Jefferson's Newspaper

Collecting Records and Walter Benjamin

I recently picked up a copy of Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations. I was completely struck by the first essay, “Unpacking My Library”, where Benjamin discusses book collecting. And while I myself take pride in my ever growing personal library, I almost immediately began to translate all his references to books as pertaining to record collecting. Not only this, but Benjamin’s words somehow summed up, far more eloquently than my own I might add, why, despite my professional stance that everything should be digitized and widely disseminated, I don’t and never will own an ipod. It made me rethink a few ideas I’ve become accustomed to, things like ownership and physicality, that have become essential to my work as a Digital Humanist. So, I thought I’d share…

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As the dialogue on the emergent (yet increasingly passe?) edupunk movement has begun to penetrate the mainstream press, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the term might mean to my present occupation, and also about what punk rock has meant to me historically (both in terms of my personal history and also my views on History with a capital H). I’ll spare you the many cliched “life experiences” I’ve enjoyed as a result of my involvement in punk culture, and focus here on how it has impacted my views on art, literature, politics, society, technology and education (i.e. the (digital) humanities).

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So, I really like the looks of this nifty little flowchart, though I’m not sure it’s logically consistent.  In fact, it kind of reminds me of the inscrutable maintenance manual that came with my Taiwanese scooter.   I’m feeling compelled to take it down and make some revisions, but I think it best to just move on to writing my little article about the challenges inherent in digital history at the institutional level.  So here it is…

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