Blog Post 5: Kevin Thinks Power Should Always be Cautiously Decentralized

As I read Examples of Collaborative Digital Humanities, by Lisa Spiro, I definitely found myself in agreement that some subjects are so expansive they require multiple points of view for the fullest understanding. Certainly digital archives like Valley of the Shadow, which compiles information pertinent to the Civil War, would be the sort of herculean scholarly effort that would defy the notion of a lone scholar.

Of course, other collaborative forms, from simple group presentations to serious scholarly essays that draw from multiple perspectives, quickly overtake the more traditional model. It also occurs to me that seeing a scholar as an island defies the idea of the invisible college that we discussed in Module 3.

Like Robert and Nial, I am optimistic about the opening up of the (often seen as) elitist ivory tower to such communal notions, though cautiously so (because de-capitalizing an industry and relying on government funding of research can potentially become politically sticky in several degrees of adhesion). For example, the elitist ivory tower might become more readily recognized as the socialist elitist ivory tower, rather than the decentralized, ubiquitous ivory tower.