Storytelling with Amnesia

via Marxchivist

While I hate to harken back to Halloween, having now passed Thanksgiving, there is one ritual associated with the former holiday that I feel has year-round appeal; ghost stories.  This past Halloween I managed to engage in two forms of the modern ghost story- I watched both a marathon of 'American Horror Story' episodes (verdict: I like it) and Sean Plott (better known to Starcraft fans as Day9) live stream his play-through of the critically acclaimed horror computer game Amnesia: The Dark Descent.  While both played on familiar horror tropes- dramatic lighting, eerie music and action 'jolts'- I found myself more intrigued with Plott's play-through of Amnesia, in part because it was a computer game (yes, I'm a nerd) but mostly because I immediately sensed that this was a new type of ghost story in which I was participating.  Not only was there the appeal of the main storyline being 'told' through play, but Plott also displayed in his live feed a camera on himself that allowed viewers to see his reactions to horrific elements interspersed in the game.  Plott also set-up a chat room for viewers to espouse their comments (or taunts/jeers), making the experience interactive and not simply a one-way netcast.  While there were moments of tedium, anytime tense or scary moments developed I was engaged and watching with bated breath to see what would happen to Plott's character.  Even though I wasn't playing the game I was still drawn into viewing its narrative effect not simply for the story but also to watch the reaction of players recording or streaming the game because in doing so I felt like a participant in the communal act of telling scary stories.

Screenshot of the Sewer in Amneisa- via Frictional Games

Go search YouTube for Amnesia videos and you will see that I'm not alone- there are several examples of others recording themselves playing and reacting to the game's many scary moments.  After watching only a few it becomes obvious that the makers of Amnesia, Frictional Games, developed a truly immersive and deeply frightful environment.  In his GDC Europe 2011 talk, 'Evoking Emotions and Achieving Success by Breaking All the Rules', lead designer Thomas Grip discussed how the Amnesia team made several unconventional (for the Horror genre) choices in the basic mechanics of the game, those being no death, no weapons and no competitive mechanics.  While Grip does a fine job of explaining why these choices were made in his GDC Talk, I believe this quote from his post reviewing 'Heavy Rain' on the blog 'In the Games of Madness: Unspeakable thoughts on horror game design and development' provides a good summation:

What I think happens is that as we interact in a videogame, there is feedback loop between us sending input to the game and us getting information back from the game (in the form of visuals, audio, etc). which builds the basis of us feeling present inside the game's virtual world.  The better this loop works, the more we feel as a part of the experience.

Eschewing traditional mechanics in horror games- the fear of death, the need for weapons, and 'gaming the game' to defeat the various monster obstacles- Amnesia instead relies upon the circulation of information between the game and the player to capture interest and create a compelling atmosphere.  By removing the more obvious 'game' mechanics Frictional Games paradoxically created an even better 'game' that borderlines on interactive storytelling.  Yet players don't feel like the game is a movie- indeed, one of the reasons for Amnesia's emotion evoking success is how easily (perhaps deceptively) it convinces players that their agency in narrative action is real and has consequences that a flowing movie-like narrative structure wouldn't allow.  Thanks to tweaks in how important mood elements (the sanity meter and appearance of monsters) operate, Amnesia creates effortless feedback loops that, honestly, rely much more on the player than the game to provide both fuel and production of emotive responses.  In this regard playing the game is akin to listening to a ghost story.

via William Cromar

This, alone, would be impressive in and of itself.  Yet Frictional Games went a step further and released mod tools for the player community to use for creating their own Amnesia 'stories'.  The results were impressive, as noted by Grip in his post about Amnesia, one year later, found again on 'Games of Madness':

Another pleasant surprise was the amount of custom stories that have been made.  In Penumbra we only knew of a single attempt to make a user-created level and that one was never released in public.  For Amnesia at least 300 custom story projects have been started, and 20 or so have actually become completed, high quality, experiences.  There has even been a Tetris clone with the tools! … It really show that supplying users with creation of tools is well worth the time.

Over at the ModDB 'Amnesia' site there are listed 75 'story' mods in various stages of completion.  One of the most impressive stories in terms of its scope and complete reworking of the original Amnesia setting is 'White Night', created by Turkish Computer Engineering student Tansel Altinel.  On the 'summary' page of White Night's ModDB entry, Altinel makes it clear up front: "White Night is a total conversion mod for Amnesia: The Dark Descent; and focuses on mostly storytelling." (Emphasis in original)  This is evident the moment you boot up the 'story' as Altinel has clearly spent a lot of time on crafting not only a new environment (Amnesia takes place in a castle, White Night at the Denver Mental Hospital) but also new objects, like the box lightbulbs come in, for the player to pick up, examine and toss about the various rooms in the asylum.  This level of detail only adds to the 'feedback loop' Grip describes above and brings the player deeper into the story experience.

Denver State Hospital Entrance found in 'White Night'

What's even more interesting is how both the original Amnesia and the player created 'stories' allow for more than just single-person interaction when the players themselves either record or stream their gameplay experience.  In the case with Sean Plott's live stream, which included a chat room viewers used to comment, the back and forth between player and viewers produced a mix of teases, taunts, even helpful suggestions.  Even though some of the chat room participants, and probably many of the viewers who watched the archival video, already knew the Amnesia story through previous play, they spent time watching Plott play the same game because there was participatory value in watching him encounter and experience the same frightful moments as they did. Much like those who gather around campfires or held flashlights to tell ghost stories, viewers/commenters of Amnesia or its mod derivatives are engaging in a community-themed narrative experience that heavily relies upon the feedback loop between the story and the listener.

One key difference that viewers/streamers/recorders of Amnesia have over the campfire/flashlight crowd is that they are engaging the narrative story in an augmented reality whereby the experience can be shared online for others to view and engage.  Campfire stories are limited to the time and space they are told, whereas Amnesia stories can be told over much longer spans of time and greater distances thanks to their presence in the analog/digital intermeshing that is augmented reality.

Had Frictional Games instead decided to keep the weapons system they first designed for Amnesia instead of cutting it (watch the GDC Europe talk), I'm not sure the streams and recordings of play-throughs would possess the same narrative impact.  The same goes with repeated death moments or the inclusion of competitive mechanics (the game hunting the player down).  These mechanics would be fun for the player (maybe) but not necessarily for the viewer.  By focusing on the immersion, the feedback loop, Frictional Games instead created a narrative experience that could become communal- something I'm not sure would be as possible without the presence of an augmented reality.  Perhaps, as the various player created 'stories' for Amnesia indicate, there is a future for this new type of narrative experience.

Academic Journals Discussion

Earlier today I was lucky enough to be monitoring my Twitter feed while a very informative discussion over paying for academic journal content, reforming the current model, the issues related to open access and the greater role of knowledge production the journal provides.  Since this was an issue I think about in my own impending professional carrier, I decided to curate this discussion using Storify.  The results are can be found here.

