom each new digital venue or application of technology is more likely to cause anxiety due to unfamiliarity than it is to alleviate workload or facilitate easier communication

Beyond the stereotypes of the young whippersnapper who can program the NASA-designed VCR and the tech-illiterate geezer who is afraid to even learn how to use a mouse, the interaction of these groups is more than just a generational divide. The DI and DN think differently. They have each existed so long in a world where the other's way of thinking/interacting/communicating was fundamentally different. To the DN, the DI seems hopelessly antiquated, a low-bandwidth individual who functions too stubbornly in too few threads. To the DI, the DN seems frenetic, easily distracted, and too reliant on fallible technological gadgets.

Even when trying to be diplomatic, it's hard to strip descriptions of these groups and their intersection of any dramatic flair. What I said above probably seems over-simplified. It is. That's why there's something between the Digital Native and the Digital Immigrant: the Digital Naturalized Citizen.

I'm a Digital Naturalized Citizen, and I'm willing to guess you probably are, too. I was born in 1979 in a house with one antenna-powered cabinet TV, one rotary-dial phone, and my father's collection of numerous hobby radios. It was the middle 80's before we had an Atari 2600. It was 1988 before we had cable TV, an Apple IIe, and a Nintendo. It was 1990 before we'd migrated to a touch-tone telephone. Today, I carry a smartphone in my pocket that is capable of outstripping all of those technologies by innumerable factors, and my wife and I collectively own no fewer than 9 devices that regularly connect to the Internet for work, communications, or entertainment. This isn't mentioned for the sake of a "look how far we've come" kind of geekout (although, it is pretty cool), but for you to compare yourself to. How many of us still remember a life when we didn't use electronic means but rarely, essentially living an almost fully analog life? It happened gradually, but we've become as digitally-aware/comfortable/integrated as any so-called Digital Native. We are technically Digital Immigrants, but we have transformed fully, as so many have, to be indistinguishable from the Digital Natives. I feel absolutely comfortable concluding that this middle-generation - a significant population - are Digital Naturalized Citizens.

This goes farther than being the middle-ground voice of reason whenever the DNs or DIs resist each other's influence. We are the voice in the middle of the debate about technology's ever-creeping insertion into our lives. We see digital reformation of our society not as the Infocalypse, but more as a metamorphoses from one stage to the next. It. Just. Is. Technology is inert, socially. It is what we want it to be, great or small, a little or a lot. It is in this way I think of technological integration; to keep in mind that these are not digital horsemen of the apocalypse, but merely digital scapegoats for the same tired issues every generation lets its shit get all emotional over: smartphones are not wholesale destroying our minds, but I pity the couple who eat together at the table next to mine, muttering a half conversation over the screens they use to distract themselves from what looks like a failing relationship. It isn't "The Twitter" that's destroying a child's writing, it's the natural development of a grammar we all engage in based on whatever environment we communicate in most regularly, the schools who are fiscally unable to provide the alternative, and the parents who are unwilling to take up that slack. It isn't video games that are sapping our children of physical activity, it's the cultural shift that has become hostile to the social goods of education and green space and has simultaneously discouraged parents from setting limits.

The Digital Naturalized Citizen doesn't go to pieces when new digital things step onto the scene: he/she realizes we are humans using technology, not the other way around.

It's dead, Jim.

A smart man admits when he’s beaten. He knows when it’s time to move on.

The Digital Naturalized Citizen idea… just wasn’t meant to be. I like the DNC for its distinction of a nuanced mid ground between the Digital Immigrant and the Digital Native. I loved coming up with it as a response to Prensky, I really did. But for this project, the nuance is its weakness. The DNC is just too damned similar, outwardly at least, to the DN. In all of my brainstorming of how I, as a DNC, could really present three distinct digital modes that would be anything other than identical than if I was a DN, I could think of nothing. The best I could come up with is that, perhaps as a holdover from a life without IM and Twitter, I think best in complete sentences, and thus I preferred not abbreviating myself on tweets. Not the solidest footing.

So, it’s time give in to the creativity part of our prompt – and let’s face it, I couldn’t really be that creative in showcasing my DNCishness – and go with another aspect of myself:

Roger, The Sci Fi Geek

I’ve always been a huge sci-fi geek. I spent a summer as a kid rewatching abused recordings of all 6 (as of that point) Star Trek Movies, a handful of ST: TNG episodes, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. If there’s a book on my bedside table, 100:1 odds that it’s scifi. All the movies I put on our NetFlix queue are scfi. I have plenty of theories, both about why it is that scifi is so popular a genre for myself and the greater culture, and why it is that Han Solo shot first. One of the first times my girlfriend(later to be my wife) made the mistake of asking me what I was thinking as we laid awake, the answer concluded after a 45 minute treatise on why I thought it was the height of arrogance for us to patently conclude that we knew all there was about physics and dismiss the possibility of faster than light travel.

