The Coming Storm: Digital Text Replaces Print & Digital Reading Replaces Print Reading

        Internet-based text, once created and "published" to the World-Wide Web, is inherently unstable: it can be changed by the owner, hacked by an intruder, changed by a system administrator, censored by a government, or completely unavailable because of high web traffic, server maintenance or crash, a changed URL, a virus or trojan horse program controlling your browser, power failure anywhere between you and the server, and naturally occurring or human-caused electro-magnetic pulse (EMP).  Printed paper text, seemingly so fragile, can remain readable longer than any digital document yet created.  Just think about what has to work correctly to make a digital text legible.

• Print vs. Digital Surrogates / Editions vs. Manuscripts: Dickinson XVI vs. Johnson's Critical Edition vs.  Photographic facsimiles of unedited Dickinson manuscripts.  So why can't I routinely get Johnson's critical edition for free online? Text created for print has many, many points at which it is anchored and tested for accuracy, coherence, and theoretical soundness, and they create "intellectual property," not just "information."

• Gresham's Law and Internet Media: Between 1995 and today, the "Moby Shakespeare"'s 1866 Globe Edition crowds out all other online Shakespeare texts: no copyright + free availability = ubiquity.

• Rein, "Hello, Grisham / So Long Hemingway?"--library budget crises and "weeding" of collections privileges frequency of use over "canonical" or "classic" status, and minor works stand no chance in print.  (See Randy Smith's email!)

• Hesse, "Truth, Can You Handle It?"--information vs. knowledge; speed vs. accuracy; ease vs. difficulty; what the world knows vs. original thought, "wikiality" and "truthiness" vs. reality and truth--in each case, the former term is winning and the latter is losing.

• Ralf Schneider, "Hypertext Narrative and the Reader: A View from Cognitive Theory," European Journal of English Studies, 9:2 (August 2005) 197-208 (Available online at:  http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=17980481&site=ehost-live).  Electronic text readers read shorter texts, taking less time.  Electronic texts are made shorter and characters in fictions are flattened to reduce psychological depth. 

• The Reader-Response Feedback Loop: Culler & Mailloux--writers anticipate readers' behavior and design their works to engage it.

• Your Online Searches Are Corrupted Before You Do Them: Two Major Ways Web Site Operators Cheat to Raise Their Google Page-Ranks

• Thomas Jefferson's Library at the Library of Congress.

• Do you want to visit the Garrett Library on Wednesday afternoon of Exam Week (ca. 1:00-4:00)?