I struggle with the stock/field part all the time. I’m like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter, but then I never do anything with them. Or maybe I’m a hoarder, I often say to myself, “you should go through those links and see what’s fermenting there.” And then I don’t. I don’t eve link in blog posts that much anymore, because I’m often writing on my iPad and I find it tedious to link. In fact, I was going to link to you yesterday and failed to do so. The lack of multitasking brings me down.
I think the web has always been a stream. It just moved really slowly. Hyper linking created the flow, but not everyone did it, and there wasn’t a lot to link to. But remember the blog rings and blogrolls and guest books and other ways the ancient web tried to connect things together, to create a stream.
We are past pages. I hear my students, 15 and 16 year olds talk about sites and tumblrs and twitter feed, but almost never pages. Pages are in books. And talk about flow. Or maybe float. They go from one thing to another very quickly. What they need, as you say, is a little more solid ground to stand on.
I do think it’s a question of balance rather than one or the other–the thing that appealed to me about Anil’s talk was the fact that it wasn’t just “oh noes! look what *they* have done to *us*” but instead, tried to get at what we have done to make this possible. I think maybe that we were so excited about the flow we were creating through blogging that when FB and T and others did streams better, it was easy just to migrate there.
But like you mentioned in your comment, we lose the ability to tweak the stream ourselves, and the sites/voices that have embraced flow can drown out everything else. It’s no accident for me that I saw your post (and David’s live-blog of Anil’s talk) on Reader first. I still haven’t gotten my Tweetbot/Instapaper/Diigo ecology working as well for me yet as Reader has for the past 5-7 years, and it’s not for lack of trying…
Going back to your CCCC presentation and the question (“And yet, if you asked 100 people at this conference whether they’d rather publish an essay in CCC or have a couple of hundred followers on Twitter, I’m pretty sure most people would choose the first option.”). I think that this question answers the larger question about flow and stock that your post asks. For instance, I just posted a question and a claim to Twitter that is at the heart of a current project, and I want Twitter to help me write it. That’s the flow and the stock. The feedback I get, the questions I am asked, and sources I will be pointed to will end up (in some form or another) in the article. In other words, and as your emphasis on modeling suggests, this is a practical, almost logistical question. The eb and flow between field and stream is an ontological condition we must navigate. How do we develop practices (and here I am thinking of your actionary rhetoric of new media) that allow us to productive navigate fields and streams?
Yep yep yep. For me, the piece that DH has really picked up in a way that Writing Studies hasn’t yet is to think about how that ontological condition is reflected, deflected, and/or genuflected institutionally–in a loose way, that’s what I was thinking about at #nhuk, I hope. 🙂
I’m conflicted–“@cgbrooke: Thinking about pages, streams, and academic practices: “Stock, Flow, Field, Stream” http://t.co/pnyNcVrXbP”
Raúl Sánchez
April 9, 2013 7:55 pm
The only complications I would add are:
a) that the field/stream/flow/stock metaphors seem to treat writers/readers/fisherpeople as distinct and or separate from those “things” rather than in/of them, though I’m not sure anything can be done about that, since any metaphor will do the same, even…
b) ontology, which is something of a dead-end metaphor or nomenclature for me, because it signals that we’re just back to a particular (philosophical) discourse rather than “out” in “the open.”
Not that we ever get out in the open, of course. But I guess some nomenclatures (yikes I’m very Burkey today) have some histories, and others have others.
@drbrowne
April 3, 2013 6:54 pmThis: “@cgbrooke: Thinking about pages, streams, and academic practices: “Stock, Flow, Field, Stream” http://t.co/G7e2k6hu5D“
Laura
April 3, 2013 8:43 pmI struggle with the stock/field part all the time. I’m like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter, but then I never do anything with them. Or maybe I’m a hoarder, I often say to myself, “you should go through those links and see what’s fermenting there.” And then I don’t. I don’t eve link in blog posts that much anymore, because I’m often writing on my iPad and I find it tedious to link. In fact, I was going to link to you yesterday and failed to do so. The lack of multitasking brings me down.
I think the web has always been a stream. It just moved really slowly. Hyper linking created the flow, but not everyone did it, and there wasn’t a lot to link to. But remember the blog rings and blogrolls and guest books and other ways the ancient web tried to connect things together, to create a stream.
We are past pages. I hear my students, 15 and 16 year olds talk about sites and tumblrs and twitter feed, but almost never pages. Pages are in books. And talk about flow. Or maybe float. They go from one thing to another very quickly. What they need, as you say, is a little more solid ground to stand on.
Collin
April 3, 2013 9:04 pmI saw that post, and almost left a comment! 🙂
I do think it’s a question of balance rather than one or the other–the thing that appealed to me about Anil’s talk was the fact that it wasn’t just “oh noes! look what *they* have done to *us*” but instead, tried to get at what we have done to make this possible. I think maybe that we were so excited about the flow we were creating through blogging that when FB and T and others did streams better, it was easy just to migrate there.
But like you mentioned in your comment, we lose the ability to tweak the stream ourselves, and the sites/voices that have embraced flow can drown out everything else. It’s no accident for me that I saw your post (and David’s live-blog of Anil’s talk) on Reader first. I still haven’t gotten my Tweetbot/Instapaper/Diigo ecology working as well for me yet as Reader has for the past 5-7 years, and it’s not for lack of trying…
@sophist_monster
April 4, 2013 10:22 am@cgbrooke is on fire RT some prelim thoughts on the shift from pages to streams and what it means for grad education: http://t.co/6J5PQZEqgi
Nathaniel
April 4, 2013 10:37 amGoing back to your CCCC presentation and the question (“And yet, if you asked 100 people at this conference whether they’d rather publish an essay in CCC or have a couple of hundred followers on Twitter, I’m pretty sure most people would choose the first option.”). I think that this question answers the larger question about flow and stock that your post asks. For instance, I just posted a question and a claim to Twitter that is at the heart of a current project, and I want Twitter to help me write it. That’s the flow and the stock. The feedback I get, the questions I am asked, and sources I will be pointed to will end up (in some form or another) in the article. In other words, and as your emphasis on modeling suggests, this is a practical, almost logistical question. The eb and flow between field and stream is an ontological condition we must navigate. How do we develop practices (and here I am thinking of your actionary rhetoric of new media) that allow us to productive navigate fields and streams?
Collin
April 4, 2013 12:44 pmYep yep yep. For me, the piece that DH has really picked up in a way that Writing Studies hasn’t yet is to think about how that ontological condition is reflected, deflected, and/or genuflected institutionally–in a loose way, that’s what I was thinking about at #nhuk, I hope. 🙂
@AnitaDeRouen
April 4, 2013 4:49 pmI’m conflicted–“@cgbrooke: Thinking about pages, streams, and academic practices: “Stock, Flow, Field, Stream” http://t.co/pnyNcVrXbP”
Raúl Sánchez
April 9, 2013 7:55 pmThe only complications I would add are:
a) that the field/stream/flow/stock metaphors seem to treat writers/readers/fisherpeople as distinct and or separate from those “things” rather than in/of them, though I’m not sure anything can be done about that, since any metaphor will do the same, even…
b) ontology, which is something of a dead-end metaphor or nomenclature for me, because it signals that we’re just back to a particular (philosophical) discourse rather than “out” in “the open.”
Not that we ever get out in the open, of course. But I guess some nomenclatures (yikes I’m very Burkey today) have some histories, and others have others.
Raúl