I have a letter to the editor in the current issue of the Key Reporter (Phi Beta Kappa's newsletter), responding to a crotchety piece by Stolen Words author Thomas Mallon on the subject of Web plagiarism. I wrote my reply because I thought the venue, often rather crotchety itself, needed a credible point of view. Mr. Mallon responded with unkind words about the title of my dissertation, and not much else. The links given here are to PDFs of the entire newsletter; I've attached the text of my letter below.
To the Editor:
It is difficult to know what to do with Thomas Mallon's recent comments
on the Web and student plagiarism (Key Reporter 68.1, Fall 2002). The
first half of the piece is in fact taken up with his defending his book,
Stolen Words, which is his privilege, though the image of
tweedy academics brandishing copies of Roland Barthes's "The Death of
the Author" corresponds to no contemporary English department I've seen
(I've studied and worked in several large public research institutions).
Mr. Mallon manages to wield a label like "the professors" in an
accusatory manner that recalls the worst anti-intellectual strains of
the culture wars. The whole screed comes off as at least ten years out
of date.
In any case, when it comes to the Web, Mr. Mallon is largely at a loss
for words. If it is true, as he says, that the Web "makes it impossible
for students to value originality, or writing itself, in quite the same
way" then our job, I will suggest, begins precisely with the phrase "in
quite the same way." We must--in other words--teach our students to use
online resources responsibly, and do so in part by engaging the question
of what both "writing" and "originality" have historically meant in
different information-epochs. (This is not reflex relativism: it is an
acknowledgement that sometimes ideas are complicated. If Mr. Mallon
doubts this he might start with Geoffrey Nunberg's fine essay on the
changing meaning of information, "Farewell to the Information Age.")
Our students are growing up in a media culture that embraces mixing and
sampling, a media culture that is simultaneously witnessing the most
dramatic confrontations in the sphere of copyright and intellectual
property law we've seen in generations. When I talk with my students
about Internet file swapping or Lawrence Lessig they are both animated
and opinionated--and often surprisingly well-informed. This is, it seems
to me, what used to be called a "teachable moment." My students may
leave my classes with the notion that authorship and intellectual
property are historically determined, but they also leave with a
practical sense of what's right and wrong when it comes to their own
writing and research in the digital settings they inhabit--and will
continue to inhabit once they depart the university and enter their
chosen professions.
By the end it becomes clear that Mr. Mallon has no real ideas to offer
(instead, for a closer, we are treated to a meditation in the thin
tradition of Sven Birkerts on the glam seductions of bibliofind.com as
compared to wiling away the hours in the aisles of the Strand
bookstore). "Why dig a well instead of turning on the tap," Mr. Mallon
wants to know, lamenting the way the Web has altered the student work
ethic. Only he doesn't want to know: it's a rhetorical question, and
that's where his essay ends. But I have running water taps in my home,
and I suspect Mr. Mallon does too. That may seem like a cheap rhetorical
ploy, but he employs exactly the same tactic in suggesting how angry
critics of Stolen Words would be to find their own words plagiarized or
improperly cited. The point is those taps are not going to be
turned off, nor is the Web is going to be unplugged. If we don't teach
our students how to use it wisely and well then AOL, Microsoft, and the
rest of the edutainment industry will be only too glad to do it for us.
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
Silver Spring, Maryland
[Mr. Mallon, it turns out, also dislikes my use of the word "edutainment."]