Have y’all seen this app? It’s beautiful, and I know that because it enchanted a programmer AND a literature buff simultaneously. But the programmer estimated it would take hundreds of hours, and $50k-$200k, just to build, which got me thinking: how is this painstakingly prepared, labor-intensive, and costly object any different from the illuminated manuscript of yore? And will this be the new way in which literature appreciation is an issue of class?
Some say keeping literature cheap is the key to its survival; I don’t entirely agree. This app feels like the perfect literature delivery system for today’s reader vaguely interested browser under thirty. But it’s not going to be cheap. You need to pay programmers and actors and curators and information architects: watch how the notation, audio, and video features sync with the written poem by highlighting text; think about the monster flow chart that had to proceed decisions about where the swipes and touches would lead. And that’s only 400 lines. The design gets exponentially bigger with, say, a novel. Or Homer’s Iliad.
Much depends on your business model. Fifteen bucks isn’t bad for all this functionality — if you can already afford an iPad. If enough people buy it, can it pay for itself? Be profitable, even, which I don’t think is a bad goal? But what about people who can’t afford an iPad in the first place?
The cost/class issue is really bothering me. But I can’t ignore that it’s doing something right, a good model for what digital humanities COULD be.
Could something like this be a modification of a wiki-type project? We can’t crowdsource the readings (well, we could, but I think the attraction is having famous people reading/performing). But, if wikipedia has taught us anything, we can crowdsource just about anything – links to interviews, annotations, footnotes, analyses, could be done by the “crowd.”
I have a similar idea for a site devoted to my favorite author and book. The problem with more contemporary texts is copyright. But, like you, I am troubled by who has access. However, we could crowdsource something like this, and put it online.
I fear that online wikis can’t compete with the extraordinary and well-orchestrated interactivity this app provides. You can do a lot more with CSS3 and HTML5 than was previously possible, but I think the touch/swipe/game-planning aspect is crucial for making literature and its context fun to explore.
To be honest, this is why I’m generally ambivalent about crowdsourcing. It’s a great way to unify communities and let people trade their resources but in the end there does need to be an actual design and/or centralized planning authority. You know what they say about too many cooks…but perhaps if we could get more of developer community on board with this kind of lit wikis, we could find a way?
First of all, this is brilliant. Absolutely perfect. And I’ll agree with you, the price issue is kind of a mood-killer for me (which is the only reason I didn’t buy it when I first heard about it.)
But then again, universities are asking students to pay a few hundred dollars for textbooks that they barely even look at during a semester, surely an iPad app is a better alternative? (Although there would have to be some allowances made for those students who are SO 2009 and don’t have an iPad.)
Sidenote: Is it weird that I experienced a “WTF?” moment when I realized that Marnie from True Blood / Mrs. Dursley from Harry Potter was reciting “The Wasteland”?
Isn’t it, though? I think they really did establish a new standard for how these things should work.
My usual cynical response: I blame the (for-profit) textbook companies rather than universities for the current state, and I worry that making the iPad mandatory would just trade one monopoly for another. That’s why open-source is such a big deal in the developer community, the whole point is that proprietary technology begets unfair sponsorship deals…yet the iOS swipe-y stuff is so very good, it’s hard to argue. Maybe if Apple made sure to come up with an affordable, no-frills reader?
Ah, and that’s where I’d seen her before…
I think the iOS swipe-y stuff is fundamental to the awesomeness of the app, but I’m also (cynically) willing to bet that anything Apple comes out with in the way of tablets will definitely NOT be “no-frills”…all the bells and whistles on iPads are exactly why they aren’t cheap. (That, and the status symbol / market demand from people who worship at the altar of Steve Jobs.)
It would be great if this app, and others like it, were on less flashy tablets like the Kindle or the B&N Nook, which are already much more driven towards the technology-literate bookworms. And college textbooks will probably be going in that direction anyway…
Amazing. An illuminated manuscript plus a Norton Critical Edition–it’s not hard to imagine the pedagogical possibilities.
As for cost, yes, asking students to buy several such apps for one course seems like a lot. But this level of production and price seems more like the future than the crappy $0.99 editions available for the Kindle. If someone is unwilling to pay $5 for a cheap paper edition of Moby-Dick, they’re probably also unwilling to pay $1 for a cheap electronic version of it. So why not aim an edition at those who are willing to pay $15 for a version that features video of Robert Duvall delivering the sermon on Jonah?
A couple of things. One, it’s less a question of “willing” than “able.” There are a lot of people who simply cannot afford to buy an iPad, and therefore will not have the chance to be exposed to literature in this way. These are probably the same people who are struggling to pay for college anyway, so I wouldn’t want to start requiring it — I mean, what of the student who can’t technically afford a laptop (which is more or less indispensable at this point), and now needs to buy an iPad?
Two, if we leave humanities to those who are already “willing”, I think we’re going to have the same problem as when we leave Classics to those who already have an interest in Latin, i.e. small, class-divided numbers. The beauty of this app is that I think it could successfully intrigue someone who didn’t have much interest to start with. That’s why, ideally, I’d like to imagine it in the hands of many different users, not just students who’ve enrolled in a course (which indicates some pre-existing interest, theoretically).
[...] skills taught in school–is programming more important than software usage in the long run? I like it when people do awesome things with classic books. Who wants to work on an interactive Middlemarch with me? Academic publishing is making tons of [...]
Putting together something like this would be fun to do as a dissertation project–not that I have the programming skills myself to do something like this independently. It just seems like it would be cool to produce something that incorporated scholarship (“perspectives”) in digestible essays with visuals. It could be really interesting to make something similar for history classes with various primary sources on different topics, for example. Historians (much like classicists) complain that no one cares about our work, but maybe they would if we presented it in engaging formats?
That, of course, doesn’t get around the class issue you raised.
I like that idea, and it would be super cool if there could be a collaborative project where a developer would help you build what you envision…and you might even get one to donate their time if they were literature buffs. Of course, at that point, I’d advise you to trademark it, and sell it for a minimal fee. when you were done Then it would be a startup, not a diss, though and I can’t imagine the university would like the idea.
As for the class issue, well, I do think the technorati are the new literati, and I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon. So to be pragmatic, it’s a good thing to keep them interested in literature.
i walked into Borders for its closing sale… what was weird was that they had not only just dub-step music playing, but this freakazoid matrix dub-step playing. it was … like, saying something. the death of books and all.
my personal thought is that humanism oscillates, and we about to plunge into another age where only those that know latin can do the dance.
thanks for your quirky ass blog. it’s more hope that austin is the right place for me.
and for whomever mentioned college tetxbooks: that is a subject not worth dogshit in validity. textbooks are plain robbery when they release a new edition every year to the only population that has money to spend and nearly *no* room to exercise decision making and options.
Actually, textbooks need to go away in favor of sourcebooks; that would provide a lot more choice for everybody.