Digital Culture Reflections

Note the three folders at the bottom. Thinking academically about digital culture has helped me organize and think about my own digital life. In Consume, I keep apps like Music, Podcasts, and Hulu; in Connect, I have Mail and social media; in Create I have Calendar, Voice Record, Notes, and To Do lists.

A couple years ago I presented at a conference for podcasters in Utah called Pod Camp SLC 2011. Now, as I reflect on what I have learned this semester in digital humanities class, I find myself thinking back to that presentation. Maybe the main thing that the digital culture class has taught me, in my final semester of college, after years of podcasting, is that this stuff I have been up to has been more than merely a side project.

I’ll go ahead and share below my presentation that I gave back then. It was called “Being Professional With Your Passion.” I defined what that meant for me, and how I measured success with my podcasting. I explained how I sometimes felt like Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can, making people believe that I was anybody worth listening or talking to, and how I tried to hide the screaming Beatles fan inside me every time I got to interview one of my most respected artists about my favorite subject.

Back then, I felt like I was getting away with something. What my digital culture course has taught me is that I wasn’t: I was directly participating in something real. Digital tools gave me access to The Thing, not just a superficial rehashing of it.

Brittany Purcell, a classmate of mine, has written about how digital tools like Etsy can afford access to real business opportunities. She outlined the Maker movement in her article, “Etsy: The Vehicle to Professional Entrepreneurship,” and defined Makers as “the population of creators that use available resources to create and enhance given products.” 

Reading that, and talking in academic ways about consuming, creating, and connecting, has been for me like going to the doctor and finding out that this strange thing you have growing on you has a Latin name. Even if I don’t know exactly what to do about my passion for Do-It-Yourself digital and creative projects, knowing that it is a recognizable, diagnosable subject, worthy of academic attention, is paradigm-shifting. And confidence-inspiring.

After three years of podcasting, I am closing shop on The Pixar Podcast and starting a new show in January. I will continue to apply the principles of consuming, creating, and connecting that I had found on my own and then became cognizant of in this class, and I couldn’t be more excited to go forward, my vision now clear about what I am doing and why it is worthwhile.