Writing Space – Response
While I was reading the first couple chapters of Bolter’s book Writing Space, a couple of main ideas took over my thoughts. Before I get into that I want to mention that I liked this technology of social book that we are using. I enjoy reading other people’s comments on specific sentences which allows me to see other points of view instantly rather than finishing the reading followed by checking our blog or website for other comments. I’m trying to determine how I might be able to incorporate that into my own classroom? Saying that, I now understand what Bolter means when he mentioned that reading print is a linear experience. With new forms of technology such as SocialBook or others he categorizes as hypertext, he explains how these technologies can be multi layered and not just linear.
Other MET classes I’ve taken look at how our brains function and really try and come up with the best way we learn. Bolter talks about how these new technologies allow us to pick the paths that we want to learn (multi-layers) and follow them. The SocialBook is a prime example because you read a sentence and your brain starts thinking one way but on the right part of the page you see other people’s comments about the same line of text, allowing your brain to take in multiple layers of understanding, no longer a linear form. My son (12) has had a couple of concussions and he’s currently in vision therapy trying to retrain his brain (eyes) to be able to follow text in a linear format rather than jumping all over the page (idea to idea, content to content) which is what Bolter talks about, but I guess you need to consciously do that rather than unconsciously.
With my passion of business I read this constantly thinking about what the next 100 years might be like in terms of technology. Thinking back to the last reading (Orality to literacy) and how cultures changed with the use of text, I think with the speed of technology we could see a 180 degree turn and go back to an all oral culture. Bolter mentions that we might call each such shift a “remediation,” in the sense that a newer medium takes the place of an older one, borrowing and reorganizing the characteristics of writing in the older medium and reforming its cultural space. Think about what Apple is trying to do with Siri? Speech to text writing as well as text to speech listening. Nobody will need to write or read any texts or emails in the future. The use of audio books is on the rise and if Bluetooth or another technology can make that experience better we might not have any use of reading text. Street signs might be obsolete if we have cars that drive themselves etc. Bolter mentions that it’s not just the hard technology but the sum of the technical and social interactions that constitute a writing system. Possibilities are endless and where the last couple major shifts over time took a couple thousand years, we might see another one in our lifetime
Mike W.
Hi Mike!
I love reading about the possibilities and affordances of new technology as well… Have you heard about project Soli?
But, does that mean that other technologies have to perish? I mean historically, we have killed the book several times before.
What do you think?
Look Ma No hands! How neat is that! though I can see those of us who like to ‘talk with our hands’ having a control problem. I would be sending Siri 2 (next generation) into a frenzy much like the GPS that announces ‘Does not compute’ or ‘Recalculating’.
“… with the speed of technology we could see a 180 degree turn and go back to an all oral culture.” We just might be doing just that. It seems that to move forward thinkers/ inventors are reviewing various aspects of current mechanisms and exploring what they can change as in improve upon and what can be left in the past. On page 23, Bolter descripts Remediation as: “a newer medium takes the place of an older one, borrowing and reorganizing the characteristics of writing in the older medium and reforming its cultural space”. Inventions have to start with something, an idea, a process, or a material; they do not evolve from nothing. There is a meshing, weaving, blending of old with new. I think of it as a remedy for what is perceived as a fault or flaw that could be improved upon. Whether resulting ‘new’ is an improvement can only be resolved with use over time. Remember Margaret Atwood’s LongPen. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/06/topstories3.books
Terry
I think you have raised some very interesting points about hypertext and the different layers of meaning that are embedded into every text. Each of us creates our own meaning with the presented text based on our own experiences and what we happen to be thinking about at the time. As you mentioned, Social Book allows us to incorporate the thoughts of our peers as we read, instead of forming our own conclusions and then finding out the opinions of others. It is very interesting to see the aspects that strike others, as generally print is very individual.
Throughout this course I have also been thinking the nature of reading and print based text. I have found the progression of from orality to modern literacy very interesting. One of the readings mention the development of more rounded characters in modern text as opposed to an archetype, which is something I think is easily observable when reading older novels but something to which I had never given much attention. I think this also speaks to the movement towards multi-layered text, perhaps not as it is meant in terms of the collaboration of meaning, but towards content that can be interpreted differently.
I also think that it is interesting that we have to teach our brains to think linearly. I remember a teacher of mine saying that when reading a computer screen our eyes jump all over the page, whereas when reading a book they follow along. It was said it a way that implied that non-linear reading was substandard, but now I wonder if we are changing our literacy to be less linear. We frequently use images to communicate when using technology it will be interesting to see how things change, and which items are continued. I liked Boulder’s term “remediation” because it takes into account the slow evolution where there isn’t immediate replacement but a way that incorporates old and new.
Catherine
You made an interesting point in saying, “Thinking back to the last reading (Orality to literacy) and how cultures changed with the use of text, I think with the speed of technology we could see a 180 degree turn and go back to an all oral culture.”
