This document discusses the concept of digital scholarship and provides context around its emergence. It includes quotes from several scholars and researchers about the potential of digital tools and networks to enhance collective intelligence and enable new forms of scholarly inquiry and knowledge production. Examples are given of early digital tools like blogs, wikis and forums that were invented by amateur developers, suggesting established theory may lag practical innovation in amplifying group intelligence.

1. What
is
digital
scholarship?
Gardner
Campbell
Virginia
Tech
www.gardnercampbell.net

2. Today’s
Hashtag
#ny6digs

4. The
world
has
arrived
at
an
age
of
cheap
complex
devices
of
great
reliability;
and
something
is
bound
to
come
of
it.
Vannevar
Bush,
“As
We
May
Think,”
Atlan&c
Monthly,
July,
1945

5. George
Dyson,
Turing’s
Cathedral:
The
Origins
of
the
Digital
Universe

7. Our
Shared
Reality,
2013
“We
are
living
in
the
middle
of
the
largest
increase
in
expressive
capability
in
the
history
of
the
human
race.”
Clay
Shirky,
Here
Comes
Everybody
(2008)
7

9. Accessed
January,
2013

16. Fellow
scholars,
I
read
this
in
today's
Guardian
about
two
"culturomics"
researchers
at
Harvard
who
are
using
Google
data
and
$
to
study
the
English
language
"genome":
"In
their
inibal
analysis
of
the
database,
the
team
found
that
around
8,500
new
words
enter
the
English
language
every
year
and
the
lexicon
grew
by
70%
between
1950
and
2000.
But
most
of
these
words
do
not
appear
in
dicbonaries.
"We
esbmated
that
52%
of
the
English
lexicon
–
the
majority
of
words
used
in
English
books
–
consist
of
lexical
'dark
mafer'
undocumented
in
standard
references,"
they
wrote
in
the
journal
Science
(the
full
paper
is
available
with
free
online
registrabon)."
Let's
talk
a
bit
about
terms
like
"culturomics"
and
"genome"
and
the
apparent
need
to
sound
like
a
scienbst
(a
wacky
scienbst
at
that)
in
order
to
be
taken
seriously
by
the
media
and
govt
grant
dispensers
these
days.

19. “It
may
be
learning,
but
it’s
not
academics.”

22. Module
Objecbves
As
a
result
of
working
through
this
module,
students
will:
• Idenbfy
themselves
as
public
intellectuals
and
change
agents,
• Demonstrate
willingness
and
ability
to
pursue
complexity,
depth,
mulbple
contexts/
perspecbves,
and
nuance
in
their
individual
thinking,
social
processes,
and
discursive
products,
• Employ
self-­‐defined,
inquiry-­‐driven
learning,
analysis,
cribcal
thinking,
and
reflecbon….

23. Blogging
(15%):
One
of
the
key
aspects
of
your
work
this
semester
is
our
course
blog,
on
which
you’ll
write
frequently,
using
your
posts
to
respond
to
our
course
readings,
to
draw
your
classmates’
afenbon
to
arbcles
and
arbfacts
you’ve
found,
and
so
forth.
You
are
required
to
post
at
least
one
entry
each
week,
which
should
directly
engage
with
the
week’s
readings,
before
the
start
of
class
on
Monday;
this
entry
should
be
as
formal
as
a
printed
reading
response
would
be,
paying
afenbon
to
the
quotabon,
citabon,
and
explicabon
pracbces
involved
in
close
reading.
Other
entries
are
greatly
desired;
these
can
be
as
informal
as
you
like….
This
weekly
requirement
is
meant
as
a
minimum
acceptable
level
of
parbcipabon;
I
hope
that
you’ll
all
contribute
more,
creabng
an
ongoing,
engaging
dialogue.

24. Beware
Administered
Intellectuality
We
should
always
be
wary
of
the
imperial
impulse—the
possibility
that
any
interest
in
mentalibes
is
betrayed
by
a
...
preexistent
interest
in
maintaining
and
jusbfying
a
structure
of
privileges.
James
Fernandez,
Edificabon
by
Puzzlement
(1980)
hfp://home.uchicago.edu/~jwf1/Puzzlement.pdf

27. No
one
knows
what
it
would
do
to
a
creabve
brain
to
think
creabvely
conbnuously.
Perhaps
the
brain,
like
the
heart,
must
devote
most
of
its
bme
to
rest
between
beats.
But
I
doubt
that
this
is
true.
I
hope
it
is
not,
because
[interacbve
computers]
can
give
us
our
first
look
at
unfefered
thought.
J.C.R.
Licklider,
“Computers
in
the
University,”
in
Computers
and
the
World
of
the
Future,
1962.

37. We’re
sbll
in
the
early
days
of
understanding
how
to
amplify
collecbve
intelligence.
It’s
telling
that
many
of
the
best
tools
we
have—tools
such
as
blogs,
wikis,
and
online
forums—weren’t
invented
by
the
people
we
might
suppose
are
the
experts
on
group
behavior
and
intelligence,
experts
from
fields
such
as
group
psychology,
sociology,
and
economics.
Instead,
they
were
invented
by
amateurs,
people
such
as
Maf
Mullenweg,
who
was
a
19-­‐year-­‐old
student
when
he
created
Wordpress,
one
of
the
most
popular
types
of
blogging
sowware,
and
Linus
Torvalds,
who
was
a
21-­‐
year-­‐old
student
when
he
created
the
open
source
Linux
operabng
system.
That
tells
us
we
should
be
wary
of
current
theory:
while
we
can
learn
a
great
deal
from
exisbng
academic
studies,
the
picture
of
collecbve
intelligence
that
emerges
is
also
incomplete.