There are costs to participating in HASTAC activities….these are born locally, either by the supporting institution (i.e., Duke, UCI, Berkeley) or by the individuals themselves, rather than centrally as would be the case for a professional organization (through the payment of dues from distributed participants). Although i would say that the costs are more socialist than organizations. From each according to their means….

But the costs are real, and unevenly distributed, as is the anxiety about covering the costs.

Following the lead of Tara McPherson, I talk about different genres of humanities technology projects, and situate HASTAC in a taxonomy of projects that include: Electronic Literature, Humanities Computing Projects, Webportals, Cultural Informatics, and Multimodal Publishing.

I recall the hype surrounding the emergence of the “virtual corporation” as post-fordist organizational form in the early 1990s. I think I remember reading an anlsyis by marxist organizational critics who noted the way in which the invocation of “virtuality” as a modality of organization was a technique for the further accumlation of capital to those in power….workers, who now were hired as “just-in-time” employees were definitely not benefiting from this new organizational form. Might be useful to cite some of this work just to suggest how the “virtual learning organization” you’re proposing avoids “hiding” costs.