In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynn Truss writes the following about computer-mediated communication:

What to call the language generated by this new form of communication? Netspeak? Weblish? Whatever you call it, linguists are generally excited by it. Naomi Baron has called Netspeak an “emerging language centaur — part speech, part writing” and David Crystal says computer-mediated language is a genuine “third medium.” But I don’t know. Remember that thing Truman Capote said years ago about Jack Kerouac: “That’s not writing, it’s typing”? I keep thinking that what we do now, with this medium of instant delivery, isn’t writing, and doesn’t even qualify as typing either: it’s just sending. What did you do today? Sent a lot of stuff. (Truss, 2003, pp. 191-192)

Truss’s book is an interesting anomaly: a twenty-first century #1 bestseller on . . . punctuation? Reads the slipcover, “Through sloppy usage and low standards on the Internet, in e-mail, and now ‘txt msgs,’ we have made proper punctuation an endangered species.” The examples in the book, however, suggest that the Internet may have little to do with poor usage proliferating on billboards, shop signs, and the like (although it may have a good deal to do with priming the public for a book on punctuation).

This week’s readings take up the question of how computer-based forms of writing may be modifying language, and whether or not literacy educators need to be concerned.

In the Digital Literacy chapter (Dobson and Willinsky, 2009), we provide a brief history of the introduction of hypermedia and its implications for literacy and learning (the section is subtitled “Hypermedia”). It may be useful to review this short section in addition to taking up the assigned readings for this week because the section raises a number of key issues that have been debated through the past twenty years, such as the following: 1) What are the implications of networked multimedia environments for learning? 2) How do readers, or “users,” experience such spaces? 3) How might different text structures modify reader experience (cf Bernstein, 1998)? 4) What are the merits or demerits of the “associationist” argument? The assigned readings offer perspectives on these issues and others. “As We May Think” is an historical article that is often cited as the first articulation of the hypertext concept; Gerjets & Kirschner (2009) and Salmerón et al (2005) take up the complex question of how reading processes are modified in hypermedia environments.

In discussions of the shift from pre-digital to digital modes of writing, it is not uncommon to hear academics, educators, and writers speak of a move from fixity to fluidity. Heim’s early comments on the technology are still relevant:

“The text processor is transforming the way philosophy, poetry, literature, social science, history, and the classics are done as much as computerized calculation has transformed the physical sciences based on mathematics. The word processor is the calculator of the humanist . . . . It would seem that not only the speed of intellectual work is being affected, but the quality of the work itself . . . Language can be edited, stored, manipulated, and rearranged in ways that make typewriters obsolete. Extensive sources of knowledge can be accessed electronically and incorporated into the planning and drafting of ideas. This new text management system amplifies the craft of writing in novel ways.” (Heim, 1987, pp. 1-2)

Bolter also refers to the fluidity of electronic text, noting that writing on computer encourages authors to think in terms of “verbal units or topics” (2001, p. 29). Ultimately, Heim (1987) inquires, “Does the conversion of twentieth-century culture to a new writing technology portend anything like the revolutionary changes brought about by the invention of the printing press and the widespread development of literacy” (p. 2)? Critical opinion on this issue at the time was, and in certain respects has remained, divided. Some feel the word, or idea, processor augments human thought processes by easing manipulation of language; others conjecture that it represents a threat to literacy and to the mastery of the “predigital word.” In this last regard, asks Heim, might the advent of digital writing erode literature and “the culture based on respectful care for the word” (p. 3)? There has been extensive debate on such issues through the last twenty years, including discussions among instructors of writing respecting whether graphical interfaces might distract student writers through an over-emphasis on the iconic (e.g., Halio, 1990; Slatin, 1990; Youra, 1990; Kaplan & Moulthrop, 1990).

This week we’ll take up the question of how digital technologies for writing might extend and modify our experiences and understandings of writing and textuality.

At the outset of the “Digital Literacy” chapter, we note that some theorists, such as Donald Leu, favour “great transformation” theories, holding that digital technologies “rapidly and continuously redefine the nature of literacy.” An alternate perspective is to view digital technologies as extending the affordances of earlier technologies for writing. The readings for this week invite you to consider this second perspective. The chapter by Jay David Bolter, for example, positions the computer in a long line of technologies for writing from antiquity to the present. Bolter refers to the writings of Ong, as well as to Plato’s Phaedrus, the latter of which is linked from the course website. Bolter also mentions the problem with “technological determinism.” You’ll find a link to Daniel Chandler on that topic. Finally, the Pope and Golub (2000) article is offered merely as a representation of the kind of rhetoric around digital technologies that is popular in education. I invite you to critique these articles, pursue ideas, refer to related resources, and to offer anecdotes supporting or contesting various arguments, etc, in the comment thread of this post–or to make your own posting on a topic of your choice related to the readings.