Hybrid: More Than Just a Word for Fancy Cars

What I have always loved about embracing a new field of study is the moment when realizations start to multiply. It’s always a little bit magical; always a little bit like your brain has suddenly become more clever than it really is. Reading Lev Manovich’s Software Takes Command this week brought me some of these clarifying moments; hopefully I’ll be able to recreate some of the connections outside the insulation of my internal dialogue.

The place where Manovich starts his book—basically, with the omnipresence of software—is sound. Software is certainly an integral part of my day-in, day-out experience—I’m writing this blog post on Word, which I will then copy and paste…I could spend the whole post just proving his point that we are now in a “software society.” I’ve been teaching my students recently about how to introduce main ideas into writing, so I feel a bit guilty just jumping in, but—and this is so often the case—the interesting part starts when we take the given statement as truth and move forward. So, in that vein…

Just as adding a new dimension adds a new coordinate to every point in space, “adding” software to culture change the identity of everything that a culture is made from. (In this respect, software is a perfect example of what McLuhan meant when he wrote, the “message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.”) (33)

I couldn’t help but think about this XKCD comic when I read Manovich’s introduction:

http://xkcd.com/1289/

It does seem to accurately represent the questions that we so often ask when “New Thing X or “Exciting Gadget Y” comes to the table; my favorite recent example is the conversation swirling around Google Glass. To hear people talk, it's either the making or the breaking of the world as we know it.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a conversation about technology, or a conversation about a conversation about technology, if we didn’t get to talk about alienation. This time, though, it’s different, because standing against the traditional “technology is a wedge that sits between the individual and others” argument is Manovich’s idea of hybridization. I’ll let him define it:

…in media hybrids, interfaces, techniques, and ultimately the most fundamental assumptions of different media forms and traditions, are brought together resulting in new media gestalts. That is, they merge together to offer a coherent new experience different from experiencing all the elements separately. (167)

So, rather than a divisiveness, we have cohesion and creation. What I love about this concept is that in it I also see reflected the academic values that resonate most with me. The difference between text and video existing side-by-side and text acting in the way that a video acts is the difference between static and dynamic education. Up until recently, I’ve led a very English Studies-centric life. But, no, that’s not quite true, either. Let me try again. Up until recently I’ve led a very Creative Writing-in-English Studies-centric life. And I couldn't be doing what I'm doing now without that history, and I do value the type of learning that a single-lens focus allows for. However...

 The very first thing I came to value about digital humanities, and all the many things that term might encompass, is that it seems to be much more about saying yes than other methodologies or mentalities. Interdisciplinary work? Yes. Working toward a mutually-informed print/digital dynamic? Yes. Real, intentional, thoughtful teamwork? Yes. Making meaning from unexpected or flawed results? Yes.

As always, for me, it comes down to language. As Manovich continues to explain hybridization, he says:

…in the process of hybridization…we end up with a new metalanguage that combines the techniques of all previously distinct languages… (170)

This is exciting for all kinds of reasons. The one that’s sitting in the front of my mind at present, though, is this: in an environment where new (media) experiences, to borrow Manovich’s phrase, are increasingly prevalent, I have to imagine that those experiences are going to come with a multiplicity of mores—more combinations, more conversations about those combinations and hybrids, more people contributing to the conversations. As a relatively young person looking into the complicated maze of academia, I can tell you that this matters--really matters. If it represents a shift in thinking, an increased openness and interest in collaboration, then let me own my idealism and tell you that all of this is very good news.