Certain recent posts here at IMproPRieTies might seem rather random. What could Everything is Miscellaneous, JSTOR, the White House Press Corps and the Extraordinary and Plenipotent Roland E. Arnall possibly have in common? I’m not sure. All I know is, after reading David Weinberger’s book, and writing a bit about it, a certain stimulus deriving from that reading seemed to propel me to “voice” certain, uh, reservations I’ve had about, among other things, the JSTOR Fortress of Knowledge.
– Tom Matrullo
I have hope that one day soon the data in the pay-per-view vaults of the academic e-journals will be released for free and open access. Tom Matrullo deserves credit for this. His recent work has brought a wider range of awareness of the matter than all the comments and complaints I’ve raised here over the last year.
Tom’s technique deserves a closer look.
First, he roared and howled, he pounded the logo and the JSTOR name into the search engines with a series of almost surreal posts… he linked to JSTOR’s mission and goals from a post titled “Obscenity on the web.” The post juxtaposes a picture of a prison with significant text pointing to the JSTOR lockdown of information. The permalink carries the droll identifier “improprieties-least-favorite-place.html” and is presented with keyword labels including academic epidemic, black hole, dark knowledge, fortress of fecklessness, Obscenity, panoptic optokinetic jerk nystagmus, [and] roosters of cognitive oblivion.
His next post asked: who the fuck are these niggaz? and helpfully included a link to a complete list of members of the JSTOR Board of Trustees. Keyword labels (tags) included on this post included groves of academe my ass, ivory cerebellum, [and] jstor. In rapid succession Tom laid out three more posts saturated with irony and sarcasm, juxtaposing Bill O’Reilly with JSTOR, tying Young-Hae Chang’s flash presentation on North Korean men’s cunnilingustic prowess to the JSTOR terms and conditions, and
I could stop my lecture here, and say with my hair standing straight up on my head like a singer in the Punk style: no future! After that we would all drink the alcohol of nihilism.
finally in that series a thought provoking assemblage of images and links, the eternal night of alain badiou, high brow thoughts and kinks featuring a photo of Alain Badiou and a woman seated at a table near the front of a stage with Badiou wailing into the mic and the lady all earnest in her moderne specs, loose white linen jacket, black slacks, sheer white ankle sox, and pointy toed shoes. Tom labels this post badiou, creation, intellectual property, jstor, philosophy, repetition, [and] worst stage set. You have to follow his links to decide what he intends with this lacanian calling card.
Tom took some time out to report on Ameriquest and our unindicted Ambassador to the Netherlands before continuing direct reflections on JSTOR. (This post did have crossover connections since it included the label scum of the earth, a label Tom used on the previous post linking JSTOR and Bill O’Reilly).
Then it was down to business. Tom pulled the Board of Trustees list forward to a direct posting, contrasted those stuffy old fat cats with a picture of Paris Hilton on the beach, and linked to the Mellon Foundation’s tax returns. Within a few hours, Bruce Heterick contacted him through his comments and a conversation began that resulted in what AKMA today called “a lovely investigation of JSTOR.”
There are perhaps three posts that if lumped together out of the context I’ve recapped above actually do turn this emotion charged struggle into a “lovely investigation.” AKMA references the antepenultimate post, in which Tom observes that “Google is less than Google when it returns unavailable data.” The penultimate post, the report on his conversation with Bruce Heterick almost stands alone and is indeed lovely. It makes a fine starting point for a common understanding of the challenges we face opening up access to information on the web.
Finally, posting today, Tom ties his thoughts on JSTOR to David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous and says:
We are still subject to the constraints of paper insofar as the business model of JSTOR has a ways to evolve before it can revolutionize its gatekeeping function to allow open access.
It seems that between the prisonhouse of paper and the unfettered bliss of what “we” can do with universal miscellaneity lie some bumps in the road: the event of Google, and the encrustations of first and second order economies, at the very least.
Why should we think that they, the JSTOR management, will be interested in tearing down the ivy covered walls when their stakeholders are the ones most interested in creating a distinction between “University” and non-academic culture? It remains for us, the interested parties, to find a way through the maze and a way to straighten out these crooked paths.
Technorati Tags: JSTOR, monopolistic practices, academic insularity, class struggle, Mellon Foundation
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Cold steady pimpin of “niggaz” eh? Matrullo is an ass (”oh, but did you see the name of my blargh?!”).
Knowledge in bondage! It must be freed! Free “niggaz” for everyone!
It is the modern age, yet Knowledge is still in private stores. Use of cheap “niggaz” can dig it out!
I understand where you’re coming from and being white am basically disqualified from discussing it much. But Danielle Allen, the Dean of the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago and alphabetically at the top of the JSTOR trustees list is not white and her high level staffer Bruce Heterick responded after Tom’s shout out, so maybe there was some cold intentionality there that worked.
I am Tom’s friend and he is not an ass. Was I wrong (in your opinion) to quote him, Charles?
I ask Aline, who depicted herself losing her virginity in her first cartoon, who she thinks is the less politically correct of the two of them. Erm, she says, tough one - he just about edges it. “Well, he is a sexist, racist, antisemitic misogynist,” she says.
Does he agree? “Oh, I guess all that stuff is in me, sure. I wouldn’t say I’m an out and out racist or proud or amused by the idea of racism but we all grew up in this culture and we all have those tensions and I just feel it’s something that’s got to be dealt with and I try to deal with them in a humorous way and poke at the most tender spot that people are most nervous and uncomfortable with.”
