Recently, Ryan Trauman (@trauman) provided an introductory overview of some tools that may be of interest to instructors looking to incorporate new media into their research and teaching.
For the most part, I think this is a solid introduction to significant questions that need to be addressed by scholars engaging themselves in new media work. However, there was one section of his text that I felt was off the mark. I include it here:
It’s one thing to capture some excellent material with which you’re going to work, but you’re going to have to put it together with other elements in order to make it a text. That’s where the software comes in. If you’re an Apple person, and you want to stick with those products because of the integration, power, and simplicity, that’s fine. Do your thing. The iLife suite should be enough to help you produce pretty much anything you’d like to produce. However, those products are consumer-focused products which, for the sake of simplicity, greatly reduce the options you have for textual production. On the other hand, "pro-sumer" products like Logic Pro, Lightroom, and Final Cut can get extremely expensive very quickly. You might be better served signing up for a subscription to Adobe’s Creative Suite which give you access to all of Adobe’s products (including Premiere, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Audition, etc) for $20-$30 a month. Not cheap, but worth it, I think. There are also free options, but with the exception of Audacity as an audio editor, most of them aren’t worth what you save.
Of special note is the end of this snippet--that free software programs aren't worth what you save in comparison to proprietary products. I read "free options" as referring heavily to FLOSS (Free/libre Open Source Software), and I find myself upset that an entire galaxy of potential programs are relegated to the metaphorical bin because they're not well-advertised, highly polished suites that work to lock users into a specific paradigm. I'm especially confused because Trauman notes, immediately after this dismissal, "Software is only worth what you can do with it. If you pay a bunch of money for a powerful program, but you don’t know how to use it, that’s a huge waste of resources." If what matters is what can be done with it--and what one knows how to do stuff with it, why is it so important that the go-to programs are Adobe CS and similar proprietary products?
There are several reasons that I feel this perspective is misguided in its efforts to help interested scholars get a feel for working with new media approaches and objects of study.
- Proprietary Does Not Equal Better, and Free Does Not Equal Worse
Among the criticisms lodged at many FLOSS programs is the argument that a given FLOSS product (and in this context, that usually means the UI) is not polished enough to be credible/professional to be used, so it should be ignored. This is an argument that in some cases makes best the enemy of good and in others equates appearance with "under the hood" quality.
This latter argument is certainly justified in many cases, but in just as many others the allure of a particular interface can obscure the potential of a given program or (as explained in point #3 below) influence users to view related tasks as possible only through the paradigm of that program/interface.
The former argument, meanwhile, overlooks a major component of scholarship--especially rhetoric and composition scholarship--that values process as an integral activity and principle. FLOSS development is inherently open (I would say 'transparent' but that's not entirely true, given the social dynamics of some FLOSS projects), making relevant FLOSS programs excellent objects of study in regards to how dynamic populations of volunteers and users communicate with one another to improve their programs in useful, relevant ways for those populations.
- FLOSS Programs Can Increase Student/Instructor Access to Work
Because FLOSS programs are primarily (although not exclusively) free in a financial sense, they are often much easier for cash-strapped students to access ... if those students have access to computers they can install software on. In addition, FLOSS programs give instructors who are on the fence about particular new media work an easier entry point to experiment with that software without much monetary investment. Of course, a similar argument could be made for institutions that might have relatively tight IT budgets. It is my belief that this is a superior approach to an expensive proprietary license, which may not be affordable by students or faculty (even with an educational discount) or capable of being run on the OS of the individual's choice--and I know that it may not be surprising to reveal that the author of this text, writing in a GitHub gist, prefers Linux. As an aside: concerns of cross-compatibility are especially significant for individuals looking to collaborate with students and colleagues: you want to make sure that your co-contributors can access with little trouble the work you're doing, and vice-versa.
I recognize at this point that I am privileged enough to speak from a position within an engineering university that prizes FLOSS principles and software (after all, NCSU has held Red Hat offices on its campus, although the company will soon be moving off-campus to a nearby downtown facility). That said, the flexibility possessed by the IT department in implementing FLOSS programs has only boosted its ability to maintain security measures and the like, since there is no reliance upon a corporate support plan/system for black-boxed software updates or other behind-the-scenes work.
- Proprietary Buy-In Works Against New Media Literacy Goals
As Trauman noted, software "is only worth what you can do with it," and one's knowledge of what can be done is related, in many contexts, to one's ability to understand and manipulate what that program can do. Yes, Adobe's CS products are powerful--but so is GIMP, Inkspot, and even many text editors used to create HTML/CSS instead and outside of the Dreamweaver interface. (I've already briefly commented on the lock-in power of a UI paradigm above.)
Among the benefits of FLOSS is the sense of community, that all manner of users contribute to the broader user population(s) their in-process knowledge of what can be done with a given program. Often, many people will share their customized "hacks" for improving their personal activities with/in those programs. Certainly, this is possible with some proprietary software programs, but there is an inevitable layer of opacity that prevents a truly flexible, customizable opportunity for those looking to learn more about what their software can offer them.
- FLOSS Encourages Broader Software Innovation
Having scholars and students learn about and experiment with all manner of programs enables them not only to learn about what a given software program has the potential to do for them but also to see what different programs offer (or don't offer). This sort of recognition allows all involved to become more informed parties that can articulate more clearly and effectively, as they learn what can be done, what they want to do and what they need a program to do. For FLOSS projects, this articulation is made somewhat easy in that there are few bureaucratic obstacles to communicating with publicly-identified contributors (as individuals or collectively in email listservs and the like). For many proprietary programs, in comparison, there is often a single opaque point of contact (a support@domain email address, generally) or maybe a discussion board ... populated mainly by other users and rarely by the developers themselves (at least openly).
Anyway, I want to stress again that I don't take issue with the vast majority of what Trauman has argued is necessary to really get oneself in a position to work with/in new media. I do, however, question his call to rely on proprietary systems that have closed off much of their procedures, development processes, and capabilities from user scrutiny. In contrast, FLOSS projects do all of these things, and the benefits offered by access to these programs makes them even more potentially useful to new media scholars, faculty and students alike.