Chuck shows me that Amazon is enacting the link in all kinds of odd, scary, and yet provocative ways. On Amazon, he found a listing for his blog. I'm immediately intrigued, of course, so I start seeing what else is up in terms of Yellow Dog. I couldn't find a listing for Yellow Dog like his; this is all I find. A slot, but no picture - Chuck's listing has a screen shot of his site. I do see at the bottom of this listing my old Gainesville address and phone number. That's spooky.
Through a general Amazon search, I also find:
Amazon is now tracking, through its search engine A9, not just my site - or any other - but the peripherals of the site, like images. Only six images pop up for my site (I have more still online). But the consequences loom large for this linking. What comes after the linking to of images?
The WPA-L recent back and forth of subliteracy speaks to these consequences. It's still fairly difficult for composition to imagine new logics emerging out of new media. Bring up the digital, and the response will focus only on a weblog assignment or making a webpage. But there is more to this digital game. Amazon understands that quite well. They - and Google - work hard to create a world of small pieces loosely joined. Their goal is obviously commerce. But so what? The question of linking and connectivity, what Collin is going to teach regarding the network at Syracuse, extends beyond the commercial appeal of viral marketing, synergy, or any other related concept. When voices proclaim today's students as subliterate, I can imagine (and this is an act of imagining, of course, b/c I do not know what many of these instructors teach) a course which resists the interlinking logics of new media. Thesis driven work is the most obvious example. Singe authored compositions fall quickly behind. Hierarchical reasoning’s in this mix too, as is argumentative writing.
Do ALL students who write poorly do so because of a mismatched pedagogy - one which forces print logic (represented loosely by the thesis example) onto new media beings (those who understand the networked society in very explicit and implicit ways)? Of course not. But that mismatch exists and is dominant in maintaining problematic pedagogy. The real question continues to be: Why is Amazon the one to understand the network and pedagogy the one to not understand? Financial motivation? Sure. Something else? Of course: ideology. Composition has a lot at stake ideologically. And breaking ideological holds is difficult to accomplish. But think about it for a minute: that Amazon knows my old Gainesville address may be frightening in terms of privacy, but it’s also fascinating in how this linking logic finds/makes connections where connections would not be obvious nor would they appear. The connection, the interlinked network of information which bends and changes, which drops information and adds new information in very unpredictable ways – that is the key to composing and intellectual work. For Amazon, that knowledge translates into marketing. For a writing student (or even, ahem, professor), that knowledge will manifest in other ways. There is a great deal to learn from the Amazon example.
