Rethinking Scholarly Commentary in the Age of Google: Some Preliminary Meditations on Digital Editions

Recently theorists have suggested that the lens of the social text demystifies an editor's role, positing that texts may be most profitably constructed as a collective conversation between all of the various agents involved in their production and reception. This paper considers these theories in light of studies of group cognition to suggest that modern readers' new relationship to digital information upsets an editor's traditional position as an authority while simultaneously offering a valuable opportunity for reframing discussions about the reliability and accessibility of scholarly evidence.