Response to Nya (couldn't post a comment)

The idea that the scholarly "competency requirements" you mention "fail to situate technology in social, political, and economic contexts," has bothered me for a long time. I've watched "collaboration and consensual decision-making" get sucked into the vortex of corporate America, and now I too am concerned about the future of technological advancements. However, I'm feeling a bit of relief because at least we are recognizing the need to consider "the implications technology has on social and political environments." If Selber is saying what I think he is, it's a sign that we are beginning to wake up.

Different genres and technology

I’m starting to see a link between the idea of teaching students the importance of considering the use of elements from different genres in freshman composition classes and the use of technological communication in the future. I'm also starting to think that someday composition will be done only on computers, using imagery along with words, much the same as we are doing now in our “visual essays.” I even think it’s possible that eventually we will be producing academic “essays” that have no resemblance at all to the type produced today in that they will count on imagery as foundational and words for embellishment. This I think is a good thing, because it has the potential to free us up from the confines of the written page and allow for more creative self–expression.

A second thought

A lot has changed since Cynthia Selfe wrote this book. It hardly needs to be mentioned that the world we live in is storming all around us. But eleven years ago, things looked rosy –– especially for technology. The dot com. bubble was growing fast in 1999, and that’s something I just plain forgot about in my earlier assessment of Selfe’s call to “acknowledge the economic and political goals that policymakers have identified as the end product of technology expansion: the effort to maintain and extend American privilege, influence, and power…” (161). I was blinded by my anger over recent developments in America, but now I suppose Selfe had a right to feel that she and America were riding high on a prosperous tide pulled along by technology. However, even though this is not the same America, or world, that Selfe was immersed in back when she wrote this book, I still think her advice is sound. Understanding that our environment acts on us in consequence to the way we act on it, and that the whole thing is reciprocal, still calls for paying attention. Now more than ever.

Democracy?

I guess what bothered me most about "Technology and Literacy in the Twenty–First Century" is the equation I kept seeing between democracy and corporate capitalism. Just recently, the last nail in the coffin of democracy in the United States was driven home when corporations were given the same rights as individuals –– the right to “freedom of speech.” Anyone who’s been “paying attention” knows that this means unbridled ownership of the airwaves, and that now, corporations will be able to pump as much money as they please from their “war chests” into advertisements to see that their candidates are elected. Do we really want to extend this type of “privilege, influence, and power” into cyberspace? I question who owns the internet now. Everywhere I go, no matter how little I surf, I run into someone trying to sell me something. The corporate world is entrenched in cyberspace, and it appears, if I can trust their track–record, they will be clamping down on it with an iron fist in the future. After all, now that they’ve got the networks of the American empire completely in their pockets, what’s left?

Just Wondering

The intro to “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” poses a lot of questions. One has to do with “the dilemma of Western Man,” who, having acquired from “the technology of literacy” the “power to act without reacting,” now finds this ability a hindrance in “the electric age.” Noninvolvement just won’t do anymore according to Marshall McLuhan, because “when our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate, in depth, in the consequences of our every action” (20). Is McLuhan suggesting that karmic law didn’t exist prior to the “electric age,” or that as we “implode” into this new universe karmic law will increase “in depth?” And what does that mean? Will it become faster because it follows us along at our own ever-increasing pace?

A bit too cerebral

Considering what it means to be a cyborg can become a bit too cerebral. I know this because spending four or five days immersed in contemplation over writing a cyborg rhetoric bent my brain. It also probably made some of my friends scratch their heads wondering why I had difficulty holding on a simple conversation. Spending the next four days writing a first draft of a cyborg rhetoric broke my brain… but, whenever I break my brain, I seem to have a realization of one kind or another. What I realized this afternoon, after walking away from my computer, was just how good it felt to have a bunch of wood rounds to split. And how much better it felt to actually split them. And while I was splitting wood, I had another realization. If we ever do become “quintessence,” or the pure embodiment of consciousness, there’s a lot of physical activities I’m going to miss way more than splitting wood.

What is cyborg rhetoric?

Cyborg rhetoric, among other things, is a call to action. It is a call to re–invent rhetoric, and change the meaning of our existence. Donna Haraway states, “over the last thirty years, a class war of immense proportions has been waged globally, and it’s been very successful. At the same time, we’ve almost lost the ability to talk in class terms on what used to be called ‘the left.’ That’s a terrible loss on our part” (14, Haraway, interview with Gary A. Olsen, JAC Vol. 16, Vol. 1). To regain our “ability to talk in class terms” we must again begin to actively discuss this nation’s global agenda in “class terms” in the academic setting. Cyborg rhetoric acknowledges the need for resistance to grow on all fronts; therefore, if we are to be true to the dream, activism in academics has to move into the public sphere. It is no longer acceptable to pour our efforts into changing the hierarchal structure in the classroom alone. Our goal must be to struggle against oppressive ideologies across the board, and this means recognizing the ideology of oppression has crossed gender lines, and infiltrated racial and ethnic circles.