The Question Concerning Technology

Despite how difficult it can be to read Heidegger, it’s still one of my favorite essays. Every time I read it, I see something new. How I understand Heidegger’s argument is that there are two perspectives that can influence the question concerning technology. If we ask about the technology, then we are seeing it as a means to an end, as a standing reserve, which is to say that we see something (technological understanding) as “ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so it may be on call for further ordering.” This view represents what he calls an instrumental perspective that presents technology as neutral and the primary goal is efficiency. When I think of this perspective, I think of deforestation or oil drilling. In my hometown state, North Dakota, a large reserve of oil was discovered in the top, western portion of the state. This has lead to significant wealth on the one hand, but also, for example, housing (not enough or makeshift) and personal safety issues (to just name a couple). There are also environmental issues such as tearing up the landscape and using natural resources. From this instrumental perspective, the oil reserves are seen only as being there for us to make use of, to order, and to find an efficient method for getting the oil out of the ground.

But Heidegger says that if we ask about the “essence of technology,” then we are viewing technology from an anthropological perspective, which sees technology as a human activity. But this too can conceal a means-to-an-end approach to understanding technology. Whereas the instrumental perspective chains us to technology and makes us believe that we can master technology, the anthropological perspective creates a technological understanding of being that is seeing people as resources. For example, companies that decide to layoff large numbers of people in order increase stakeholder profits, see people as just numbers on a budget line. The same can be said for companies that use algorithms to determine productivity without talking to any human beings (in this case, they are viewing people as resources).

What Heidegger is asking us to do is question these “enframings” first by seeing the frame (a “clearing”) and then by revealing (articulating) it. What I think of here is the effort to define global warming as a very real phenomenon and not just a theory (e.g., Al Gore’s documentary about global warming). For Heidegger, one way to create a revealing is through techne (art), which can lead to a free relationship to technology. Techne is productive knowledge that is concerned with making. It refers not to the end product, but to the making that leads to the end product. Aristotle defined techne as the “reasoned state of capacity to make” by which he meant that the maker can not only do, but also knows the how and the why of the making. Most people in my field associate techne with what would be considered expert or professional knowledge. It moves beyond simply knowing how to practice; the maker is able to state reasons why. Heidegger believes that techne, then, is one way to create a clearing.

Online Language

I love the topic of this week's chapter--online language! As someone who studies language, I wonder about the impressions other people have. For example, a colleague of mine recently posted to Facebook that after posting his syllabus, he discovered a usage mistake--using the wrong verb tense. I responded with the question, What is it about our profession that we feel we can't make mistakes? Everyone makes mistakes in his/her language use. It's human nature. I added in my response that surely students would understand if there was one mistake. But do they? Do students think less of a professor if there is a mistake in any of the instructor's written materials? I believe that people make mistakes not because they are stupid or uninformed, but because they are tired of their own writing. This is why we have editors. It is very difficult to proof your own work because you are too used to the text you're writing that when you read it, you see it as you meant for it to be written (although there are different tricks I've learned to help the proofing process). Something like syllabus materials, assignments, and any ancillary instructional documents always involve multiple drafts and readings. Mistakes can happen. I am an editor and I can tell you that whether one is a long-time scholar or a newbie, everyone makes mistakes.

I'm also curious about other forms of online communication and mistakes. I text a lot with friends and family. Recently, a friend said that she reads her texts over before sending them because I am an English teacher. I've told her that I don't pay attention to mistakes especially in texting and that I've made plenty of my own. Using the contextual cues perspective that Jones and Hafner discuss in this week's chapter, I'm curious as to why an informal medium like texting would encourage a response that is more formal. It is just texting. Who cares if there is a mistake? I text with people who use shorthand language ("u" for you, for example), people who write out every part of a sentence including using correct punctuation, and people who use a mixture. Mistakes in texting are really innocuous yet some people will send a second text correcting their mistakes. In fact, I find myself doing it even though I know the other person knows what I meant. Is there a transaction cost even in texting?

What about our blogs? When I see mistakes in our blog postings for this class, I feel compelled to say something because I am the teacher, but on the other hand, I want the blog posts to resemble verbal discussion as much as possible. If we were talking face-to-face, I probably wouldn't correct someone. For one thing, to correct someone disrupts the flow of conversation especially in the classroom. But it does depend on the context. But these blogs are also a little more formal than if you just kept a blog for your personal use because they are connected to your performance in this class. How do I judge that? The transaction costs would be high in that case. How about in a formal paper for class? Of course, it is nice to see a well-written, well-edited paper, but how important is it if there is 1 or 2 mistakes? I had a professor in graduate school who counted off points on a paper if there were 2 or more mistakes per page. Granted if someone is making 2-3 mistakes per page, then he/she is not spending much time proofreading. I think that 2-3 mistakes per page is too much and would likely count down as well because submitting a paper for a grade involves more than writing; it also involves good, clear writing.

