Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Thank you for inviting me here tonight; in particular I want to thank Katie and
Sonia for all their hard work organizing this conference—I know the sort of tedious,
detailed and exacting tasks that requires and I'm really glad someone else had to do it.
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Thanks to Dana for tossing my name into the hat and for having the chutzpah at thirteen
to join the Horror in Film and Literature list and hold his own despite our attempts to beat
on the brat.
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I want to thank all the organizations that sponsored this event: I figured if I needed to pad
the talk, I could read through them all very slowly, but this slide will have to do.
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I want to talk about the weird intersections between the digital age and the
If you've read Beowulf, you'll know that digressions are a key feature of the poem. While
initially an episode might seem unrelated to the main narrative, each sheds light on an
important aspect of the overall story, such as how Hildeburh's mourning over her son and
husband prefigures the woman singing at Beowulf's funeral or how the burning of Heorot
tips us off to fractures in the Danish court. So trust me; I'm a doctor.
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When I first received the invitation to speak here, after almost deleting it as spam,
I immediately thought of Jim Dixon in Kingsley Amis' comic classic, Lucky Jim.
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If you don't know the book, it's one that captures academic life with a merciless and
hilariously observant eye, rather like David Lodge's Small World, which skewers the
academic conference circuit. I loved the book long before I decided to pursue a PhD and
my immersion in academic life has only made me love it more. The novel embodies all
my ambivalence with academia: all that potential for knowledge, thought and meaningful
exchanges too often undone by pettiness, obfuscation and the horrible weight of
bureaucracy. It also has the very finest description of a hangover in English literature.
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I mention it now because the climax comes when Jim delivers a speech on
"Merrie England," one that he'd been drafted to give in place of the senior professor in his
department. Of course by the time he reaches the podium, he's hopelessly drunk,
floundering and eventually rude, abusive and giving up all pretence to any attempt to talk
about medieval England in any way. I use this as a "what not to do" example, by the way,
The second thing that came to mind was the high bar set by Kurt Vonnegut for
speeches at colleges.
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His good humor and loving humanism became such a trademark image that a piece not
according to Andrea Wesselenyi, who went to the trouble of sifting through the myriad
emails and posts that tangled the story—with one person (for reasons unknown)
The advice "Wear sunscreen" sounded enough like Vonnegut's wry humor that the tag
was accepted and inevitably forwarded by a million billion people afterward. I may be
exaggerating the number, but not by much. That's the thing with a digital meme. It's
instantly shareable.
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And easy to manipulate. So Vonnegut's name gets attached and few people
"it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, 'Huh? What?' You yell shark,
In other words, you forward a piece that says Mary Schmich, everybody says, 'who?' but
you forward a piece that says Kurt Vonnegut and fifty or a hundred of your friends do the
same thing. It's about authority and authenticity—just like in the Middle Ages.
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There exist many medieval manuscripts attributed in this manner: the Pseudo-
Alcuin, the Pseudo-Turpin, the Pseudo-ben Sira. These works were attributed to well-
known authors or to fake authors whose names sounded authoritative. I always impress
upon my students that the Middle Ages were all about claims to authority. Latin has more
authority than the vernacular for centuries, the bible has more authority than mere human
opinion, men have more authority than women and kings more authority than their
subjects. Chaucer's Wife of Bath claims experience as her only authority, but she peppers
her lengthy prologue with knowing references to biblical stories and clerical authorities
We've got the same anxiety about authority and authenticity now. I want to try to
make an argument about the digital milieu of our time being roughly equivalent in some
key ways to the oral milieu of the distant past. Of course the digital one moves more
quickly and can be more comprehensive—a whisper on Twitter can be heard across the
How does that manifest? Phishing scams for instance: though we probably want to
believe that even the most novice web cruiser can recognize the typical Nigerian banking
The sophistication of these flim-flammers grows as they ape the style of authority and
authenticity. Our campus has been plagued lately with emails alerting users that their
inboxes are filled and they must log in remotely to sort the problem out. The complexity
of these missives, which try to mimic campus emails from the IT department, is a wonder
next to the random verbiage of the average penis enlargement or lotto winning spam.
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Worse, we've now got fake warnings about non-existent scams that fill up your inbox just
the same. Consequently, this gives people more anxiety. Who can you trust?
