QUOTH THE PYTHONESS

If we fail to reflect on the plots and scenes and tropes that undergird our histories, we run the risk of missing the human artifice that lies at the heart of even the most “natural” of narratives.

Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know. As he progresses in the slow initiation which is life, the form of the goddess undergoes for him a series of transfigurations; she can never be greater than himself, though she can always promise more than he is yet capable of comprehending. She lures, she guides, she bids him burst his fetters. And if he can match her import, the two, the knower and the known, will be released from eery limitation. Woman is the guide to the sublime acme of sensuous adventure. By deficient eyes she is reduced to inferior states; by the evil eye of ignorance she is spellbound to banality and ugliness. But she is redeemed by the eyes of understanding. The hero who can take her as she is, without undue commotion but with the kindness and assurance she requires, is potentially the king, the incarnate god, of her created world.

Why is it that the part of our culture that is recorded in newspapers remains perpetually accessible, while the part that is recorded on videotape is not? How is it that we've created a world where researchers trying to understand the effect of media on nineteenthcentury America will have an easier time than researchers trying to understand the effect of media on twentieth-century America?

The real significance of Eastman [Kodak]'s invention, however, was not economic. It was social. Professional photography gave individuals a glimpse of places they would never otherwise see. Amateur photography gave them the ability to record their own lives in a way they had never been able to do before. As author Brian Coe notes, "For the first time the snapshot album provided the man on the street with a permanent record of his family and its activities..For the first time in history there exists an authentic visual record of the appearance and activities of the common man made with [literary] interpretation or bias.

Becoming Human

Friends and Metaphors

As with views of the Internet, in general, scholars should avoid unreflective boosterism or instinctive Luddism. New technologies could narrow access to students with the resources to purchase the latest equipment. And university administrators eager to cut costs or large corporations looking for new arenas for profitmaking could also use the new technology for their own ends. But at the same time, new technology opens up the resources of the Library of Congress to students at institutions without extensive libraries and it offers ways for scholars to create their own teaching materials without the mediation of giant publishing conglomerates. Neither the democratization or the commodification of higher education is inherent in the technology.

Experienced researchers loop back and forth, move forward a step or two before going back in order to move ahead again, change directions, all the while anticipating stages not yet begun.