In my profession, accuracy is a strong component of technical communication. Mistakes are costly and could get someone killed. Imagine someone trying to dismantle a bomb. Would we really want that person faced with mistakes? In terms of costly, I once worked for a technical college as a public relations specialist. I create a viewbook (what now would be a website) about the college and discovered that on one of the pages, the toll free number was incorrect. We had printed 40,000 of those books and had to have them reprinted. Mistakes like that could get one fired especially if there's a costly mistake in everything you write. Where (or should we) draw a line with mistakes? (I read over my post and found at least 5 mistakes. I corrected them of course, but what would you all have thought if I hadn't?)

Reading Images

Kress & van Luhen’s discussion of the valuation of the printed word (verbal) reminded me of Samuel Johnson. When Samuel Johnson set out to write the first English language dictionary, he wrote a proposal to ask for funding. In his proposal he said that his purpose was to “put down once and for all” the English language so that it can never be changed. Seven years later in the preface to the first English language dictionary, he stated that because language was always changing, it was impossible to set it once and for all. New words and new meanings are added to the dictionary every day, especially words that reflect cultural phenomenon like how we now “google” information.

At the time of their writing, Kress & van Luhen noted that there was “opposition to the visual”…that is based on an opposition to the situation. For example, in Composition classes, the written word is highly valued, so much so that they are required, general education classes. This value comes from the need for literate students who will enter the workforce. Employers constantly say (no matter the major) that they want to hire someone who communicates well. And the higher one goes in the organization, the more writing they will be required to submit. But one movement in Composition is the interest in assigning multimodal composition (combination of text, images, and audio). Most programs today are embracing this notion, but the written word still seems to be privileged. Once I was invited to talk to teaching assistants about technology and composition. I showed them a visual composition that focused on a female boxer with a voice over narration that was poignant. I tried to find it again but couldn’t, but I remember one line: “How do you know she is committed. Just look at the muscles in her neck.”  There was in fact very little narration. Most of it was a movie of this woman boxer. I thought it was striking, but all the teaching assistants could focus on was fear because they didn’t know how to teach it, how to interpret it themselves, or how to make it. New teaching assistants are always nervous in the beginning anyway, but faced with something they didn’t even know how to create was really scary to them. They worried about being able to work the technology in the classroom and if they’d be able to handle it. They said, What if I don’t know how to do something. I said to ask a student. Chances are someone will know. I understand that fear, though, because I was once a first-time TA. It was just so different/new that they couldn't imagine how to go about it.

Multimodality

Jones and Hafner’ description of video logs made me wonder if we should have tried that in this class. If you’re like me, you probably would have written yourself a script and then read it to the video camera. And I can’t really think of a good reason to include it in class except that it would be fun to experiment. One of the objectives of the class is to learn unfamiliar technology, but we are already learning so much software, I wasn’t sure we could handle any more in a 16 week semester. What do you think? Would it have been fun to try?

I also thought of the journal I edit (Programmatic Perspectives, cptsc.org/pp/). In the beginning, we had wanted it to be interactive. I imagined that next to the PDF link to an article there would be a link to a blog in which people could comment on the content of the article. This would be equivalent to Commentary sections in printed journals. We did this for the first two issues, but no one commented. The world of academia moves slowly. I also envisioned a more multimodal publication system such as video clips in which the author is commenting on an aspect of the article. Or audio clips of the author reading or comment on something in the article. This would be especially striking with editorials, which are all opinion with some citations. I had also hoped to add a section to the journal where we would interview prominent people in the field and include their real voice in audio clips or even video clips from the interview. But we ran out of time and have not yet been able to publish the interview. What I was imagining overall was something like downloading a magazine on your iPad: the article would be the same as the print article but would include the video/audio clips as extras.

I’m stepping down as editor after this year, so it will be up to the new editors whether they want to change the existing format or not. Journal should go through transitions like this. New editors should re-envision the journal and its objective. It’s good for it.

Remediation

In Remediation, Bolter and Grusin note that remediation is the “representation of one medium in another.” Of course, everything is a conglomeration of what came before it. Everyone was sure that ebooks would destroy physical books, but book sales are still high if not higher. At one time, writing was regarded as killing orality and therefore thinking. Everything is subsumed by advances in technology, becoming a part of the history of the new form or technique. 