Empirical Roots of 'Digital Dualism'

It is often the case with new technology that the promise of change it brings often outstrips its capacity to actually enact that change.  This is certainly true with several digital constructs that emerged over the past decade, like Wikipedia or the Open-Source movement, that are increasingly becoming obsessed with the promise and potential 'social' can bring to the issue of user equality.  Free from the constraints once imposed by more traditional analog methods, digital means of knowledge production and creation offer the promise of true independence and interdependence- yet often these new methods fall prey to (con)structural weaknesses that do little more than perpetuate the previous modes of inequality found in their analog ancestors, albeit in digital terms and conceptions that mask the true nature of their operation in the combined realms of both online and offline activity.

The argument presented above largely comes from a very cogent essay written by Nathan Jurgenson on the blog, Cyborgology.  Titled 'Digital Dualism and the Fallacy of Web Objectivity', Jurgenson argues for abandonment of what he terms a 'digital dualist' perspective in favor a conception he calls 'augmented reality', defined in the quoted sections below:

…recognizing that code has always been embedded in social structures allows persistent inequalities enacted in the name of computational objectivity to be identified (e.g., the hidden hierarchies of Wikipedia, the hidden profit-motive behind open-source, the hidden gendered standpoint of computer code, and so on). I will argue that the fallacy of web objectivity is driven fundamentally by digital dualism providing further evidence that this dualism is at once conceptually false, and, most importantly, morally problematic. Simply, this specific form of digital dualism perpetuates struct ural inequalities by masking their very existence. 

…Perhaps the central theoretical insight that characterizes my work thus far is the concept of augmented reality…simply, this perspective rejects the digital dualist position that the digital and physical are separate spheres and instead promotes the idea that atoms and bits enmesh to create our augmented reality. (Emphasis in the original)

Jurgenson expands on the implications of digital dualist thinking by stating that many digital projects, conceived in this mindset, are imbedded with the notion that they are capable of creating a sphere of activity that is separate and, perhaps, better than similar spaces found in the offline world.  The utopianism inherent in this perspective, however, "betrayed the ultimate reality that none of this digitality really existed outside of long-standing social constructions, institutions and inequalities."

Jurgenson, in my opinion, is absolutely correct- but his insights don't stop there. Take this quote, found later in the piece:

We could list many, many more examples about how supposedly-objective systems are instead embedded in the messiness of offline social structures and inequalities. 

…what this analysis suggests is a traceable path from a conceptual fallacy that predates the Internet and became realized online with the dangerous result of disappearing the visibility of certain forms of social inequalities.

While I agree with most of what Jurgenson states above, I would posit that the 'dangerous result' inherent in digital dualism did not come about solely with the advent of the Internet- it has existed and been realized for quite some time in another construct many would consider mundane; the written word.  In this post, I would like to expand on the thoughts articulated above and demonstrate how Russian peasants, upon encountering the construct of Imperial 'written space', sought to pursue the concept of 'augmented reality' by challenging the 'utopian' ideal assumed inherent in the use of the written word.

Beginning with a short analysis of how written space came to embrace this mantle of 'utopian' ambition and creation of a 'separate' equality driven space through the introduction of Liberalistic ideals, notably marked by the reconfiguration of the state/society relationship found in the shift of subject to citizen, I then want to analyze two distinct examples of how Russian peasants challenged the idea of the written word.  The first focuses on reaction to the 1848 Inventory Reform in the Right-Bank Ukrainian provinces before shifting to the second, a look at peasant appeals of Volost court rulings as discussed in Gareth Popkins insightful article 'Code vs. Custom'.  My goal is to provide empirical evidence in support Jurgenson's claim, above, that digital dualism originates in a conceptual fallacy that predates the Internet, by analyzing how the written word, in part, helped shape this fallacy in forming the analog dualist ideal.

Up front, I should state that while the examples discussed below bring empirical perspective of the processes described by Jurgenson in his conception of 'digital dualism', the two situations have characteristics unique to their temporal locations.  This is not a 'one-to-one' correlative exercise- it should be viewed, instead, as an attempt to bring historical context to the issues raised by Jurgenson in his essay.

Liberalism and the 'Equality' of the Written Word

The question of liberalism…has been one of the constant dimensions of that recent European phenomenon which seems to have emerged first of all in England, namely: 'political life.' -Michel Foucault, Birth of Biopolitics

Michel Foucault delivered a series of lectures during the 1978-79 term at the College de France devoted to furthering study on the art of government by way of examining the question 'liberalism' asks of governing practice; that being, what is the self-limitation of governmental reason?  The idea that government could possess limits on its power was a radical shift from the stance taken by Western pre-modern societies that based their rule more upon coercion rather than regulation.  (This is a gross simplification, but for the sake of brevity I will indulge in such means)  The ideals of Liberalism promised to bring a greater capacity to unleash the latent forces of a nation's citizenry (not subjects- a crucial differentiation that helped give liberalistic norms the air of greater equality) by using a system of discipline through regulation, rather than submission through coercion.  This shift from seeing population as a group of citizens, rather than subjects, possessed profound consequences.  The 'equality' implied in being a citizen meant that the state itself operated within disciplinary bounds, best expressed in what the West called 'rule of law'.  Only by putting all citizens, including the rulers of the state, on equal terms in a juridical conception could the once oppressive forms of control, associated with feudal or medieval systems of rule, be transformed into a limited, reasonable exercise of power capable of spurring growth and the development of knowledge/professions then associated with the increasingly growing power of states like England.  

Of course, not all states were interested in engaging in the self-limitation of power liberalism demanded.  Absolutist regimes, embodied by the rule of Hapsburg and Romanov dynasties, instead sought to embrace aspects of liberalism that could help them develop while still maintaing hold on the reigns of power the 'rule of law' was supposed to self-limit.  This created a contradiction among the subjects ruled in both empires- while the new laws were meant to inspire a sense of greater equality among the varied classes, the written words located in books or edicts did little but provide a thin veneer to justify the gross inequalities still in existence.  As I discussed in my post on High/Low mobility constructs, the asynchronicity created by what the laws espoused and the lived reality on the ground created potential for backlash that manifested itself in use of rumors, 'everyday resistance' and even outright revolt by those who saw themselves as positioned in decidedly unequal positions with regards to the lawmakers.

Peasant/Serf behavior towards, and use of, the written word and the supposedly 'equal' space it created in modern Imperial Russia provides a perfect vehicle through which to explore the issue of 'analog dualism', and allows one to see empirical link between issues raised by Jurgenson above and the past examined below.

Inventory Reform of 1848: The First Example

But what exactly is this state of war? Even the weak man knows- or at least thinks- that he is not far from being as strong as his neighbor. And so he does not abandon all thought of war. But the stronger man- or at least the man who is a little stronger than the others- knows, despite it all, that he may be weaker than the other, especially if the other uses wiles, surprise, or an alliance. -Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended 

"То-то, толкуешь, а мы закон знаем."  "That is what you discuss, but we know the law." Parish Clergyman to Soldiers sent to enforce the Inventory Reform in the Volhynia Province.

