Exploring the Small Demons of Books

When discussing the differences between high mobility/low mobility knowledge constructs, I often invoke the book as an exemplar of the latter given its general property of being unable to undergo modification through transmission.  You and I may have different copies of the same book, but the words, characters, jokes and cultural references (to only name a few) remain the same even if we loan the book to a friend or find a stranger on the subway reading a copy of foreign origin.  This singular property, its immutable character, makes the book a superb transmitter of stable knowledge.
 

And while I am far from an authoritative source of knowledge on the history of books, a la Adrian Johns, the low mobility potential of the book (as I have defined it) continually proves to be a fascinating intellectual investigation.  That's probably why I found the following tweet from James Bridle, author of the Booktwo.org blog and general commentator on the intersection of technology and literature (in addition to 'book futurism' as he states on his blog), to be very interesting with regards to my evolving thoughts on the mobility potential knowledge in books possess.

Tweeting from the 'Books in Browsers' 2011 conference, Bridle added the following thought tweet a day after the above came into came into existence:

Both of these thoughts explain, in their own way, what I have come to see as the interaction of high and low mobility found in knowledge constructs.  In a real sense, the beginning portion of Bridle's first tweet is entirely correct; books do not need a network.  But when brought under the lens of mobility potential, books do need a human network in order to not only transmit their stable knowledge but also facilitate the creation of high mobility knowledge constructs- reader's thoughts, interpretations and influences- that produce a full range of what we might call 'culture', expressed in a variety of forms.  In this interpretation, the second half of Bridle's initial tweet fully affirms the role low mobility books play in the creation of a diversified field of culture, made up of both high and low mobility knowledge potentials- other books, essays, rumors, stories, tweets, blogs, art, music, etc…

Bridle's second tweet affirms this interpretation.  In a good example of circular reasoning, books are products of culture which, when transmitted- networked- produce additional iterations of culture which have the potential to produce other books, and so on.  Whereas in the past, when interaction between knowledge constructs of high and low mobility often produced disruptive asynchronous effects (think the interaction between written documents and oral rumors disputing their contents), thanks to the facilitation of digital networks new forms of knowledge interaction, which I label 'transition points', are engendering greater interaction with knowledge constructs of both high/low mobility with decreasing degrees of disruptive asynchronicity.  In a previous post, I demonstrated how Wikipedia was one such 'transition point' involving both high and low knowledge constructs in the process of certifying encyclopedic knowledge.  I have recently discovered a website that I feel is another 'transition point', this time for analyzing books; Small Demons.

Here is a video explaining, in part, what Small Demons is trying to do:

I recently received a beta invite to use the service (you can register for an invite from the Small Demons main page) and while it is still very rudimentary in many respects, there is a lot of potential for the service as it continues development.  

The reason I qualify Small Demons as a 'transition point' is the way it essentially helps users pick apart the details, perhaps uncovering the influences an author selected when creating their low mobility literary work, and then transfer those users reactions to these details in a high mobility manner.  Engaging in a limited 'reverse-engineering' of 'cultural' sources (it cannot reveal the mystique of writing, only the sum total of references in the work), Small Demons gives glimpses, shadows perhaps (thus the Demons reference?), of the high mobility knowledge constructs- i.e. thoughts, influences, culture- that entered the minds of writers as they produced works dissected by the website.  People can comment via the 'like' function on various ephemeral bits uncovered- a map location, or weapon, or music album- and create their own interpretation of the work, in a very low mobility way (the likes don't change via transmission), that nonetheless acknowledges the extreme high mobility thought process that spurred the 'like' expression people find attachment to in a book.  The asynchronous effect between the interaction of low mobility books and references and high mobility thought-reactions is reduced to the extreme in Small Demons, if only because people can state what attracted them to the work, revealing what part of the creative mystique drew them into the words, in a way that is stable and yet capable of creating high mobility spin-offs.  This is accomplished through debates on the selected book or influences facilitated by the act of reading (see Bridle's first tweet above), further discussions brought about via the 'share' button linking to Twitter or Facebook, or in the soon to be implemented 'curation' option whereby particularly knowledgable people who add details to the site can moderate discussions or review incoming contributions.

