Final Reflective Commentary on Sony Reader

But here’s something different: The NCAA can’t keep up with online tools either. It’s against NCAA rules to attempt to persuade a recruit to choose a school, and so a Facebook group cheerleading a high school basketball player to go to NC State is against the rules (Sports Illustrated). But who’s culpable? And who can punish whom?

I just read Mary Kalantzisa and Bill Cope’s “On Globalisation and Diversity” (Computers and Composition 23.4 [2006]: 402-411). Kalantzis and Cope explain the narrative of three globalization phases: 1) the first globalization, which involved the diversification of languages and cultures and the spread across the globe; 2) the second globalization, which involved the development of writing and agriculture and the colonization of the world by Europe, resulting in homogenization; and 3) the emerging third globalization, which involves de-centralization of power, “new forms of subjectivity and new kinds of personality” (408), and a new proliferation of differences, including “a return to radical multilingualism” (409).

As I read, I was suspicious of the sweeping history of thousands and thousands of years of history, but after reading the article about Facebook, perhaps there is something to this third globalization, which is, as Kalantzisa and Cope speculate, just now beginning. I’m still suspicious of the sweeping narrative, and I’m wondering if these three globalizations (if this is even an accurate representation of history) might overlap more than Kalantzisa and Cope discuss. (It seems to me that the last few hundred years have been more of a mixture of homogenization and diversification and of centralization and de-centralization.)

And check out the newscasters’ enthusiasm! Wow!

I think we should call “new media texts” those that have been made by composers who are aware of the range of materialities of texts and who then highlight the materiality: such composers design texts that help readers/consumers/viewers stay alert to how any text—like its composers and readers—doesn’t function independently of how it is made and in what contexts. Such composers design texts that make as overtly visible as possible the values they embody. Considering new media texts in this way, I think and hope, helps us to see where openings for agency are within the new media texts we compose.

Under this definition, new media texts do not have to be digital; instead, any text that has been designed so that its materiality is not effaced can count as new media. (15)

Wysocki, Anne Frances, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia L. Selfe, and Geoffrey Sirc. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2004.

• While in NYC, I visited Printed Matter, a great store with all sorts of zines, old books, artwork, prints, and magazines. I picked up the book Queer Zines, which is a catalogue of various zines with some articles about queer zine practices, history, and theory. I’m excited to read it, if I can ever get through my homework.

• Teaching went really well today. We had a great conversation about cultural assumptions regarding literacy technologies. I think students are starting to pick up on what I’m talking about for their second paper — though we still need to discuss narrative in more detail, among so many other things. Writing classes = trying to cover too much, as always. Even with a theme, I find it impossible to fully narrow down the scope. It’s like my own writing: too much too much too much. Narrow, focus, and define!

• Something really interesting was said in one of my graduate seminars today, but for the life of me, I can’t remember it. I remember thinking: I want to blog about that! I didn’t write that down, so I am not blogging about it. Plato was right: writing hurts memory. Plato was wrong when he claimed this is a bad thing. Writing is memory! (So it doesn’t actually “hurt” memory.)

• I feel that this blog needs a new look and feel to it. Also, in case you missed it, this blog is boring. Roger Wilson says so.

• I’ve been thinking about audience recently again. Perhaps I should focus my paper for 584 (Postcritical Perspectives in Literacy Studies) on audience instead of my previous topic (authenticity, related to Sennett’s The Fall of Public Man. Not sure. But how does audience change in electric/digital writing — that is, does our (composition studies’) conception of audience need revisited, post Ede/Lunsford? Not sure…

How is the Sony ebook Reader going? Eh, I’m not impressed with it. My students are frustrated by the slow page turning rate when they read pdf’s, as am I. In fact, for the graduate course I’m in, I barely read on the machine anymore. I print off the journal articles that we are “supposed” to read on the Reader so that I can have paper in front of me and mark it all up. It’s easier to read on the Reader when we’re using an ebook, such as Everything, which actually reads nicely, I think. My problem is that when it comes to reading on the reader, I read too quickly because I can’t have a pen in my hand to slow me down and make marginalia. I like marking in the book, not saving notes elsewhere, because I inevitably lose those notes or forget about them, whether I hand-write them or type them.

