I admit I checked out synonyms for “text” (idea) and synonyms for “technology” (machinery) and that’s how the site name came to be. When I think about what the word ‘text’ means to me, I conjure up thoughts of printed images. In that sense text is anything that is visually consumed in digital or printed form (although, in saying that, it feels like ablest terminology and I’m going to have reflect on that). Examples of text would include words, graphs, tables, and pictures. With respect to technology, I immediately think of modern examples of technology such as computers, however I also think about technology being any tool or resource that changes the way we engage with a task or object. I think that technology is sometimes associated with the idea of progress, but I personally have always been uncomfortable with the concept of progress when the values and worldviews associated with that idea aren’t problematized. I’m looking forward to reflecting, expanding, and critiquing my understanding of text technologies and their relationship to reading and writing while working through this course ETEC 540 Text Technologies: The changing spaces of reading and writing.
Hi Deirdre,
Creative title! And creative way to find it as well… I resonated with your notion of technology embodying a type of tool that aids in our engagement of the physical world – I wrote about something similar but evoked the term ‘medium’. While i tend to agree that most would associate the term technology with the concept of progress, but I wonder what you mean when you say there is a disagreeable nature to progressive worldviews when they ‘aren’t problematized’?
I think what I’m getting at when I say we need to problematize the idea of progress and technology is to ask, who values progress? who values technology? To what extent does technology or progress harm or help someone? In what ways is progress and technology culturally appropriate or culturally harmful? What is the relationship of progress to capitalism? Questions like that.
These are very intriguing questions – I’m not sure I wholly agree with progress as an issue, or at least, something we need to problematize. I feel it’s inherent in our human nature to progress, create, and find innovative and more efficient solutions to problems. I can’t think of a time in human history where regression was a popular in the cultural zeitgeist.
With that said, I think what you are hinting at is the equity issue – Who benefits and who doesn’t from this inherent human progress. It’s the rich get richer idea. It’s not that progress is the problem, it’s the treatment of those within the social mechanisms of progression… perhaps those on the margins? Are there any examples you can think of with respect to “progress and technology” being culturally (in)appropriate?
Thanks for your thoughts and thanks for the question. Have you heard of the slow food movement? It was started in 1989 as a response to the growing fast food market in Italy.Local and traditional foods were dying out and this movement seeks to protect, honour, and promote traditional food practices, biodiversity, and quality of food. That’s just one example of how the progress in food production has been at the detriment of traditional foods. I wonder if you would find the course Indigeneity, Technology, and Education interesting. In this course we explored a lot of the ways in which Technology is antithetical to Indigenous cultures. For example, resource extraction for production of various technologies might conflict with a culture’s reverence for the land (Cole and O’Riley, 2012) or how the use of computers and the internet removes people from place and from on the land experiences which are also central to many Indigenous cultures (Howe, 1998). As for whether or not “regression” is popular in the cultural zeitgeist, some other things that come to mind, though I haven’t thought them entirely through, are subcultures devoted to homesteading, communal living, and off grid living for example.
Cole, P. & O’Riley, P. (2012). Coyote and Raven put the ‘Digital’ in Technology – Hands Up
and Down to Earth. Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 9 (2), 18-34.
Howe, C. (1998). Cyberspace is no place for tribalism. Wicazo Sa Review, 13(2), 19-28.
doi:10.2307/1409143
Thanks for your reply Deirdre! The Indigeneity course was one of my favourites throughout my time in the MET program – It’s funny, I centred my learning in that course on the opposite of what you suggested; how technology could actually favour and preserve Indigenous customs and cultures, and educate or inform the non-Indigenous perspectives. With respect to the Slow Food Movement, it’s not something I’m familiar with, but I was able to dig around and find their Manifesto (https://www.slowfood.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Manifesto_Quality_ENG.pdf) – Take a look at some of the central tenants (ie – shifting the responsibility of the consumer to co-producer; a progressive idea). Food must be ‘clean’; in other words sustainable and intentional in its protection of ecosystems and biodiversity. Oftentimes, these solutions evoke innovative new technologies (see carbon emission technologies, smart and/or vertical farming etc.). Ultimately, this movement certainly seems to be inherently progressive in its nature. As for the off-grid living examples, I’m not entirely sure this qualifies as a part of the cultural zeitgeist; the defining spirit of a particular time period illustrated by the central beliefs of the time.