’Technology’… It is important to be humble.
The problem with being in the mindset of thinking “I already know everything” is that you will stop growing. Are we better educated and technology- ‘smarter’ nowadays compared to twenty, thirty, forty, or a hundred years ago? Yes and no. The flashback into the history and background of the written word and the historical and etymological essence of the words ‘technology’ and ‘text’ through the readings evoked the thoughts about the predictions made long time ago about the present situation in educational world in terms of reestablishing the control over the language by the printed word, ‘text’, and ‘technology’.
The Cambridge Forum audio broadcast was interesting in terms of arousing the existing and developing issues in quality control of the using technology in high education as well as trying to ‘balance between things what you knew and things you knew how to know’ meaning that the written world throughout the history has given us the power to outsource our knowledge.
The key idea expressed by James O’Donnell that there no complete gain or loss in this evolution is really relevant to what I think about this subject. What is necessary to do is to make the best of the benefits of technology and try to minimize the ‘losses’.
Even if we look at ‘evolution’ of a cell phone, for example, it can give an idea about ‘gains’ and ‘losses’. There are still the ‘imperfections’ in the latest versions of the newest and the most modern cell phones. There is no doubt that phone companies are making us to buy the newest versions promising better options of usage in return and they are making a bargain by doing this. As civilized humans, we make a free choice using the technology willingly and ‘smarter’ compared to decades before choosing the ‘smartest’ version of the cell phone as compared to writing letter to communicate.
There is no denying the fact that ’We are living in a wider world of discourse today’ and printing word increased the power of technology.
New forms of information technology bring the unpredictable changes in humans’ roles and geography as well as roles of power in the society.
At the same time ‘cyber space’ creates a closer community, so it has both gains and losses. Just to consider the situation of communication to one person; you might talk, send them a letter, or on the contrary, send a text message to as many recipients as you want using technology, sending a text or email. Face to face encounter is supplemented by online component quite commonly nowadays.
James Engell states that there have been a lot of transformations in the field of high education. Even not being accepted by everyone, he thinks there is a necessity in these changes and transformations. Some years ago, the predictions about those transformations seemed unreal. The major challenge is to integrate ‘older’ technologies into a new world in his opinion.
Information management, for example, might present financial, planning, and integration problems for an educational institution. Storage system is not obsolete as if it changes, it might demand lots of financial investments. Is it a gain or loss? What are the ways of retrieving information? So, thus it might lead to different sets of problems.
James O’Donnell thinks that the technology changes the nature of the ‘scholarly’ resources in terms of validity of the information on the one hand, but agrees that the expectations of relevancy and responsibility for the information on the website or a book should be the same on the other hand.
In conclusion, ’We need to understand the changes we are going through well enough in order to understand the technology, understand our world, and make rational choices and rational applications of technology through our problems without either being hypnotized by the technology or being hypnotized by threats or promises that the technology seems to offer.’ (Engell J. & O’Donnell J. (1999). From Papyrus to Cyberspace. [Audio File].)
References:
Bolter, J. D. (2000). Avatars of the word: From papyrus to cyberspace. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. doi:10.1353/ajp.2000.0016
Engell J. & O’Donnell J. (1999). From Papyrus to Cyberspace. [Audio File]. Cambridge Forums. Retrieved from https://canvas.ubc.ca/courses/4290/files/609973/preview
george backhouse
June 7, 2018 — 8:50 pm
Hi Natallia,
You raised a very interest point concerning the voyage from the pre-technological age to modern times. In particular, you asked the important question: have things really improved since the transition from oral societies to literate societies? Your argument appears to be twofold. Yes, some things have improved, like the speed at which communication takes place and the convenience that hand-held devices permit. No, because at heart communication and its goals seem to have remained the same. I would like to speak to these in some more detail.
I feel that the transition from purely oral to written reached its peak and is now undergoing another major transition. Writing required careful, considered thought and meticulous construction for it to be effective. I read the texts of ancient scholars and marvel at their wonderful mastery of their language of choice. Every word appears to have been painstakingly selected before pen was put to paper. I would like to think that these individuals were hypersensitive to the fact that what they write would be visible for a very long time.
The entire writing culture would suggest this. Every writer of the pen, ink and paper variety spent years cultivating a particular writing style. They experimented to ways of saying and studied older texts in the hope of developing a writing style particular to themselves. Some of them even took tremendous pride in nurturing a unique handwriting. Great texts were illuminated, bound in leather and preserved in libraries.
Furthermore, I would like to believe that the care, diligence and respect of these individuals for their craft comes, at least in part, from an attempt to “capture” and maintain what was once transient: the spoken word. With the passage of time and the advent of more advanced technologies of communication, writing (as a form of art) has slowly become sidelined. In a similar way, the preservation of knowledge in a permanent form has come to be taken for granted.
Modern communication technology has made it too easy to write something down. Think of Twitter and similar social media platforms, where one just has to open a digital application and scroll down in order to find out what anyone (whose thread you follow) is thinking at that very moment. Gone are the days when people sat down and carefully crafted a written response. In fact, the more rapid a response appears on social media, the greater the prestige it is accorded.
Mechanical rituals such as finding the right pen, selecting an appropriate medium upon which to write (such as paper), steadying one’s hand and collecting one’s thoughts, made writing a slow, deliberative and purposeful task. This is no longer the case. The result has been rapid-fire, short messages with witty often biting comments. This is visible especially on social media platforms. There is an art to this form of communication, but that is not what I am discussing here.
The result of this quick response communication method can be disastrous. The mechanical rituals described above serve to slow the mind down, to train it to focus, to think carefully before formulating a response. How often have we not heard of people retracting their comments on social media? It would seem human cognition has not caught up with the rapid onset of digitalization. Instead it has encouraged knee-jerk responses with disastrous effects.
Ironically, a paper message can easily be burnt or tossed in the recycling bin. The same cannot be said for messages in the digital public domain. Haven’t we all heard the old ‘once it’s out there, you can never take it back?” This could not be more true for anything that finds its way online. It seems to me as though the very process of writing (if in fact it can be called that) is undergoing a change. It needs to be called something else, because by its very nature, communicating in the digital domain is not writing. It may be something that resembles writing, but it is not writing.