Over the course of the first-half of the nineteenth century, as Imperial Russia watched its relative power decline in the face of a growing industrial England and Western Europe in general, several intellectuals and bureaucrats alike began to realize the necessity of bringing reform to a institution that served as the backbone of economic production for the state in the past two centuries- serfdom.  Before granting emancipation in 1861, there were several limited attempts at reform made in smaller sections of the empire.  The Inventory Reform of 1848, carried out in the Right Bank Ukrainian provinces of Kiev, Podolia and Volhynia, sought to reign in the landowning nobles power over their serf populations.  Inventories were documents that stipulated the amount of land serf families were given to farm and also set the terms for the amount of dues they paid to their landowner or the total number of labor days (known as corvee labor) a landowner could demand from their serfs each week.  It was a limited, yet ambitious, plan to use top-down reform methods in an effort to improve the living conditions of serfs lives while also keeping the mainly Polish landowners in check.    

Due to the sensitive nature of bringing this kind of reform to serf populations, measures were taken to ensure limited 'misunderstanding' of the comprehensive laws to be enacted.  Promulgated between November 1847 and March 1848, the Inventory Laws were to be delivered by the Marshall of the Nobility and district police officials to each individual estate.  Upon arriving, serfs gathered for a special service in the village church where the Marshall would read aloud the regulations to all assembled, taking special care to note how the new laws were conceived of as a special favor from the tsar.  The local village priest was tasked with providing answers 'without any kind of interpretation' to questions serfs possessed.  Almost immediately, serfs challenged the interpretation and implementation of the new laws.  

Of central concern for serfs was filling out the written contracts or record books that established the new land boundaries and labor obligations.  While reactions were diverse, complaints generally fell into the following categories:

1.  The 'books' were written in hand, rather than printed.
2.  The 'books' used the crest of the landowner, rather than that of the tsar.
3.  The 'books' mandated a higher number of labor days than the inventory laws stipulated.
4.  The 'books' were not issued in other villages.
5.  Neighboring serf villages were not accepting the new 'books'.
6.  Many expressed fears that if they signed the new 'books', they would remain serfs forever.

There were a few reasons why Serfs felt justified making these complaints.  First, the Inventory Reform sought to implement a standardized model that was based on a single estate located in the northern portion of the Right-Bank Ukrainian provinces.  Since every estate possessed varying levels of serf population and composition of land types, the use of a single model simply did not make sense for the majority of estates under the jurisdiction of the new laws.  Second, the rigid impracticality of the written code ran roughshod over the established notion of community, informed by local customs and traditions held by the often distinct villages, that serfs worked communally to uphold.  The reasons for refusing to sign the new Inventory 'books', provided above, reflect the sense of disconnect between the 'one-size-fits-all' model imposed and the reality of the estate in question.

In general, serfs resisted engaging solely with the written word because it represented a 'space' dictated not by the traditions and customs held by the local populace but, instead, the rules and regulations of the higher authorities; the laws did not embrace the 'augmented reality' serfs desired.  For the authorities, this seeming separation of space created by the written word was advantageous and allowed for greater levels of purported 'equality' to be applied to the whole of society.  Serfs, often illiterate and weary of 'outside' intrusion, understandably felt differently.  The conflict between traditional values and the norms expressed in the Inventory Laws is pithily summed up by the quote of the parish clergyman provided above.  While the authorities, represented by the soldiers, discussed what the new reform meant (advocating 'analog dualism'), the local serf population, represented by the local clergyman, provided an alternative view based on their interpretation of the 'true' meaning of the law (advocating their version of 'augmented reality').  

Because the laws were written in a particularly dense form of legalese, it proved easy for serfs to base complaints on circulating rumors and differing interpretations of the Inventory reforms.  (Another example of the interaction between High/Low Mobility Constructs)  These tactics were not without merit- the level of unrest created by initial implementation of the laws caused authorities to rethink their initial proposals.  While this behavior did not keep the laws from being enacted, they did force change that often accepted, albeit to a limited degree, the desires and issues raised by serf populations.

(Much of the information from this section of my response comes from David Moon's excellent article "The Inventory Reform in Right-Bank Ukraine in 1847-48")

Peasant Appeals to Volost Court Decisions: The Second Example

…peasant petitions were considerably more sophisticated than earlier; no longer content with traditional appeals for justice or compassion, they offered more complex arguments to establish their legal and moral claims. -Gregory Freeze, From Supplication to Revolution 

…villagers showed themselves to be skilled at exploiting the contingencies inherent in the customary law situation itself. -Gareth Popkins, "Code versus Custom"

Emancipation of the serfs in 1861 meant a radical reshaping of a large section of Russian society.  No longer directly relying upon landowners to regulate and ensure the production of resources on peasant lands, in addition to maintaining law and order, the Imperial Russian government reluctantly endorsed another governing model inspired by the liberalistic quest to produce citizens instead of subjects- the volost court system.  A volost was a unit of land-area measurement, roughly equivalent to a county in the American system.  The volost court was another attempt to cede some measure of authority away from the absolutist government and more into the hands of locals- although, again, in very limited terms and always under the supervision of central authorities.  As Gareth Popkins states in his article, "Code versus Custom? Norms and Tactics in Peasant Volost Court Appeals, 1889-1917", this attempt at self-rule reflected an understanding that local volost judges held a much clearer view of both unwritten local peasant customs, then still very much alive and influencing conceptions of legality and morality, in addition to written legal statues (despite the fact that many volost judges were illiterate).  Popkins focused his article on appeals to the higher court authorities concerning matters of inheritance and family property disputes, as these areas relied heavily upon local customs for implementation.

In the examples provided below, there is an increased sophistication of peasant use in both their local customs and the written legal codes.  While it can be argued that the Imperial Russian state accepted the use of local custom in legal proceedings in order to build up a legal tradition from the ground up (this is the position Popkins takes in his article), I would suggest that peasants were, instead, attempting to bring the separate written space of legal codes into alignment with their concept of 'augmented reality'.  This is not to say that they always sought this incorporation, as sometimes peasants would insist on utilizing the written legal code if it worked to their benefit.  However, it should be noted that peasant attempts to justify the use and existence of local, unwritten customs into the larger juridical apparatus demonstrates that many felt the supposed equal and separate space created by legal codes did not always foster an equal treatment for the peasant class.  In a real sense, the cases described below point to an evolutionary understanding of how to blend the lived experience with the space created by the written word. 

Although Popkins analyzes several examples of peasant appeals, I selected just two cases for this essay- one, the Egorova case, in which the written law code trumped the presence of traditional custom and another, the Shelokov case, where custom managed to push back the boundaries of codified laws.  

Sevost'ianovye Brothers vs. Egorova-1910

The crux of this case centered on whether Egorova could receive a widow's share of her dead husband's property as stipulated under the written civil laws.  The husband's sons, the Sevost'ianovye Brothers, appealed to higher authorities claiming the Volost court decision ignored local customs that made a distinction between young, childless widows and aged widows.  The higher courts rejected the appeal by the brothers on the grounds that no custom had been quoted by either party in the initial Volost court case and that the use of civil laws, in this case, was appropriate.

