Zoe Armstrong – MET

Defining Terms

Without consulting any resources, here are my initial thoughts on the terms text and technology.

Text: Any form of communication involving reading. Though I myself am a digital native, I prefer these “texts” to exist as something with pages that I can turn. That said, text can also be in the form of a shop sign, of a recipe, a postcard, a tik tok caption, etc.

Technology: Any form of hardware or software used in the digital space. We often claim technology to be something that has the ability to increase our competencies in any area we want.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) here are the definitions of these words:

Text, The wording of anything written or printed; the structure formed by the words in their order; the very words, phrases, and sentences as written.

Technology, The branch of knowledge dealing with the mechanical arts and applied sciences; the study of this.

The following graph was pulled from Google Ngram Viewer. I find it very interesting that there was a slight peak in the world technology in the 15 and 1600s. It is also neat to see how now in the 2000s, the two terms have reached a similar amount of usage.

Reflection Question:

How is technology related to text?

In our current world, it is becoming more common for text to appear with the use of technology than not. Even books that are printed were once in the form of an online document pre-printing. It seems as though one cannot exist without the other anymore. Many of my students at school now bring their kindles or tablets to read from instead of physical books. They prefer the lightness of the tablet in their backpack and enjoy having multiple options for books at their fingertips.

Though I am enjoying the many affordances the collision of text and technology has allowed, I am a sucker for a nice paperback.