Writing Technology: Studies on the Materiality of Literacy
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Honeycutt, Lee
Kairos
1997

Abstract:

In these days of dizzying technological change, it is difficult for teachers of composition not to be enthusiastic about the ever expanding arsenal of literacy tools at our disposal. From the myriad possibilities of networked classrooms to the disseminal opportunities of the World Wide Web, these technologies offer us promising venues in which to teach the craft of writing to our students, who seem more than eager to embrace these digital technologies. Yet anyone who remembers the days before word processors realizes that the relationship between writer and text has changed, and not just because of poststructural theorists like Barthes and Foucault. While word processors undoubtedly have eased our production and revision of texts, they have also altered our spatial and tactile relationship to the writing process. And some would argue these changes are not necessarily for the better; perhaps all of us in the computers and writing community know a Luddite colleague who eschews the technological elegance of an Apple PowerBook for the simpler pleasures of an antique fountain pen and hand-bound writing journal. To the technological cognoscenti, such resistance seems at times like quaint nostalgia for a world that is quickly disappearing. But the more I scour the digital landscape to keep abreast of new technologies, the more a gnawing question tugs at my synapses: 'What is being gained and what is being lost as the tools of literacy increase in complexity?'