question for Dr. Sam: have we been reading (and will we continue to read stuff) in roughly chronological order? 

some of them seem so old, partly because we’ve been talking about all these issues and things for so long now… gender is a thing. and it matters. and it’s political and personal and important. technology is enmeshed in this lots of ways. but so what? and what can we do about it? well, Brady Aschauer goes over what some people have been doing about it. I liked the turn in her historical overview, here where she says, “Dissatisfied with simply noting these patterns, philosophers, historiographers, sociologists of science and technology began to plot the reasons for the patterns along the axes of historical neglect and material misuse. Searching for the hows and whys of gendered work led them to recover and reclaim two distinctly different types of women’s experiences with technology” (9). seems a good beginning. research is always political too, though. and I’m glad she also eventually recognizes and critiques the essentialism in some of the research there.

it’s also cool that she discusses writing as a technology, and rhetoric as a technology. I don’t think we talk about that enough.

—

as a postscript: oh boy would this Chapman fellow be even more worried about our attention spans now, after thirty years of this internet thing. and who knows what he’d say about mobile devices.

I also don’t know if his print/visual divide is valid anymore. tv and newspapers are both old fashioned at this point. 

I’ve only ever done research using a computer – the computer tells me where the books are in the library; the computer tells me where the online articles are; the computer tells me which school has the book(s) I need tomorrow; the computer tells me that Amazon is cheaper than the campus bookstore; and, when the computer fails to tell me anything, the librarian (often a female) tortures the World Wide Web into submission. Once I have the information, the knowledge, regardless of where it was retrieved from, my professors help me piece it together. I do remember, though, using an encyclopedia in primary school, and reading through the dictionary so I could “sound smart” during my second grade class discussions. But that was only because I didn’t have access to a computer until I was in the 8th grade, and then I don’t recall having access to one at home until maybe high school, and I didn’t have my first personal laptop until I was a freshman/sophomore in college (that was 9-10 years ago). There’s something about being able to be comfortable at home with a cup of coffee while you do your research, and I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom – us youngins aren’t losing out because we didn’t have to walk 5 miles in the snow to get an education; perhaps we take it for granted that information is at our finger tips, but hasn’t that been the goal since the creation of mankind? Wasn’t that the plight of Adam and Eve – a hunger for knowledge that surpasses all limitations?

Regardless, I do think it’s pertinent that students are taught how to flesh out this knowledge – we can’t believe everything we see, read, hear, or even feel. I can’t say how many times I’ve called someone an idiot on Facebook because they posted a satirical piece and started a war between fools. Look up your sources people. Perhaps that’s the potential pitfall of the World Wide Web and access to everyone’s thoughts and feelings at all times: no one knows what’s true anymore, no one critically thinks about what they’re reading before they hit the share button, no one considers the counterargument before hitting the paste button. We share knowledge like it’s sloppy seconds, with no will regard for where that knowledge originated, who thought that, who said that, why and how did they come to this conclusion. It’s all just hand-me-downs now.

I usually have a pretty deep appreciation for the perspective of luddites. The Lee Adamas of the world do much to temper the irrational enthusiasm for the new shiny of whatever technology tends to be making waves at the time. As much as I am enamored by technology, I understand that too often we try to throw technology at our problems without thinking about what new issues may arise.

However, I took particular interest in and disagreement with Chapman’s claim that “the nonlinearity of the reading experience, the widely acclaimed hypertext, undermines logical patterns of reading and thinking. The linearity of a written text is not a limitation, it is its glory” (249). Now, again, I’m all for linear texts. I think they absolutely have an important, fixed place in knowledge-making and I would never want to see linear text completely abandoned. On this, Chapman and I agree.

However, Chapman is mistaken that linear methods of thinking, reading, writing should be the privileged method. Nonlinear thinking allows us to find unintuitive connections between concepts or phenomena that purely linear, logical lines of thought would ignore out of convention. Nonlinear reading allows us to resist the designed nature of the linear text and approach it in ways that encourage alternative perspectives on the ideas presented therein. Hypertext allows us to approach text in a way that prioritizes individuals’ personal styles and allows one to think critically about how best to approach the text, since the writer is no longer leading the reader by the nose. Nonlinear writing forces the writer to consider the myriad ways in which their text may be accessed, which should (if the design is good) make the writer more cognizant of how their text is arranged.

