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10/19/2004 Archived Entry: "innovation"
Duncan Watts writes regarding "cascades" and "percolation" (two ideas related to the network):
If we imagine what happens when an innovation is introduced into an initially inactive population, we can see that it can only spread if the initial innovator is connected to at least one early adopter (235)
An important point for any kind of digital rhetoric studies, it seems. How do innovations (in general or connected to the digital) get picked up?
The apparatus is supposedly there: weblogs, listservs, websites, etc. These are more effective tools than books for spreading ideas. I'm not confident much innovation is being picked up and spread, though (but maybe I'm being too picky regarding what I understand innovation to be). When it comes to adoption in composition, we tend to be quite slow (though the same could be said for English studies in general). Cascades, as Watts defines them, cannot occur in composition or its sub-branch of computers and writing because of the trope "cutting-edge." Cutting-edge is often employed as an excuse - "That person is so cutting-edge. I could never do that." Cutting-edge stops the network from passing on an idea or innovation because it situates that idea around a particular personality or feat mere mortals cannot accomplish. And while we may only need "one" adopter as Watts claims, those adopters tend not to materialize (possibly we need more than one adopter) or only materialize briefly. The network hides those adoptions as "cutting-edge" or novel and lets them fade back into the background while the status quo resurfaces.
Replies: 2 comments
Yeah, I agree. Related - rather than become a network model, the attitude divides up into binaries:
1. What we do right now without technology
2. Doing something with technology
The interaction/overlap is not addressed (and models from before for some reason aren't believed to be related to new work).
But I think related to this is that when perceived "changes" occur, they are read through/enacted by the previous model. So the illusion of growing, as you note, is there because the previous model is just being re-instated in the so-called new one. Like The Who said: Meet the New Boss/Same as the Old Boss. I think hypertext theory early on was guilty of this when it slapped post-structuralism onto Storyspace and the Web and basically showed (without meaning to) no change had occured. Composition may be guilty when, for instance, it hypes portfolios (sorry to portfolio folks. No offense, just observation) or professional writing.
Posted by jeff @ 10/19/2004 06:53 PM EST
I'm about to start Watts, but this issue of change is a crucial one for network studies. Arguably, both Gladwell's Tipping Point and Ball's Critical Mass are grounded in the question of how change happens. I'm not sure either comes up with any better answer than Watts, though.
And I would add that, in addition to the trope of the cutting edge, there's another obstacle in the form of how we conceive technology or technologies, seeing it/them as another "area" that fits into the obsolete model of coverage. So many people in our field object to adopting technology in their courses (or careers), seeing it as "yet one more requirement" instead of something that potentially revises all the requirements before it. This attitude provides us with the illusion that our field is "growing," at the same time that it obscures the ways that it is *changing* or could be changing.
cgb
Posted by Collin @ 10/19/2004 05:38 PM EST