This post is becoming more about my reading habits than my students’ and my class, so I’ll make one last comparison about my reading habits. I bought an iPhone on Friday, and so far, I am using it a lot and getting a lot out of it. (Went to New York City this weekend — not sure how I’d get around as easily if I hadn’t brought an iPhone with me, esp. in New Jersey, where I parked my car but had trouble finding the parking lot because New Jersey’s road signs are so awful.) Last week my students read Sloane’s “The Haunting of Story J” from Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies. Sloane argues that new literacy technologies are not completely and radically new, but that instead we bring prior habits and expectations from previous literacy technologies, as well as our own personal history and cultural assumptions, even if they are “wrong” or not useful. My students on Friday started discussing some of the prior activities that “haunt” our use of the Reader (including, interestingly, the Nintendo DS and the iPod). This view, a genealogical one, allows us to understand that there isn’t a linear transformation of literacy technologies, from the scroll to the hand-written codex, to the printed book, to the eReader.

How is my use of the eReader “haunted” by my prior and current literacy activities, as well as my own assumptions and personal beliefs and experiences with literacy technologies? I keep comparing the Reader to my print reading activities, but I think the biggest frustration comes from how I have more expectations of a screen than the Reader can cope with. I expect to be able to click on a screen and move through ideas. I expect to be able to highlight and annotate in some fashion, even if it’s copy and pasting text. I’m used to being able to listen to music on the same machine that I read, and to be able to quickly and easily flip over to my music to change the song. (On the Reader, songs play in alphabetical order and you have to leave your reading, go back to the main menu, and then go to the music section to change the song you’re listening to.) On my laptop, where I do lots of reading and writing, I don’t even have to go to iTunes to change the song, but can instead use the function keys at the top of my keyboard.

The Reader seems limited in so many ways because it doesn’t attune itself to the reading and writing practices of web2.0 users — it’s not so much that it fails to remediate the book (though it does fail this in some important ways). Imagine if Apple had made this ebook reader. You’d be able to zoom in by using your fingers; you’d be able to select text with your fingers and a keyboard would pop up (which is close to what happens on the newer version of the Sony Reader, though you use a stylus); you’d be able to quickly and easily change music you’re listening to; pdfs would be easier to read and not load so slowly. One thing that is nice about the Reader is its eInk that doesn’t burn out my eyes as I read, but this doesn’t seem very important because of how impatient I am with the Reader. I’d rather read on my iPhone, which has a much smaller screen but that might actually burn out my eyes more quickly.

XKCD: I’m Not an Idiot

Langdon Winner’s blog

essays on the philosophy of technology

1. What does Winner mean by “technological somnambulism” (10)?

2. Why is Winner’s book still so relevant? Why haven’t we moved beyond some of the basic questions he’s asked?

3. His question, not as rhetorical as he’d hoped: Do artifacts have politics?

Winner defines politics as “arrangements of power and authority in human associations as well as the activities that take place within those arrangements” (22). He writes, “to say that some technologies are inherently political is to say that certain widely accepted reasons of practical necessity — especially the need to maintain crucial technological systems as smoothly working entities — have tended to eclipse other sorts of moral and political reasoning” (36).

4. Is there a problem with the word “values”? How about the notion that “humanist intellectuals are often called upon to instruct engineers, planners, and decision makers as to what the ‘good’ values are” (Winner 160)?

5. Winner argues that technology is a “conservative influence” (Winner 139), especially because the primary ethical consideration for adapting technologies is “risk.” Do you agree that the adaptation of technology is often conservative?

“Are there no shared ends that matter to us any longer than the desire to be affluent while avoiding the risk of cancer? It may be that the answer is no. The prevailing consensus seems to be that people love a life of high consumption, tremble at the thought that it might end, and are displeased about having to clean up the messes that modern technologies sometimes bring. To argue a moral position convincingly these days requires that one speak to (and not depart from) people’s love of material well-being, their fascination with efficiency, or their fear of death” (Winner 51-52).

6. Does “mythinformation” still prevail? How are Selfe and Faigley responding to mythinformation?

7. The book title question: Revolution, Democracy, and Literacy: Or, What Do We Value (With [dis]Respect to Winner)?

Relevant passages:

“[T]hese technologies may be the most profound when they disappear, but — it is exactly when this happens that they also develop the most potential for being dangerous” (Selfe 435, emphasis in original).

“[C]ontinuing to argue for a vision of literacy for participation in democratic community life, civic engagement, and social justice feels like swimming against the current” (Faigley 34).

“Calling such changes ‘revolutionary,’ we tacitly acknowledge that these are matters that require reflection, possibly even strong public action to ensure that the outcomes are desirable. But the occasions for reflection, debate, and public choice are extremely rare indeed” (Winner 117).