So, yeah. Hypertext doesn’t privilege linearity. Big deal. Wanna fight about it?

I’ll admit, when I first read Chapman, every bone in my body screamed to contradict him. So much of what he describes–from the actual meat and potatoes of the article to the purple prose he uses to elevate it to–seems to come from a place of privilege. He describes a library with “sanctified halls” and rows upon rows of books where the value of knowledge can be seen in the “rich bindings and marbled end pages.” I have been in libraries such as these. I’ll admit that, when I had the privilege of walking into the Bodleian library in Oxford, I reveled under the awe-inspiring arches and longed to touch the ancient, protected texts they kept tucked out of the reach of curious visitors. Knowledge should be awe-inspiring and, sometimes, we give it the honor of those kinds of visual cues.

But all of Chapman’s descriptions bucked against the expectations of my most desperate students. He admitted the convenience of being able to create bibliographies in the dorm room or office, but lamented that students weren’t willing to take the time to search through the physical copies in the library, content to be lazy and only go with those papers which had a “full-text” option online. He’s not wrong. I’ve been guilty of this, too. But what about the student with two part-time jobs and a full course load? What about the first-generation college student who isn’t sure where to start when faced with aisles of books bound in generic, canvas covers, but knows how to navigate a search engine better than Chapman admits he does? Wanting ease of access isn’t necessarily lazy, and it’s not like our lazy students would be guaranteed to try harder in a physical location–many of them are likely to grab the first books that seem to match and never go back, regardless of the fit. Lazy will be lazy regardless of the venue.

But even though every example Chapman gave only made me want to argue more, I didn’t like finding myself arguing against libraries. I don’t mean the strange, dream-like versions he seems to be valuing, but the cherished, tired, neighborhood versions I grew up with. The ones that smelled vaguely of dust and stale coffee and maybe a bit of mold. The ones with only a handful of aisles, with books that had been worn down by too many hands, but there were a few comfy chairs set up for anyone able to linger a bit longer. The ones that let me check out 15 books for a two week period and didn’t blink an eye when my mom let me bring them back 3 days short because I’d already sped through my latest collection. I love libraries. I love what they offer to communities. And it’s true that, in print form, students have access to some texts they don’t online…sometimes because they haven’t been translated to digital texts yet, but just as often because their school hasn’t subscribed to get behind that particular paywall. Because, for all that the internet could be an equalizer, it isn’t. Not completely. If knowledge isn’t limited physically, it’s limited financially, parsing out availability to those with wallets large enough to pay for it.

Chapman’s arguments seem weak at best–the protests of someone emotionally lamenting the loss of something that 90% of the world will never experience–and they acted as an interesting introduction to Schauer’s conversation about how women are often rationalized out of tech fields. When the status quo is challenged, its defendants will always come out, tears flowing and arms reaching for the golden days when things were done “properly.” But as digital practices become more common, I don’t want to become complacent in my acceptance…and I don’t want to ignore that some of Chapman’s arguments (however misguided I think they are) still hold weight. Technology is not a panacea. It’s not a replacement. It’s not the herald of a utopia. It’s just a tool, with all the ups and downs and strengths and weaknesses that entails, and it’s Schauer and other men and women like her who are responding (I believe) more effectively. Blind acceptance or irrate denial get us nowhere fast. It’s the rhetorical understanding and the ability to think of the possibilities (expected or not) that will let us get the most out of each step of our technological progress.

In Tinkering with Technological Skill, Ann Brady Aschauer made me wonder more about the “add women and stir” solution (15) to address the (dis)belief that women lack certain technological skill as it presented itself in my ENGL106e class this semester.

My students are unlike any other students I have had. While there are larger systemic problems with the class structure and its partnership with TECH120 (don’t get me started), The treatment of the three young women in my class has increased in the last few weeks. While I am always attentive to the needs of my students, historically (As proven by this article) and currently the marginalization of women in technical fields was something I knew I needed to look out for. The three young women (PSL, POC, and SHY), are, for the most part, ignored by their male peers. POC and PSL have bonded well and use each other as support, but SHY is oftentimes ignored by her male peers and by the two female peers. Despite the fact that SHY is smart and has a larger technological skill than many other first years in the class, she has (so far) been passed up for each tech-based small group class activity.

