One advance or change in technology begets another and in that process there are inherent loses and gains. This is the enduring message of ETEC 540. The move to electronic/multimodal/hypermediated text is dependent upon our knowledge and understanding of the printed space of a book (Bolter 28). The printed space, prose, is concerned with enlivening the visual in the reader’s imagination. The move to hypermedia permits the visual to augment prose which in turn alters the purpose of prose. This move also promotes the human tendency for associative thinking. Indeed, in the beginning of this electronic era of text, Bush and Englebart’s claimed that associative information structures are likely to improve human ability to approach and solve complex problems. We can certainly see how the hypertexted format of the web allows us to see “the structural skeleton of the text” with more clarity, and arguably claim that it can communicate more effectively or more vividly, arguable because “whether it’s better is a cultural determination” (Bolter 21-35).
In an informal survey I conducted with my friends and family, ranging in age from 25 – 61 I asked for their thoughts on reading hypertext. Most replied expressing an appreciation for their inclusion, and depending on time and interest followed the link. The older of the group (of 11 respondents) tended to skip the link and double back if interested with the younger following the link in situ finding them “usually pretty relevant and useful”.
Another idea that grabbed my attention was Kress’ notion that “all forms of communication are inherently multimodal, involving the interplay of more than one form of representation”. In other words the acts of production and the consumption of meaning are entangled and understood by its consumer if only in a visceral way. This begs the question, what does it mean to read these multimodal texts? Let’s consider the various forms of digital text, their act of production and the consumption of meaning. A website is written to inform and display information. I believe increasingly that its usefulness is in the ease in which the consumer can access the information they are looking for. Immediacy and efficiency dictate the act of production. Email is the business standard. It is a more formal mode of communication, and because it is less immediate than other forms, it allows room for reflection and composition. Text messaging is informal, and more immediate. The immediacy (or delayed response) present an array of social implications regarding response time and word choice. Both email and text messaging have given rise to the emoticon to facilitate communication. Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat or other forms of visual/textual communication are guided by creative, humorous and often satirical content. Finally, Twitter. This is a most interesting multimodal digital text as it is text written to mimic speech. Peter Wikström, in his dissertation I Tweet like I Talk : Aspects of Speech and Writing on Twitter discusses this twist: “the oral qualities of Twitter text are real but virtual, and actually embodied in digital script. Talk-like tweeting has the materiality of writing, but its written sign is deabstracted to gesture at oral meanings. The author is absent but the text is envoiced, animated like living language” (108). Over and over again we see Kress’ observation manifest; the act of production is interwoven into the consumption of meaning.
The final questions posed in module four “The Educated Imagination in the Information Age: Redefining our Understandings of Literacy” are thought provoking. I believe that we have irrevocably entered the age of post text. Voice recognition and virtual assistants have even limited the necessity of a screen. According to comscore “50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020” (Olson). The rise of voice to text technology does hint broadly at Ong’s secondary orality, voice as the primary experience, mediated by written text.
In the New York Times article “Welcome to the Post text future” Farhad Manjoo discusses how “the defining narrative of our online moment concerns the decline of text, and the exploding reach and power of audio and video”. Audio and video communication dominance will alter too the way we think about the information presented, as the audio/visual form appeals to emotion far more than rational text. The reach and power of audio and video is evidenced in the the changing manner of our web consumption: it is predicted that by 2019, 80% of all internet traffic will come from video (World). But let’s get back to the odd twist that is Twitter. Wikström says it best: “the conventional nomenclature of designating the individual message in online writing as a post seems apt, as Twitter talk – a visual script of virtual speech – is inevitably post-writing”. The evolution of text technologies is once again in the spin cycle.
References
Bolter, David J. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print
Kress, Gunther. Gains and Losses: New Forms of Texts, Knowledge, and Learning. vol. 22, , 2005, http://www.sciencedirect.com.