My life’s aspiration is to be a successful scifi author. So yeah, I can get some mileage out of this topic.

Sure it's not as cool as the DNC, but it is me without a doubt. I’ve already got a host of appropriate digital outlets for this, and have a great idea where I’m going with them. Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and Second Life all come to mind with a myriad of possibilities. So now I can look forward to the Pecha Kucha presentation, which I had been dreading before.

FWIW, I'll post the sites here asap, for those of you browsing/posting beyond the course's requirements.

From a different angle

After conferring with Dr. Schirmer and thinking on the earlier feedback, I’ve decided I’m still going on with the topic of the Digitally Naturalized Citizen, but I will change the way I discuss it. For the background on the topic, see the next blog entry below this one or see the entire paper here. First, I’m going to ruminate further on what I think define a DNC, and maybe it will resonate with some of you and maybe it will contrast – I look forward to feedback.

Thinking of myself as a DNC brings up the following ideas. Think of them as the way a DNC expresses his or herself:

I still tend to think and write online in whole thoughts and in whole words. In Twitter, for example, I tend to max out the 140 characters. This is not because I have more to say, but because I tend to avoid fragmentary thoughts or abbreviations as much as possible. I found myself deleting and rewording so I can get a whole thought in without abbreviating. I don’t think of such writing habits in Twitters as deficient, however – i.e., I don’t care if someone tweets in that way, assuming it doesn’t occlude meaning. Example: My recent tweet of “Protip: liquids should not be independently symmetrical. Notable exception: leftover gravy prior to reheat.” I’m sure that could have been more succinct, but that’s just the way I think, that’s just the way I talk, therefore it’s just the way I tweet. Is that a product of a life started devoid of tech, no matter how immersed I am now?

I don’t think this makes me sound like the worst sort of Digital Immigrant, but l want to tread lightly here. I cannot comprehend the tweets and status updates regarding the most mundane stuff. I’m not trying to be the old man shaking my fist at the skateboarders from the front porch – I don’t begrudge them their very existence. Would a DNC, unlike a Digital Native, boggle at oversharing/overconnection, but not in the way of the Digital Immigrant’s lamentation that these are the Four Tweets of the Apocalypse?

I’d like to note that I’m aware that I am making generalizations in the above points. I know that not all Natives are overconnected and that not all Immigrants are paranoid.

I’d be happy to extrapolate further on the DNC idea if anyone would like, but for now, any reactions from readers?

Digitally Me in 1, 2, 3

Right now, I think I’m going to go with Dr. Schirmer’s suggestion of a more personal, focused presentation of the self through a single aspect. In this case, I think I’m going to expand on an aspect of myself first considered in the Tech AutoBios we all composed at the beginning of the term: a Digital Naturalized Citizen.

Background

In response to our earlier discussions about Mark Prensky’s Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants article, I conceived of a third class: Digital Naturalized. From my own paper: “The naturalized citizen has so fully assimilated into the host culture as to be nearly the same as a native. Only the inescapable fact that the naturalized was once something else separates them from the native, and I believe this concept includes me. The time I wasn’t on the edge of digital progression was brief in my personal history. Even though I didn’t begin life as a digital native, I count myself as far more assimilated than an immigrant, and as such could embody the new term.”

Execution

At this point, I believe I’m going to divide my identity up into three stages – the life I began that was wholly not digital. The second stage will be more robust, focusing on my period of immigration. Finally, I’ll finish as the naturalized, explaining my digital life here and now. My intention is to find three separate services to portray the different Digital Rogers. Being that I am generally pro-integration of online identities, I usually try not to have too many digital selves out there, preferring to keep to the one, whole story. For the purposes of this project, however, I will likely create entirely separate accounts/profiles as needed. Seeing as I intend to capture a freezeframe of my life at different points, a living online idenity would just confuse things.

Any thoughts from readers? Anything I should consider?

