Orwell 2.0

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Every time I broke my arm as a kid, I started noticing people in casts everywhere. I’ve been mulling over a paper presentation about consumerism in my field, and I am having a similar experience. Suddenly, everywhere I look there’s an article suggesting something about new communication technologies, good or bad.

Most recently it’s a Slate piece called, “War is Gaga.” It’s written, in typical bourgeois journalistic style, from the point of view of “our troops.” The point, in other words, is that these “ridiculous dance routines on the Internet” (as the subtitle notes) are a way for soldiers to blow off steam. No doubt.

There’s a brief nod to the creepier side of some of these videos (not much on the racism or xenophobia) and an acknowledgment that these videos are a profoundly denatured view of war. It’s imperialism as sketch comedy. The piece also notes that the military, which once resisted web 2.0, has now embraced it.

It’s hard to imagine a better way for the military to naturalize war and to help focus our concerns on “our soldiers” rather than on the policy that put them in danger. It has to be one of the most direct propaganda channels– straight to the hearts and minds– ever created. There’s no putting this genie back, either.

Posted in: Professional, War

Instant Literacy

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I enjoyed this piece on Read Write Web (“Do Kids Read Blogs? New Study Aims to Confuse“) becuase it does a great job of talking about the various ways that a survey can be designed and or manipulated to make the points that you want to make. In this case, it’s BlogHer and iVillage ‘s apparent desire to make blogs seem younger and so, presumably, more marketable, than what was recently reported by Pew Internet. What I find most interesting, though, is the way these debates illustrate the role of consumerism on new communication technologies.

In a general sense, blogs became the “thing” a few years back and as such were used to illustrate that these new technologies were improving rather than retarding literacy. Whether or not that was true, it now seems clear that, for many young people, blogging was a fad that has now faded in favor of Facebook, in the way that email faded in favor of IM’ing or texting. I keep wondering if the important trend isn’t from communication tools that takes a bit of time and commitment, to communication tools rooted in a kind of instant gratification.

Posted in: Language, Online Places, Professional

Concentration, Contemplation

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I’m going to start a conference paper today– really, I will!– that focuses on the need for a stronger critique of consumerism in the study of computers and writing, in part to avoid a potential backlash against new communication technologies, and in part becuase without that sort of criticism our field risks intellectual and social irresponsibility. The backlash, as a recent Washington Post piece illustrates (“More colleges, professors shutting down laptops and other digital distractions”), continues to gain momentum.

In the liberal arts, a certain segment of the academy always believed that these new technologies are alienating, if not anathema to the traditional transformative goals of higher education. In computers and writing, we’ve long argued that this was both wrong and misguided. Wrong because few tools short of the atom bomb are wrong in and of themselves; what matters is what you do with them. Misguided becuase English Studies seems less relevant every year. If we miss the boat on the web, we risk becoming irrelevant.

There’s a certain irony to the complaint that notebooks are a distraction in a large lecture hall. What isn’t a distraction in a large lecture hall? But there’s also a certain amount of common sense, particularly as the third and fourth generation devices make it increasingly possible not just to Tweet, but to catch up on those Project Runway episodes you missed. I have no doubt that many students simply don’t have the self-discipline to focus. Professors can make their lectures more engaging, too, but that’s a very limited solution.

I think that we are going to see a long period of backpedaling on technology in the classroom, at least when it comes to internet access and laptops. The first won’t be difficult to shut down, although it will never be perfect; the second seems nearly impossible. I suppose, though, that schools could begin to insist that students take notes by hand. The question, of course, is whether or not the older technology can successfully counter the twitchy mindset of modern consumerism or the chronic lack of respect, in the U.S., for both education and teachers.

Posted in: Composition, Professional, Writing