He talks about a cartoon he did, advertising a fantasy product called Nigger Hearts. “This cute kid says, ‘Hey, mom let’s have nigger hearts for lunch!’ with this kinda jigaboo image on it. And it’s like canned nigger hearts. It looks like a straight newspaper advertisement. It’s actually about all the sordid murky stuff going on in the real world, but some people thought it was a racist image. Those things are complex, y’know. They were as much about what was going on inside white people as their attitude to black people. I liked the idea when I was doing that stuff of making things that looked as if they were one thing but were actually something else.”
Actually, Aline says, he is a true egalitarian. “Yep, everybody’s fair game. Y’know, he spares no one.”
Cheek to cheek?
Frank, I think Tom’s “niggaz” ploy was a cheap one. I understand the desperation to pry open the gnarled claws of the JSTOR guardians (well, no, not really), but not every end justifies any means. FWIW, I wouldn’t have known about the link if you didn’t mention it here so, in a way, there’s value in that.
I kinda cussed Tom at his site then I realized he might not allow that comment to light so I came here in all my sputtering glory (I know this to be one of those “unsafe” sites wot allows a little outrageous umbrage). I’ll calm down in a minute.
He did let your comment show up, Charles. I expected he would too. I don’t think he would try to justify the use of an epithet on utilitarian grounds. In the context of his series of posts, not to mention his overall writing, it came across to me as gruesomely, hilariously horrifying and far out of character, kind of like my grandmother saying, “Honey? I boiled the kids for you”, when she knew and I knew that she would rather be boiled than see the kids come to harm. If you pull that kind of thing off right, it’s art.
Yeah, Scruggsy, I saw that. Great. Everybody’s a mensch. Nevermind.
The last time I looked, this post had zero comments. fp, I might be an ass. It is one of my prereogatives, as something other than an institution, to make an ass of myself. To be an ass is one of the untrumpeted glories of blogging, though you’d not know this from the Rush To Blogging of MSM.
I don’t know you, Charles, other than as someone whose comments are sometimes found here. This makes it harder to understand what pinches. If it was asshattedness on my part, it was. I just can’t tell. I’m at my last name at gmail if you’d prefer to write direct.
You people are dumbasses who apparently know nothing of the costs involved with making these journals available online.
Somebody, thanks for the helpful comment, the generous insight and the details you’ve provided regarding the costs. I eagerly await the rest of your explication, with the cost breakdown, a thoughtful cost/benefit analysis and a robust disquisition on the ethical considerations involved in both maintaining a pay wall and making the journal freely available. Don’t be coy about it now! It will be an act of Nietzschean micro-heroism on your part.
sorry I took a while to respond. I normally catch frank via arrgravator and only once in a while directly from his server. anyhoo, this isn’t the first time i’ve been unintentionally dense in expressing a point, but I thought this one didn’t need much furrowing of brow to understand. there are many things to know about me tom, but I’ll suppose the relevant fact here is that i’m Black, and one of those sometimes uppity types too, wot arbitrarily finds offense in
sloppy,misguidedcheap use of of black folk/culture. does that help you to frame my initial pinch better? owie. i’m making a huge assumption, btw, that you’re white (or at least non-black). I can’t imagine any self-respecting black person using “niggaz” in a context like this.far be it from me to judge people by size of their hobby horses. the jstor thing is all you, tom. go for it. tho I do wonder if it’s actually already in an ideal state. that is to say, if this stuff is freely available in your average library then mebbe this is information meant only for do-ers. be-type people won’t actually get anything done so why give them easy access to the font of ivory tower goodness?having the balls to walk (or bus or even drive) one’s heavy ass down to the library immediately qualifies you as a do-er. do-ers do the do, be-ers glean in the glow.
but why fight it, i’m going to join you in your efforts. here are some suggestions to help rattle the cages and spur action toward jstor justus for the peeps:
1) you could have a shot of some aborted fetus and link it back to jstor with the title parameter saying, “bloody hell, why can’t we get the info?”
2) perhaps a photo of some darfur massacre or t’other, titled, “all this knowledge left in to rot”
3) what about some toothless bum entitled, “people need bytes”
no need to thank me (you’re welcome), twas easy for me; non-sequiturs are my life. granted, depending on who you ask, these photos would be more revolting than some bug-eyed rap mogul, but i’m sure they’d generate the same level of powerful-yet-humourous juxtaposition needed to stir the pot.
i’ll do anything to help. nothing is sacred or taboo for cause is all and namaste to you, sir.
p.s. pahdon me please if my last comment come off harsh somehow. George Meredith is my guru.
Somewhere behind the pinch may lie a worthwhile argument about identity politics vs. issue politics, but, Charles, I won’t, can’t argue with your finding offense. I’m an equal opportunity cheap pop cult abuser, and if my post caused pain, even a fraction of what this sort of thing has caused in people I care about, I am sorry for that.
JSTOR is currently in some 10-15 public library systems in the US. Not in any around where I live. Not that that is why I’m displeased with JSTOR. My feeling is that knowledge is one thing our humanity can claim as common ground, like sunlight. I happen to think the current condition - moronic - of our society is not improved by withholding humane knowledge, in any form, in any discipline. Intellectual property is a corporate cock-up, like privatizing water, or air. It’s as dumb as corporate world eaters want us to be.
Fair enough. Fair enough.
Ya see? Big bad boyz can disagree, and still get a long!! Vive la différence!