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David M. Levy |
Eric L. Dicken Associate Director Career Services Baldwin-Wallace College |
Posted July 31, 2002 Student Affairs Online, 3 (Summer)
David M. Levy's Scrolling Forward offers a reflection on the nature of documents. More so, Levy provides a context from which we can evaluate the technologies used to produce, transmit, and store documents. To create this context, Levy first looks backward to reflect on the history of documents, libraries, publishing, copyright, and education.
Levy casts a wide net in his quest to answer questions about the meaning of documents, their stability, and our own mortality. When he pulls in his net, Levy finds such seemingly disparate subjects as changing technology, cash register receipts, Walt Whitman, greeting cards, Dewey Decimal Classification, advertising, death, religion, and existentialism.
Levy is uniquely qualified to examine such issues. In 1981, he walked away from Silicon Valley and his educational training (he holds a Ph.D. in computer science) to enroll in a program in calligraphy and bookbinding at the Roehampton Institute of London. The time away from computer technology allowed Levy opportunities to connect with previous modes of communication and trace their introduction and evolution. Now, he approaches questions of document technology from a broader perspective.
Levy raises questions worth pondering:
While considering such dramatic shifts, Levy reminds us that every age incorporates and adapts to change when dealing with documents. In one example, he traces the evolution of correspondence from personal letters, postcards, and memos to e-mail. Many of the changes resulted from new technologies. Commercially viable typewriters assumed their place in offices in the late 1880s, which helped fully realize the use of carbon paper, a product invented in 1823. Few of us use carbon paper today, yet we continue to use the terms "carbon copy" or "cc:" when sending e-mail messages.
While many of Levy's questions cross disciplines, he includes a discussion specific to the future of higher education. He states that like the postcard and the memo, the scholarly journal article is "an outgrowth of the letter" (p. 172). For roughly a century, academics and researchers produced new works to share their ideas and results. The push to "publish or perish" in academia resulted in the creation of numerous journals. These journals, which began in universities, went to publishing houses, only to be purchased by university libraries to provide access for faculty and students. The increase in the number of journals and the costs associated with purchasing them from publishing houses limits the number libraries can collect. Levy cites the work of cognitive psychologist Steven Harnad who "suggests scholars should take back control of their own publications process by self-publishing their works on the Web" (p. 173). This controversial proposal raises a number of questions for publishers, libraries, and scholars and is likely to surface in the years to come.
In Chapter 6, "Reading and Attention," Levy effectively explains my simultaneous feelings of anxiety and pleasure experienced while reading his book. Our society presents an abundance of information. We lack sufficient time to process all the documents we encounter on a daily (or hourly) basis. Levy posits, "Every moment of our lives, whether consciously or not, we are choosing what to attend to and with what depth of focus" (p. 101). Scholars describe our modern reading habits as "extensive reading" to distinguish them from earlier "intensive reading" practices. Simply put, we're reading less and less of more and more.
After reading Chapter 6, I thought back to my initial reaction as I read Chapter 1, "Meditation on a Receipt." While I enjoyed Levy's extrapolation and fascination with a receipt that he obtained for a deli purchase, I constantly had to brush aside feelings that I should read something that provided more substance and less reflection. Surely, I thought, I could learn some new information from the stacks of documents piled around my office. What can I possibly gain from such musings? Then I realized, that's exactly what Levy wants us to do --- learn by reflecting, not just by acquiring more information:
In the end, how can we separate hype from hope, and both of these from present reality? Through careful examination and reflection, through pointed questioning, through public discussion...by admitting our ignorance, our concerns, our fears. (p. 202).
Levy, D. M. (2001). Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age. Arcade Publishing: New York, NY.