That's the underlying fear of the digital age. The famous New Yorker cartoon,
"On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog," points to the genuine discrepancy between
At the heart of this fear stands performance. Increasingly in the digital age it's true, as
Vonnegut wrote in Mother Night, we are what we pretend to be, so we should be really
careful about what we pretend to be. I can tell you that I'm a sober, serious medieval
but I could just as easily be a romance writer who pens scandalously steamy novels in a
My title "Converting Monks into Friars" is about the need for us, scholars, to step
up and claim authority in the public realm by actively performing our work in the open.
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Monks were supposed to keep to their cells in quiet contemplation offering a mostly
unseen model of piety, while friars were sent out into the community to beg for alms for
the church and to preach the word as a very visible sign of piety. We need to come out of
The long history of elitism connected with that phrase goes all the way back to the Song
of Solomon, where the lover's neck is compared to an ivory tower, but it was also a
popular motif in medieval depictions of the Mary, an oddly phallic image of purity like
the unicorn, a fierce beast who could only be tamed by a gentle virgin.
Look around us: the ivory tower has become a death trap—if only for the fact that
American anti-intellectualists are taking an axe to it. The undeclared war on education
has been devastating and continues to broaden. "No Child Left Behind"—a deeply flawed
concept based on falsified data—has assured that all children are being left behind. The
mistrust of education, erudition and intellect grew from our Puritan heritage but has had a
boost in recent years thanks to the virulent right wing campaign to make us ashamed of
our smarts and suspicious of people who can think. [gratuitous Tea Party signage]
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One of the reasons I love being in Britain is that they honor and respect their
boffins: what a great word. Stephen Fry, the gay, manic-depressive, gadget happy Oxford
graduate who remains restlessly curious about things like printing presses and poetry may
be the most famous man in Britain. Feminist (that dirty word here) Germaine Greer pops
up on chat shows and game shows. Professor Brian Cox is rightly reckoned a rock star
because of his level of fame that has him appearing with Alan Moore and receiving an
And speaking of Queen, the guitarist of that rock band went back after years of massive
I don't think we have to take up guitars or chat shows to change the climate for
but we do need to get out there and show people what we do and why it's important. And
we need to do it in ways that people understand and in the places that they go. Too much
of academia has been a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear. Guy LeCharles
Gonzales offers a great example of this in his discussion of the way the conversation on
education has been re-framed by the people behind the controversial documentary
Waiting for Superman not only because of their film, but also their active and elaborate
Conversely, Diane Ravitch’s truly excellent book, The Death and Life of the
Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining
Education, takes the traditional approach, an expert voice armed with data, strong
opinions and a call to action, all buried between the covers of a hardcover book
that will be read by far too few people, and offers those who might be inspired to
act… nothing.
We have to offer something. We have to reach out. We need to let people know
what we're doing and that it's important. Academic integrity doesn't have to mean
academic frigidity. But we've got a massive PR problem that goes far beyond the ivory
We face a growing tide of corporate control over every aspect of our lives, one that
directly benefits from an ignorant and ill-informed populace. To do that we need to reach
the hearts as well as the minds of people who may not be in our classrooms (yet). We
need to show that our work is essential not just to other academics, but to the very fabric
of this nation which seems to be unraveling as we watch. Social media offers one of the
How did a medievalist get so entwined in New Media? I know what you think: we study
dead languages in dark libraries where we thumb through dusty leatherbound volumes of
vellum translating obscure sermons. Okay—well, sometimes we do. I did have to master
a number of obscure languages for my PhD. I have gone to the British Library to handle a
tenth century manuscript, so I have touched a part of that distant past, felt the skin of it
with the holes where the page was stretched to far and the hair that didn't get scraped
from hide, while I traced words written by a long dead hand a thousand years before me.
And yes, I cried the first time I saw the Beowulf manuscript, its singed edges reminding
me that we very nearly lost it in the Cotton Fire. And yes, I did suggest my university
start a medieval theme park where people would have to make their own book from
scratch.