The gender techno divide is a real one that we can observe in our every day. The micro-community of the classroom versus “the field” of technology are equally important for allowing female students like SHY to be a part of their discipline. The closing comments for Brady Aschauer echo this overlap, “both communities can benefit from an increased understanding of how social expectations and constraints influence the construction of technological skill and use” (21). The way that PSL, POC, and SHY are brought into the community of practice for the College of Technology will be important for determining their future success and development.

Redefining technology, as the article suggests, only matters when industry responds to new definitions. So, sorry, Brady Aschauer, you’re wrong. Idealistic, but wrong.

I find myself getting hung up on Chapman’s closing remarks in “A Luddite in Cyberland, Or How to Avoid Being Snared by the Web”:

One often hears that the potential for the Web is great. And, I would agree. The Web has the potential to sacrifice the quality of sources used by students in research for the ready availability of Web sources. It has the potential to distract students away form the analysis and reflection at the heart of a college education as they focus on the superficial appearance of documents. It has the potential to squander the precious resource of student time by focusing on the mechanics of Web-site production instead of on the act of writing. We may be able to avoid the Siren call of the Web as we avoided the false promises of televised classes in the 1960s and computer tutorials in the 1970s. With a little luck, the Web may never be able to reach its potential. (252)

I have to say that I don’t really know how I feel about all this. On one hand, as someone who often feels like a Luddite herself, I can kind of empathize with the challenge of keeping up with technology and the feeling that “students too often settle for inferior sources” (249). But it seems that more and more “superior” sources are becoming available digitally (at least, since Chapman wrote this article), although perhaps access to and availability of such sources depends on the institution/university through which students/teachers are operating. The hope, though, that “the Web may never be able to reach its potential” seems a bit limited in its posturing as a cautionary, cynical tale—would it maybe be more helpful to critically engage, instead, with solutions for how we might make use of emerging technologies and digital media in a way that could help our students navigate these terrains more effectively?

I wonder if Aschauer’s “Tinkering with Technological Skill: An Examination of the Gendered Uses of Technological Skill: An Examination of the Gendered Uses of Technologies” might allow us to move in that direction, especially if we consider more fully her pointing out that “rather than arguing for an ahistorical, inner essence of womanhood and rejecting technology, we need to remember that femininity, masculinity, and technology are social constructs, all three of which can be resisted and reconstructed” (14). And perhaps her interrogation of femininity, masculinity, and technology as social constructs through the feminist empiricist approach that highlights the value of lived experience might complicate Chapman’s arguments, especially in that Aschauer argues, “To engage in the kind of empirical research I have suggested requires that we exchange conventional definitions of technology as a monolith for a view of it as a site for lived experience” (17). As such, I wonder if, perhaps, by further problematizing the social constructedness of gender, technology, and the intersection of both, we might continue to complicate these “conventional definitions of technology as a monolith” and unpack the manner in which all this impacts our classroom concerns.

My reaction to Chapman here was immediate, and visceral: “oh, bullshit, Chapman; change is not inherently bad!” But I’ve been trying to explore my strong reactions lately (in the hopes that will temper them?), so I re-read the beginning and tried to position myself in his perspective. Because, see, I remember the shift to web-based research. When I was in junior high and high school, I performed traditional library research for most projects. Web sites at the time were far less useful, and it wasn’t until I had LexisNexis access for my college debate team research that I understood the power online databases brought to the table. For someone trying to pull quantity to sift for quality, it was a boon.

But I never had to take a comp class, and by the time I got around to teaching one, this was just the way things were. Print-based library research had become the realm of specialists and scholars. And what Chapman says here, about students defaulting to the easiest sources they could find, whether or not they were better? As true then as now. But is that inherently a problem with the change in research types, or have we not found a way to teach students to manage time? Let me ask it this way: pre-Web and online databases, would a student have waited for a better book through Interlibrary Loan unless they were an advanced scholar? The problem, I feel, has remained the same; only the way Chapman demonizes it is different. His assumption that books and print materials are going to offer the better information speaks to his prejudice in favor of print, and what we gain in access seems, to me, to make up for any loss.

Speaking of how some things don’t change, though, the Aschauer reading just makes me tremendously sad. This was written when I was still a teenager, hinging on research from before then, and so little has changed in many ways. I can’t even make sentences about it yet.

