Geoffrey Glass

Please read the following quotes. Use Marginalia to comment on them, and to mark where you agree or disagree.

The following is from the conclusion of Andrew Keen's Cult of the Amateur (2007):

. . . technology doesn't create human genius. It merely provides new tools for self-expression. And if the democratized chaos of user-generated Web 2.0 content ends up replacing mainstream media, then there may not be a way for the Mozarts, Van Goghs, and Hitchcocks of the future to effectively distribute or sell their creative work.

Instead of developing technology, I believe that our real moral responsibility is to procted mainstream media against the cult of the amateur. We need to reform rather than revolutionize an information and entertainment economy that, over the last two hundred years, has reinforced American values and made our culture the envy of the world. Once dismantled, I fear that this professional media - with its rich ecoystem of writers, editors, agents, talent scouts, journalists, publishers, musicians, reporters, and actors - can never again be put back together.

This is from Raymond Williams in Culture and Society (1963):

. . . ideas of the diffusion of culture have normally been dominative in character, on behalf of the particular and finished ideal of an existing class. This . . . is seen most clearly in an ideal which has been largely built into our educational system, of leading the unenlightened to the particular kind of light which the leaders find satisfactory for themselves. A particular kind of work is to be extended to more persons, although, as a significant thing, it exists as a whole in the situation in which it was produced. The dominative element appears in the conviction that the product will not need to be changed, that criticism is merely the residue of misunderstanding, and, finally, that the whole operation can be carried out, and the product widely extended, without radically changing the general situation. This may be summarized as the belief that a culture (in the specialized sense) can be widely extended without changing the culture (in the sense of "a whole way of life") within which it has existed."

And from Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life (1980):

Tools are the operators of writing and also its defenders. They protect the privilege that circumscribes it and distinguishes it from the bodies to be educated. . . . But this barrier is gradually breaking down. The instruments are giving way little by little; they are almost anachronistic in the contemporary order, in which writing and machinery, lo longer distinct, . . . "

Welcome to the Marginalia sandbox. Please create an account on SCoPE and log in so that you can participate.

Please contribute to the discussion and give us something to annotate by creating a forum post. We developed Marginalia in order to enhance online discussion, so I suggest describing a problem or limitation you have encountered with online forums.

For example, I find that forum posts contain many extremely valuable pieces of information. My anecdotal experience is that in many cases people readily write thoughtful arguments and useful information in forums, but are less likely to contribute that same information to, say, a wiki. But unlike wikis (or even blogs) forums do not structure their contents for easy categorization or retrieval. Even when I recall seeing an interesting post, I often have great difficulty finding it again later.

If you prefer (or if you have never run into any problems with forums), consider writing about how you have used them in education, whether as an instructor or a learner.

We are genuinely interested in what you have to say about forums, but of course you are here to try out Marginalia. Use the drop-down list at the top of the forum page to show the margin, then experiment with creating annotations. Things to try:

• Try making overlapping highlights, then hover over them with the mouse to see which margin notes they go with
  
• Click on an annotation you already created to edit it
• Use the drop-down menu at the top right to display annotations by only a particular user, or by all users, or to hide the margin
• Create the same margin note more than twice so that Marginalia can autocomplete it
• Click on the Summary link at the top right to visit the summary page
• Search the summary page, or filter it by clicking on the hand icon that pops up next to user names and other text in the results list
• Use the quote buttons beneath forum posts and beside notes in the margin
• Try making an annotation private (other collaboratory participants can check whether they can see it)
• Click on the Atom feed button at the bottom of the summary page and see what Firefox (which isn't really a feed reader) does with it.

After this session, you may wish to visit Marginalia's home page at www.geof.net/code/annotation/, where there are screencasts demonstrating Marginalia's features.