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And it's true that some medievalists (like my dissertation director) are quite happy to
have nothing more modern than a fountain pen—if only for the reason that they don't
want to keep a flock of geese in their office for fresh quills—and shrink from using
However, by and large, medievalists are geeks. This, perhaps, does not surprise
you. I seem to be one of the few who did not decide to become a medievalist after
Tolkien was a medievalist before he redefined the genre of epic fantasy; he drew on
medieval works like Beowulf and The Volsunga Saga. But the people who read him are
often the kind likely to watch Star Wars and read speculative fiction and yeah, own
Apart from simply being geeks, the primary reason medievalists were early
adopters of the net: scarce resources. Remember how I said there was only one Beowulf
manuscript? That's the case for a lot of medieval works. When we say there are "a lot" of
manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales we're nonetheless talking about fewer than one
hundred. The "best seller" of the Middle Ages, a work known as The Pricke of
If you want to study a manuscript and it is located far from you, you had to travel to go
take a look at it. The previous solution for examining manuscripts you could not actually
travel to see was to get microfilm of the volume. For fragile manuscripts, this was also a
way to preserve their integrity and avoiding excessive handling. If you've ever used
microfilm, however, you know what a poor medium it is for detail. If you're trying to
Digital copies are miles ahead in quality. In 1993, Kevin Kiernan launched the
Digital copies really are the next best thing to being there when it comes to
paleographical studies and the way most academic budgets are going, it's the only one
many of us can afford. Scarce resources mean a lot of networking, too. In addition to rare
manuscripts, there were also almost as rare reference books that you couldn't get through
cataloguing. Before I started graduate school, I was already networking with scholars in
the field in discussion groups for Old Norse and Old English via Gopher [not that kind].
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Back in the days before your mother was on the internet (mine still isn't), there was a
text-only version where information came in hierarchical lists that you could go up or
down, but not sideways. If Gopher was an escalator compared to the stairs of the library,
the world wide web is a Wonkavator. Medievalists were all over it from the beginning.
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But it's not easy. Trust me: as a medievalist I know how hard it can be to convey
the worth of what you do. I have been known to use the obscurity of my studies to baffle
and intimidate colleagues. I made sure that my first opportunity to speak in front of my
new colleagues at my current job included a chance to recite some Anglo-Saxon poetry
My students always get the opening lines of Beowulf recited to them (of course) as well
Mastering nine or ten languages for your dissertation does give a sense of
accomplishment which can at times lead to arrogance, but it also offers the genuine
problem of putting a great distance between what's in your head and what's in the head of
So, I spend most of my time translating the past to the present. Not just the words:
the majority of what my students read, they read in translation. What I need to translate is
the entire context. I have to bring alive the Middle Ages so that students can understand
not just the sense of the words they're reading (challenging enough that) but the culture
from which they spring. I start every semester with the words, "You have been lied to"
Most of what they think they know about the Middle Ages is lies: people did not think
the world was flat, Vikings do not have horns on their helmets, Roger Bacon was
employing the scientific method in the twelfth century and those "medieval" witch hunts?
Those were from the early MODERN era. And yes, people bathed—in fact the public
bathhouse was likely to be one of the best places for conversation and gossip. These are
the ideas I have to disconnect and replace with the true picture, translate the silly notions
they've got through popular culture about the time period into more well informed and
We need to do the same "translating" of our work with the general public. We
have to unpack not just the importance of what we do, but the entire process of how we
do it, to demystify the procedure of scholarship and lay bare our methods. We have to
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make academia a spectator sport. There's a great Monty Python sketch that presents novel
You hear the roar of the crowd as "local boy Thomas Hardy" sits down to write his novel
The Return of the Native and the announcers giving the play by play sound just like the
commentators at any football match: "…he dips the pen in the ink and he’s off! It’s the
first word, but it’s not a word, oh no, it’s a doodle way up on the left-hand margin, it’s a
piece of meaningless scribble and he’s signed his name underneath. Oh dear, what a
disappointing start!" They play the scene for laughs, but I know for a lot of scholars the
very idea of exposing their developing work is terrifying. Yet that's precisely what we
need to face if we want to get more people to comprehend what we do and its importance.
While I don't think it's necessary to literally write in public—though that is also a
useful act—we do need to be much more forthcoming about the process. Fortunately
there are a lot of scholars already engaged in this process in a wide variety of ways. One
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great site to find out more about the folks who are doing this is Enabling Open
Scholarship, but there are many more and probably at least one or two in the area in
Consider academic publishing: there's a lot of work done researching and then
writing. There's also a huge amount of work done to peer review and then edit those
pieces. Then there's a further step of publishing and printing, and finally there's the
distribution step, which may or may not include publicity, garnering published reviews of
the final product or advertising the work at conferences or in other publications. It's a
be a lot less expensive if instead of being packed into small print runs of library quality
papers, it were openly available on line to anyone who's interested in the topic.
