Wal-Mart and Digital Authorship

On Monday night, as I drove home from class, I passed my hometown Wal-Mart. As a former Wal-Mart cashier (first job), I have often wondered, and did again on Monday night, what Sam Walton would think of the course Wal-Mart has taken today. Has Wal-Mart stuck to his vision or has it grown at the hands of its employees (or all of society) to something that he would never have imagined or approved of?

As we discussed in the class, one of the main differences between traditional authorship and digital authorship is control. When an author writes a digital text, which is often filled with links to other texts and allows readers a space in which to comment, that author essentially hands over the keys without locking the glove box. Content of linked pages can change and readers can manipulate writing in nearly endless ways, often writing comments that are longer and more intricate than the original text. At what point, we have to wonder, does the original author merely become a contributor? When do readers become co-authors?

Digital authorship has much in common with Wal-Mart (and other corporations). Is Sam Walton the founder of the Wal-Mart we know today, or was he something more like the digital author, a surrogate mother of sorts? -- Someone to bring forth the creation for others to shape and continue to define. Here creation is not a one-time act, but an ongoing process.