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December 08, 2006, 03:50 PM ET
Rethinking the Working Paper, Digitally
Mitchell Stephens, a professor of journalism and mass communication at New York University, is at his home institution today, presenting a paper on the history of atheism. He should have at least some sense of how it will play to an audience: For the last few days, the piece has been sitting online, drawing its healthy share of comments and annotations.
Mr. Stephens's paper -- titled "The Holy of Holies: On the Constituents of Emptiness" -- is the subject of the latest experiment devised by the folks at the Institute for the Future of the Book, a Brooklyn-based academic center run by the University of Southern California. The institute uses digital technology to reshape books as interactive conversations -- as it did with GAM3R 7H30RY, a monograph by McKenzie Wark, a professor of media and cultural studies at the New School (The Chronicle, July 28).
In Mr. Wark's digital book, each paragraph had its own Web page that included a forum for reader comments. But Mr. Stephens's paper works a bit differently: The piece is divided into a dozen sections -- each roughly the length of a page in a traditional book, and each given its own Web page. Within those pages, readers can click on individual paragraphs to offer comments or see what others had to say.
The new format makes Mr. Stephens's paper a smoother read than Mr. Wark's monograph, and it's a good sign that digital books can rethink basic precepts of the medium without seeming self-consciously avant-garde. In essence, the experiment in form "gives new meaning to the idea of the working paper," writes Ben Vershbow, a researcher with the institute.
So how effective is the digital book in starting actual conversations? It's too early to tell, but the format seems to be doing a decent job of that. While several commenters have written in just to point out typographical errors, others offer some meaty commentary. "Glad you have the courage to invoke Heidegger," writes one poster in response to one of Mr. Stephens's knottiest passages. "You’ll get a lot of grief for it, of course." --Brock Read
Categories: Research
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