Open Scholarship does have some of the same costs in time investment, but it has
none of the printing costs and more importantly it doesn't have as much of the lag time.
The instantaneous access of the web—the satisfaction of writing something and posting it
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at once—makes it more and more difficult to withstand the slow pace of traditional
publishing. I realise that some of our impatience marks us as creatures of the 21st century
conversation. How well does a conversation go if there are gaps as long as years between
the speakers?
Picture this: you're working on your dissertation and you see a notice for a new
book on a related topic. You've got something to add to that conversation. However, even
if you've defended already, you've still got to get your dissertation out to publishers who
might consider it. Should one choose to publish your tome, they will next ask you to edit
it—primarily but not solely to remove all the things your committee asked you to include
to show your knowledge of the work in your field. Add on the usual time for the various
stages of publishing and printing, and your "response" finally comes out—but the
conversation has moved on. Digital scholarship can speed up the process immensely and
keep those conversations going, while maintaining the academic rigour that is so
Most academic publishers are struggling at best; some exist only because they have
university support underwriting them. People will still want printed editions of many
works, but academic publishers are going to go through the same upheaval that
Things are not going to change; they have changed. Think also about the prohibitive costs
of textbooks. With the advent of tablets and ereaders it's much easier for students to read
campus lab with buzzing fluorescent tubes, constant chatter and the whirr of other
This is how we should be writing, too—for ereaders and online reading. I realise that my
weekly column for BitchBuzz has retrained the way I write. Instead of adding footnotes,
my habit is now to add links. I've already incorporated that into my blog writing. Instead
British comedy references—I just slap a link onto the phrase and let people investigate
further if they're inclined to do so. I know that when my students read a large number of
them never look at those footnotes at the bottom of the page. Would any more of them
click on live links while reading an ebook, particularly if a dialogue box popped up with
the requisite information, which they could close as soon as they read it and continue
We need to begin living as the kind of scholars our times require and we have to do it
now. We have to get out of the ivory tower and into the daylight of the public streets—
even if it's only the digital information highway as we so quaintly called it back in the
90s. I know it can be difficult to step out of the comfort of the cloister and into the bright
glare of the public gaze, but you can do it. As Kurt Vonnegut said, "wear sunscreen"—it
will help. But get out, be heard and be seen. Show the value of what you do to your
Too many of my colleagues try to hide from the digital world. "You can't use
websites as sources" some will say. "You can use websites that end in .edu but you
cannot use other websites," or the always reliable, "Do not use Wikipedia under any
circumstances!"
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Never mind that studies have demonstrated Wikipedia to be reasonably reliable—at least
as much as print encyclopedias. And I think it's a very interesting assignment to have
students monitor a topic on Wikipedia and examine how it changes, because all robust
websites change. Information has never been static; now we have the technology to keep
up with the changes. Yes, it is true that any idiot with a computer can set themselves up
as an "expert."
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That's why an essential part of teaching critical thinking should be teaching students how
to critically read the web. Sturgeon's Law was made for the web and we can see it so
clearly there.
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One of the very first things I do in my Writing for New Media course is have the
It's a great way to introduce them to the rhetoric of web design. I find that my students
have a sophisticated ability to read visual cues, but they lack the ability to articulate how
convincing or fake. We talk about elements of design including colour—usually the first
thing they mention—and layout as well as links, buttons and images. I'm kind of amazed
at how much more knowledgeable students are about fonts now. They recognize fonts!
Even five years ago I still found it necessary to explain what I meant by a "font" and they
really only connected it with word processors (and padding paper length). While they
don't quite assimilate the concept of branding, they can spot fonts that ape well known
Back to Dihydrogen Monoxide: they parse the site carefully commenting on the
color choice (unexciting), the fonts (serviceable), images (too few, small, most look like
standard issue clip art), links (Paypal for donations, similar organizations) and they
conclude, not unreasonably that the site is probably a few years old by the look of it, run
by people who are more concerned about the message than how it's delivered and overall
responsible and it's very informative. I suppose you can tell they're mostly liberal arts
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majors in the class, because they seldom stop to consider what "dihydrogen monoxide"
might be.
