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04/15/2004 Archived Entry: "Liu"

Usually, I'm asked about Alan Liu when I talk about my work. So every now and then I venture over to UC Santa Barbara to see what he's up to (no doubt he is not venturing over here to see what I am up to). One of Liu's courses begins with the statement that it will deal with the information economy through (among other things), our "sense of culture (the culture of 'cool,' it has been called)." What does Liu mean when he describes "our culture" as cool? Based on what he is asking students to do, he can't mean what I mean.
Term papers, exams, and lectures are not central to cool. If Liu uses cool to mean the interconnected, juxtaposed, remixed, dub world of information delivery, production, and storage, then why is he using print based logic to structure his course? Imagine the students in this course being told what cool does to information but never asked to use cool to construct information. And since this course comes with discussion sessions (taught by a TA, I assume), I imagine Liu doing a great deal of lecturing, a very non-digital (or cool) way of working. Another good example of Liu's that I often use is his usage of the list to create information networks - even though the list, as Jack Goody notes, is the product of print culture.
This is an excellent example of the gaps we find today between digital work an the univeristy. The university (represented here by Liu) is fascinated with digital culture. But it wants to work with digital culture using the tools invented in print (like the exam or midterm). The university still struggles to make the next necessary step in rethinking its apparatus.