What makes this case interesting is that both Egorova and the Sevost'ianovye brothers were aware of the local customs in use- yet both parties clearly hoped that exclusive use of civil laws would prove beneficial to their cases.  When denied what they felt was a fair settlement, the brothers then turned to local custom as a means of overturning the established written space of civil laws.  While ultimately unsuccessful, this behavior demonstrates that, by the early 20th century, peasants were much more adept at negotiating both the world of local custom and the written space of codified laws- in effect creating an 'augmented reality' that could be selectively utilized depending on the situation at hand.  Even more interesting, while the state could have insisted on utilization of only written space, they clearly sought an accommodation between peasants and society through the acceptance of local custom in legal claims.  In a real sense, the Imperial state acknowledged the presence of the 'augmented reality' peasants clamored for, although one should keep in mind the ultimate authority resided in the central governing bodies- they may have tolerated such claims but could ultimately reject them.

The Shelokov Case-1915

There existed a tradition in peasant communities that couples without a son could take a young man into their household in a form of adoption termed primak.  This relationship was not usually recorded in official registers, but among the local populace the designation of primak granted full rights as a male heir to an estate.  In this case, Evdokiia Zakharova accepted Alkesander Shelokov into her house as a primak and Shelokov married Zakharova's daughter.  After Zakharova died, Shelokov appealed to the Volost court to seek his rights as an heir to Zakharova's estate.  After the case moved to the higher courts, Shelokov was awarded a much smaller parcel of the estate than was traditionally given to male heirs- Shelokov appealed, claiming the district courts were not aware of his designation of primak and the local custom granting him full rights as a male heir.  The courts decided he should receive a greater portion of the estate amounting to a 'widow's share'.  Feeling slighted again, Shelokov appealed the new decision, this time sending in a list of improvements he made on the estate in order to demonstrate his willingness and ability to manage the full parcel of land.  This tactic proved far more successful, as the district board officially recognized his primak status and instructed the volost courts to review the case once more taking into account the local custom of inheritance associated with those designated as a primak.

Here we have a case that, at first, sought to place Shelokov directly under the rule of written space in a clear embracement of the 'analog dualist' perspective.  Only through vigorous appeal did Shelokov receive his traditional, unwritten rights as a designated primak.  Just like the Egorova case discussed above, the state recognized the presence of an 'augmented reality', albeit only after continued insistence by Shelokov that the 'analog dualist' conception did not apply and could not provide justice as established under traditional rights.

From Inventory Reform to Legal Custom- Evolution of 'Augmented Reality'

In this very brief survey of complex peasant/serf interactions with the Russian Imperial state, I've tried to demonstrate the empirical roots of what Jurgenson calls the web objective fallacy of 'digital dualism' by showing that similar fallacious claims were made with the written word, in what I will term 'analog dualism', through use of supposedly objective 'liberalistic' claims to equality embodied in codified laws.  Clearly, due to the rather long history of the written word in modern societies, there are several more examples that could be examined in greater depth to provide even stronger empirical claims to points raised in Jurgenson's essay.

What the examination of both Inventory Reform and the use of local customs in legal appeals points towards is an evolution of the applicability of 'analog dualism' to include, or at least acknowledge, the 'augmented reality' claims made by those groups who felt they were treated unequally by the imposition of written space on the lived experience.  This points to a hopeful future in which increased user sophistication of web platforms will lead to a greater acceptance and recognition of 'augmented reality' despite the prevalent use of 'digital dualist' conceptions.  The current debate over the use of oral citations on Wikipedia point towards developments of this trend.  However, the chipping away of 'digital dualist' practices will not occur on their own accord, and if participants in digital culture today take anything away from the peasant/serf experience surveyed above it is that continued pressure must be applied to bring the effects of 'augmented reality' into practice.

Wikipedia, Twitter & Mobility

A recent New York Times piece, written by Noam Cohen, asked the question, "When knowledge isn't written, does it still count?"  The inquiry targets a recent effort by those within the Wikipedia movement criticizing how the online encyclopedia structures its dependency on written secondary sources for article validation.  A documentary made by Achal Prabhala, Zen Marie and Priya Sen, titled 'People are Knowledge', dives into the issue of using 'oral citations' as a means of documenting and thus validating information obtained from cultures that do not currently have a wealth of textual accounts- in the vernacular or otherwise- for use on the largely text-based Wikipedia.  Using a variety of examples, such as the evolution of play and rules on games indigenous to local regions in India and South Africa, the documentary makes a powerful case for the inclusion, or at least discussion, of oral citation methods.

Yet the potential use of oral citations caused a stir among fellow Wikipedians, some of whom see the use of non-authoritative primary source material (essentially oral interviews) as anathema to the larger mission of the online encyclopedia.  They point to one of the central pillars of Wikipedia- No Original Research- as the source of primary objection.  What is at stake with this issue is the larger question of certified knowledge, or, more precisely, the methods utilized by encyclopedic efforts in order to make the claim that their presentation of knowledge is, indeed, certified.  While the case discussed above specifically deals with a cultural conflict within Wikipedia, the issue of knowledge certification looms large over many disciplines now finding their traditional hierarchies of authority questioned or laid low by a wave of culture digitization and digital models of knowledge production.  But, on an even larger scale, the question over the applicability of 'oral citations' has roots in a debate that surrounds the intersection of both oral and written knowledge that go back to the onset of the printing press- further even to be sure, though the focus of this survey lies in the Gutenberg era and its pursuant centuries.  I would like to use this post to discuss how the 'oral citation' debate now underway in the Wikipedia community is tied to a much larger question on the nature of transferring oral culture into written culture that is best explained, in my opinion, through the lens of mobility potentials.  This approach brings a greater understanding to not just knowledge production and certification methods of the past but also in the present, marked by the arrival of new social networking platforms.

In my response to Federico Giordano's essay 'Almost the Same Game', I argued that an essential characteristic separating digital and analog games was their difference in mobility potential.  Elaborating on Claude Shannon's understanding on the nature of information, that a transmitted message contains no information if its outcome can be predicted (specifically in the realm of math, but also in more mundane notions), I suggested that the next definable quality of information should be its capacity to undergo modification through transmission cycles.  The range by which information could be modified through circulation, by either the transmitter or recipient, I defined as mobility potential.  This characteristic is not solely defined in terms of actual, physical action, but rather through the very nature of the means by which knowledge is transmitted.

Take the book, for example.  Despite the ease with which its contents may be transported in the physical sense, when examined under the definition of information provided above, the book, in fact, possesses a low mobility potential.  Why?  Because the text, the informational message contained within, cannot be modified, in any great degree, through transmission.  If you and I both read copies of Moby Dick, there is little chance we will come to the end and read different endings.  The words on the page will remain the same today and tomorrow. This low mobility characteristic provided the book with both strength, in that the very low capacity of having the printed message of the book transform through transmission provided relative stability in the larger process of dispersing knowledge, and weakness, in that the informational content could not be modified unless the writer or publisher made modifications and printed an updated edition.  Limitations on modifications notwithstanding, the stability of printed knowledge greatly trumped all concerns as the immeasurable effect on the spread of knowledge books conferred paved a route towards modern power structures embodied by the rise of renaissance, then enlightenment, ideals.

