The readings from module 4 have made me consider ideas I hadn’t previously encountered, in relation to the changes in reading and writing that occurred with the introduction and increased prevalence of digitization. In this post, I want to briefly explore the importance of the book, the shift from writing to images and the missing pieces in history.
It is no understatement to say that the invention and spread of the book is an important piece of history. David J. Bolter (2001) argues that the proliferation of books brought about significant change. Bolter cites multiple examples of such changes; for example, the increased adoption of silent reading, or how serious writers had the aspirations of adding a volume to the world’s library. We now live in a time when books are still important, but we also live in a time when silent reading often takes the form of scrolling on a phone and almost anyone can write and share what they like. Does a book, therefore, hold as much value as it used to?
Bolter (2001) eloquently describes how the identity of books has changed with the onset of digital writing. The increased proliferation of multimodal media has led to a diminishment in writing in the late print age. However, this is not necessarily a negative: Gunther Kress explains that writing giving way to the image brings about “a variety of responses, mostly negative, ranging from outright despair, anger and nostalgia to some still utopian voices on the other end of the spectrum” (2004, p.5). Kress argues that a “cultural pessimism” is prevalent in the perception of this change in reading and writing (p. 6). Around the school I work in, how many times have I heard, “kids don’t read as much as they used to”? This module made me ask: as the nature of reading is changing, will kids necessarily read as much and in the same format as they used to? And what impact could this have on children’s educational development and needs?
Literacy has evolved with the invention of the hyperlink. When visiting a website, there are now multiple entry points and no order designed by the author, which is in stark contrast to how books used to be designed, building chapter upon chapter. It is clear to me that we are reading differently. We are now required to hone two different types of skills i.e. one skillset which based on the more traditional ordered way of reading, and another skillset where the reader looks at an image and writing on a page, clicking to decide where they want to go next, following their whim rather than an author’s direction. Will we get to a point where the former skillset will no longer be necessary, and will therefore become neglected? It is in this sense that Kress (2004) posits the evolution of the consumer of writing from a reader to a “visitor”. Will we no longer need to be a writer but instead a designer? When looking at an image, it certainly leaves more to interpretation. Thinking about my elementary school students, who is going to teach and encourage them to be critical, observant and reflective? Indeed, these are skills that are necessary when reading, but take on an extra level when looking at webpages. Bolter (2001) explains that the writer used to control the image but now, the image is in control. I wonder, on leaving more to the interpretation of the reader, are images not empowering the reader?
When these shifts happen – for example, scroll to codex, or books to webpages – I am left to wonder, at what cost? As Bolter (2001) notes in his work, these shifts can leave important works of literature in their wake; “each shift in the past has been an occasion for weeding out texts that no longer seemed culturally relevant.” (p. 50) In our current digital age, with emails, text messages, etc. What will get left behind? Who will deem what is important?
Bolter, J.D. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. Routledge.
Kress, G. (2005). Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 22(1), 5-22.
wendyl
July 30, 2018 — 7:44 am
Hi Kathryn, I enjoyed reading your musings. I share your thoughts and questions about where we are headed in the evolution of reading and writing. Similar to the death of cursive writing, reading and writing, as we know it anyway, may well be on its way out. Whereas the importance of cursive writing was culturally significant in terms of status, it is completely irrelevant to the educated imagination, and because it has lost its relevance, it is dying.
I feel that communication is headed from an emphasis on text to an emphasis on audiovisual. This will change everything. Creating a written piece of hypertext still requires similar organization, context and containment procedures. The writer is in charge of assembling the information provided. The organisational skills students need to do this, I think is similar to traditional formal writing techniques. You must ensure the links you use are integrated properly into the text you are creating. On the other hand, the secondary orality that Ong talks about is fascinating for its fusion features. Now we have increasingly effective voice to text technology and its popularity is on the rise. The voice recording, however, is mediated by our knowledge of writing because often the desire to use voice to text is to write something for later use. Proper grammar, sentence flow and punctuation must be understood to complete this properly (for now, at least). Do you think that this will change with use? Will proper grammar become increasingly less used? Will text be increasing less used? I think so. The new virtual assistants that have recently flooded the market are a testament to that. They don’t require a screen at all.
You ask a pertinent question about your young students ~ who is going to teach and encourage them to be critical, observant and reflective? We need to place an emphasis on these key critical/reflective skills, and even more importance on the critical analysis and deconstruction of video and audio forms of communication. This critical lens is a skill we have not taught before as our focus has been on the written word (page or screen).
Jo
August 9, 2018 — 11:31 am
Hi Kathryn,
I really enjoyed reading your post which evoked many different thoughts, but really got me thinking further about the nature of reading these days and if printed books are really on their way out, what are the necessary skills we need to teach our kids to navigate hypertext and glean the relevant information needed. I recalled a recent article I read in the Independent newspaper, an online UK publication.
In our digitalized world, we are not only being flooded with social media, but also websites and sources of information that may not necessarily be “trusted”. In the days before hypertext, we could always pretty much rely on the fact that if we were reading a printed book, it was a reliable, trustworthy source of information. Now as an educator, I see examples all the time of students going to sources they’ve found online and not checking whether the information they are reading and reproducing is actually verified as coming from a reliable source.
The rise of fake news in social media and across the internet is one example of how important it is to be able to discern the credibility of the resource. In this vain, there has been much discussion over the credibility of Wikipedia. There are now Wikipedia sites in 300 different languages, with 46 million articles accessed by 1.4 billion unique devices every single month with 200,000 editors and contributors verifying the content every day (The Independent, 2018). The author of the 2018 Independent article “Can we trust Wikipedia? 1.4 billion people can’t be wrong” argues that the idea of Wikipedia as the Wild West of the internet is wrong, “it’s more like a self-governing society” he says, “perhaps even sailing close to the political idea of pure anarchy – not the definition that includes disorder and chaos, but the one that talks of the absence of authority and state”. (I love this definition!).
According to John Lubbock (The Independent, 2018), communications coordinator for Wikimedia UK, we need a much more media-literate society, people who understand better what’s going on, what is happening to information, and who have the critical thinking skills to judge for themselves exactly what they are being told. I agree with his sentiments, as I do yours, that we need to prepare our students as best we can for the changing nature of reading and writing. My question is, can the school systems keep up with this as reading and writing and presentation of information continues to evolve at such a rapid rate?
Reference:
Barnett, D. (2018). Can we trust Wikipedia? 1.4 billion people can’t be wrong. The Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/wikipedia-explained-what-is-it-trustworthy-how-work-wikimedia-2030-a8213446.html