Planned obsolescence: Publishing, technology, and the future of the academy

Abstract

The text you are now reading, whether on a screen in draft form or in its final, printed version, began its gestation some years ago in a series of explorations into the notion of obsolescence, which culminated in my being asked to address the term as part of the workshop "Keywords for a Digital Profession," organized by the Committee on the Status of Graduate Students at the December 2007 Modern Language Association (MLA) convention in Chicago. However jaded and dispiriting the grad students' choice of "obsolescence" as a keyword describing their own futures might appear, the decision to assign me this keyword was entirely appropriate. © 2011 by New York University. All rights reserved.