I’m especially interested in Bolter and Grusin’s discussion of transparency. Because I teach document and web design, emphasizing transparency is essential to skill development. I’ve always seen the awareness of transparency to be the difference between a novice and an expert. I’m currently writing about expertise and competency in Technical Communication so, I couldn’t help but connect the two ideas. The key difference between a novice and an expert is, I think, a difference in transparency—it is always difficult to see the transparency in the expert’s making. The novice often shows signs of making with such characteristics as misalignment, lack of white space, inappropriate font choices, and, more often than not, the use of too many effects (e.g., the use of bold, underline, and capital letters to signify a heading). An expert’s work disappears into a finely crafted finished product. Nothing needs adjustment.

When learning web design, for example, the novice is highly sensitive to the procedures because, I believe, it is difficult to learn design at the same time as she is learning the tools until the novice is somewhat familiar with how to use the tool. This is not to say that the novice doesn’t incorporate design principles; it is moreso that the novice just doesn’t know how to control the software enough to realize a certain design. They are too “aware of the process of construction” (p. 38) that their knowledge of the tools becomes transparent. They act without thinking about how to do it. In a way similar to learning a foreign language (i.e., if you can think in the language you got it), when the thinking about the tool dissolves into using the tool, you got it. I think that in the beginning, students are trying to listen to everything all at once (design principles and software instruction) feeling a sense of being overwhelmed or in information overload. In my classes, this perspective is why I teach the tool, unlike a lot of my colleagues, to help novice students feel comfortable enough to hear design instruction. When we get to Dreamweaver later in the semester, you will see that I take students through the construction of a basic framework for a website in order to get them to see the whole picture as opposed to teaching about links, inserting images, text manipulation, and so on. There is a lot of talk in my field about whether to teach the tools in class or have students learn the tools on their own. I prefer to do a mixture by combining tool and design knowledge.

Hypertextual Reading

In Chapter 3, Jones and Hafner note that one advantage to hypertextual reading is that the reader can choose her own path of reading. This idea made me think of The Handmaid’s Tale and the creative choices made by the author, Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid’s Tale is a story about a misogynistic, futuristic society in which women who were capable of giving birth were assigned to households in which the wife is barren in an effort to realize the real place of women—to give birth. The story is set up as a script created by a scholar who found a series of “tapes” recorded by an escaped handmaid and transcribed them. The appendix also provides a script of his presentation at a scholarly audience in which he, as a literature professor, analyzes the content. I always wondered what would happen if each of the sections of the novel (what equates to one tape per section) were actually recorded in audio (as the story suggests) and displayed in a hypertext document in scattered audio pieces. How would our understanding of the novel change or not change, as the case may be? The reader could listen to whichever sections she wanted to in whatever order she wanted to. Same with the appendix. I wonder if we would “understand” the novel in the same way. The sections of the novel were arranged, according to the scholar, “in the order they appeared to go.” What if they were read out of order? What if we read everything out of order? What kind of agents would we be? What would the novel mean then? I remembering seeing the movie, which was a poor representation, and thinking that the “voice” of the main actress was not the voice as I “heard” when I was reading the novel. In fact, I thought the movie voice was childish. I also listened to a dramatic reading of the novel, which instead of changing the voice I heard in my head, strengthened the agency of it. Which media did I play a more active role in as a reader? What about these different versions did I take advantage of or feel constrained by?

The case study about blogs made me think about why I assigned blogs in this class. I wanted more than the discussion forums in Blackboard. I had used the discussion forums for a previous totally online class and they were not as successful as I had hoped. I thought the students contributed well, but I read the students post in the gradebook area of Blackboard, which made grading much easier, but did not go back and post in the discussion forum. Because of this, I think I seemed absent from the class discussions. I didn’t have time to respond in the gradebook and then go back and respond in the discussion forum, so I chose grading. This semester, I decided to use blogs because I thought they would feel more like a conversation and because students would control their own blogs, which gave them agency. Jones and Hafner talk about how blogs allowed readers/writers to “talk back” to the author. But so did the Blackboard discussion forums, yet, I am enjoying the blog discussions more. They seem more active, more engaged, and more attentive. I feel more like I’m having a conversation with students rather than talking at them through grading.

I do like the idea of a “blog” community, as Jones and Hafner discuss, which I don’t think Blackboard offered in the same way. I feel the same sense of community with Facebook. I’ve only been an avid user of Facebook for about a year or two. I know it’s getting to be old now, but I find that I really feel a sense of a community and that I am talking to people I know and care about (maybe a few that I don’t). Jones & Hafner note that “online contexts lend themselves to the development of communities of readers.” I think I am definitely doing that and I hope students are engaged in the same way.