Faigley, Lester. “Literacy After the Revolution.” CCC 48.1 (Feb. 1997): 30-43.

Selfe, Cynthia L. “Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention.” CCC 50.3 (Feb. 1999): 411-436.
Winner, Langdon. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.

Are there no shared ends that matter to us any longer than the desire to be affluent while avoiding the risk of cancer? It may be that the answer is no. The prevailing consensus seems to be that people love a life of high consumption, tremble at the thought that it might end, and are displeased about having to clean up the messes that modern technologies sometimes bring. To argue a moral position convincingly these days requires that one speak to (and not depart from) people’s love of material well-being, their fascination with efficiency, or their fear of death. (51-52)

Winner, Langdon. The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.

It’s been an exciting two days so far. We haven’t started with the Sony Readers yet, because the students are getting the books next week, but we’re starting the term off with a critical analysis unit on the non-neutrality of technology and design. We discussed Jennie Winhall’s “Is Design Political?” today in class, which was fruitful. Students are most excited (I think) that they don’t have to buy textbooks this term (and I don’t blame them — in fact, that was part of the reason I was excited). My students so far have been talkative and great and offered some interesting ideas and perspectives.

The thing that I’m most frustrated with at this point is the course blog. The teacher of the other section engaged in this project and I decided that rather than traditional journals or posts on ANGEL (which I loathe almost as much as Blackboard) that we would have class blogs. I set up a Movable Type blog on my PSU webspace (figuring that it would be best to keep things on PSU server space) and started immediately running into problems. I can’t invite students to the blog until they’ve taken an online questionnaire showing they “understand” copyright laws and PSU policy for their webspace. We did this in class today, but there is a 1-3 business day turnaround for their registration to go through, so I’ll have to wait to invite them to the blog. And I’m not used to MT (I’m a WordPress blogger, for certain), so it was a bit of self-teaching and information seeking in order to set comment moderation the way I wanted, to incorporate links in the sidebar, etc.

I’m not sure how much privileges I’ll be able to give students on the blog. I want them to have quite a bit of control to play with the blog, including adding links to the sidebar, should they feel so inclined, but I’m not sure what MT will allow for users who don’t “own” the blog. Guess we’ll find out.

What’s most exciting about this experiment is that it’s obviously an experiment. I view all my teaching as an experiment (like a pragmatist), exploring what works and what doesn’t, and what works in what situations. But this term, I’m doing so much that’s just new to me and to students. It’s probably going to take up a lot more of my time than teaching did last term, but that’s okay.

Additionally, we’re using the Sony Reader in one of my graduate courses, which is exciting, so the eleven of us will also be exploring the tool as we discuss literacies and technologies.

¹ The course catalog and ANGEL (our Blackboard-esque software) call it Honors Freshman Composition — a term I am not too fond of because of the gendered “freshman” and the lack of “rhetoric” in the title. Our non-honors sections are titled Rhetoric and Composition.

I found the parts of the essay on authenticating most interesting, as this seems to be one of the biggest anxieties around the Internet currently: what is true? what is safe? what is legitimate? what is a “real” human being online? Baron notes that as students research online, that “verifying the reliability and authenticity of that information becomes increasingly important” (31). (Anne-Marie has a great blog post on these issues.)

Last term I read David Gunkel and Debra Hawhee’s “Virtual Alterity and the Reformatting of Ethics,” which takes up issues of “real,” “truth,” and “authenticity” in the virtual world, arguing that virtual systems call into question traditional notions of ethics because on the Internet, you can’t tell what is true or even what is human. I don’t want to go re-read the article at the moment, but Baron’s assertions that authenticity has always been an issue with new technologies seems to question Gunkel and Hawhee’s claims that the Internet is somehow that much different than other technologies. I do think it is different, but perhaps it is a different in kind(?) and that authenticity and truth has always been a concern when it comes to new technologies.

One other interesting moment in this book chapter that I want to address. Baron mentions the Unabomber’s attacks on computer scientists, but his relative ease toward humanists. Baron “[feels] left out” and asks “if humanists aren’t harmful, then what’s the point of being one?” (17). He discusses humanists’ relationships to technologies for a bit, but this strain isn’t picked up again. I didn’t get the sense from his essay that humanists are “harmful” (at least when it comes to technologies)… Just something I’m thinking about…

Baron, Dennis. “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies.” Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies. Ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 1999. 15-33.

Gunkel, David, and Debra Hahwee. “Virtual Alterity and the Reformatting of Ethics.” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 18.3-4 (2003): 173-93.