I noted your reference to text-to-speech technology as an example of a small shift in this direction.
I am wondering if society will evolve to an “all oral culture” or if conversely, it will evolve to a “silent culture”?
I think about the way our hands are using the affordances of digital technology and how technology is so UX focused that a mere finger press to a screen or keyboard completes the desired action / communication. I’ll expand on this. Recently, I visited a MacDonalds and upon entering the store, was greeted with three large, upstanding screens inviting me to “CYT”(choose your taste”). The system allowed me to place and pay for an order without any human contact, therefore without speech. Collecting the finished meal simply involved handing over a ticket dispensed by the screen to a customer service person at another point in the store. Speech was not required (although nice) there.
I report this as one example of how our culture is replacing speech with silence. There must be other examples because I know of parents who are deeply concerned that their children, particularly teenagers, don’t talk. They interact with screens.
If a’silent culture’ is where we’re heading, then it would mean a serious loss of literacy. Well, literacy as we know it. Thus far, becoming literate has meant learning the alphabet through using hands to manipulate pen on paper, or some instrument on a flat surface. There has been a need for the hand and eye coordination, and a very subtle relationship between the hand and parts of the brain (Mangen & Velay, 2010). The research into haptics is very interesting.
Without the haptic skill of manipulating a pen or pencil, how will children learn to recognise letters? Mangen & Velay (2010) say, “With new technologies, we are changing the role of the hands, as the haptic affordances of digital technologies are distinctly different than earlier technologies such as pen and paper, the print book, and even the typewriter.”
Rash’s views are incredibly optimistic in saying “we can create new symbols as needed; we can combine symbols into words, words into thoughts and with those thoughts, we can change minds” (2014).
Mangen & Velay (2010).
Rash, W. (2014). Internet’s Roots Stretch Nearly 600 Years to Gutenberg Printing Press. eWeek.
15306283, 2/3/2014
The complete citation is:
Mangen, A., & Velay, J-L. (2010). ‘Chapter 20 Digitizing literacy: reflections on the haptics of writing’. In Advances in Haptics, Ed. M.H. Zadeh, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license (open access).
Accessed 26 May 2015 at
http://www.intechopen.com/books/advances-in-haptics/digitizing-literacy-reflections-on-the-haptics-of-writing
Since writing can be considered as technology and as Engell has described IT as an additional layer to our intellectual ability (on Cambridge Forum) but the soul of writing lies in written “words”. Technology is merely a mean to communicate, preserve and show our thoughts as David Bolter’s book can be read and available as hardcopy, ebook or as social book Indeed, every time we read “words” , they give us new perception to see thing from different angles. It is the magic of written “Word” that provokes our thoughts and enable us to see multidimensions of a single object.
Bolter , J. D. (2001). Writing Space: Computer, Hypertext and Remediation of the Print. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Chandler, D. (2014, March).Technology as Neutral or Non-neutral. Retrieved from visual-memory.co.uk: http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/tecdet/tdet08.html
Rakhshanda
Mike, I have to admit that I first purchased a copy of Writing Space from Social Book, then I obtained a used copy of the book from Amazon. I think Social Book is a great idea and its hard to believe that in this age where every web startup and even video game has a social component that someone else didn’t think of Social Book before. I really think Social Book is at a crossroads. From here, it has a definate chance of becoming wildly successful. The biggest variable is the uptake of the eBook. From my armchair point of view, I just do not think that the eBook has overtaken print literature the way online video overtook the rental market, MP3 overtook the CD market. The printed book has been resilient.
I’m currently chewing my way through the later chapters in Writing Space. Bolter continues by citing how technology is changing the linearity of the printed book. Lets not use the word “ruin” (Walter Ong) when referring to technology’s hypertextual ability to divert the reader’s attention. What is interesting is that Bolter identifies what e called the “antibook” … that is, Derrida’s Glas where each page is divided into columns. One of the columns represents the linear nature of a traditional book, in another column is the comments and annotations arranged in a non-linear fashion. Its similar to those Shakespeare study guides with three columns per page. The center column is the story, the left column are footnotes, and the right column is an explanation of the lines. I think what Bolter is alluding to is that technology simply enables what we were already doing.
Bolter states that print is linear in nature, authoritative in its absolute stance, interpretable without the rhetoric and defence of the author (actually, I think Ong stated this last point). From my own observation of technology, it is driven by human need. In teaching computer programming for the last seven years, I always say that programming is a very human task. Its sole purpose is to assist and complement the human condition. We use computers to do repetitive tasks, to do things that are boring or even dangerous. Bolter’s reference to the antibook is another example of computers further enabling a pre-existing human need. In short, I’m not sure linearity in writing was ever a “natural” condition. I argue that the very nature of our cognition is more like an interlinked web of connections rather than a straight-ahead line of Powerpoint slides.