view: that digitization is, fundamentally,
something he calls “dematerialization.”
A community that digitizes itself, in
his view, renders its physical self sym-
bolic and nonmaterial when it puts itself
“online” or “in the cloud,” where its sense
and sensibility will outlive its bodily
demise.
The transitions from bodies to spir-
its, from Austen’s written words about
haberdashery to three-dimensional bob-
kins and petticoats, are well known to
Janeites. When Ted Scheinman joined the
Janeites, he found himself at a séance,
among “those enthusiastic literary necro-
mancers who regularly summon Austen’s
ghost.” Note to Trekkies: Dematerializa-
tion is akin to being beamed up.
About 10 years ago, I began to suspect
technology is the masculine form of the
word culture. Among the first projects
launched at Dartmouth College by John
Kemeny, the coinventor of Basic, was the
1972 digitization of the poetry of Rob-
ert Frost, with a complete concordance
so anyone could search Frost’s opus by
words. Though this was little more than
data entry, it looked like a miracle to
Frost fans and to the librarian, Edward
Connery Lathem, who worked with
Kemeny. Suddenly, computers weren’t
merely for mathematicians and the mil-
itary. They were for memorializing, pre-
serving, and extending culture. And yet,
in spite of his close attention to Frost,
Kemeny will forever be known as a tech-
nologist whose work belongs to STEM,
and not the humanities.
Which is all why it’s necessary to rec-
ognize Janeites as the avant-garde of dig-
ital culture. Not only are Janeites fans of
literature by a woman and about women,
but their organization was forced to
become dexterous and ironic (not unlike
Austen herself) in response to sexism and
homosexism that kept members from
taking the main stage at literary lectures.
And then later, while STEM and sci-fi have
been front and center in the story the
internet tells about itself—on Wikipedia
and elsewhere—Janeites, who are now in
full force on the actual internet, stand for
the stubborn persistence of the human-
ities online.
VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN (@page88) is a
regular contributor to wired.
WHAT BIG TECH FEARS
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Company run by man
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to leave Google in the
wake of sexual assault
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