Cambridge Forum
From Papyrus to Cyberspace
This was a wonderful forum. I’m not proud to admit that my experience of it was difficult. I found it incredibly hard to concentrate. Managing interruptions is a huge impediment to exploiting the potential of technology. Technology gives, and it takes away… Yet even with my devices turned off, I interrupt myself!
Sitting down to focus on listening to something from start to finish reminds me of when folks sat down to appreciate a full LP record, the quality of sound which no MP3 can match. Sitting still is lost in today’s schedules. The few people I know who have found peace in such an art have been those who for one reason or another have no longer been able to fully participate in day-to-day society. For everyone else, carving such quality time has to be fought for⎯ and then one realizes that unplugging itself has become a skill.
Here are some highlights that stood out to me:
Frontier-ism. It was a valuable reminder that frontier mentality applies to cyberspace as well as historical spaces. “One generation’s frontier becomes the civilization for the next.” This places our own role into context. It’s disheartening to me to think that “democratization always comes with new lines of exclusion,” but at the same time, it is uplifting to remember that the state of frontiers “is not a matter for statesmen only.” This could translate, among other things, into what we now call a “digital divide” of restricted access, yet co-existing in an Internet with wider access than ever before.
Trade-offs. The analogy of risking our safety while driving automobiles for our collective benefit rings true. As with the car, we take a risk when we go online. We accept, often reluctantly, the mixes of loss and gain when we trade off our privacy for the Internet’s benefits. The line we draw, however, seems to keep shifting.
For a great film predicting the state of people’s trade-offs in the digital space, I highly recommend the documentary We Live In Public, a profile of Internet pioneer Josh Harris’s 1999 NYC art project titled “Quiet: We Live in Public” (coincidentally the same year as this forum), winner of the Grand Jury Prize (U.S. Documentary) at Sundance Film Festival in 2009.
Books in Religion. Others have discussed this one in their posts. What struck me was that the notion that one body of principles and creed were not necessary to bind a faith is vastly different from the reverence to another book of faith, the Koran, as practiced today (in addition to series of hadiths – commentaries on the teachings of Islam – that also hold great weight). Koran is sung on the radio here in the Arab world and the call to prayer is a text that is sung; the oral tradition is alive and well. Furthermore, emphasis on other people “of the book” (Jews, Christians) as defined by Islam dictates the allowances of rites of passage such as marriage. It is ironic teaching in (what westerners would call) a non-reading culture in the Arabian Gulf, the most important Book is not lost on anyone here. For many people, the Koran is an event. It is the reading culture.
Emotional Resistance. Or, fear. Are we not now, and have we not always, found ourselves “poised somehow between doom and utopia”? Naysayers of today continue a long tradition, as history illustrates. Isn’t it always the best and the worst of times? One speaker predicted the political effects of the Internet would be enormous. Who could have predicted the role of social media in the Arab Spring?
Today’s fears of waning literary skills seem smaller if we consider that we have always been “social” and that visual and oral communication can finally have their vengeance on “100 years of monologue”. Everything is not, as the speakers say, automatic. Predictions can be wrong. The nature of things seems to be more cyclical than many assume. The antiquated book is a “new” form of art, traditional photography too has become an art; even the pencil is gaining back its respect. Recently, a pencil shop in New York opened up for “texting the old-fashioned way”.
Effect on Production. The forum noted that a premium is placed on shorter words for typing given the tools at hand, something we have all witnessed with short forms, acronyms and perhaps even the invention of the #hashtag. We also mimic previous technologies (such as highlighting a Kindle book), which help books to survive and affect the ways in which books are produced and distributed. The prediction was accurate that we would eventually pronounce whole words ourselves and be able to choose among speaking, writing and seeing for convenience and appropriateness in our communications. Today, we have excellent speech recognition technology to dictate text messages or send voice notes, which is a nice way to come full circle and break out of the limits technology initially placed on our texts.
With that idea, and the thoughtfulness that speaking may once again require, I will end with the quote I loved best, which I believe is apt here: “The most important word processing is what takes place between your ears when you speak.”
Julia
Sources
Engell J. & O’Donnell J. (1999). From Papyrus to Cyberspace. [Audio File]. Cambridge Forums.
