Digital enthusiasts are sometimes accused of throwing traditional approaches under the bus. Quit lugging around those heavy books — slim down with 140 characters! But traditional literature approaches are useful for making sense of digital culture. Close reading and analysis of texts, the most analog of the analog, are tools that can be profitably applied to navigating the tumultuousness of digital seas.
Moby Dick, as an example, can provide two kinds of guidance for digital mariners:
1) The text can be seen as an example of digital culture, and
2) The text can provide purpose for digital tools.
To the first point, comparisons can be made between Moby Dick and digital contemporary life. Some comparisons are charming and superficial, others offer real insight. We can see in Ahab the passion of fan culture, and in Ishmael’s obsession with whaling information an example of a blogger who is curating all the information possible about whaling. And we can also see type of deep-diving in research that Ishmael uses as an example for how blogging can be a serious and deep endeavor.
Social media is sometimes considered silly and without purpose. What did you eat for breakfast today? When we look to essential literature, we can become re-calibrated to essential values and meaning. It can then give purpose to our digital endeavors. Reading Moby Dick, we can understand better themes of obsession, commitment, shortsightedness, and passion. And a blogger who embarks on a creative journey, for example, will make a more meaningful blog having seen the passion and failings of Captain Ahab. Having consumed the moral and thematic material that great literature has to offer, we will know how to responsibly yield new digital tools.
No comments:
Post a Comment