Because the website is stability based- there is little to no modification of the works presented- Small Demons embraces the low mobility defined by the books it covers, yet the capacity for high mobility discussion and the examination of the sources used in literary works allows the site to become a 'transition point'.  Increasingly, digital portals and structures are being developed that fuse high & low mobility knowledge constructs in way that augment the presence of both without producing the often disruptive asynchronous effects observed in previous analog or textual conceptions.  Small Demons is more than just a book lovers 'nerd-out' site- it is emblematic of a new type of knowledge production 'augmented reality', reshaping the way we both produce and consume cultural content.

Insights from Valve on High/Low Mobility Potentials

Today, while drinking my coffee, I came across this tweet from Tracy L.M. Kennedy (@netwoman) pointing to a discussion by Valve co-founder Gabe Newell at the recent WITA TechNW conference (Washington Technology Industry Association) that occurred in Seattle.  During the panel discussion, Newell discussed some interesting economic experiments Valve (who runs the very popular on-line game distribution service, Steam) engaged in regarding the use of sales, varied pricing models and 'free-to-play' games in order to understand these effects on their gross sales and profit margins.

While the economic experiments were very insightful, what really caught my attention was how Newell discussed the impact of piracy on Valve's thinking regarding pricing/service.

Newell: One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. For example, Russia. You say, oh, we’re going to enter Russia, people say, you’re doomed, they’ll pirate everything in Russia. Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market. 

Ed Fries: That’s incredible. That’s in dollars? 

Newell: That’s in dollars, yes. Whenever I talk about how much money we make it’s always dollar-denominated. All of our products are sold in local currency. But the point was, the people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russia. … So that, as far as we’re concerned, is asked and answered. It doesn’t take much in terms of providing a better service to make pirates a non-issue.

At the end of the summary, Ed Fries provides the following summation of the point made above:

Fries: That’s some incredible data. … You talk about doing experiments. This is probably the biggest change that’s affected the gaming business over the last few years. It’s not just that we have digital distribution to our customers. It’s that we have this incredible two-way connection that we’ve never had before with our customers. 

We’ve gone from a situation where we dream up a game, we spend three years making it, we put it in a box, we put it out in stores, we hope it sells, to a situation that’s incredibly more fluid and dynamic, where we’re constantly modifying the game with the participation of the customers themselves.” (Emphasis mine)

The discussion is fascinating not simply for the insight it provides into the experimentation occurring in Valve, but also in how the statements above appear (at least to me) to be another validation on the interaction between high and low mobility potentials found in informational constructs- in this case, the constructs being games distributed through digital means.  Pirated copies of digital games would appear to be exemplars of high mobility.  They often emerge in markets where the audience cannot afford, or choose not to purchase, a game that is perceived as highly desirable yet out of sync with the needs of the target audience, either through pricing or format.  The act of piracy often modifies the original piece in order to increase its rate of transmission.  In this view, I am borrowing from the process examined by Adrian Johns in his book Piracy- specifically the chapter dealing with Dublin printers 'pirating' works originally published in London.  Publishers in London often produced large folio versions of books that were neither affordable nor easily transported/stored, two key disadvantages that kept the works from reaching a larger mass-audience.  Dublin publishers, instead, took the same works and printed them in much smaller versions spread over a few volumes.  The Dublin works cost less, could be transported easily and began to eat into the profits of London booksellers.

Yet, looking deeper into the process driving sales of both books and digital games, mentioned above, it becomes obvious that pirated copies, while increasing transmission, do little to foster increased or sustained modification- a key component to my understanding of how high mobility potentials work.  With books, as Johns noted, increased sales were definitely helped by reduction in cost and size, but the real key to growth was producing new volumes altogether.  Compilations filled with 'new' or additional material put together by publishers, sometimes of dubious quality, gave people reason to buy new copies of already owned works.  The original modification, making books smaller and cheaper, increased sales but only continued modifications- provided via new editions, additional material- sustained sales.  A similar phenomena can now be seen in the production and sale of digital games.  Thanks to the emergence of technologies enhancing the speed of communication and distribution (Steam being the noted example), piracy of digital games is of little concern (at least for Valve) as the 'fluid and dynamic...participation of the customers themselves' drives increased modifications of the games sold.  In effect, pirated copies of games become low mobility constructs through their inability to be modified, while official versions become high mobility constructs through their constant modification driven through customer participation and interaction.  Give users control over the modifications or an increased voice in the means of modifications and you largely solve the problem of piracy presented by competing low mobility constructs.

