Compared two editing forms, documentary editing and critical editing, the former has a historical perspective on dealing with text as a relic, thereby emphasizing the author’s intention and strengthening his authority. The latter, on the other hand, focuses on the current context in which the article is being read, so the author’s authority is reduced while at the same time the editor gets transferred some of it. In other words, each has its pros and cons. For the former, it opens wide possibilities for the reader to interpret the content because it is aimed at faithfully conveying the original to the reader. However, in the obsessive process of pursuing to seek the author’s intentions, there can be some sanctification of the original. The latter, meanwhile, has the advantage of enabling past and present to be connected and helping readers understand through modernized versions. However, at the same time, the fact that the understanding is the result of reinterpretation by the editor as an actor within society may cancel out the advantage.

In this regard, I don’t mean to be imperative, but editors may need to be wary of the possibility of reflecting their intentions while successfully reflecting the modern context to the original. I am aware of that the emergence of numerous subjective voices resulting from the development of the media is an inevitable phenomenon in modern society. I also know that being in a ‘completely neutral’ position is almost impossible. Therefore, I think it is necessary to reexamine the collective intelligence aspect of the ‘critic’ that the critical editing form has. Editing in modern society is done through collaboration and interaction among many parts. I think this process will make communication and reflection possible and move future knowledge away from being ideological in the renewed way.

The reason why I chose the capstone project Imigration, Small Business and Assimilation: Three Stories of Small-Time Capitalism on the Lower East Side was because it was interesting that the audio link that interviewed the study participants was attached as a result of the study. It was also because I wondered how the choice of such a form contributed to drawing up the finding of the study and how effectively it revealed the theme. However, when I actually looked through the writing, I was rather confused. It was because it was more out of the form of conventional research than I had expected. Basically, the project uses a kind of ethnomethodology that is widely used in anthropology and sociology. Investigate and describe cultural background and show the talks of the study participants as it is without setting up theoretical frame. What really stands out in this project, however, is that the personal narratives of the researcher, which do not seem to be directly related to the theme itself, account for a large portion of the writing (every semester he took at the center is listed on several pages, devoting a chapter of pride in completing the study). I would like to compare this project with the most formal academic form I have learned previously, concentrating on disclosure/hiden of the author, to think about what difference they have, what meaning each of them has, and what its effect would be.

Especially in the field of social science where I majored, the existence of researchers is completely excluded from writing. Because it is science, it is wary of the author’s subjectivity and intent in revealing facts and objectively analyzing them. A clear explanation and rationale (through theoretical background and prior study review) is required in selecting research questions, objectives and targets. However, his personal experience and motivation are actively showed in the project. (Of course it’s very feeble. It’s just that he loves New York so much, and he has personal career and experience as a radio host and city guide.) Meanwhile, ordinary studies in utilizing interview in research regard it as a discourse and analyze it by researchers on the premise that they are methodologically trained. Sadly, however, it is one of the most difficult tasks to analyze, leaving their intentions completely blank. On the other hand, the project has attached a link to the audio file to listen them directly and opened the full text of the conversation with the study participants (even describing the noise and music sounds heard during the interview) as an alive form. Here analysis and judgment are left to the readers.

Then, what does each of these extreme two formats have a meaning and an effect? In the case of formal academic form, researchers tend to set themselves as an observer outside the world. This is a modern way of approaching truth and closed to elitism as a reproducer of knowledge. This project, on the other hand, cannot be said to have revealed the world technically and scientifically. However, even the author is represented as part of the world he describes, and acts as living material. Thus, because the former uses academic language, it creates a distance from the real world and universal readers, but in the latter case, it has the advantage of narrowing the distance. However, for what contents this each form contains, when given the difference that the former is in philosophical methodology and the latter is close to aesthetic form, more research is likely to be needed on what difference they will bring.

Using computers was pretty common and obvious when I was young, but I was in the transitional period that certain handwritten system also existed in Korea. It was writing on a given form, a ‘squared manuscript paper’. The most general type was for 200 characters with red lines. Each square can contain one letter, one mark, or one space. Elementary school essentially educated how to write on the squared manuscript paper in class, and official writing assignments and tests were to be written on it. At the same time, however, I was technically accessible to the word processor and knew how to use it. That is, I was a generation that was able to experience both forms of writing.

As with all handwritten system, writing on the squared manuscript paper has the tension of the uncorrectable. The difference is that it has the precise rules, even for which signs to use when making corrections (of course, in this case they are intuitive and universal, but still definite to follow). In this format, the actual writing had to begin very deliberately after careful consideration of the entire content of the writing. On the other hand, writing in a word processor made it more improvised and showed that the flow of thought can be cut and edited in a visible way.

Having many strict forms means it has authority. The ways to write on the squared manuscript paper were to be learned and trained. How well someone follows the format correctly, how well someone writes a complete composition with one stroke of a brush, or whether someone knows the rules when he/she has to modify it; these are a glimpse of the writer’s level of education. Indeed, writing on the squared manuscript paper was a symbol, especially of an intellectual. Despite the fact that word processing is now perfectly generalized, many contests of research or composition in Korea still announce the length limit of the writing based on the form of squared manuscript paper. Does the development in technology of writing equalize all of us and allow anyone to express their thoughts freely? A few years ago, I made and edited a book of stories that were created by long-time local residents, setting up the town they live as a stage of the stories, as part of activity against gentrification. The most enthusiastic, middle-aged male participant who had a dream of novelist but couldn’t realize it, and now run a small fried chicken restaurant, visited to give a handwritten composition on the squared manuscript paper when all other young participants e-mailed a word processor writing. Ashamed of the fact that he had never learned to use a computer, my team moved dozens of his handwritings to Word. Technological advances have made my writing fast, efficient, able to write anytime and revise whenever I want to, but is it really freeing everyone, including me? Are we perhaps isolating another invisible class in our writing technologies and composition process?

How have material changes effected the way we read? As one of the events that gave rise to modern times, two perspectives on the development of printing technology can be roughly summarized; the position that mass production of books has resulted in the democratization of knowledge or that the rule of power was strengthened through the means of the dissemination of knowledge. I would like to discuss the change in the way we read as a result of the critical insist, which is closed to the second one, that the development and diffusion of printing technology was possible by particularly meeting the contemporary context of capitalism.

Initially, Gutenberg’s famous ‘42-line Bible’ was widely produced by theologians for the religious purpose of distributing the Bible. Historically, however, it has only been able to continue and spread as the demands have been met within the system of private markets, at the same time, the abundance of supplies and the consumer-oriented societal ambience due to the declining population after the Black Death. In addition, when it was regarded that the Reformation had risen by the fact that Martin Luther’s ‘Ninety-five Theses’ were quickly printed and distributed, it is important to note that the Reformation, which emphasized ‘individuals’ who can directly face God, led to Calvin’s Protestant outbreak and was very friendly with the capitalist spirit. In short, printing technology was able to develop and disseminate in the process of forming the capitalist structure that was born at the time, and was also a catalyst for opening a new epoch.

By being part of the capitalist system, printing technology has made it possible for everyone to be subjective readers, but at the same time it makes us all consumers of equally mass-produced knowledge. Thus, the material change of printing technology does not simply change the way we read, but the content what we read. In the form of printing, knowledge exists as a commodity, and texts that do not conform to the logic of the market do not survive or cannot enter at all. Therefore, in this macro capitalist logic we might also ask: How do we change what we read?