There’s a Mac For That

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Last week I updated my computer to Windows 7. It was easier than any major update I have ever done. At about the same time, of course, Apple began running the latest iteration of its commercial, apparently trying to tamp down some of the enthusiasm that has surrounded the newest version of Microsoft’s operating system. It’s always been a loosing battle, of course. Apple has never achieved more than 10% of the overall market share.

The whole Apple/Microsoft dynamic is full of irony and contradiction. Apple has long pedaled the notion that it was the ‘alternative’ to big brother, yet it’s hardware and software is almost obsessively proprietary. Bill Gates has long been portrayed as the ultimate corporate master, yet he’s now retired and busily giving away his fortune to the poor. Steve Jobs seems determined to work until he drops, or until he’s milked the last penny from the consumer market.

Interestingly, education has always been a big part of Apple’s success, beginning with the early Apple programs that made their computers and software cheap for students. There’s always been a notion that Apples were better at graphics, too, and they are favored in many graphics heavy departments, such as journalism. I doubt anyone could make that case convincingly, now. Yet the “Mac as Alternative” confidence game continues to find favor among many academics.

I find the “I’m a Mac” campaign smug and arrogant (almost unwatchable) but it fits into a lot of academics’ self-image very nicely. The rest of the world– an overwhelming majority– have chosen PC’s over Mac’s again and again, over decades, and through enormous changes in technology. Yet, the Apple ads say, they have always been wrong. Only this tiny minority can see the Matrix. The rest of you are just fat, unattractive dupes. I’ve been to that department meeting before…

Posted in: Writing

Open Scientific Writing

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Arguably, we are witnessing the end of one era of academic cultural capital– I’d call it the proprietary era– and the beginning of another, which I think should be called the open era. In the proprietary era status was dependent, in part, on the possession of more or less rare forms of knowledge. The value of knowledge was dependent on keeping it secret until it was made public in a way which ensured that you would receive proper credit.

That’s one of the reasons that academic journals were so important: they were the gateway that allowed proprietary knowledge to become public without any loss of capital. The channels themselves, in fact, conveyed their own institutional cultural capital. It didn’t just matter what you knew, it matters where you worked and where you published. Slowly, though, for reasons that range from the political to the technological to the logistic, all of this is changing.

I don’t think it’s possible to know for sure what the new forms of academic capital will look like; there’s still too much turbulence in the system for any clarity. I think, though, that the open science and open notebook folks are the place to look for signs of the emerging paradigm. As a writing teacher, I am particularly interested in the open notebook projects, since they point to a very new model for audience and purpose in academic writing.

“Open Notebook Science,” Jean-Claude Bradley of Drexel writes, “is the practice of making the entire primary record of a research project publicly available online as it is recorded.” It sounds simple, but it’s not; it’s also not as transparent and democratic as it might sound, either. It pushes scientists towards writing notes that others can understand, but that “other” might be other scientists more than the general public. The rest of us can read but may not understand.

How will academic capital change if academics begin to be rewarded for sharing knowledge openly rather than keeping it secret until it can be revealed via the proper channels? “Openness” will itself have to be defined: do we reward most who most fluently speak the technical codes of their disciplines, or do we reward those who find ways to subvert those codes so that science itself becomes more widely accessible? It’s still an open question (pardon the pun).

Posted in: Language, Professional, Writing

Pity the Poor Adjunct

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The Dylan reference is probably unfair. But whenever I read a piece like this (“Value Students? Then Value Adjuncts“) I can’t help but feel more than a little frustrated. Academics– not just adjuncts– just don’t seem to understand the basic paradigms of power in a capitalist economy. I know that in part it’s just a figure of speech, but it’s absurd to ask the university to “care.”

It just does not work that way. No capitalist institution, no matter how rooted in the liberal arts (or organic foods or solar power or anything else) is going to willingly give up power over something as basic as labor costs. Adjuncts, especially in writing programs, like the author of the piece, are money making machines. Too often (but not always) they are very compliant money machines too.

The real problem, in the end, is that academia needs to give up its genteel notions of power and influence exercises through persuasion, specially in a written form. It borders on a kind of fetish– this notion that the way you change the university is by writing texts to persuade them that your cause is just. Writing is fine, but power comes from organization.

Posted in: Writing