One of the main premises of this course, as Postman observes, is that language is a technology in the sense that it is a practical art—an invention to facilitate communication. Moreover, it is a practical art that has played a central role, some claim, in shaping human consciousness.

(1.5 Thinking about Text and Technology)

“pantextualism”  -Scholes

How will post-print society redefine text in order to reflect the malleable, ever-changing writing spaces of the Internet?

Children come to school having been deeply conditioned by the biases of television. There, they encounter the world of the printed word. A sort of psychic battle takes place, and there are many casualties-children who can’t learn to read or won’t, children who cannot organize their thought into logical structure even in a simple paragraph, children who cannot attend to lectures or oral explanations for more than a few minutes at a time. (Postman, 1992, pp. 16-17)

In the early 1990s such students may have been considered failures, Postman argued, but as communication technologies shift so too does the balance of power. Indeed, it is very clear in the contemporary moment that children who grow up with screen media will prove more adept at negotiating the image-based, multi-sequential learning environments of the present. Indeed, more recent research suggests that exposure to interactive audio-visual media, such as video games, develops a number of skills that are desirable in today’s information economy (e.g., Beavis, 2015; see also the work of MET faculty such as Suzanne de CastellLinks to an external site. and Jen JensonLinks to an external site.).

[1.5] Thinking about Text and Technology

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Giles, J. Internet encyclopaedias go head to head. Nature 438, 900–901 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/438900a