Now the pirates could respond by bringing original modifications into their pirated versions- neither Newell nor Fries say anything of this potential phenomena- yet we might assume this is not the case as users have a dedicated communications channel with the original content creators allowing them to funnel their desires for modifications directly to the source.  It would be interesting to see how pirates operate in other franchises where this communications channel is either denied or cut-off (a game reaching it's 'end of life' so to speak), that is, would pirates become enablers of high mobility potential in products whose lifespan renders them, essentially, ossified low mobility products?  There is also the question of how the act of piracy impacts the transition of an informational construct from high to low mobility and vice versa.  As this brief examination proves, there is clearly a great deal more to explore in the interaction between high and low mobility potentials found in informational constructs.

Course Design Process: History Through Games

As part of the ongoing process that is assembling my 'Graduate Portfolio', I've decided to design a course that addresses one of my growing interests- the intersection of historical inquiry and gaming.  About a year ago, I wrote a draft essay analyzing the Cold War themed board game Twilight Struggle as a 'complex cultural artifact' using, primarily, the methodology behind material culture analysis in order to dissect the deeper narrative generative process one encounters through play.  The essay was a labor of love, not provoked by assignment, and I found the process of looking deeper into the issues related to the play-design mechanics inherent in the game to be a satisfying intellectual exercise.  What I realized through the writing of my draft was that Twilight Struggle could be read, in part, as a historical artifact- albeit one with caveats and peculiarities that needed to be addressed if one desired to utilize analysis of such an artifact to the fullest.

Now many might think it silly that I would come to such an obvious conclusion.  However, in my defense, I was not aware of the diversity of thinking, especially among academic circles, that surrounded analysis of games against a larger historical-cultural backdrop.  I hadn't read a single issue of Simulation and Gaming, nor did I know about excellent blogs like PaxSims or Play the Past (although, to be fair, Play the Past did not yet exist when I wrote my essay).  Needless to say, through my writing on a subject thought to be quite novel, I reinvented the wheel several times over in a rough manner that ill suited the smoothness in inquiry pursued by others in the field.  Being a developing Humanities scholar I am not adverse to such endeavors, but it was, in equal measure, both refreshing and discouraging to see the trail already blazed.

Yet I took comfort in the fact that most scholarship or academic writing focused on video games, leaving the table-top variety largely unexamined.  This makes sense, given the fact that video games are much more rich and diverse objects of study.  However, this should not be taken as a sign that board games possess any less diversity as an object worthy of serious analysis or study- quite the opposite.  As Ana Salter recognized in her four part ProfHacker series on 'Using Games in the Classroom' (selection from part III):

Board and card games can be a great first project, particularly for students.  Digital games are flashy, but board and card games offer the advantages for structured play with a lower barrier to entry.  They can also be good practice for learning the mechanics and structure of games without getting bogged down in programming and logic.  We've all played some version of classroom jeopardy before, and it remains an example of taking game-like mechanics and applying then to any content- but when content guides the way, board games can transcend these roots.

The last line of Salter's quote above is the key to why I want to analyze history through games.  So now I have a topic and suitable motivation- but how, exactly, do I design a course that accomplishes this task?

To answer this question I've drawn on two sources, the first from Mark Sample's two-part discussion about Course Design on ProfHacker (Part I and Part II) and the second from Chad Black's Teaching Philosophy post on his blog Parezco Y Digo.  Sample states that, in course design, we should embrace a 'backwards-design' perspective (a process he borrows from the Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe book 'Understanding by Design') that utilizes a three-step process: Identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence and plan learning experiences.  In this way, course design promotes uncoverage, as opposed to simply coverage, in order to plumb both the depth & breadth of the material we as instructors want our students to explore.  Chad Black's 'Teaching Philosophy' takes the ideas promoted by Sample and provides the linkage to my subject matter- History.  Here is a quote from Black's post on linking desired skill development (reading comprehension, primary/secondary source evaluation, identify/build casual explanations for events/structures/movements and communicate explanations in written form) to his course design goals:

I structured my courses to provide practical experience in each of these areas, mixing primary and secondary source material on the various topics under consideration and emphasizing in lecture and discussion the connection between explanatory narratives of the past with evidence.  I increasingly sought to include a wide variety of media as part of the source-based building blocks of my courses (texts, film, photographs, artifacts, etc.)  My hope for each of my courses has been that students will leave with a keen sense of the problematic relationship between the present and the past and of the problematic nature of the relationship between information and knowledge.

