One of about 10 dry-stacked rock sculptures in a secret sculpture garden.

Since we started this trail-themed blog, I have been amazed at how often I have stumbled upon something that seems to support the emerging theme. Remember the Shirky quote from Here Comes Everybody? (It’s sticky at the top of this blog.) Well, I returned to this quote after editing a video (taken with my phone on a walk). I was just thinking how lucky we are to have so many tools to express ourselves: “People now have access to myriad tools that let them share writing, images, video—any form of expressive content, in fact—and use that sharing as an anchor for community and cooperation” (103). We can produce and distribute layers upon layers of expressive content. Shriky writes, “People like to consume with media, of course, but they also like to produce it (‘Look what I made!’) and they like to share it (‘Look what I found!’)” (104)

So look at what I found: a hidden rock sculpture garden off the beaten path. And look what I made: it’s a sculpture.

People now have access to myriad tools that let them share writing, images, video—any form of expressive content, in fact—and use that sharing as an anchor for community and cooperation. The twentieth century, with the spread of radio and television, was the broadcast century. The normal pattern for media was that they were created by a small group of professionals and then delivered to a large group of consumers. But media, in the world’s literal sense as the middle layer between people, have always been a three-part affair. People like to consume with media, of course, but they also like to produce it (‘Look what I made!’) and they like to share it (‘Look what I found!’). Because we not have media that support both making and sharing, as well as consuming, those capabilities are re-appearing, after a century mainly given over to consumption. We are used to a world where little things happen for love and big things happen for money. Love motivates people to bake a cake and money motivates people to make an encyclopedia. Now, though, we can do big things for love.
(103-4)

—Clay Shirky
Here Comes Everybody

How do we represent ourselves as a collective? How do we present ourselves as an evolving ecosystem that includes people, places, relationships, and technologies? These are the questions we have been asking ourselves leading up to Computers and Writing Online 2010 Conference. On the Web, there are lots of ways to represent groups. For example, we could just create a Web site. But we already have a Web site. (And we think the DWRL Web site is just fine.) We could make a video. But there is already video on our Web site. We could take pictures and record sounds and make a blog and tweet about it. But we are already doing all that. (Granted, we’d like to keep getting better at it.) For this conference, we wanted to up the ante, try something a bit more ambitious, a bit more special, a bit more full of suspense. So we created this space. During the online conference, from April 22-May 13, 2010, we will be collecting and uploading as much info about the DWRL as we can. We want to give, you, the audience, an inside look at what makes up the DWRL. But we also want to see how big a thing we can do in a short time powered by “love.”

But, wait! There’s more. While this may look like just another WordPress blog, it has a special Trails feature you can see above. Trails are made using the trailmeme plugin for WordPress, created by Xerox. The plugin is part of the larger trailmeme project. Trailmeme is like a platform for creating online interactive mind maps that provide a new way to make associations on the web and to share stories. So we’re helping Xerox out by testing out their Trailmeme idea, and they’re helping us out by hosting this trailmeme enabled blog, and allowing us to use trailmeme.com to create a gigantic web of associations that attempts to map and explain all that we do here at theDWRL.

All the blog content, images, videos, and links to other web pages are created by members of the DWRL as the Spring 2010 semester draws to a close. This bricolage offers you a snapshot of some of the exciting things we’ve been up to this year. All this content is pouring into us as it gets finished by the Lab, and the blog reflects that process. We’re using a trailmeme to give that jumble of content a sense of coherence. Trailmemes present new ways to configure and read the web, and we think that this interface will also give a complex place like the lab a fresh way to present itself.

Working with the Xerox team not only provides us with fresh ways of representing ourselves. It also demonstrates the DWRL‘s commitment to working with community partners in the Lab.You will among the various nodes on our trailmeme how our project groups have benefitted from collaborations with Stanford University’s Cross Cultural Rhetoric program, the Blanton Museum‘s participation in the international STEVE Musuem project; the New Media Consortium, and our ongoing and generative relationship with UT’s Division of Innovative Instruction and Assessment. We are also delighted to work with Professor Cynthia Haynes and Hans Holmevik from Clemson University for our upcoming, special gaming issue of Currents.

There’s a lot to peruse,  enjoy, and provoke among the trails we have produced for Computers and Writing this year. We hope you enjoy your stroll, and please use the ‘comment’ function on the blog to join the conversation. And if you want to get more involvedwith this DWRL project, then please contact Will or Sean.