Web’s new ‘digiterati’ amidst respected literati

Web’s immense outreach in connectivity has produced a robust literary culture and its new icons have emerged. The new ‘Digiterati’ complement the revered literati as millions access the digital frontier. “Computers are not about computers anymore, it’s about life,” prophesied Bill Gates.

Internet’s unique expressiveness has changed the public discourse before our eyes. Web-driven resurgence in reading has reached new levels spurring a look at core beliefs and assumptions considered sacrosanct.

Futuristic views pervade the climate inside and outside Sri Lanka to an unprecedented degree. The popular blogs frequented by the Sri Lankans reach extraordinary readership levels. Those reading the Lake House e-papers Daily News and Sunday Observer for example, have skyrocketed worldwide.

Critical thinking capacity

Many search engines sustain readers’ intellectual prying giving an impetus to critical thinking capacity. This year Stieg Larsson became the first author to sell over one million eBooks through the Internet. Larsson’s trilogy, starting with “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” reached the top of the bestsellers lists and became the most downloaded in public libraries connectivity site in US.

Cyberspace Digiterati seemed tilted towards populous substitutes in the shape of science fiction, adventure, self-help guides for growth and teen romance emblematic of a more deeply formative ways of apprehending the world than during any previous technological transformation. Bill Gate’s world is here to stay.

Shakespeare Quarterly

The prestigious 60-year-old Shakespeare Quarterly embarked on an unusual experiment in September 2010 issue making it the first traditional humanities journal to open its reviewing to the World Wide Web.

Mixing conventional and new methods, the journal posted online the four essays designed for publication. Web readers, a core group of experts - popularly called ‘crowd sourcing’ reviewed them. The renowned Web site, Media Commons, a scholarly digital network received all the reviews. Reportedly, more than 350 comments came in, many of which elicited responses from the four authors.

The revised essays were then made the final cut before printing. The Shakespeare Quarterly trial, along with a handful of other trailblazing digital experiments, goes to the very core of the review process. Traditionally peer review has shaped the way new research has been screened for quality control and accessing the readers. That is changing.

Academic review

Bill Gates Born * October 28, 1955 (age 54) Nationality *American Occupation *Chairman of Microsoft *Co-Chair of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

A small group of digitally adept scholars had rethought how knowledge was understood and judged by inviting online readers to comment on books in progress.

The Shakespeare Quarterly’s experiment has so far prompted at least one other journal - Post medieval - to plan a similar trial for next year.

Exclusiveness of what was generally seen in academic review with some charges of cronyism and bias may not appear when reviews get done by the digiterati. Peer reviews so far by a smaller exclusive club, considered anonymous helped prevent triviality, but it made reviewers less accountable. Now the range of feedback and participants are expanding getting a wider and consensual element.

That Wikipedia approach where anyone can post a comment has spurred many to get into reviewing process. Wikipedia, on balance, has become a valuable reference resource, an encyclopedia run by large group of interested experts .

Traditional peer review by scholars would not disappear but the digiterati are making their presence felt. Scientists and economists in particular, now rely on online repositories for unpublished working papers that are more quickly adapted to digital life.

The Digiterati believed that the goal is not necessarily to replace peer review but to use other, more open methods as well. In the humanities, in which the monographs -the scholarly papers had been centre of research, there is more inertia. But things are changing. Some though seemed wary of turning peer review into an ‘American Idol’- like competition.

Many also asked whether people would be as frank in public and they worry that comments would be short and episodic, rather than comprehensive and conceptual and that know-nothings would predominate. That debate will go on.