A Second Helping of Second Life

So, like mentioned in class, let’s talk Ideal vs. Reality:

The Ideal

As I’ve heard it described and have read, the assets that SL brings to pedagogy seem to be focused mostly on accessibility. Ideally speaking, SL lets a student from half a world away have the same experience as a student sitting in their dorm room on campus, if the class is taught within second life. Infrastructure exists to facilitate reasonably educative environments, such as projectors with slide shows, lecture venues, and even large-scale object manipulation for the purpose of displays.

Additionally, Second Life allows, at least theoretically, for robust object creation, limited only by how far the creators are willing to go. A history course could, for example, use dozens of small models on a miniature ocean, timed to move independently in set patterns to explain fleet movements in the Pacific in World War II. Or you could visit a recreation of the Apollo 11 landing site (someplace I’ve been).

The ultimate goal of Pedagogy in SL is to attempt engagement on a level of technological sophistication. I believe what must fundamentally be the ideal is that this is the precursor to future digital environments, so get on board now. Even if it’s only half-realized now, being here now will mean better things later.

The Reality

Tumbleweeds. A lot of tumble weeds.

As we saw in class, and I hope some of you might yet get to experience for yourselves, there’s a lot left to be desired in a professional and pedagogical sense in SL.

Most desirable? People. I had thought I would go through several other virtual campuses in SL, showing everyone what they look like, but the truth is, you saw all you needed to see at Wolverine Island. Every one of the schools I went to was a ghost town, with myself the only inhabitant. It was almost a post-apocalyptic feeling, as if I woke up to find the world intact, but all the inhabitants gone. The nice seating areas on Wolverine Island for the classes that don’t seem to be held made me feel very lonely – the exact opposite of what should be the goal of as socially derived of an environment as SL should be. This extended to a handful of other sites I went to in SL – museums, public art spaces, colleges, municipalities, memorials – all of them empty.

The fact of the matter is that the people are the only real component missing in-world, if you strip away the mundane technical issues, at least in the not strictly-social realm. Without fellow digital denizens, your presence there is just a waste of time.

I’d be interested to read in other blog posts what else strikes people about Second Life, mostly on a professional/pedagogical sense. I came out pretty strong in class against my own technology I’d Facilitated. I’d love to see someone else take up the gauntlet and show me I’m being too hasty.

Admittedly, the night clearly wasn’t a total wash. When else can you say “I saw Daffy Duck bumping and grinding Bugs Bunny in class tonight” other than where Second Life is concerned?

Content Aggregator meets Content Aggrevator

Net Vibes is, on a somewhat more aggressive scale, what many other sites are: a content repackager/aggregator. Since I’ve been a long time user, I did a slapdash comparison of Net Vibes with my homesite of choice for several years, now, iGoogle. Below are my impressions:

First off, I cannot stress how frustratingly slow Net Vibes is. No matter how awesome the content of a service is, waiting about 2 minutes as I did for login is just unacceptable. I worry this is common for the site, as it was also slow in class on Tuesday and slow now after I finally managed to log in.

(time passes)

Alright. I’ll leave that above paragraph up to make a point about usability. When I first started using Net Vibes, I experienced that slow access and felt like that’s all I was able to experience. Slow functionality impedes impressions of usability like nothing else for me. What I’ll say now is that my new impression is this: Maybe this is kinda nice after all*. Now that the insane lag between request and response has evaporated (where did it go? That makes me nervous), it’s actually a decent service. Already it’s outshone iGoogle in layout ability. Google seems to eschew a 4 column layout, and beyond that, it seems to ignore that content might look nice in mixed column width. Overall, I’ve never liked Google’s rounded-edge bubble look for something so information-driven. Moving back to sharp, clean lines and moving the tab management to the top of the pages reclaims enough horizontal real estate to make a 4 column layout manageable, even on a laptop screen.

Back to the topic of what these content aggregators are good for: a lot. Right now on both my iGoogle and Netvibes pages, you can find widgets giving me functional use (if not total) for the following applications: Mail, weather (and radar), Twitter, Digg, Facebook, and a host of news websites. Any time I log on, I check all of these websites. I’ve been using services like this almost since my time on the Internet began, although they have of course become much more robust in the past several years. Now that sophistication of programming allows for such intermixed content integration, it’s nice to get the half-dozen websites I almost always go to right when I first start out.