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but I want the lessons to stick: Don't be fooled by the rhetoric of the page: dig into the
content. Find out who's responsible—if you can't find out, there's going to be a reason,
whether it's mere incompetence or some attempt at subterfuge. Doubt and examine. After
this exercise, we turn our now more informed gaze upon websites for corporations, public
services, social justice organizations and even our own college. My students offer sharp
critiques and suggestions about how to improve our website's appearance and usefulness
Of course along the way we deal with a lot of the hot button issues that consume
us all as we try to negotiate teaching in the digital age, including those big problems,
I find it interesting that when I mention my New Media course to colleagues their first
question is usually, "What do you do about plagiarism?" It drives me crazy that the
people most concerned about plagiarism of words have no compunction about copying
and using art without attribution of any kind, peppering their syllabus or Powerpoint
You know what I do about plagiarism? Nothing. Well, almost nothing. There's a brief
note on the syllabus after the standard verbiage about academic integrity that says if any
student identifies plagiarism in another student's work, they can receive that student's
It hasn't happened so far; I'm not sure it will ever happen. I don't think I want it to
happen. Mostly I think it's unlikely to happen because of the nature of the writing we do.
My students are looking at websites, copying and pasting information back and forth—
and then commenting on it, explaining, analyzing and interpreting that information. They
seldom know in advance which models we'll be using in class as I try to pluck sites and
stories that are in the news at the time I'm teaching. The best way to avoid plagiarism
Not that I discount the effects of plagiarism and piracy: but I think that policing
via Turn it In and similar paid sources is the wrong approach. We have to face a very
basic and irrefutable fact: once it is possible to make an exact digital copy easily, people
I'm more accustomed to dealing with this issue from the author side, where ebooks mean
epiracy. I know far too may writers who spend inordinate amounts of time hunting down
piracy sites, railing against pirates on social media and begging people to help fight
piracy. Sometimes I think they spend more time worrying about piracy than they do
writing. I guess I don't worry as much about it because I think a lot of digital pirates are
just digital hoarders. Every pirated book is not a lost sale. Some thieves just steal because
they can. And I'm with Cory Doctorow on the difficulty of monetizing obscurity, which
iTunes proved an important fact about music piracy. If you make it easy and affordable
for people to get the music they want, they'd rather pay than pirate, especially when they
know that piracy sites leave them vulnerable to malicious downloads of mallware,
Rather than focus on plagiarism, I think we have to bring more attention to the
students' rhetoric. In my New Media course we focus on the ways that we use language to
create an impression for different audiences. Yes, I talk about textspeak, which often
seems to be used as prima facie evidence of illiteracy. I certainly heard much hand-
wringing amongst my colleagues on Facebook about LOL making it into the OED.
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It made me immediately think about this book: medieval scribes used a whole slew of
abbreviations in manuscripts to save time. When you're copying a giant book by hand,
stopping frequently to sharpen your quill or squinting in the afternoon light, any time you
We need a handbook to decipher them now, fashions change; but they understood one
another because it was a shared discourse community. LOL may not be acceptable in all
We need to work on our own rhetoric, too, and think about addressing a broader public
than just each other and our students. We need to be friars out in the community, not only
gathering alms, but preaching the word: the word is that academia is good, that academia
can be an uphill climb as it requires more time than they have to reconsider everything
they do, but I figure most of you are graduate students and so you can start out on the
right path, rather than have to adapt what you're already doing. So how do we make an
Blog: Whether on your own or as a part of a group, blogs offer an informal site for
showing the intersections between daily life and academia. You can talk about your work
as you do it, you can also talk about the process of working through an academic project.
