Authorship 2.0

Authorship is changing by the minute. So what’s different about it?
The who, what, where, when, why, and how…that’s what.

Everyone is creating and sharing digital compositions from anywhere at any time, using constantly evolving tools and rules, because we are inherently driven toward the edge of possibility.

Who – Everyone
Today’s authors comprise a worldwide peer-to-peer network of everyday people, free of editorial gatekeepers and restrictive production and publication technologies.

What – Creating and sharing digital compositions
Today’s authors can create dynamic, interactive, multimedia compositions to express anything on their minds to any audience. Digital compositions are dynamic because they can easily be modified in either form or content by author and/or audience. Interactive digital compositions allow audiences to direct their own experience and/or contribute to the composition in some way. Multimedia digital compositions can include any combination of text, images, audio, video, or animations. In fact, the new “text” is the multimedia text.

Where – Anywhere
Through ubiquitous computers and Internet, anyone can create and publish digital compositions from almost anywhere on the planet, and those compositions can be instantaneously accessed from almost anywhere on the planet, even if author and audience are miles apart. The only tools needed are a personal computer with an Internet connection.

When – Anytime
People can create, communicate, publish, and update digital compositions whenever they want. Unlike print publishing, digital publishing allows an author to make changes on a continuous basis. Web-based documents remain under the author’s control, yet audiences always have access to the most recent version of a digital composition.

Why - Because we are inherently driven toward the edge of possibility
People are innately intelligent, social, expressive beings. They are fundamentally predisposed to think, interact, create, and communicate through any means possible. Those means are now in constant flux, converging, diverging, and otherwise evolving, as authors and audiences alike better understand their affordances. The medium and the message are interacting like never before, both shaping and being shaped by each other. Categories are growing harder to define, and lines that were once clear are getting blurrier all the time. Such changes are a natural outcome of the human condition.

How – With constantly evolving tools and rules
Most anyone now has practical, affordable access to flexible, easy-to-use power tools for thinking and communicating (e.g., e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, wikis, online discussion forums, chat rooms, social networking sites, shared virtual environments) that capitalize upon the convergence of digital media. Each new communication tool engenders its own rhetoric, and society is constantly developing new discourses, social norms, and participation structures for digital interactions.

How might these changes impact teaching and learning?