Manjoo, Farhad. “Welcome to the Post-Text Future.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 9 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/09/technology/the-rise-of-a-visual-internet.html.
Olson, Christi. “Just Say It: The Future of Search Is Voice and Personal Digital Assistants.” Campaign: Marketing, Advertising and Media News & Analysis, www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/just-say-it-future-search-voice-personal-digital-assistants/1392459.
Ong, W. (2002). Orality and Literacy. London: Routledge.
Wikström, Peter. I Tweet like I Talk : Aspects of Speech and Writing on Twitter. 2017, http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-64752.
World. “The State of Video Marketing in 2018 – #Infographic.” Digital Information World, 4 Mar. 2018, www.digitalinformationworld.com/2018/03/the-state-of-video-marketing-in-2018.html.
Postscript
This section of the blog post is composed through speech-to-text technology I am speaking my blog rather than writing it. I did not write the text prior to composing these voice thoughts, although I have edited the text in a traditional word processing format. I am interested in the difference between verbal speech and written text. We don’t generally write the way we speak, so therefore, if we are to fully utilize this voice-to-text technology, then we will have to also remediate the way we speak for the appropriate appearance and format of written text. I write better than I speak and I wonder if this is a mechanism of association, because I’ve always written my thoughts, or whether it is a natural tendency? The actual act of speaking what I want to be typed is more difficult, and less intuitive than I had thought it would be. It requires long pauses for me to collect my thoughts correctly. An interesting facet of speech-to-text technology and the remediation of print is that, whereas orality begins to end and is final, speech-to-text, secondary orality, is not, as the speech is recorded as text on an screen, and therefore remembered and recorded historically. (*italicized text represents the the edits)
JamieTooze
August 5, 2018 — 2:12 pm
Hi Wendy,
I really enjoyed reading your post. I feel you captured the main themes of the course and posed some very interesting ideas but I do have a question about the very first line of your post. You opened your post with, “one advance or change in technology begets another and in that process there are inherent loses and gains.” I absolutely agree that one innovation gives rise to the next but I am unclear as to whether “in that process there are inherent loses and gains.”
This got me thinking because much earlier in the term I read the first few chapters of Neil Postman’s “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” and he convinced me that “technological change is neither additive nor subtractive (Postman 1992).” I had to read the chapter a few times but eventually, I saw his point that technological change tends to be “ecological” rather than. He convinced me to see it as neither adding nor taking away from the environment but rather altering the ecology of a culture or as Postman suggests changing “everything (p.18).”
Now Postman, writing in 1992, had a rather pessimistic few of the future of computer technology, and many critical reviews of his work have been written but I do believe he makes one important point about the disruptive nature of innovation. When we look at the major disruptions in communication technology of the past millennium unpredicted outcomes always confound those who believe they can foretell the benefits of new technology. Postman used the example, cited by many, of the Gutenberg press. He suggested that its creator, Johan Gutenberg, was a devout Catholic and “would have been horrified to hear that the heretic Luther” used his technology to undermine the authority of the Pope and unravel the centuries-old monopoly on knowledge the Church had over the masses (p.15).
Can we apply this reasoning to the computer age? Postman thinks we can. He argues that schoolteachers are part of the current “knowledge monopoly created by printing and they are now witnessing the breakup of that monopoly” with the growth of “private learning and individual problem solving (p.17).” In your post, you mention how developments “will alter too the way we think about the information presented, as the audio/visual form appeals to emotion far more than rational text.” I can’t agree with you more. Technology appears to be our friend but does not give us time for reflection on potential consequences before it changes everything. As researchers and inventors strive to make work more efficient, our lives healthier, and our learning easier …technology begins to commandeer our critical thinking. It is so intertwined with modern life that we find it difficult to back up and see what consequences, covertly intended or accidental, may follow. As you suggested, “the evolution of text technologies is once again in the spin cycle.”
Postman, Neil. (1992). Technopoly: the surrender of culture to technology. New York :Knopf,