Archive for March 12th, 2008
Did Hypertext Really Kill the Byline?
If we think of collaboration as an assembly-line or segmentation model of working together, as George P. Landow puts it, in which any number of people contribute to a piece of writing over a period of time, then authorship becomes an issue of acknowledgment. What else could it be? We live in a society where authorial credit for an endeavor is currency. Authorship, especially in the humanities, gives us a sense of meaning, as well as legal and professional benefits.
But with hypertext, it is common to think that collaborative writing takes the place of individual achievement, which can be translated in some circles as the death of the byline. Read the rest of this entry »
