Interconnective scholarship

Where indeed would we be without the internet?

This isn't going to a cheerleading post for the internet - after all, I remember doing research in the days before the internet, and I certainly didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. I also could probably finish this dissertation if the internet disappeared overnight, though it would involve a lot more travelling to physical locations like libraries.

But I have found twice in as many days that connectivity to the internet has brought me two ideas that I intend to use or at least explore in the dissertation. If it hadn't been for the internet, I would have had to spend more time and energy exploring these things, or remain ignorant of them.

The first item was a mention on a listserv about a connection between two books I hadn't thought of pairing together - Rushdie's magic realist text Midnight's Children, and Ian MacDonald's science fiction text River of Gods. I've of course read Rushdie's book, and intended to discuss it in my fourth chapter (the one that focuses on magic realism as technique), but I had only started reading MacDonald's book before I got sidetracked and set it aside. I had been thinking of mentioning it in the sixth chapter, the one on science fiction, but now I'll have to read it earlier to see what kinds of fruitful connections might be there. I may ultimately decide not to use MacDonald's book in the fourth chapter, but it might prove an interesting angle to take.

The second was a blog post. The writer was talking about collectivity in the context of Web 2.0 technologies (something very big on my work-related radar right now), but it talked about the hive mind and the Borg in particular. And right now I'm stuck in a place in the dissertation chapter where I'm trying to bridge hybridity with collectivity (specifically a reference to ants and bees in a novel) and this article looks like it could provide that link. [Now I just need to find something to make that prosthetics/war/progress link!]

Without those electronic connections, I'd still be stuck working out the argument connecting hybridity and collectivity, and I might have written all of chapter four without even opening MacDonald's book, not knowing I was missing out on a connection that could prove interesting. No doubt I would've managed without these connections, but they sure helped.