I find the pairing of these articles a bit weird. It’s tempting to say that they are common to each other in that they provide dissenting or alternative viewpoints to the persistent drumbeat of “rah rah technology is cool” articles, but I don’t think that’s quite fair to these two articles individually. Aschauer, particularly, is more redemptive of technology in that she seeks to revise the category by making it more experiential–thinking about technology as something that seamlessly integrates with our experiences in order to revise women’s relationship to it as something they possess mastery of. I’m a fan of this strategy, since it capitalizes on mastery a group already possesses and doesn’t task them with playing “catch up” as the only road to equality (as she says, that viewpoint is inherently deterministic). I like her attempt at reconciliation with Haraway. I, too, hold Haraway’s notion of the cyborg dear to me (although that’s not really what a cyborg would do, I guess), but I agree that it must come from theory and practice of everyday life, and not broad abstractions.

It’s tempting to dismiss Chapman and his admitted Ludditism, but I paused after on line in the last paragraph: “We may be able to avoid the Siren call of the Web as we avoided the false promises of televised classes in the 1960s and computer tutorials in the 1970s” (emphasis added). I know this is thinking way past what Chapman is arguing against in this article, but t made me think of, in the immediate, MOOCs. Education delivered over the TV seems like a monumentally bad idea driven by the same efficiency and monetary concerns as the recent push for widespread MOOCs and general downsizing of educators going on right now. In that context, it’s easier to see how Chapman, who I assume is an older faculty member (probably white, yes?) would see web technology as another mass broadcast system being collectively promoted as the Next Big Thing in education without any firm grasp on why and no clear vision for how. While I don’t think he’s necessarily wrong, what remains more crucially unclear if that’s a bad or good thing, either in 1999, or now.

My time in Second Life on Tuesday was a bit odd. When I created my account, I selected default everything to start, just so I could spend as much time as possible exploring what the program had to offer. I hadn’t played it since it first came out, and I remembered close to nothing about it, other than it was a kind of weird 3D chatroom. A good chunk of my time was spend trying to customize my avatar and trying to make it do something other than stand/run/fly, the commands for which were prominently displayed on the bottom of the screen. Commands for more complicated gestures seemed to be hidden within some sub-menus that took me half the class to find, and even then, when I found them, I didn’t have much drive to do anything but put on a silly outfit and dance like a fool. It was fun, but the distracting kind.

I can see Second Life potentially being helpful in the way that customizing an avatar can tell us a lot about the rhetorical choices one makes in self-representation in online spaces. I would probably opt for a more simplistic system than Second Life, which has a bit of a learning curve when it comes to changing one’s appearance. Even when I finally figured out how to change my clothing, I couldn’t preview the way anything looked without assigning it to my avatar, which overrode the last thing I wore. This made trying to find my preferred appearance a bit cumbersome.

As far as a place to conduct digital classroom discussions… A chatroom would be a lot easier and about as effective. The learning curve is far too high, and (unlike learning HTML), there really isn’t any long-term benefit to learning how to interact with Second Life. There are just better platforms that don’t require quite so much investment to use.

Unfortunately we spent most of class last time trying to find a MOO that was still active that we could actually navigate in and around. We eventually did find one, but by the time we had it half way figured out to the point where we could start doing things with it, class was over. That said, I saw a few interesting pedagogical implications of what we did and how we were doing it.

1. I’m about to start the second unit in my tech writing class which is going to be the technical description. It could be kind of cool to given the students an assignment to provide a technical description of how to actually do something with a MOO. The documentation that Amelia and I were dealing with was helpful, but not super helpful. So that could be an interesting assignment/activity for 421 students.
2. In retrospect, the struggles we went through to figure this thing out are kind of a metaphor for the writing process. (Or learning anything, really.) You struggle, it doesn’t make sense, you think pretty much everyone else is doing it better than you. Then, when you finally think you’ve got it figured out and you’ll be able to start actually doing stuff, time is up and you have to “turn it in.” But the difference was this felt more like a game and less frustrating than the writing process often feels. So why does the writing process feel so much more frustrating? Why can’t we approach it more like a game and have fun with it? Ideas to continue teasing out, I suppose.
3. Honestly, I’m still not sure I totally understand MOOs. I think there is actually a much more direct pedagogical implication into how we use them, and maybe I would have gotten it had we figured things out more quickly and actually gotten into the MOO, but for now I think I’m still on the outside.