But what are the larger implications these services have for our digitized culture? Well, like boiling a frog by degrees, we’re integrating ourselves with our online content more. We recognize a tendency in ourselves to want to get more done, more quickly, so we oblige that urge continually. We’re constantly reaching for equilibrium between what we have to do and our means to do it because we are constantly adding more for ourselves to do. Look at me just a few paragraphs ago. I give bonus points to Net Vibes because it allows me to cram more onto a page. What these content aggregators show is that instead of choosing to slow down and get to what we get to when we get to it, we want more of it faster – continually. I also hear from people in and out of class all the time that surely we must be reaching that point where we can do no more. We’ll have to stop adding more to our plates soon.

Haven’t we always been like this, though? Has there ever been a time where, at least collectively, enough people have said, “No, we’re fine with our media the way it is. We can do no more, thanks.” We added the printed book to the town crier and public storyteller. We expanded literacy downward to the lower classes. We added the newspaper. We added the radio. We added movies. We added TV. We added cable and its hundreds of programs. We added the internet, which in itself has been a continual series of additions. Why would we stop here? Why will we ever stop at any single point in the future?

*As long as that lag stays away.

Reddit and Digg - frustratingly worthy

First, I’ll admit a bias that probably will come through in my portrayal of the services: I’ve used Digg for a few years now. Like I mentioned in class, I tried for several months to act in the spirit of its social networking flavor. While I never originated new content for others to digg or comment on, I did participate in some comment threads about news. In the end, I withdrew to lurker status, and now only comment when I feel truly moved to by a topic of great interest. That usually ends badly.

I’ve also dabbled in Reddit off and on over the past couple of years. Even though the karma system is an interesting motivator for participation (and ideally, it rewards quality participation), I ultimately find Digg more satisfying in design. One thing I will cede to Reddit is timeliness. Overall, Reddit’s posts seem to be a little more real-time. During last night’s free session in class, I searched for several of the stories topping Reddit over on the other site. Of at least seven or eight articles, only one had just been introduced on Digg, but probably wouldn’t find diggs for another couple of hours. This struck me as Digg’s only true deficiency as a monitor for breaking news or hyper-current trends. One example: a trending topic on Twitter was causing a big kerfuffle at the very time the topic was topping Reddit. It was timely enough that should I have desired to particpate, I could have made my way over to Twitter and joined in while the topic was relevant.

Ultimately, I find the social news sites frustrating because they become utterly repetitive. Repetitive to the point of ruining readability of the comments. Some great examples.

Vapid Topics

If you take as read that the cadre of social news sites are first and foremost about, well… news, then you quickly tire of the top ten articles being comprised entirely of Top 10 lists. Do I really need to know who the Top 10 TV Dads, which are the Top 10 Horniest Countries (how does one even really quantify that?), or what the Most Memorable David Hasslehoff Moments are?

General Dismissiveness

I used to find Digg great for what wasn’t always the most erudite of discussion, but that you could count on discussion to be present. Like all things massively social, people eventually resort to adopting a combative attitude. More often than not, posters adopt an almost Scorched Earth Warfare tactic, seeing to make the posting environment inhospitable to all. A salient, topical comment is nuked with down diggs for no apparent reason. Also, see:

Factioning

Much of what I wrote in one of my very first posts of this class speaks directly to this great degenerator of all things on the web. The Other is wrong/corrupt/stupid/misinformed/trying to destroy our way of life. Repeat ad nauseum.

Memes

F1rst! Lol wut? I for one welcome our new meme overlords. Yo, I’m real happy for u, “I see what you did there,” and imma let u finish but “longcat is looooong” is the best internet meme ever. Ever. All your base are belong to pedobear! Yes, but can it facepalm Crysis? Pwnd! How is babby fromd? Hi I’m 10 and what is this? Shoppd! Leave Britney alone! I can has keyboard cat?

If any of that made sense to you, I’m sorry I had to do that. I know you’re probably sick of it to.

I don’t mean to universally pan Reddit/Digg and their myriad of would-be rivals. I do manage to collect dozens of good article reads a week; that’s why I go back despite all of the above grief. It’d just be nice if there was something that wasn’t eventually ruined by the inanity of the common internet lurker.

Oh wait – would that be Fark?

For Good Measure: Give a boy a book... please!

This week’s facilitation of Good Reads has really opened up the topic of reading choices, habits, and their impacts on literacy. Literacy is something often thought of in a black/white, 1/0 context. It’s a more nuanced grayscale, however, and can be used to describe the difference between someone who is an avid read and someone who is perfectly capable of reading but chooses not to. I’ve been both.

