Culture: September 2007 Archive Page

From ISS, orbiting 220 miles above the surface of the Earth, the qibla (an Arabic word meaning the direction a Muslim should pray toward Mecca) changes from second to second. During some parts of the space station's orbit, the qibla can move nearly 180 degrees during the course of a single prayer. What's a devout Muslim to do?

I have never wanted anything in my life as badly as I wanted to get into that college. ... That is not how it should be."

When he was a boy, Dr. Pausch said, he had a concrete set of dreams: He wanted to experience the weightlessness of zero gravity; he wanted to play football in the NFL; he wanted to write an article for the World Book Encyclopedia ("You can tell the nerds early on," he joked); he wanted to be Captain Kirk from "Star Trek"; and he wanted to work for the Disney Co.

We at DHQ hope that we will eventually reach a wider audience (and trust our readers will help us do so), introducing the type and range of activities the digital humanities community is interested in, and featuring energetic, novel, and interesting articles on a variety of research, making use of all the Internet technologies at our disposal.

One of the papers in this, our second issue, has already done just that. Dennis G. Jerz's Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original Adventure in Code and in Kentucky, was posted on the test site for proofreading a few weeks before launch, when one of our editors featured an advance mention of it on his blog. A few days later, it was picked up by the gaming community on a popular discussion list (rec.arts.int-fiction), garnering comments such as "HOLY MOLY!" and "It is clear on a single reading that this is the most important single paper ever written on the history of interactive fiction" before it had even been formally published. It doesn't stop there: the paper went on to be featured on Boing Boing (a "directory of wonderful things" which is read by hundreds of thousands of readers), then being mentioned on Slashdot, the popular technology-related news site. (We are pleased to report our servers survived being "slashdotted" so far, which is perhaps the best load test we could wish for). Shortly after, it featured on Metafilter, a community weblog that anyone can edit with a vast readership, where comments included "What academic research should aspire to be" and "I can feel a new LOLCATS meme coming on. (I can haz mint-cake?)." On the eve of publication, we have had a request from a local Kentucky newspaper wishing to republish the paper (which our publication terms willingly permit). This paper has legs.

In addition, publication on DHQ has made the original game available again for a new audience. When the preprint version of this article became available on the internet in August 2007, Matthew Russoto modified Crowther's source code so that it will compile for today's computers. David Kinder made a Windows executable version. The colossal cave lives again.

Public interest in news has changed slightly over the last two decades, but in a manner that suggests no meaningful trend. The average reading for the Pew News Interest Index did slip during the 1990s from 30% to 23%, a seemingly noteworthy decrease that represents nearly a fourth of the original level. Had the index continued to slide as much in the new millennium, that change would have suggested a trend of potentially great import. But in the current decade the index has bounced back to precisely its level during the 1980s: 30%.

[...]

Money News registers with audiences, ranking second among super categories with a three-decade score of 34%. And, decade-by-decade, interest in Money News has increased. In the '80s, its index score was 23%; in the '90s it moved forward to 29%. In this decade it leaped to 40%.

Not one play, not one poem, not one letter in Mr. Shakspere's own hand has ever been found. He divided his time between London and Stratford, a situation conducive to correspondence. Early scholars naturally expected that at least some of his correspondence would have survived. Yet the only writings said to be in his own hand are six shaky, inconsistent signatures on legal documents, including three found on his will. If, in fact, these signatures are his, they reveal that Mr. Shakspere experienced difficulty signing his name. Some document experts doubt that even these signatures are his and suggest they were done by law clerks. One letter addressed to Mr. Shakspere survives. It requested a loan, and it was unopened and undelivered. His detailed will, in which he famously left his wife "my second best bed with the furniture," contains no clearly Shakespearean turn of phrase and mentions no books, plays, poems, or literary effects of any kind. Nor does it mention any musical instruments, despite extensive evidence of the author's musical expertise. He did leave token bequests to three fellow actors (an interlineation, indicating it was an afterthought), but nothing to any writers. The actors' names connect him to the theater, but nothing implies a writing career. Why no mention of Stratford's Richard Field, who printed the poems that first made Shakespeare famous? If Mr. Shakspere was widely known as William "Shakespeare," why spell his name otherwise in his will? Dying men are usually very aware of, and concerned about, what they are famous for. Why not this man?

Book review editors often have difficulty convincing their bosses that the news about books is in the books themselves, not in mega-buck contracts, bestseller chitchat, and profiles of famous authors. Truly conscientious reviewers are not exactly a beloved breed: authors sensitive to criticism detest them, publishers would love to coopt them, and academics rarely respect those who write for a wider public, not for other scholars. Yet book reviewing is where talented young critics often get their start. It encourages them to be generalists, keeping in touch with contemporary writing. It forces them to write quickly and clearly and to put flesh on their arguments, eschewing the abstract jargon of many professionals. And it contributes to a cultural conversation otherwise dominated by hot TV shows, blockbuster movies, and media-manufactured celebrities.

[...]

Though it is built on reading and writing, the Internet is seen as the enemy of literature, digging the grave of the printed book. But just as the computer lent new fluency to the act of writing, the Internet has revolutionized literary research, allowing instant access to vast bodies of information that would have required arduous labor only yesterday. It has amplified the reach of print publications by becoming a prime carrier of the printed word, creating a simultaneous worldwide audience for publications great and small, local and national. But the economic crisis afflicting newspapers and magazines, which has battered literary journalism, shows how the Internet is eating away at it own foundations, the printed sources of so much of its real content. The blog will not make up the difference, at least in its unedited form as a spontaneous effusion, a personal diary in shorthand. As Adam Kirsch has written: "Bitesized commentary, which is all the blog form allows, is next to useless when it comes to talking about books. Literary criticism is only worth having if it at least strives to be literary in its own right, with a scope, complexity, and authority that no blogger I know even wants to achieve." (Critical Mass)