Comments on: Will the Writing Revolution Beget a Social Revolution?

By: Some Memorable Dishes from the Kitchen in 2009 « The Scholarly Kitchen

Some Memorable Dishes from the Kitchen in 2009 « The Scholarly Kitchen — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:16:52 +0000

[...] Will the Writing Revolution Beget a Social Revolution? [...]

By: Denis Pelli

Denis Pelli — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:58:20 +0000

Dear Kent Anderson
Teaching literacy is a great thing. Thank you. I’m an author of the Seed article. Your article and its commenters raise nice points. As Cody Brown says, perhaps “Publishing is the new literacy.” We discuss the issue of how broadly to define publishing (and authorship) in our response to comments at the New York Times blog. http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/a-writing-revolution/#comment-28215

By: thorn

thorn — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:15:36 +0000

There may be a law of diminishing returns in the ‘influence vs. privacy’ economy. With all those people ‘authoring’, who’ll have time to read?

By: Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:33:16 +0000

As in, “authentic”?

By: Bill Kasdorf

Bill Kasdorf — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:30:43 +0000

I’d like to point out the relationship of the words “authorship” and “authority” and see what people have to say. . . .

By: ann michael

ann michael — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:26:27 +0000

I think some of the points made in this post are more about communication than “authorship”, and as such one could define authorship more broadly (or to minimize confusion, perhaps drop the term all together).

It seems the real “empowerment” is that people are communicating more and with more people simultaneously creating “a population that wields increasing individual power.”

If that is true then change is inevitable!

By: Michael Clarke

Michael Clarke — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:47:24 +0000

While I concur with Shirky and the authors of the Seed article (Pelli and Bigelow) that there is a trend towards increased authorship with profound consequences for our society, I think the numbers used to make this case are overstated.

It seems a bit of a reach to classify Facebook and Twitter posts as “authorship.” Most people who use these platforms do so to communicate with friends and family. In that sense, these communication platforms replace and augment letters and e-mail. On the professional side, these platforms replace and augment e-mails and list-serves. If one is not counting letter and e-mail writers and list-serve posters as “authors” I don’t think it makes sense to count Facebook and Twitter posters as such. While it is true that Facebook and Twitter posts can be read (in many cases) by more than 100 people, it seems a stretch to classify postings of one’s vacation pictures or lunchtime activities as authorship. Context is more important, I think, than quantity: surely the writer of a scholarly article read by 90 people is an “author.”

I think there is enough evidence of this authorship trend available elsewhere (e.g. blogs and the explosive growth of self-published books) to make a credible case. To include Facebook and Twitter posts smacks of shoehorning the data to fit the trend, undermining Pelli and Bigelow’s otherwise thought-provoking article.