When compared to the high mobility potential embodied in oral culture, it is no wonder scholars and elites preferred the use of low mobility constructs to buttress their growing power structures.  Oral constructs of knowledge tend to have a very high capacity to undergo modification through transmission.  While oral knowledge can be spread across distances comparable to the book, its progress can be sporadic and often the journey alters the informational content, sometimes to a great degree.  Folktales provide a good example to explore the idea of high mobility potential in oral knowledge.  Unlike the book, a folktale relies upon modification in order to find use outside of the locale from which it originates.  Oral transmitters of a folktale often altered pieces, or entire sections, of a folktale in order to tailor it to the situation or audience presented.  Recipients, in turn, re-transmit the folktale to others and engaged in their own modifications based, again, on the situation or audience presented.  Whereas the book finds strength in its printed word stability, the folktale conversely grows weaker under such stability, or stasis, as its message and informational content cease to be modified and find applicability with wider audiences.  Conversely, where the book would lose its value if it could be changed every time it's retransmitted, the folktale gains new life and takes on new forms as it is retold and modified over and over.

While every culture has its own cultural tradition in generating and spreading folktales, due to my familiarity with Russian history I would like to bring up the Skomorokhi from the era of Kievan Rus' and Muscovite Russia- roughly the span between 1000-1648- as an example of how high mobility potential can influence the development of culture.  Russell Zguta, in his article "Skomorokhi: The Russian Minstrel Entertainers", discusses the evolving role these minstrel's played in the development and spreading of Russian folktales, songs, early theatre, games, and the enrichment of the cyclical festivals/celebrations central to the agricultural workers world. Their impact on Russian culture was massive- emerging not from the elites, but rather the lowly ranks of the peasantry, the skomorokhi were able to fuse the high-minded literary style of heroic poetry, derived from elite patronized Gusliari (think court minstrels/entertainers), into the more common and popular folktales told by peasants.  As the skomorokhi traveled around the area of Novgorod, and later Muscovite Russia, they spread their amalgamation of tales and songs and inspired revivals/preservation of cultural traditions that had lain dormant. Freely mixing elements of one story into another, the skomorokhi were able to tailor their performances to the audience as well as stimulate the creation of new folktales or songs that integrated elements of high culture with the causes and concerns of regular people. It was because of their great supporting role in maintaining Slavic folk culture among the lower orders that the skomorokhi were eventually persecuted, as both the growing power of the Muscovite state and the presence of the Orthodox church worked to stamp out the vestiges of 'pagan' belief often associated with peasant traditions and celebrations.

It is interesting that a construct of low mobility, namely the proclamation "On the Righting of Morals and the Abolition of Superstition" of 1648 that banned skomorokhi activity, was issued to combat the influence of high mobility folktales and songs that often put into question issues of justice and morality then being enforced by secular and sacred authorities. Again, this comes back to the issue related to oral citations use on Wikipedia- certification of circulating knowledge. One reason Muscovite authorities felt threatened by wandering skomorokhi centered on the issue of asynchronicity between high mobility and low mobility knowledge constructs.  Going back to the example of the book, if I take a copy, place it in a time capsule and then dig it up fifty years later, the text will not change even if the 'knowledge' or 'opinion' stated within underwent significant revision over the course of the past fifty years. High Mobility constructs, like the folktales described above, are constantly changing through the process of transmission and circulation, meaning that they are more capable of being informed/transformed by the milieu of its temporal evocation. The conflict arises when the two forms of knowledge constructs attempt to operate in similar, or exact, spheres of activity. As Muscovite authorities attempted to enforce 'moral' behavioral norms, their edicts and proclamations found sharp criticism in the values espoused by folktales and songs. While the written edict conveyed power to literate functionaries (the Grand Prince/Tsar made the laws- not other upstarts or usurpers) it could not change its wording through transmission (to do so would have been a crime against the Grand Prince/Tsar himself) and so found itself at the mercy of interpretation through the prism of peasant mentalite, influenced directly by high mobility culture.

While authorities could always point to a document in question as the source of power, the interchange between oral and written culture proved that a more interdependent relationship existed. Daniel Field investigated such interdependence in his essay, 'The Year of Jubilee' (part of larger collection in Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881), describing the process involved in carrying out the emancipation of Russian serfs in 1861. When laws regarding the emancipation of serfs in Russia were finally put together in February 1861, their announcement was delayed to coincide with the beginning of Lent. Why? The Tsar and his advisors knew full well how monumental edicts had a tendency to be 're-interpreted' by the peasant masses, who spread rumors and other ideas through their oral networks challenging the established notion of 'knowledge' the document in question contained. During Lent, peasants were to abstain from alcohol consumption in addition to observing fasting restrictions. Authorities hoped that would make the populace less restive and prone to 're-interpret' the emancipation edict that was lengthy, complicated and monumental in terms of reshaping the basic foundation for much of the relationship between society and state. In effect, the delay of announcing the emancipation edict demonstrated the influence peasant usage of high mobility oral networks possessed on the promulgation of low mobility constructs, such as laws. Because peasants could 're-interpret' the pronounced edict with surprising flexibility and speed, any printed document had to be handled with great care. The government could not hope to match the speed of constantly evolving 'knowledge' spread through high mobility constructs with an equal flurry of matching printed statements and counters to circulating rumors or beliefs- the very nature of the printed low mobility object prohibited this kind of response! Hence the use of more tried and true methods to back the printed word- force. In addition to delaying announcement for the beginning of Lent, the Tsar dispatched elements of over 80 military regiments across the country where the edict was to be delivered so as to bring quick support to local civil officials and put-down any peasant disturbances.

Asynchronicity between constructs of high and low mobility was, and continues to be, a defining feature in the interdependent relationship between both potentials prior to the rise of widespread near-instantaneous communicative networks. In areas where communication networks are of poor quality or nonexistent, asynchronous 'knowledge' gaps expressed in different mobility potential constructs can produce waves of reconfiguration, disruption or backlash, especially when the issuers of low mobility constructs wish to regulate the sphere of high mobility discourse. This was the problem largely encountered by the Imperial Russian government during its tenure of power. Yet when networks of increasing complexity arise and grant the capacity for more instantaneous communication, the asynchronicity 'gap' between high and low begins to dramatically shrink- a factor made apparent and amplified with the rise of the internet. This decrease in asynchronicity impacts, significantly, the established hierarchies of power behind low mobility constructs, for example the newspaper, and brings to the fore questions on the certification of knowledge established by said constructs. The 'knowledge' gap transforms into a 'credibility' gap. Hence the debate that once occurred in the journalism community over the role of 'citizen journalists' and the current debate surrounding the validity of oral citations on Wikipedia. Looking at the model of inspiration Wikipedia drew upon, that being the enlightenment era notion of the universal library, it becomes easier to see how the real debate on oral citations centers on the issue of Wikipedia acting as a transition point for the interchange between high and low mobility constructs.

