Text and Hubris

The fastest way to stop writing is to begin to think of all of this as a brand.

I’m job hunting right now. I’ve applied for a fellowship but I’m not sure where I stand in the running. I think I would be a great fit but one never knows exactly what is being looked for. If I get the fellowship I will be in great shape because it runs for a full year and will easily set me for grad school in 2012 (assuming no sudden end-of-the-world scenario).

I’m not counting on it, though. I’ve done my due diligence. I have my LinkedIn site set up- feel free to connect to me. I’ve done countless Google searches on myself and my data and everything comes up looking good. The Geoff brand is coming along. I am more a child of the digital age than even I suspected. I was really enjoying building this online identity until I realized it was invading every part of my psyche. In truth, it had already been there. It began when I started trying to decide if I was prose or poetry writer. That’s a stupid- stupid -thing to decide. I knew that. I knew that before I entered college. The point is always to write what connects, what’s real. Here I’ve been caught up trying to fit in. I want to be part of the cool kids, the literary maestros. Maybe it’s more important that I just be who I am and damn the rest.

I sat down in a class today and listened to people tell stories about their lives. I watched them perform themselves. For an hour and half, masks came down and we touched something real. If you have the opportunity to do that in any class, do it. This class is probably the second most important class I have taken in college because it reminded me why I do this. It reminded me why I came back to English, to the very words themselves. We are storytellers. Writers or not, actors or not, it does not matter. Every one of us has a story to tell and I want to hear those stories. I want to share those stories. I love workshop. I love it because we share stories. We share things that are important to us. Pieces, chapters of ourselves – or at least we should.

I stopped doing that. My prose and poetry has become staid and rule-centric. It’s boring and flat because I ripped the life out of it. I’d rather have a page of chaotic nonsense that touched the real than a gem of text constructed by the numbers. I love new media, but this is a trap that haunts us even more than the rest. Why? Because we have analytics. I know exactly how many readers hit this site (a small but growing number). I know how each post affects the hit count and how that integrates with twitter posts and the like. I monitor all of it. Numbers are everywhere and I can see a direct relation between what I write and the numbers. This gets addicting, I know. It’s like a video without an broad base of possibilities and it’s tempting to build for the numbers. That’s doesn’t work, though (if it did, this would be a porn site). It’s important to remember that the numbers are ex post-facto. The are not the goal, merely a detail of data tangentially related to the story at hand. That story is important. The numbers…well they just rise and fall.

If we can remember that. If I can remember that, then everything seems a bit more clear.

I haven’t talked about Apple for a while and, honestly, I am not going spend too much time on them now. It’s their platform and they can make up whatever rules they want for it. Frankly, it’s not the only game in town. My media purchasing is not limited at all by not having any Apple products or their iTunes software installed on any of my systems. I know they have a large share of the marketplace right now (The University has a huge Apple following), but I do love a world where those things still can and do change. Apple is not the end-all-be-all; it is merely another company trying to lock-in as much money as it can before the cards start to tumble.

I believe in content. I don’t believe in platforms. Apple can do what it wants. Some content creators will cave and pay their 30%; the rest won’t. In either case, content continues and what Apple has proven is that their iPad or iPhone – or any of their hardware, for that matter – has a very limited value. It’s the all about the apps. It’s the content that really matters. The iPad user doesn’t care about the iPad, they care about what cool things they can get for their iPad. That is what Apple is trying to control because that is where the money is. Console developers knew this a long time ago. They could sell a console for a low profit and then feed off the game licensing. This is all that Apple is trying to do. The difference between Apple and console developers is that games used to be sold through retail stores. Apple wants complete control of that as well. Then again, look at Sony, Microsoft, even Google. They all want to do that, to some extent.

As creators, we need to ask ourselves where our content is best placed. Since I am still a small – well non-existent at this point – content creator, Apple’s 30% cut is too high for me. Of course, this ignores all of Apple’s other onerous policies regarding content (which makes me wonder – will Apple also seek to control the type of content that is sold?). Even if I ignore all of those issues – which I wouldn’t -  I don’t want to pass a 30% charge to people interested in buying my work. Of course, I also like to eat. Apple has taken a very adversarial role with content creators and I don’t think that is a positive for anyone. Obviously, Apple doesn’t want my content and luckily I have a whole wide online space in which to sell without Apple. Yeah, it can be rougher out here. Apple’s carefully tended garden, with its manicured lawns, has its benefits. Those benefits just don’t outweigh the costs of lock-in. I have, yet, to see any valid reason that does.

Publishing vs. Distribution –
We tend to view publishing and distribution as a unified action and this is not accurate¹. Publishing requires the careful and attentive curation of works by experts who know both the audience and the works in question. Distribution is the method by which those works are provided to the public. You can, to paraphrase Doctorow, place your work in the garage and someone may see it but that’s not publishing. Just posting your work online is the modern equivalent to tossing it in your garage, the chance someone will actually see it is rather low. The Internet, then, is a means of distribution not a means of publishing. This is key to understanding the importance of publishers and it’s also, in my opinion, why there will be a rise in small publishing houses that curate specific types of titles for niche audiences, at least for a while.

The Slush Pile -
Doctorow’s commentary was incredibly apt and again I am paraphrasing, “If you sat me in front of a computer with a web browser and told me to stop clicking when I ran out of interesting things to look at, I’d starve first.” There is a plenty of quality work available online and that work can be customized for audiences. If I post a small video on YouTube for myself and a few friends it may get the play I want even if I don’t reach a million clicks. In addition, as Doctorow noted, the actual cost of clicking on a poor quality work is so low that it is relatively nonexistent. I can easily and immediately go somewhere else and lose little to nothing in the transition. This is entirely different from other forms of media.

The ‘net as an Echo Chamber -
While there are certainly wide assortments of groups that can reinforce any type of opinion a person has on the Internet, it is also very rare that an individual belongs to a single isolated silo. For example, someone may be a conservative or a liberal but they are also mothers and fathers, teachers, professionals, fans, car nuts, and who knows what else. What the Internet does is provide easy transitions between such silos.

It should also be noted that the echo chamber complaint is far less a problem than the echo chamber that can result growing up in a small rather isolated community. Online, leaving the echo chamber is only a click away. The same cannot be said of a small town. My personal opinion is that the real source of concern about the online echo chamber is actually rooted in the idea that the local area is losing its grasp on shaping opinion. Frankly, I don’t always think that is such a bad thing.

Teaching in New Media -
Our kids can’t pay attention! Sound the alarms! This type of argument sounds very similar to every other type of argument that has been made about media in the past. Yes, media can impact how we learn and how we think. Books did, radio did, television did, and so will the Internet. The key is not wholesale disavowal but a reasoned and rational approach to how the new tool can impact and possibly improve teaching. This is especially true with technology – again I point to Rushkoff’s Program or be Programmed. Cory shared an assignment that he taught once and I think it is a great example of how to educate students about new media in general. He had his students contribute to the discussion and make edits, where appropriate, to Wikipedia entries. Then he would track their user names to see the work they were doing and have them comment on it during class time. Quite honestly, this was a fantastic idea and one I may steal in the future.

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King’s comment on the difference between ebooks and mp3 albums is an interesting counterpoint to some of Patel’s objections.

[h/t mediabistro]