The Story Behind Unlimited Creations
"So when's the book coming out?"
I'm wary of creating false dichotomies between what is an "academic" book vs. a "general public" book, especially since I don't want to make assumptions of my audiences or their intellectual curiosities. But I've also spent most of my adult life as both a scholar and journalist and while those professions may share similarities and have much to learn from one another, they are distinct in their respective purposes and processes. In short, writing a book for a university press simply isn't the same thing as writing a book for a general audience.
Therefore, I had originally nurtured the idea of writing a second/companion book for non-academic readers. I wanted something to give back to the Bay Area community for whom the mobile scene was lived history. Especially knowing the incredible amounts of visual media generated during the scene, there seemed to be a good opportunity to pair a narrative history with a collection of images – a heady "coffee table book" if you will – designed to relay slices from this remarkable history.
However, it then dawned on me that what I needed wasn't a print book so much as a digital site. Given that the stories I have collected only scratch the proverbial surface of how deep this scene ran, even if I had produced that "companion book," it too would have inherited the same limitations in scope and depth.
A digital site/repository, organized as both a point of publication and collection, could ideally benefit from any number of advantages over the printed page, not just in speed of production but in its ability to grow and evolve via user-generated content. The scene itself may not exist in any form that resembles its heyday but that doesn't mean our understanding of it can't be a continual process of learning and adding.
So for those who keep asking "where's the book?", in a sense: this site is it. True, it's still incomplete, still imperfect. But it's a beginning, with the potential to grow as much as those invested in the history and legacy of the scene are willing to contribute their energies.
However, it then dawned on me that what I needed wasn't a print book so much as a digital site. Given that the stories I have collected only scratch the proverbial surface of how deep this scene ran, even if I had produced that "companion book," it too would have inherited the same limitations in scope and depth.
A digital site/repository, organized as both a point of publication and collection, could ideally benefit from any number of advantages over the printed page, not just in speed of production but in its ability to grow and evolve via user-generated content. The scene itself may not exist in any form that resembles its heyday but that doesn't mean our understanding of it can't be a continual process of learning and adding.
So for those who keep asking "where's the book?", in a sense: this site is it. True, it's still incomplete, still imperfect. But it's a beginning, with the potential to grow as much as those invested in the history and legacy of the scene are willing to contribute their energies.
Unlimited Creations was built during the summer of 2011 at the Vectors/NEH Summer Institute for the Digital Humanities at USC. It uses a development (pre-release) version of the authoring platform Scalar. Thanks to Michael Parayannilam for research/content management.Thanks the Institute staff and coordinators, especially Erik Loyer, Craig Dietrich, Phil Ethington, John Lowe, Tara McPherson, and Jillian O'Connor. Shout out to all my fellow attendees, especially Matthew Delmont for his feedback on the site, and in particular, my lunchers-in-crime: Scott Wilson and Nic Sammond.
Special thanks to Ken Wissoker @ Duke University Press for recommending me for the Institute. Thanks also to Josh Kun and Loren Kajikawa for their continual support of this project.
Discussion of "The Story Behind Unlimited Creations"
Add your voice to this discussion.
Checking your signed in status ...