I found McGann’s article interesting because it was based on a personal experience, and he leads us through the process of how to find a solution and how to decide which is our real goal. This essay could also be seen as an interesting mixture of the eternal debate between printed text and computerized data text, as well as a practical guide of the techniques of how to organize the writing of an article or of a paper based on the rejection of one of his essays from a magazine and an skilled reader’s critique, respectively.
The article starts with the dilemma of what to do with the pictures that illustrate the paper. The printing of these images on the paper based medium will cost a considerable amount of money, and since they were initially created with the computer, they will lose quality on the printed page. Moreover, the reader will not be able to appreciate the process so clearly. The solution seems clear if we think or the article as a web publication or electronic text: adding the images will not suppose any extra cost, the quality will not suffer, and the graphic features that the computer offers will help make the replaying and recreation of the process of the experiment more understanding to the readers.
However, this is connected with another problem: the difficulty of indexing and the searching of image-based data and alphanumeric-based data. The image-based data enriches considerably the texts since it provides visual evidence, but it is much more difficult (impossible) to search or to index than the alphanumeric data, or at least it is with the present technology. Some claim that alphanumeric based editions are the most significant future trend in electronic edition, but this assertion can depend on what we mean by it. With today’s technology might be difficult, but a research focused on finding new techniques that allow a proper managing of the image-based data could be the first step. As McGann pointed it out, it is all a matter of point of view, and not mistaking “the future we think we know” for “the future we know we need”. Through experience and the mistakes we do when researching we can realize what we really need and use this hints to redirect our path of investigation. Realizing what we do not have and what we need is the first step to the achievement of our final goal.
On the other hand, there is the issue of the readership. A paper based text, for instance a scientific magazine, tends to have a reduced number of readers or a narrow span compared to the web, but at the same time it targets and focuses on a more precise network of specialized readers who will really be interested on the subject. An article on the web can be missed much more easily. Furthermore, the creation of the electronic form version of the printed magazines is a very slow process. Nevertheless, we can advocate that the computerized text can offer a high quality data, offering both the critical and the facsimile edition, which would be impossible on the paper edition. Furthermore, if we think that the humanities scholars are interested in non hierarchical models or forms, we will have another reason to bet for the computerized versions.
As a conclusion, I think this is a very thought provoking essay, with a very interesting philosophy: we might by “chance” or by mistake bump into a problem when undertaking our research, which can be understood as a hint from fate to open our eyes and see our real goal or the means to reach it. At the same time, it objectively shows us the strong and weak points of the computerized version of a text or article and its possibilities without discredit the printed world.