Adrian Johns briefly surveys the quest for a 'Universal Library' in his work, Piracy: Intellectual Property Wars From Gutenberg To Gates. Idealists of the enlightenment period saw in the printing-press book a tangible way to preserve knowledge and facilitate progress as the intellectual riches of minds past could be made stable and accessible to all- to many this was a considerable upgrade from the often turbulent reliance upon word of mouth or sluggish pace of scribal reproduction. Yet not everyone saw in the printing revolution a sign of progress- Samuel Egerton Brydges, an independent printer who favored reproducing antiquarian texts, felt that 'Universal Libraries' would become "infinitely large reservoirs of triviality" as the sheer volume of works being produced did nothing but glut potential holdings with works divorced from 'genius'. He believed that, prior to the commercial age of printing, the 'popularity' of a text closely aligned with authorial merit- a relationship all but destroyed by the state of (then) modern printing. The quote of Brydges provided below speaks not only to his fears of unfettered publishing but also to the concerns expressed by Wikipedia specifically, on the issue of oral citations, and other pundits generally, on the contention that the digital age of information is bringing a 'post-idea' age to fruition:

"If the reverence and celebrity which in enlightened ages have attended 'Authorship' are destroyed, by giving equal preservation and the same place of distinction to whatever the Press vomits forth, who will forsake the inviting pleasures of youth, and the enjoyments which court the senses, for the solitary lamp, and the anxious and abstracted toils by which the capacity for the higher sorts of literacy composition, or success in the more difficult branches of science, is cherished and attained?"

It was one thing to produce knowledge, another to produce useful knowledge. This was both the promise and peril of attempting to build a 'Universal Library' and, by extension, a 'Universal Encyclopedia'. Defining knowledge in terms of what should be deemed 'useful' and 'certified' and what constituted 'large reservoirs of triviality' became the central issue at stake when attempting to produce a 'universal' compendium. Traveling closer to the modern period, another advocate of the 'Universal Library' concept, H.G. Wells, best expressed the potential benefit a stable, authoritative source of knowledge could bring when he stated that such a construct would become a "clearinghouse of misunderstandings". (Well's quote and insight provided by Joseph Reagle's Good Faith Collaboration) In both viewpoints we see a desire to avoid dilution of the authoritative nature of low mobility constructs through gatekeeping of what can be considered 'certified' knowledge. High mobility constructs, according to Brydges and Wells, have no place in encyclopedic efforts as their high degree of potential modification through transmission made them unsuitable for the desired effects of producing the compendium; to enable the 'capacity for the higher sorts of literacy composition' as a means of creating a 'clearinghouse of misunderstandings".

Wikipedia is both a continuation and radical reshaping of the enlightenment era notion of the 'Universal Encyclopedia' because it is a digital high mobility construct that, while completely capable of being modified through transmission, ultimately relies upon 'certified' low mobility constructs to establish its authoritative knowledge base. One of the central pillars of the Wikipedia effort that enshrine this high/low coexistence is reliance upon a 'neutral point of view' facilitated by use of 'verifiable' sources:

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth- whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. ...This policy applies to all material in the mainspace- articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions- without exception, and in particular to material about living persons." (Entry on Wikipedia: Verifiability, emphasis in the original and accessed 18 Aug 2011)

Two things immediately stand out, especially under the lens of mobility potential.  First, the separation of verifiability from truth and, second, the absolute insistence that material on the lived experience must be 'verified' though low mobility constructs, i.e. 'certified' knowledge that has been published. The first observation is a clear deviation from the original purpose envisioned for the 'universal encyclopedia', that being a source of truth that provided a guide to true genius while also eliminating misunderstandings. This is understandable as Wikipedia is a high mobility construct that constantly redefines the essence of truth as its 'knowledge' content undergoes modification through use and transmission. However, this creates a necessity to find some source of 'knowledge' credibility and provides the reasoning behind insisting on use of low mobility published material to verify the Wiki entries. By combining the high mobility nature of the Wiki construct with the 'veracity' of low mobility published sources in a digital communication network, Wikipedia takes on the form of a transition point between high mobility and low mobility. 'Transition Points' represent a new form of knowledge interaction and construction made possible by near-instantaneous communication networks in that they both speed the transmission cycle of low mobility sources and reduce the asynchronous effects historically generated when high mobility and low mobility constructs interacted.  

The second observation acts as a sort of demarcation of acceptable material, a filter point, whereby high mobility constructs are declared off limits in use of 'verifying' knowledge. In part this is tied to the implications of the first observation because to suggest that high mobility constructs can act as verifiers of knowledge would invalidate Wikipedia's claim to possess an authoritative source of knowledge and completely divorce the project from the enlightenment model that inspired its creation. By stating that published material is the only acceptable arbiter of the lived experience, Wikipedia in effect creates a temporal barrier that ensures high mobility constructs will not upset its current configuration as a 'transition point'. The real concern is that inclusion of oral citations would re-introduce asynchronicity effects in the interplay between high and low mobility constructs creating, once again, a 'knowledge' gap that calls into question the validity of authority Wikipedia desires to have effused through its content. Given these influences and imposed constraints on the operation of Wikipedia, the question now shifts to how the group backing the inclusion of oral citations have structured their argument.

In response to the question of when alternative methods of citation could be useful, the 'People are Knowledge' filmmakers propose three criteria. First, alternative citation methods are useful "when there is not a single printed source on a subject of lived reality." Second, "when there are some printed sources on a subject, but the sources are effectively lost, by being housed in libraries that are inaccessible to the general public and/or whose catalogue is not online." Finally, third, "when there are some accessible printed sources on a subject, but the sources are incomplete or misleading by way of being outdated or biased." (Criteria are presented at 9:16 in the film)

In seeking to create space for the use of alternative methods, like oral citations, the filmmakers of 'People are Knowledge' are challenging the standard of validation itself by attacking the 'filter' created to remove the influence of high mobility constructs. This line of argumentation would find good company in many claims made by Russian peasants regarding the implementation of tsarist edicts or laws, in that both groups are using reconfigurations of knowledge spurred by high mobility constructs to challenge the influence of more stable, less changing low mobility constructs. The logic used in 'People are Knowledge' turns the question of validity upon itself, in effect demonstrating the asynchronicity presented through rejection of oral citations. How can Wikipedia claim to be an 'authoritative' knowledge source if it is 'blind' to certain subjects of 'lived reality' or, worse, using 'validated' knowledge that is, in fact, biased? Yet, interestingly, the solution proposed by 'People are Knowledge' seeks to form the same compromise between high and low mobility constructs that Wikipedia currently facilitates.  While the oral nature of knowledge is indeed a high mobility construct, something that would be considered not subject to 'validity' under current guidelines, by making a low mobility recording of the oral knowledge and using that as the source cited for 'validation', the supporters behind 'People are Knowledge' are attempting to carve out an increased role for high mobility while also restricting the asynchronous effects produced by sourcing their 'validation' through low mobility constructs.  The goal is not to undermine Wikipedia as a 'transition point' but rather to expand the domain of knowledge under Wikipedia's 'transitional' authority. By laying the groundwork for the process of high/low interaction, future discourses of power can begin to take shape.

