------------------------------------------------------------------------ December, John. Studying the Virtual World: Cyberspace for Language Scholars. Global Network Navigator News, January 31, 1994. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TORONTO (December 30th, 1993) The virtual world ... the matrix ... cyberspace ... the World-Wide Web -- these were terms scholars at the 109th annual meeting of the Modern Language Association (MLA) used in Toronto during the last days of 1993. The gathering drew more than 8,000 teachers, researchers, and students in the fields of language and literature who took part in 739 meetings on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to popular culture. In several meetings, electronic communication and texts were the focus, and participants discussed the use of computer-mediated communication in their profession. At issue was how MLA members, as scholars and humanists, can have an impact on the study, design, and use of computer-mediated communication systems. Call for Humanist Participation The MLA was a radical group when it was formed more than a century ago because it distinguished itself from the scholars who studied classical languages. Today, the MLA extends itself again to explore how humanists can participate in designing and using communication systems in the virtual world. The sessions at the convention highlighted new and continuing challenges electronic communication poses for MLA scholars. Ian Lancashire of the University of Toronto summarized challenges in his introduction to the session, "Reconfiguring the Discipline in an Electronic Age." He characterized electronic communication as a medium exhibiting new organizations of knowledge, new media characteristics, and new literary forms. Dr. Lancashire stated that the design and use of systems for electronic communication must not only be the work of people with technical backgrounds---humanists must participate. Echoing this call for humanists to participate in computer communication design and use, Cynthia Selfe of Michigan Technological University discussed the political aspects of using virtual landscapes for education. Dr. Selfe acknowledges that some computer-mediated communication theories and research points to more democratic participation in electronic forums. However, she points out that computer-mediated communication tools are products of a culture, work within political and social influences, and can perpetuate inequalities inherent in the culture that produced them. Missing from contributors to the development of the National Information Infrastructure are the humanists: groups such as the Modern Language Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the International Reading Association. Dr. Selfe points out that "the design of these environments is so challenging and so complex, so important to the ways in which people around the globe will be communicating and sharing information, that their architecture will require the best possible minds we have to offer in the widest possible array of disciplinary fields." She adds, "If we don't involve humanists, we are missing out on an important source of creative and innovative thinking and problem-solving power. That's not only wrong and not only shortsighted, it's stupid." Humanists must also, according to Dr. Selfe, raise the level of discussion from one that is based on technical discussions of hardware and software to speculations about people and processes. Users of networks and computers must not just be passive consumers, but active critics of the technology as well, helping to design not just the infrastructure, but the "technology of human needs." Scholarly Publishing While the vision for the design of communication infrastructure was a theme in many sessions, so too were discussions of how communication technology can meet immediate needs. The need to publish is a very real need within the academic community of the MLA. In fact, according to Barbara von Wahlde of the State University of New York at Buffalo, the real crisis in academic freedom is not censorship or other restrictions, but information dissemination. University presses publish academic books and monographs often at a loss, and subscription and page publication charges for academic journals strain university budgets. Increasing specialization within the academy leads to still more specialized journals and even more pressures for academics to publish. Practices of electronic publishing arise out of these real needs. Barbara Hanrahan of the University of North Carolina Press described the trends for the future, growing from projects in electronic publishing: greater affordability, more information on time on demand, fewer monographs and serials, and more collaboration among libraries and scholars. While there are still many problems to be worked out, including issues of copyright, peer review, and charging mechanisms, the participants in the session on scholarly publishing seemed to agree that electronic publishing is an inevitable next step for scholars and university presses. Electronic Editing and Hypertext In a session on electronic editing, scholars involved in bibliography and textual studies identified how computer-assisted means can help them with their work. Peter Shillingsburg of Mississippi State University called for the end if viewing the paper scholarly edition as the final repository for a literary work. Dr. Shillingsburg called electronic editions "tantalizing." Through hypertext links electronic editions, electronic editions can give scholars a view of a work within its larger cultural and historical context. Using computer-assisted means, variant editions of a work can be generated and displayed for the reader with ease. Dr. Shillingsburg called for the creation of archiving standards for graphics, sound, and file structures. Phillip E. Doss of the University of Texas at Arlington described the editor of such an electronic edition as a poststructuralist reader. Hypertext, according to Dr. Doss, is a necessary structure for critical electronic editions of text. Hypertext generates meanings through associative links and frees the reader to become a creator of knowledge. The Study of Cyberspace While MLA members actively use computer-mediated communication, there are few graduate programs of study that specifically focus on the study of electronic communication. In an MLA session on new directions for PhD programs, professor Charles Bazerman of the Georgia Institute of Technology described his department's innovative graduate program in electronic communication. Based in the high-technology and communications-rich environment of Atlanta and born of a need to create a comprehensive program of study in electronic communication, Georgia Tech's program aims to create scholars to practice and study in the growing field of electronic communication. The program integrates the study of language, literature, communication, rhetoric, and culture---a mix that encompasses studies of the symbolic nature of communication. Dr. Bazerman says that this mix of study "will help us figure out how to use the new media most effectively and to design that use to meet human ends." Georgia Tech's MS in Information Design and Technology, now in its first year, prepares students to have a broad understanding not only of environments for electronic communication but also the "rhetorical, social, psychological and cultural contexts within which communication takes place." The department is designing a PhD program in rhetoric, technology, and communication which will prepare researchers and practitioners for the analysis and design of communication technologies as well as teaching and theory development. Beyond Technology The sessions at the MLA convention dealing with electronic communication demonstrated how issues of cyberspace are becoming part of language, literature, and communication studies. Not only do scholars communicate on networks as part of their scholarly activity, but they examine electronic communication and its products as objects of study in themselves, creating insights that go beyond a technical understanding of the infrastructure to humanistic concerns of broader cultural and social effects. Scholars in the MLA seek to open up new avenues for electronic text generation and publishing, to use computers to help teach students how to write, and to create academic programs to further our understanding of cyberspace. The study of cyberspace is a far cry from Miltonian poetics, but the MLA has engaged this new medium as part of its domain. Keywords: Cyberspace, Internet, language, conference, scholarship