Blog Post #5

Humanities projects, specifically those that relate to the creation or analysis of literature, are collaborative by nature—creative and academic/analytical works exist within and draw upon a tradition, anticipate and address a specific audiencehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif, etc. The digital collaborations explored in this post and module are concerned with explicit collaboration, but all writing is implicitly collaborative, according to some, because knowledge is socially constructed. Besides, at what point does influence become authorship? Was Marlowe’s Barabas in The Jew of Malta merely an influence on Shylock? Or does Marlowe share authorship of the character? Where academic publications in the Humanities are concerned, authors frequently incorporate previous research in the form of reference, extend or dispute work done by their peers in the field—all of which, in my mind, constitutes a sort of collaboration. The digital age simply expands our ability to network with peers who might influence our research and, potentially, our framing of the collaborative endeavors we all already undertake. The digital age just might make us more honest and less vain about the brilliant insights we develop on the backs of others’ ideas because, more and more, we will be able to trace our influences and to rethink what authorship and “intellectual property” implies.