I think we have all experienced examples of temporary cyber-infrastructures and how they can be made redundant by the passage of time, as well as by advances in technology. In fact I experienced a perfect example of what A Domain of One’s Own (Wired, 2012) describes when I was setting up my own website for this module. When choosing a domain name I decided to go with my Twitter handle (I have never tweeted but I had set up an account when doing an ICT course a few years ago). But I no longer remember the password to this Twitter account and my alternate way to access it (and prove my ownership) involves the email account it was set up with….my then student email address, which I no longer have access to. Reading the Wired article after this experience brings up a series of questions for me, from the quantitative: How many domains names, twitter handles and email addresses have been relegated to the status of digital junk by the temporary nature of so many educational endeavours ? To the qualitative: What value(s) do we assign to digital space ? Is the digital still seen as ephemera within the Academy ? To the entirely practical: At what stage in our education/development should we be made aware that we need to be the system admins of our own domains ? And how best do we teach and learn that digital literacy ?
As part of my reading for an introductory module to Concepts in the Digital Humanities I read a piece by Mark Marino Teaching Writing in the Post-Blogging Era (2019). My first reaction to the text was that reading it gave me a headache – which I suppose was one of the points the piece was making. Multiple fonts, styles, formats and media types have been used by blogs since their inception in the mid-90s, and Marino seemed to incorporate every last one of them into his post. As a handy point of reference for the development of blog page the piece is second to none. The fundamental human desire to communicate ideas and thoughts from the one to the many, borne of the human need for social connection and personal validation, is manifested perfectly in the blogging domain.
Bibliography
Teaching Writing in the Post-Blogging Era | by Mark C. Marino | Medium (2019). Available at: https://markcmarino.medium.com/teaching-writing-in-the-post-blogging-era-ab7848247e33 (Accessed: 7 November 2021).
Wired (2012) ‘A Domain of One’s Own’, 27 July. Available at: https://www.wired.com/insights/2012/07/a-domain-of-ones-own/ (Accessed: 7 November 2021).