The debate over the functioning role of digital high mobility constructs acting as 'transition points' extends beyond Wikipedia. Although it operates in a manner quite different, Twitter produces similar reduction of asynchronicity when facilitating 'transition point' interaction between high and low mobility. Tweets have the capacity to be modified through their transmission, via the re-tweet, either through restructuring the message itself or adding commentary to existing sentiment. When containing links to essays on blogs or even Facebook photos, tweets reduce the asynchronous effects these low mobility constructs often encounter when interacting with high mobility constructs. You read an essay that is thought provoking and tweet about it. I see your tweet, read the essay and begin to think of my own take, or response, to the points presented. I can then create a low mobility response, like a blog post, and then tweet about that, linking it all back to the original essay read. Or I can produce my own high mobility tweet, containing my thoughts, and link back to the original essay read. Some view this 'transition point' function as, at least, superfluous to real knowledge creation or, at worst, a stifling of the entire creative process in the name of informational narcissism. This is the view taken by Neil Gabler in a New York Times opinion piece titled, "The Elusive Big Idea". Here is a quote from that piece:

"Even though there are sites and blogs dedicated to ideas, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, etc., the most popular sites on the Web, are basically information exchanges, designed to feed the insatiable information hunger, though this is hardly the kind of information that generates ideas. It is largely useless except insofar as it makes the possessor of the information feel, well, informed. Of course, one could argue that these sites are no different than conversation was for previous generations, and that conversation seldom generated big ideas either, and one would be right. 

BUT the analogy isn’t perfect. For one thing, social networking sites are the primary form of communication among young people, and they are supplanting print, which is where ideas have typically gestated. For another, social networking sites engender habits of mind that are inimical to the kind of deliberate discourse that gives rise to ideas. Instead of theories, hypotheses and grand arguments, we get instant 140-character tweets about eating a sandwich or watching a TV show. While social networking may enlarge one’s circle and even introduce one to strangers, this is not the same thing as enlarging one’s intellectual universe."

According to Gabler, tweeting is much like "giving equal preservation and the same place of distinction to whatever the Press vomits forth" in that it dilutes the potential for big ideas to develop and divorces 'authorial merit' from popularity. While he recognizes the new role networks like Twitter provide, calling them 'information exchanges', Gabler fails to see any utility in their operation. His claim that 'tweets' or other high mobility constructs cannot serve as inspiration or fuel for new 'big ideas', once taken into consideration using a mobility potential framework, proves demonstrably false. If nothing else, this essay serves as a counter-example to the theme of Gabler's message. I discovered his opinion piece via twitter the same day it was published and began to immediately formulate his position into my own explanation on why Twitter is more than just an 'information exchange', even though that in of itself would be a wonderful venture. Twitter allows me to become familiar with a greater range of intellectual topics and produce quicker iterations of my own thought process and beliefs. Networks that act as 'transition points' will continue to push the boundaries on what constitute knowledge production and certification, leaving those who remain tied to protecting low mobility constructs as the sole means of establishing these activities increasingly in the past.

In conclusion, I would like to say that this brief exploration on mobility potentials is only the beginning of elaborating the complex interaction of information that occurs through use of near-instantaneous communication networks.  While the past is replete with examples of clashes between low and high mobility constructs, the modern period brings a curious mix of asynchronous effects generated in places with slow communication networks (the recent movements behind the continuing Arab Spring come to mind) but also new hybrid forms of 'transition points' that greatly reduce asynchronicity but create new questions over what is credible and certifiable, in terms of knowledge production and circulation. Although this essay used a binary distinction between mobility potentials, it should be noted that many artifacts or constructs contain a variety of features that bring them from low/high and high/low (and all points in-between), depending on the moment of use.  A cassette tape is one such artifact, a prime example of low mobility when just being played yet possessing the capacity to be 'modified' through re-recording in an outfitted tape deck. By taking a concept like information and focusing the scope of inquiry to 'can it be modified through transmission' allows a more in-depth explanation to the workings of discourse as elaborated by Foucault. It not only informs the present, as evidenced by the comments of people like Gabler who dismiss social networks as mere triviality without realizing their greater 'transitional' authority, but also the past, as noted above in interpreting the actions of peasant behavior in Imperial Russia. Viewing informational behavior through a mobility potential framework also promotes an understanding of how seemingly old or antiquated behaviors are, in fact, still very much alive today and integral to how we as people come to and interact with social media.


(Editors Note: A previous version of this post mistakenly attributed 'Good Faith Collaboration' to Jonathan Reagle.  The author is, in fact, Joseph Reagle- thanks to the commentator below who noted the error!)

Digital/Analog Divide in Academia: My Opinion

One of the themes I attempt to draw attention to on Peasant Muse centers around the Digital/Analog divide- a topic that, I know, has been covered ad nauseam by others more qualified than myself.  The reason I straddle such a weary horse and attempt to plow already furrowed fields is that I occasionally see confusion among different groups as to the continued effects this divide brings on all levels of the cultural-production process and transmission.  I was reminded of this seeming confusion upon reading 'Ideas in the Ascendant' by John Swallow in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  

The brief essay makes the following argument: students are increasingly encountering ideas on their own, free from the explicit guidance of traditionally 'certified' knowledge provided by, to only name a few, advisors and reading lists.  This leads to ideas being served a la carte, providing greater opportunities for creativity and individualism- yet, Swallow argues, without proper guidance students will falter in their capacity to judge and manage ideas successfully.  In this way, Higher Education not only has a purpose but a driven mission to provide this guidance to students in an increasingly digital era where 'ideas are ascendent'.

Catalog of 'received authorities'
Photo via Jessamyn West

Swallow uses the anecdote of working with a student of his, named Adam, in attempting to solve a vexing mathematical proof.  Adam rushes in- (the plucky always do) to explain a new idea that would prove to be the breakthrough in the theorem they had both worked on for the past year.  Here Swallow explains the divergent methods of knowledge acquisition between himself and Adam; whereas Swallow consulted sources by 'received authorities', Adam ignored the structure of books handed to him and picked out only the relevant pieces or was far more open to sources of information beyond those considered the most reliable.  Adam represented for Swallow this new generation of students, soon to be scholars, who fill their ideas pallet a la carte.

I believe Swallow has some excellent observations.  From my own experience, I could not imagine being where I am today without the guidance I received/continue to receive from my incredible advisor.  She has been a valuable sounding board for new ideas, questions over readings, debates on the meaning of the past- in short, for helping me develop into a professional scholar.  I've seen other grad students flounder and fail due to lack of a proper relationship with their advisor.  He also states the importance of teaching students to not just accept ideas or arguments without first considering points both for and against.  Conventional wisdom is not enough to satisfy the most basic level of academic skepticism.  On these points, Swallow has my full confidence.

However, without any personal disrespect towards Dr. Swallow, I could not help but feel the other points of the essay were narrowly focused and the general tone somewhat paternalistic.  Here are some examples of what I mean:

I showed Adam a graduate textbook that I thought might be helpful to our project. What did he do? Just as he might click from Web page to Web page, he flipped through the pages, looking for theorems. If a potentially relevant one used terms or concepts he did not know, he learned about them. Adam's intellectual delivery system was need-to-know, just-in-time.

and this:

Consider the principal fears that trouble observers about the ascendancy of ideas. Nicholas G. Carr, who writes about technology and culture, offers two in his recent book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (Norton, 2010). With access to so much, he argues, students will, ironically, know less. And they will lose their ability to think deeply. I would add a third: In navigating a galaxy of ideas, students will be less able to determine "truth," however we define it.

or this quote, towards the end, discussing the need for these new students, using 'just-in-time' intellectual delivery systems, to perform checks on their sources:

Mathematicians have implicit checks against error. Students in other disciplines need such methods as well. 

