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.