Technologies of Wonder

For the upcoming week I'll be reading Technologies of Wonder by Susan H. Delagrange. It can be found here: https://ccdigitalpress.org/wonder

First, On Format and Usability

In terms of format and access, I'm already noticing a few features of this book that look a bit different compared to paper academic publications.

1. The book can be read entirely online by clicking from page to page, or
2. The book can be downloaded as a single large PDF file, or
3. The book can be downloaded as individual chapters.

Each chapter has its own standard form cover page identifying the title of the work, author, chapter, url, a chapter summary, and other information. This is a nice reference tool that usually isn't included in paper publications. It is a particularly nice feature when chapters need to be downloaded individually.

Love, by Alexandr Milov for Burning Man 2015. 

Hunched and isolated adults on the outside; curious friendly babies on the inside

Access & Use (my encounter) 

I am still making my transition into digital literacy, by which I mean composing and reading in entirely digital formats. I like reading and annotating on paper. When I write, I always print paper drafts for revising, editing, and proofing. But I'm working on learning new digital approaches and practices--I got to learn some new one with this reading. I'm sharing the experience here because sometimes academia feels like a rigid ladder we climb alone rather than the mutually supportive community of scholars we really are. What I share below feels simple, but I'm including it because I hope others find it helpful.  

Lately, my practice for reading digital texts (in pdf form) has been to save the file to my hard drive and read/annotate it Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. To back-up my work or when I want greater ease in accessing the reading across multiple devices, I copy the file to my box.com account. Box has a new plug in that allows users to open files stored on box, edit them using regular programs (like work or a pdf reader) and then save the work as usual. The updates are automatically reflected on the master copy saved to box--cool! The only hang up is that I use the free version of Box and there's a limit to to file size that can be uploaded (250MB). 

When I tried to upload the entire book (as one PDF) to Box.com I was told the file exceeded the size and was promoted to pay for an upgrade. The cheapest paid version if $10 per month. So I tried another way: I downloaded each chapter individually and saved all of them in a single file titled Technologies of Wonder. Box.com allowed me to upload the folder with no problems! Somehow, the exact same data wasn't allowed to be stored when it was packaged together as a file, but could be stored as separate files contained within a folder. Computer logic is frustrating...but also funny at the same time.

Content of Technologies of Wonder

Chapter One: Reading Pictures, Seeing Words

Chapter Two: (Re)Vision and Remediation

Chapter Three: Embodiment by Design

Chapter Four: Visual Arrangement as Inquiry

Chapter Five: Media Machines, Devices of Wonder

Wunderkammer

There are also two reviews of this book, both published in digital academic publications:

• Amber Stamper's review in Kairos
• Abigail Linhardt's review in CC Online Journal

Questions 

1. When writing a blog post that takes multiple sittings to complete, is it better to "update" and "publish" intermediary drafts along the way, or it should writers wait to publish until the post is finalized?
2. What possibilities do digital composition and multi-modal visual composition offer that traditional linear academic publishing might not?
3. Delagrange suggest wonder-inspired research is contrasted with efficiency-focused research. Do you think they are mutually exclusive? Could the possibly inform one another?
4. Feminist epistemology underscores main themes in Technologies of Wonder. Do you think digital and multimodal composition is more open to feminist work?
5.