I think one word sums up all the concerns expressed by Swallow above; Certification.  This is probably one of the most often cited causes among academics for distrust of many things digital.  Swallow worries that when ideas become ascendent, students will fail to evaluate the sources and counterarguments of their a la carte choices.  As they increasingly seek knowledge outside of traditionally 'certified' sources, they will become increasingly distant from the truth.  But this concern comes across, to me, as a reactionary stance against the encroachment of digital knowledge production on the traditional relationships of academia.  As ideas grow in abundance and increase in their circulation, previous analog methods used to 'certify' knowledge- be that journal articles, reading lists, even presence of monographs- need to evolve in order to accommodate this new potential.  It's not that the older methods are defunct- quite the opposite.  However, the older methods are struggling to keep pace with the explosion of knowledge-circulation digital technologies enable.

Analog Lecture Hall, filled (mostly) to capacity.  The Digital flood of information could fill
this room several times over with participants.
Photo via University of Innsbruck

This debate forms the core of a post on the science-themed blog Genomes Unzipped, titled "Why Publish Science in Peer-Reviewed Journals?" Joe Pickrell, who wrote the post, suggests that established methods of scientific article submission, utilizing peer-review, involve inordinate amounts of money, time (both in reviewing and preparing the article for publication), a fair dose or randomness in that anonymous reviewers can have wildly different takes on the same subject and thus judge its applicability to be published accordingly.  Pickrell does not discount the journal process entirely, however:

...journals do perform a service of sorts: they filter papers, ostensibly based on interest to a community, and also ostensibly ensure that the details of an analysis are correct and clear enough to be replicated (though in practice, I doubt these filters work as intended). 

So let’s take this goal–that of filtering papers based on quality, interest to a community, and reproducibility–as the legitimate service provided by peer-reviewed journals. When phrased like this, it’s simply absurd that our way of achieving this goal involves a handful of unaccountable, often anonymous, reviewers and editors, and takes so much time and money. Certainly the best judge of the interest of a paper to the community is, well, the community itself. Ditto for the best judge of the quality and reproducibility of a paper. (Emphasis in the original)

This kind of language- that the community is the best judge of quality and reproducibility- is anathema to the cause championed by Swallow above.  How can the community, Swallow would argue, understand what is relevant and what is not if they only take their ideas a la carte and, thus, distance themselves further from the 'truth'?  Perhaps, in the 'analog' methods of knowledge certification, this claim could hold water.  Yet in the digital realm, much of this claim falls flat.

Speed of Digital Circulation
Photo via Pierre Yves Lacroix

Why?  Circulation of knowledge in digital systems is exponentially greater than that encountered in current and past analog models.  One of the biggest complaints of the peer-review system of today is that it can take up to a year or more to get one's research into a published journal- for some fields, this year wait is more than an eternity as situations change so rapidly.  The supreme reason many academics hold the 'certification' issue so dear is that, in the analog world, an idea, once published, can take years to correct if proven wrong.  Books last a long time- so do journal articles.  It is entirely conceivable that a person can be in a library, perusing the shelves, pick out a volume of history and be totally ignorant as to the errors in argumentation or use of evidence, especially if corrections to the text come in the form of other books or journal articles which may or may not be close, physically on the shelf, to the offending text.  Under the old system, 'certification' via journals and respected authors became not only necessary but invaluable in acting as a filter, allowing only the most rigorously evaluated texts and ideas to enter the somewhat permanent state of published existence.

At once, the digital revolution has done away with this concern.  When I look up journal articles via digital means, I am far more likely to see the 'conversation' surrounding the work, through comments or reviews by others as to the importance or failures of the text at hand, either in the search engine or social network used to query the information.  This is invaluable data, as reading comments and reviews can somewhat alleviate 'reinventing the wheel' in scholarly pursuits.  If one author sees a flaw in the text, their comments can help me save time in going through the same evaluation process myself.  

Swallow might cry foul at this last sentence, stating that this is exactly the problem with 'ideas in the ascendent'.  Yet Swallow failed to acknowledge a key process that occurs with idea sharing over social networks, something that his student Adam no doubt drew upon in his sampling of ideas a la carte- trust in the opinions of ones peers.  If a colleague of mine recommends a text or article, I am far more likely to actually read the text.  Because of the sheer amount of text in the digital aether, networks of trust must arise if any scholar desires to find quality 'signal' amongst so much other 'noise'.  While many attempts have been made to build a platform upon which these networks of trust could support themselves, (most notably arXiv, Faculty of 1000, and to some extent Google Scholar) not one has gained traction across the diverse disciplinary landscape.  

Despite, or because of, the relatively sparse usage, these nascent attempts have already drawn fire from traditional scholars.  Many of the commentators of Pickwell's post highlighted the little to no feedback received on digital published material produced outside of traditional journals.  They also mentioned that current tenure and promotion systems reward publication in high profile, peer-reviewed journals, demonstrating a value beyond that which most see in digital platforms.  The truth is that these new forms are just that- new.  As these platforms stand currently, there is little value being added by the potential of digital conversation because, sadly, there are so few doing any actual commentating.  Yet there is potential there, a potential to allow more ideas to be explored for their own merit and 'certified' by the community of scholars at large.  Pickwell says there is no 'killer app' for filtering, commenting, and circulating the vast potential of scholarly material.  I have to agree, but we both share the opinion that this fact alone does not discount the potential benefit of the process, once properly conceived and executed.

'Certification' isn't limited to Analog
Photo via Matthew S.

Because the real issue with scholarship and the rise of digital natives, what one might term the digital/analog divide in academia, is that 'certification' for the new breed comes from information that is not only applicable but circulated.  Ideas that are shared, re-shared, commented on, modified, used to build new ideas- this is what 'certifies' knowledge in the digital world.  The older methods do a superb job of producing quality, filtered work- but they do so at a painfully slow pace, compared to the speed with which the digital age moves today.  Moving away from the traditional methods of information 'certification' and embracing digital means has the potential to augment, not replace, the current scholarship produced.  Will errors occur in a more open 'digital' method?  Of course- even in today's peer-reviewed world mistakes are made and once sacred arguments come under piercing scrutiny by new thinkers.  Swallow worries that these 'ideas in the ascendent' will lead to students actually learning less, even as they consume more.  I say this ignores feedback mechanisms inherent in the digital circulatory process, that community efforts funneled through a network of trust can produce high-quality results. 

Already I see promising developments and ideas towards building these networks of trust.  The recent debut of Google+ and its use of 'Circles' to define relationships, I believe, will allow greater professional sharing across informal networks.  Another source of inspiration is that of Longreads- the community sourced long-form reading recommendation service.  Users, upon finding a noteworthy read, submit their link with Twitter, including #Longreads in the tweet, to promote the find.  Both Google+ and Longreads demonstrate the ease with which community involvement can be leveraged and utilized to sort through the digital mass and find the gold nuggets within.  While Swallow may worry that students sampling ideas fail to evaluate those ideas, I believe that digital platforms and evaluation systems are developing to address the need- yet there will always be a need to train would-be scholars in critical evaluation of the sources they select.  Adam's 'just-in-time' intellectual delivery system isn't a cause for alarm- it's a call for scholars to evaluate how they will interact and circulate their ideas in a new digital landscape.