I once knew a student who was classified as mentally retarded.  His name was Robert.  One day, while we were having lunch together, Robert told me that there were four kinds of things in this world.  Surprised, I asked him what the four things were.  Robert told me they were 1) things that had arrived here, but would leave.  2) things that had always been here, but would leave.  3) things that had never been here, but someday would.  4) things that had always been here, and always will.  I don't know where Robert ended up, but I've carried that piece of unexpected wisdom with me, using it to classify "things"; using it to organize the world I live in.

Technology is the fourth kind of thing.  It has always been here, and it always will be.  Technology is the use of science to improve the condition of humankind.  Technology is applying innovation to make the tasks of man more easily or better executed.  Technology is, however, always a Faustian bargain, and there have always been alarmists aplenty pointing out the trade-offs of the day's technological advancements.

One of the most common complaints of today's alarmists is an overabundance of information.  They claim that we are buried in useless knowledge; that the Internet is the forest, and we cannot see the trees for it.  There is, as there always is, a grain of truth in what the anti-techs say.  The Internet does contain more information than any one person can assimilate.  It contains virtually all of the information that we, the human race, have accumulated, and it provides the location of virtually all that it does not contain.  Search engines are a partial solution to the problem of quickly finding the specific information one needs.  Specifically targeted portal sites like EnglishScholar.com are another.  The critics are wrong.  There is no such thing as too much information.  They have confused too much information with too little organization.  Search engine technology will evolve, and that, coupled with a growing number of gateways like this one will help to sift the information, making it easier to digest.  


EnglishScholar.com is what Jean Baudrillard calls a simulacrum.  There is no single, static original of this thesis.  It exists only in cyberspace.  It will never be a complete, finished product, because the nature of the space it inhabits is fluid; unstable.  The destinations reached through this portal sometimes disappear without warning, and each day brings a new set of billets.  This does not in any way invalidate the thesis itself, for it shares these attributes with that which it provides.  Information is itself slippery in nature, and no static provider of it remains true for long.

I started working toward my M.A. in English literature at Bowie State University in the fall of 1999.  One of the difficulties I faced while doing research for my first few classes was finding too much information. Entering the term "rhetoric" into the Alta Vista search engine, for example, produced 199,921 results.  Even after applying Boolean modifiers and adding closed keywords, the number of results returned was staggering.  As I waded through this jungle of often useless or inactive hyperlinks, I started compiling and organizing the valid links, using Microsoft Internet Explorer's "Favorites" folder system.  This system worked, but it was clumsy, and became more unwieldy as the number of links mounted into the hundreds.  Because I already had extensive experience in web design and construction, the solution was obvious to me.  I started building a website that would serve as a hyperlink library; what is commonly referred to as a "gateway" or "portal" site.  Initially, I didn't worry about what the site looked like, or whether all the links were annotated. The site was for my personal use only.  Soon, however, I started sharing the URL with other scholars (professors and students, grad and undergrad).  As I opened the site to a limited number of others, I developed a more graphically pleasing, user-friendly front end, and tried to annotate as many links as I could.  I also obtained the domain name "englishscholar.com", and posted the site to its own server.  As the site became more sophisticated, Dr. David Kaloustian, then one of my professors and now a friend and colleague, expressed the belief that it could serve as at least a major component of my master's thesis.  When I suggested the idea to department chair Dr. Hardy Cook, he encouraged me to pursue it, offering several technical suggestions.


A master's thesis is, by definition, supposed to be a contribution to the knowledge base of one's discipline. The philosophy of EnglishScholar.com is predicated on that ideal.  The primary goals of this website are:


The first reason may seem simplistic, but searching the Internet is a skill in and of itself.  Using complex Boolean terms and multiple search engines can provide very different results than simply entering a keyword in a generic engine.  I have used 24 different search engines (most of which can be accessed under "web research" in the construction of this compendium in an effort to find the best sources possible.  

For the purposes of this philosophical explanation, I use the word "best" to mean that the site a hyperlink points to: a) is relevant to the category it is listed under.  b) has valuable content. c) is an active link 3 out of 4 times checked, over a period of at least two weeks. By using this verification process, I hope to minimize the number of "dead" links.  Dead links occur when a URL is no longer pointing at the desired document, and sometimes re-direct a researcher to a completely different site.  

Cataloging and organizing the many hyperlinks has proven to be perhaps the most difficult part of the process.  I created 10 categories, not including the catch-all "additional links" section.  The 10 categories are:

Annotating each link is the most time-consuming part of building this website.  I am consciously not using any kind of rating system.  I made this decision because sometimes the fact a researcher needs is available only on what otherwise might be considered a "one-star" site.  I am instead writing a very brief description of each hyperlink destination on the site.

The final goal I listed is to provide content that can't be found elsewhere.  This exclusive content is currently minimal, but may be of some help to the scholars who visit the site. Currently included content that fulfills this goal includes some of my own graduate papers (including the hyper-paper entitled "Baudrillard, Christ and Reality: Reading the Matrix as a Postmodern Statement", available on the front page by clicking the "Matrix" link) and information on author Zee Edgell.  I will soon start posting some student papers under the "full-text" section. 


The purpose of this website is to give scholars of English a single source that will provide them with all of the information they seek.  While the nature of this goal guarantees its perpetual incompleteness, it is that same inability to achieve plenariness that differentiates it from a more traditional, static work.  The quest to achieve an unachievable state of existence is simultaneously a cornerstone of Western civilization and a basic tenet of postmodernism.  This site, and others like it, can and will change.  It will grow and adapt, constantly morphing into a different animal than it was the previous day, edging ever-nearer to its impossible objective, and while its stated purpose deconstructs itself upon inception, the project itself is validated by that same ideal. 

 

ADDENDUM 1

This website is optimized for use with Micrsosoft Internet Explorer, Version 4 or higher.  Everything can be viewed using Netscape, but some of the effects (hover buttons, fly-ins, etc.) will appear as static images when viewed in Netscape.  Below is a chart that shows what I have found to be typical results for visitors to this site.  As you can see, most surfers of this site seem to utilize MSIE.

Browsers
Browser Number
MSIE 5.0 15
MSIE 5.5 10
MSIE 4.01 3
Netscape 4.0 1
Netscape 3.0 1
Netscape 4.7 1

 

HOME    §    E-MAIL