The sympathy you will generate as well as the understanding achieved pays off
immensely. Blogs also form the backbone of scholarly networking. Where once we had
anonymous bloggers who felt unable to speak truthfully about academic life and its
difficulties and isolation (like Rate Your Students), we now have group blogs that offer
sophisticated knowledge and personal insight to guide those struggling through the
A great example in my field: In the Middle, which features Jeffrey J. Cohen, Karl Steel,
Mary Kate Hurley and Eileen Joy. They present work in progress, highlight new
publications (their own and others') and talk about academic life and conferences. They
Because it's a blog, it's public and it's an on-going conversation that people both inside
Another avenue that's ripe for scholarly discourse: Twitter. I wish I had a dollar for
every time someone told me they just "don't get" Twitter. They're intrigued by the use of
it in the Iranian elections and the Egyptian revolution, but they're always telling me they
don't want to hear about what people had for breakfast. Well, neither do I, so I don't
I follow Margaret Atwood and a host of other well-known writers. I follow publishers
and trade publications. I follow other medievalists and other scholars. I follow people I
know. I follow fake personages who are amusing. And about 1300 people follow me—
why? I could be modest and say, gosh! I just don't know why, but the truth is some are
spambots who follow anyone and the rest are people who like being part of the network
For those of you who get the retro reference, Twitter is "The Relay" and for the rest of
Of course, you know I'm also going to mention Facebook. It often seems that a lot of
folks have a very adversarial relationship with Facebook, whether they refer to it as a
time-suck or as an invader of their privacy. But the plain fact is that the social network
has more than 500 million active users, half of whom log on every day. You have the
world at your fingertips on Facebook. You never know how far a message will spread.
You may want to keep your personal identity just for friends and families, but you can
create pages for your class, your program or department, your projects and invite people
to join the conversation, offer advice, participate. Throw your dreams into the air and see
what they bring back to you. I have had new friendships, places to visit, publications and
more because of Facebook connections. I've also had a hell of a lot of fun. Our work
should be fun. Of course it should be rigorous, challenging and thoughtful, too, but this
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Make no mistake: things have changed. These are the things we can say at present
When Homeland Security announces that they will be sending alerts via Facebook and
Twitter, things have changed. When every business, organization and yes, college or
university has the little collection of "like", "tweet" or "buzz" buttons on their homepage,
things have changed. Everyone may not be on Facebook, but my dad is.
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I have had people sniff at online interactions, saying "I talk to people in real life"
with verbal italics on the latter words, as if the people on the other end of the computer
link were not real. I tell them I have dead friends online.
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Yes, I revel in the shock value of saying that, but I do want to bring them up short [and I
miss my friends a lot]. While it's possible to be false online, to be a dog or whatever, it's
also a way to reach across continents and oceans and find kindred spirits. I have met so
many people who have brightened my days, and perhaps more importantly, my nights—
those long dark nights of the soul where isolation seems certain and comfort far; a friend
who's there in cyberspace can be a friend indeed. You can tell the digital optimists from
Those who believe the internet made of cats and those who believe it is made of trolls.
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I suppose like all things, it's a mixture of the good and bad [Kipper as Naboo]. The
internet is only a tool no better or worse than the people who use it.
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No, I am not a complete lover of technology: I love writing with my fountain pens
Technology for the sake of technology is not what this is about: just because we have the
ability to do something doesn't mean we need to do it and there are a lot of risks involved.
The development of technology without ethics or morality will not bring us good things.
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But we need to use every means possible. There's a concerted war against what we do:
We need to be friars out in the community, preaching the word. The word is thinking and
Be proud of what you do. Remind people that the humanities teach us how to
understand ourselves, what makes life worth living. This is not trivial or frivolous. We
must perform as digital scholars. It can be a good thing to be on stage. Remember, the
stage can be digital; open your mind to the possibilities—all the possibilities, what
Be friends with your head; if you find a Lady Gaga song illuminates what you're saying
about Restoration drama, use it. If you can make a comparison between The Pardoner's
Tale and Treasure of the Sierra Madre, do it. If you can find a way to explain the current
interdisciplinary scholar get compounded by choosing to study popular culture, too, but
it's what academia desperately needs now. "Demonstrating relevance" seems to have been
interpreted as "you can get a job with this"; true relevance means bringing out our
essential humanity whether you are studying medieval literature or The Wire. Tell us who
I wanted this to be a speech that changed the world, that brought children of every
nation together to join hands and sing songs, for all of you to rise up as one and declare
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universal peace, to fill your heads with impossibly adorable images of puppies and kittens
and leave a golden glow of beneficence that no political wrangling or natural disaster
could dispel. I guess I'll have to settle for hoping that you got something useful out of it,
even if there isn't a slice of cantaloupe at the end. Mostly I hope I've encouraged those of
you who—like me—can't seem to fit yourself into existing categories. Be friars for the
church that is learning. Go among the people and preach the word. Go on being friends
with your head; have confidence in your passions; and wear sunscreen. It couldn't hurt.
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