Scattered Notes and Questions from Reading about the Foundational Theories of Digital Writing and Rh

Hawisher and Selfe, “The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class” (1991)

It is hard for me to imagine a classroom without computers. Throughout most of my school career, computers have been present. While some teachers use the tools better than others, this is true for every tool. Many of the 1991 discussions on the uses of computers in the writing classroom feel dated, but there is still validity to the points that rings true. For example: “The central assumption underlying our argument is that writing instructors, by thinking critically and carefully about technology, can succeed in using it to improve the educational spaces we inhabit” remains a critical element to successful instruction. (64)

Cynthia L. Selfe and Richard J. Selfe, Jr., “The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones (1994)

The conversation about crossing boarders perhaps has different meaning today than it did when Selfe and Selfe used it as an introduction. Yet, just as that topic has grown in complexity, so too have the borders, visible and invisible, of the technologies available to teachers of English. The goal remains important: “Our goal is to help teachers identify some of the effects of domination and colonialism associated with computer use so that they can establish a new discursive territory within which to understand the relationships between technology and education.” (482)

“The rhetoric of technology obscures the fact that, within our current educational system-even though computers are associated with the potential for great reform-they are not necessarily serving democratic ends.” (484)

The line of thought connects really well with feminist rhetoric as presented on page 487.

How do the interfaces as maps of discursive privilege (488) extend to social media in terms of the privileges and positioning of English as a language of choice and dominant groups as maintaining power? “The language of computers has thus become English by default: The majority of standard interfaces are English, much of the documentation for these interfaces and the machines they operate on is in English, and the systems that currently support global computing networks rely on English as a standard exchange language.” (490) (The conversations make me think of the West Wing episode about cartography, a wonderful classic, also discussed on page 499). “This realization, how-ever, cannot provide an excuse for inaction. We must also, as these authors note, take on the responsibility of continuing to "work towards unconcealment ... and let our awareness guide our actions in creating and applying technology" (179).” (501)

Has this changed? “Students who want to use computers are continually confronted with these grand narratives which foreground a value on middle-class, corporate culture; capitalism and the commodification of information; Standard English; and rationalistic ways of representing knowledge.” (494) How has social media changed the democracy of the Internet or the perpetuating of middle-class values?

Anne Wysocki, “Opening New Media to Writing: Openings and Justifications”

What a fantastic sentence: “Writing would not seem so different from what it was 30 or 300 years ago, really, if all that composed it was simply the words we hear in our heads…” (2) The ideas and psychology behind communication technologies (as discussed on page 11) still fascinates me. In fact, much of this piece was simply intriguing (like the kinds of liens and pages of a book, 14). A definition of new media is offered on page 15 (and also a discussion on “how and why we make these combinations of materials, not simply that we do it” (19)) I love the teaching suggestions and look forward to incorporating some of the ideas!

Cheryl E. Ball, Show, not tell: The value of new media scholarship

(2004)

Ball offers an important distinction definition: “I demonstrate the print-bound conventions of current online scholarship in journals such as Kairos, and argue that applying the term new media scholarship to digital texts that use print-based conventions is an inappropriate application of the term. Instead, new media scholarship should only be applied to texts that experiment with and break away from linear modes of print traditions.” (404)

I wonder what forms of rhetorical argument cannot be neatly applied to new media texts? “‘It has to happen on every level, “linear article, then, not to outline how the forms of rhetorical argument can be applied neatly to new media texts (as I don’t believe they easily can), but to help readers understand the possibilities of interpreting new media scholarship so that when they approach a new media text, they can make meaning from it’” (405)

One of my favorite aspects of digital rhetoric is its immediate application: “Continuing to write about the potential of multiliteracies rather than acting through those literacies will limit our notion of scholarship for the future.” (408)