My friend Joe, a newspaper editor, once said something to the effect of “It’s kind of crazy how all the punks end up doing such interesting and serious work outside of punk when they ‘grow up.’” Okay, he probably said something a lot better and more impactful than that because I remember the gist of it years later. For some reason this brief conversation has stuck with me. As I moved through undergrad and grad school and into the professional world, I have consistently noticed the phenomenon in action. The best students, the best teachers, the best writers, and the best researchers all seem to have this common background. I have seen it and confirmed it in many of my (more interesting) colleagues and it shows in the work of many others whom I’ve never met. It’s a certain flair for innovation, improvisation, and investigation; a proclivity for self-education and DIY solutions; a disdain for convention and privilege; and an eye for finding humor and absurdity in unexpected places.

3 Chords is All You Need (… at Least to Start)

Yep. The Ramones first album proved among other things that you only need to know three guitar chords to make great music. But like many other punk bands, the music matured over time, becoming more complex as the artists began to hone their skills and increase their repertoire. Sometimes the music got better, sometimes it got worse as a result. Even though I never was able to master even the requisite three chords to start my own band, the “anyone can do this” attitude that punk embodied has carried over into everything I do. Most everything one might pursue has those metaphorical three chords — the trick, as with the guitar, is figuring out what they are.

In digital humanities, those three chords might be HTML, CSS, and PHP. (Maybe others have a different idea. I’m focusing here on the digital part because the humanities part – the content – is understood. Afterall, if you don’t have something to say, you shouldn’t be starting a “band.”) The degree to which you need these “chords” will vary depending on what you are trying to accomplish, as well as on the tools you use and the people you work with. But generally speaking, these three will set you up to start web publishing, and also give you a solid base for understanding other more complex programming languages and projects.

So you find the chords, you master them. Then on to the next challenge… and the next. Before you know it, you’ll be soloing on your hand-built keytar as your self-produced album rockets to the top of the prog rock charts. Or not. Maybe you’ll just keep pounding away at those same chords and finding new ways to use them. But the point is that it’s alright to start small (and/or stay small).

DIY or Die!

It’s not just that you can do it yourself but that you should. To me, there is no such thing as a major label punk rock band (at least not after about 1980). Being punk has always been about doing it yourself – sometimes out of necessity, sometimes by preference, and occasionally as an anti-capitalist or anti-authoritarian gesture. If you do it yourself, you are free to do it however you want.

Thus far, a lot of the digital humanities projects I’ve seen are tied to institutional funding and labor, proprietary content and technology, and bound by copyright and contractual obligations. It’s not that these projects are bad. Many are great. And they often benefit especially from connections gained through these affiliations. They also employ people, which is good. It’s just that they can also become organizationally bloated, unwieldy, and tenuous as a result. This doesn’t mean you have to run your semantic search think tank from your mom’s garage (though, hell, why not?), it just means keeping hierarchies in check and making sure you don’t lose control of your project, or lose sight of your goals. It also means learning as you go; tinkering, experimenting, and failing are all important.

No Rights Reserved

DIY is not about individualism, it can also be about leaning on (and contributing to) like-minded communities. Open source technologies and Creative Commons licenses are totally punk rock. Open platforms (like WordPress, Drupal, Omeka, etc.) and software packages (Gimp, OpenOffice, FireFox) share their code, encourage non-proprietary standards, and are often developed and maintained by a community of users/contributors. If you want to use them, you can do so for free. If you want to study them, make them better or bend them to your own needs, you can usually do that too. Most open source projects operate under some kind of Creative Commons license.

But open content is also important. Humanities research requires the use of all kinds of content. Running up against unnecessary copyright restrictions can be not only frustrating but can actually bring projects to a halt – especially digital archival projects operating under the aegis of larger institutions; institutions that are understandably (though sometimes paranoically) wary of litigation. There are two (or maybe three) significant archival repositories in my neighborhood. One opens its content to all comers because they have defined themselves as an institution committed to education and community. They allow hands-on access, digitization, and non-profit use of nearly everything in their collections. At the other end of the spectrum is the more hallowed institution. They believe that their collections are sacrosanct and that their artifacts exist to be preserved. They do not make anything available online and they forbid reproduction of any type (unless you pay a ridiculous fee) for fear that everyone is out to steal their content. They really believe that if they increase access, they will lose their standing. Direct quote: “These items are all we have! We can’t just let people download them! Then how will we make money or get funding?” As if they are bringing in a lot of money in their current state: offline, behind lock and key, and crippled by the analog DRM called fear of obsolecense. The people who will pay (i.e. commercial projects like documentaries), will pay anyway. If they can find your content. Overprotection creates a situation where the “wondrous” artifacts they preserve may as well have burned in Alexandria. It’s pretty annoying to know that the perfect set of historic image sits just across town, waiting to help you complete your groundbreaking, non-profit, community-based public history project, but it will cost you $1000 (or the equivalent in months of grovelling) to use it.

So why add to this problem with your own unnecessary copyright barriers? Open it up, and let people benefit from and build on your work. They’ll do it anyway, so what do you have to lose? (see also Stuart Geiger’s post on the topic). The point of your work is to make an impact (on communities, people, scholarship, your reputation, etc.). While nothing is more punk rock than throwing the ole’ “No Rights Reserved” on your blood, sweat and tears creation, CreativeCommons allows you to choose the degree of openness that suits your project, so no pressure… you poser.

Death to Posers and EduJocks

Punks hate nothing more than posers and jocks (and maybe Ronald Reagan). They are antithetical to all the punk believes in. Posers are an affront to the punk rocker’s unending need to measure and display authenticity. In edupunk and in the digital humanities (interesting how these seem to be tied together), there are also what might be called posers. We will call them EduJocks (I sure hope you heard it here first, but I doubt it). EduJocks adopt the outward persona of the digital humanist/edupunk, but lack the internalized commitment and understanding of the bigger picture. If you hear someone saying, “Well, BlackBoard is good for some things…” or “Too bad there’s no alternative to Microsoft Office/ContentDM/Adobe…”, cut them off and walk away immediately. You are in the presence of an EduJock. This could be like a Jeff Foxworthy bit. You know you’re an EduJock if… [ahem - this is what blog comments are for].

That’s it for Part 1. I’m getting tired of this right now, but I have plenty more to say. Stay tuned for Part 2, wherein I will blow your mind with another ludicrous application of the time-honored punk rock tradition of making everything you like be about punk rock.

Yes, this post ends abruptly. That’s because it’s punk rock. I’m exploring the form.