The Digital Future of Authorship: Rethinking Originality
In this reading, Kathleen Fitzpatrick discusses the transition of text from a print-based media to a web-based media, and the implications that this transition has had and could have for the future of academic writing, as well as in other fields such as music and video production. She mentions that the advent of word processing created a method of writing in which ideas could be put down, expanded upon, moved around or deleted, all in one document. This new way of creating content is reflected in music production, when digital audio workstations are compared to traditional tape-based recording methods. With tape, a recording was almost final, and it was difficult to edit this recording once it had been made, but recording onto a computer means that audio can be moved around and manipulated endlessly post-recording. This idea is then explored in terms of publishing works. A text published as a book is fixed, and any alterations must come in the form of new editions, but the introduction of the blog means that authors can update their content, add to it, delete it, in a continuing process of creation, and readers of blogs expect this to happen. This could be an interesting idea to explore in music, where a song is uploaded in it’s initial finished stage, but the artist can then change it as they see fit, so that the creative process is an ongoing one, exposed to the audience.
This idea of ongoing creation could also be seen as a possible reason for the decrease in perceived value of recorded music, and an increase in perceived value of live performances, which is reflected in falling album sales and increased concert ticket sales, as well as increased prices of these tickets, which is a good example of supply and demand.
I believe that blogs or other forms on online text could be used more widely in education; rather than teaching students from static textbooks, as is the case in many teaching situations, teachers could use online resources, as knowledge is updated constantly on the internet, which means that students would be learning from the most current sources.
She also mentions the idea of authorship, and that Web 2.0 has changed the idea of a single author to a collaboration of authors, as well as the idea of authorship through curation. This is an extension of the remix or mashup, where new content is created directly from pre-existing content. This idea could be applied to other fields, because there is an overabundance of content that is generally badly organised online, so there is a need for people to consolidate the best content, and make it easier for people to discover and access it.
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