Through this article, I’ve stumbled upon Guys Read and Boys Read. These are organizations dedicated to, in no small part through their Internet presence, change the reality of male readership in the United States. Boys are less likely than girls to read, that’s well known. I’ve often thought that some people are just okay with that, accepting a false rule that males aren’t as inclined to be readers at a young age. This is definitely a black/white view and such thinking undoubtedly lets some who could be readers fall through the cracks.

I spent my years pre-16 in an odd relationship with books. Even though my reading had always been at a level beyond that of my peers, I'd done a poor job of engaging with reading. Being that most of my reading came from school assignments, I resisted. Even when it was for a book that I had been given latitude in choosing, I had a resentment for the proscribed interpretations that so many teachers would drill into us. It still happens that teachers in high school and university frequently prescribe interpretations, but only those poor at their job chafe when the student comes to a different conclusion.

For me, the crucial moment was when I spent several weeks in the hospital while my mother underwent numerous surgeries. I spent hours awaiting the results with my sisters or hours waiting for my mother to wake up. Reading a book to pass the time just matched that moment. I was already very introspective as a teenager facing the mortality of a parent, and having something as introspective as reading clicked for me, providing an appropriately contemplative outlet while letting me engage with such a worldview-altering experience.

Coming out of that time, I understood that books could be an intensely personal thing, even if assigned. That opened up a block I had in engaging with books, a block I now marvel at today. Now I'm a frequent reader, at least by the standards of my adolescence. I enjoy reading like few other things in this world and can be extremely picky about my reading. I can count at least a few books I gave the benefit of the doubt only to later abandon, sometimes even ludicrously close to the conclusion, because the author went of the deep end. Otherwise, I’m now about as devoted a reader as they come. For me, this was a product of external motivators stripping away my own misunderstanding. I, too, existed on the gray scale. Illiterate of course didn’t describe me, but perhaps I was underliterate. I wasn’t reading to my ability or desire, much like someone can be underemployed. Thankfully that has changed.

I really want to thank Mike for bringing Good Reads to our attention. Just like the site was designed to, it created a great conversation around reading, and not just books themselves. Aside from a few dear exceptions we all hold, books aren’t just about the stories or their specific effects on us – surely we could get that on TV or from movies if that was all we wanted. We read because doing so adds something to our world, and that something is different (and maybe similar) for each of us. Being reminded of the value that relationship has for us also reminds of the value it may not, but could have for others.

More Reads means Good Reads

I had some trouble coming up with a specific direction for this post, so I’ll settle on thoughts regarding Good Reads.

A question struck me as I browsed the site: what impacts might it have on actual reading tendencies, if there were a way to quantify that? I know that when I’m busy, reading for pleasure seems like the last thing I can fit into my life. I don’t know exactly what it is that makes me think this. Generally, however, I can find some time to do other things I’d probably consider more useless, such as aimless web surfing or watching a tv show I’m not 100% interested in (I’m looking at you, Heroes!) because I feel like vegetating more than anything. Even though I’m always happier when I’m reading, finding the process meditative and calming, I just don’t make the time.

Since Mike introduced Good Reads on Tuesday, I’ve been thinking a lot about reading. Aside from reviewing books I’ve read, which incidentally is harder than it sounds unless you’ve happened to read the book you’re reviewing within the past year, I’ve been far more engaged with the act of reading this week. I’ve browsed other readers’ lists, spent time trying (mostly fruitlessly) to recall which books I’ve actually read, and read about books I’d like to read in the coming months. What I’ve found is that I’d now really like to make a point to read more again. I’ve already lined up the next few books I’m going after, despite the 10 or so I have on my shelf sitting unread.

So is this a product of the GoodReads/Shelfari etc. model? Does building a community around the act of reading, and around sharing our experiences of reading have an effect more than the sum of its parts? I’m not just talking about reading in reviews, or considering reading experiences in browsing lists. I’m creating a sort of positive reinforcement around these experiences. By making me contemplative about reading beyond the act itself and the immediate aftermath one experiences as they digest a just-finished book, is this social network objectively increasing the amount of reading we do?

I’d have to say the impact must be present, whether or not there exists a means to quantify it. Having reading tied to the social environment of class and later online adds the warm glow of a shared experience. Just in the little bit of in-class discussion, I saw several faces glaze over and I don’t think it was that Mike was boring. I’m pretty sure a few of you were, like me, thinking about what reading you’ve been meaning to get around to and perhaps mentally lining up your next targets.

So, onward to time better spent. Goodbye Heroes. Hello Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Thanks, Mike!