Black goes on to state that he looks to bring the process of collateral learning to his students, fostering the development of skills and attitudes through exposure to not just various cultures but also technical skills that will produce information literacy.  Students in Black's class are prompted to create their own content on their own sites in an attempt to 'demystify the web a bit for a generation that has grown up with the internet as a given in their lives and cultivate a capacity for DIY that is collateral to the specific content of (Blacks) courses…"

Under these guidelines, I've begun to establish the following parameters for my 'History through Gaming' course:

What results do I wish to achieve?  I want students to be able to critically evaluate a board game, or any game derivative, looking at not only its outward theme and graphics/material pieces but also the mechanics and designer motivations/inspirations that went into the overall play-mechanic design.  They should be able to situate the game amongst the larger historical narrative, demonstrating knowledge of what the game excels at modeling and what it fails to accurately portray.  In a real sense, I want students to be able to use games as one of many 'documents' in evaluating what Black identified as the 'problematic relationship between the present and the past' in addition to the 'relationship between information and knowledge'.  

What do I consider acceptable evidence?  To begin, students will need to analyze the game itself and then branch out to the designer behind the game, as well as examine the source materials used in its construction.  Students should also cross-check their initial analysis of game materials and design construction using other critically evaluated primary or secondary sources of the period or theme depicted in the game.

What are the learning experiences I wish to utilize?  Beyond reading and evaluating source material (the bread and butter of historical practice), I want students to actually engage with the games we study through the act of play.  Many modern day board games strive to create a narrative through play and I want students to become observers of this process, yet go a step further, analyzing the structure and limitations of this narrative generative experience.  Because many games rely upon the experiences, both past and present, a player brings to the table, I want to use a coordinated approach of tweets to create a real-time experience backchannel, allowing others to view and comment, in addition to having students produce longer explanatory essays, once reserved for the instructors eyes alone, on blogs of their own creation that will be shared with the entire class.  I also want students to produce 'modifications' of the games we study, based on research they have conducted throughout the course, linking the play-design mechanics they propose on reasoned approaches to historical phenomena.

With these guidelines, the next step in designing the course is to determine a theme upon which to base the semester.  Because I am acutely aware that Russian historians are increasingly asked to teach courses outside the constraints of that particular geographic boundary, I decided that it might be best to pick a topic and era both suited to the wealth of available games and interests of mid-level undergraduates, the target audience of this course- American History.  Immediately, Twilight Struggle comes to mind- but this is a rather complex game that might serve better as the keystone, given its survey of Cold War history.  There is also the recently released Hero of Weehawken, which covers the Aaron Burr conspiracy of the early 19th century.  And, of course, there is a plethora of World War II games that cover every conceivable aspect of the American involvement in that conflict.  One constraint of the course is that I don't want to pick too many games to analyze, as learning how to play these games and then asking students to have at least one go at a complete session- in addition to reading relevant documents/analyses of the period in question- would prove too much to cover in one semester/trimester/quarter.  I also want to avoid focusing too much on 'war-games', which is why I'm considering games that tackle social issues like 'The Battle for Seattle'. 

Then there is the larger question of how to address the concept of approaching a board game (and games in general) as applicable historical artifacts worthy of study.  Here the task is much simpler, due mainly to the recent surge of academic interest by those in diverse fields of study.  A few exemplars immediately surface: Brenda Braithwaite's incredible GDC presentation on her approach to designing Train, a documentary 'People are Knowledge' created by editors of Wikipedia seeking to have oral citations included in the encyclopedia based (in part) on the evolving rules of traditional games, and a recently released collection of essays (edited by Gred Costikyan and Drew Davidson) found in Tabletop: Analog Game Design, just to name a few.  Then, of course, there are the excellent blog posts on both PaxSims and Play the Past, not to mention the deeper levels of analysis found in the works of past luminary Johan Huizinga and contemporary luminaries Alexander Galloway & Ian Bogost.  What I once thought was a desert turned out to be an ocean of thought based solely around games of all forms.  

Herein lies the promise and peril of studying games- how do I decide which texts best suit the guidelines I elaborated above?  Should I select the games I wish to study first or should I pick texts that suit my quest of elaborating the game as a historical artifact?  This is the next hurdle I face in my course design- not to mention the selection of appropriate texts suited to historical analyses of the games I select.  However, thanks to my articulation of the three questions above, I have a much better idea of what I want to pursue in fulfilling my goals for the course.  I would love to hear from others in the comments section, or on twitter (@jsantley) on either game ideas, course approaches, or texts to use.

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.