On holiday. It's the old tradition around here, a week off once in awhile. Back on Sunday... [0 & P]

The most significant change. "We are living in the time of the most significant change in human expression in human history," said Richard E. Miller at 1:25 of "The Future is Now," the video I posted yesterday. A little more than a minute into that piece, he turns from a general description of the excellence of the Rutgers University English Department to this vision for the future of a "New Humanities" that will engage English studies with the changes we are now seeing.

In a networked textual and image world, he says, people communicate instantly and globally; English, as a field that addresses human expression and culture, should be at the forefront of these developments. As people contribute to the making of knowledge on the web, English must train people to live in this new realm where authority has been remade. This stretches most people's vision of English studies to include images and moving images and is a portion of a larger reimagination of the humanities for the new century, Miller continues.

A collective and collaborative web is enriched by the contributions of the university -- the academy's sustained study and understanding -- and with this addition, he says, society is better positioned to live creatively and solve problems that we are facing. All students are served by training in the "central activity of multimedia composition," he says near the end. Multiply-authored, multiply-produced writing, says Miller, is the future.

A couple of years ago Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer began to explore the implications for pedagogy, too -- perhaps most efficiently introduced in "Teaching the Action Horizon," a headnote to their New Humanities reader.

It's still rare enough for academics to "get" what they're getting, and more unusual for them to see structural changes to the university as part of a proper response. [0 & P]