If we are to embrace digital culture and the digital humanities, it helps to be rooted in a literary cannon, or a text that is considered the American novel, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. This is a great text that can navigate a traditionally academic student through the digital wilderness in understanding an aspect of digital culture.
One aspect of digital culture that really stands out in Moby Dick, is socially optimized research. Socially optimized research consists of gaining social proof through your homies, peers, enthusiasts, and experts. In addition to the “who,” it also encourages collaborative learning through tagging, commenting, and providing feedback to help a student achieve a quality formulated idea. In return, for the feedback you receive as one seeking social proof for research, it is expected that you also contribute to socially optimized research by providing your help and feedback for others’ needed ideas.
In Moby Dick, Ahab is a self-driven character, solely motivated by the desire to kill the whale, Moby Dick. Throughout the novel, we see him exemplify social proof by stopping every passing ship, and seeking their knowledge to achieve his goal. Ahab doesn’t have any family members or close, loved ones to speak of at this time, so he isn’t quite able to achieve proof from homies. He has, for most of the voyage, relied on his peers - his crew - to help him find Moby Dick. Ishamel could be considered an enthusiast; after all, he does have a whole section on cetology and is repeatedly reminding the reader of his enthusiasm for whale and whaling. Ishmael isn’t much help though; he helps around the ship in the whaling process, but isn’t a huge asset in finding Moby Dick. Lastly, Ahab enlists the experts - the captains of other ships whose paths they cross. For example, when the Pequod meets the Rachel, Ahab asks his usual question of, “‘Hast ye seen the White Whale?’” (468). Through asking this question to various ships, he is gaining a sense of direction in where to search for the whale and how close or far he is from the whale.
The problem, however, is that while Ahab demonstrates good social proof, he doesn’t do much to contribute to the others’ needs. When the newly acquainted ships make a request of the Pequod out of need, Ahab ignores them and continues on his journey with the information they freely gave and he hoarded. For example, when the Pequod meets the Delight, Ahab requests information on any encounter with Moby Dick. The Delight captain responds that they have, but they have been damaged and members of his crew killed by the whale. They sought help from the Ahab’s crew as they buried a crew member in the sea, but suddenly, “Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight” (477).
Through Ahab’s example we can see the benefits of utilizing social proof in our research. Optimized research should also entail providing feedback and direction for others when they help in our own quest. Doing all of this will bring variety and optimization of our research.
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