Image courtesy of fancy.com; for similar images, search here.
Julia,
I really enjoyed your post and I found myself agreeing with a lot of the information you pointed out. I especially like your picture. I see more and more people trying to “connect” old technology with the new. It’s funny that the more advanced technology becomes, the more people try to fight it (especially with a “type-writer” for an iPad).
Your section on the Effect on Production raised some excellent points. In my post, I mentioned how I was concerned that the short form or acronyms of words would slowly sneak into the classroom. Students may have a difficult time separating Instagram from essay writing. I focused so much on the negative that I didn’t stop to consider some of the positive aspects. As you mentioned, speech recognition technology is a wonderful tool that helps countless individuals. My dad, one year since his first smartphone, using Siri to dictate every single text message he sends out. He finds it much easier to recite his message to her rather than type it out. Siri, however, is not a perfect system and he sometimes struggles when she does not hear him correctly. I can, as an educator, see the implications speech recognition technology has in the classroom. Many of the schools I am in use Dragon Dictation for students who struggle with writing their thoughts down. It gives them an outlet for their ideas and allows the teacher to assess their work. It’s a wonderful piece of technology that serves a educational purpose.
Sean
Hi Julia,
I enjoyed reading your posts and I was enthused by the fact we seemed to have remarked upon many of the same points. I’d like to respond to the points about tradeoffs and time.
I still can’t believe what some people are willing to trade off in terms of sharing the details and movements of their life in the modern world. I still limit my internet presence to a degree that confounds my friends, family and co-workers. I have no Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter, no Strava and I have not updated the software in my GPS cyclocomputer because you can only analyze the data online after sharing it with the company (whose name I will not plug here!). I suppose if/when I want to change jobs I may have to ‘get with the program’ but I really am not comfortable sharing the details of my life with everyone. I do use the most popular search engine which is tracking my internet movements to better market products to me so I suppose I have made the tradeoff. I had to get a youtube channel for my first MET course in January so have also made that tradeoff (but I still hope my students never find it).
I really enjoyed the Cambridge Forum too and I am glad we were assigned it early in the course because as the school year winds down and the MET assignments heat up, finding time for it would have been daunting. I have a nice set of LP records that I haven’t listened to once since I started taking MET courses so I really related to your mention of vinyl. I hope that 1.5-2years from now when I am finished this program I will have time to spin some discs again but I’ll probably be developing new courses or overhauling my old ones so maybe not…
Hi John,
I can relate. I am appalled by the family details my sister will share on Facebook that I wouldn’t dare post. I suppose it’s her choice, and there is only so much I say, but I loathe it. I’ve had to compromise – haven’t we all? – to balance engagement with privacy. For a long time, I had students harassing me about every social media channel. As I work in a place that doesn’t explicitly govern its use, I have chosen to conduct myself as though I were in Canada. I assume that everything is public, keep it G-Rated, and where students are concerned, I add everyone back – but place them on a Blocked list so they can’t view content. I use social media tools for groups and discussion. I no longer use it for anything personal. I have come to a place where I don’t try to resist it, but rather manage it. I wouldn’t do this in Canada, but I would probably have a teacher ID online handle and use that openly.
Good luck! And don’t wait two years… spin some vinyl this weekend.
Julia
Hi Sean,
Thanks for your comment. I can relate to the Instagram/writing issue… not personally! My students hashtag and tell stories on Instagram, and I’m ok with that, but it’s definitely not long-form writing. I really like it, though. I had to engage on it to determine how I would use it (to what extent if at all I would hashtag or supplement with text) and what my purpose would be. As with any tool, it’s a means to an end, so I think that’s the most important message to students.
It’s funny you mention dads here. My dad is using an iPad and little did we know we’d be using it for tools to enhance speech, and not text the other way around. Unfortunately, he is sick and has lost his ability to speak (we FaceTime a lot and I get to do all the talking). He has discovered all kinds of tools on the iPad to communicate with others. He especially likes to make it curse, which I’ll excuse him for! So dictation can work both ways, for so many benefits, and if not in an educational context, then the process itself is always an education.
Cheers,
Julia