Back in the day...

Wolman, David. “When Tech Attacks!” Wired (Sept. 2008): p. 31-34.

When in doubt, blame the latest technology. Socrates thought the advent of writing would wreak havoc on the powers of the mind. Christian theologians denounced the printing press as the work of the devil. The invention of the telephone was supposed to make letter-writing extinct, and the arrival of the train – and later the car and plane – was going to be the death of the community.

Now comes a technological bogeyman for the 21st century, this one responsible for a supposed sharp uptick in American shallowness and credulity: the Internet and its digital spawn. Witness the wave of books and essays implicating the wired world in a sudden rise in uncritical thinking and attention deficits.

…Yes, it must be acknowledged that the Web provides remarkably easy access to such bogus ideas. On top of that, there’s the human tendency to seek out information that supports preexisting assumptions, a behavior psychologists have dubbed homophily. The Web magnifies this echo-chamber effect.

…The Web is not an obstacle in this project [remedying stupidity]. It’s an unparalleled tool for generating, finding, and sharing sound information. What’s moronic is to assume that it hurts us more than it helps.

Read the entire article here: http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-09/st_essay

I learned photography with a film camera, and I spent more time in my darkroom than I probably should have (adolescent development +harsh chemicals=high probability of cancer, etc…). When I discovered Photoshop and digital cameras, I was amused but definitely not converting. Silver halide crystals were the real McCoy; pixels were a sad imposter. Now, this stubbornness is slightly justified, in that when these new technologies came out, they were pretty poor in comparison to my darkroom and keen eye for an exposure that needed tweaking or a face that needed burning.

Needless to say, I no longer own a film camera, and I enjoy using Photoshop and not having contact with toxic chemicals. But I’m sure the smell of fixer would bring me back to the good old days. I appreciate the affordances in digital photography knowing the extra energy, money, and time I would be wasting in a darkroom ruining my film because the temperature was two degrees off.

Anyway, I thought digital photography was a false art and a trend that would soon die; it wasn’t the real thing, so what good could it be? In fact, I was adamantly against color photography until I moved out of the darkroom. I was a stubborn kid, trying to make excuses for things I didn’t have access to (a decent digital camera or a color darkroom), and for things I didn’t know.

Flash forward a few years to my senior year in college, the same year Mac introduced OS X. That was like the jump from my parents’ Kaypro 10 to a Gateway with Windows 3.1: it had a mouse attached to it. The screen wasn’t green and black. It had a CD player.

Anyway, OS X came with iMovie and Garageband, so instead of doing my documentary photography class project in the traditional digital slide with caption format, I put the images into iMovie and included audio from interviews with the subjects of the documentary. There was a huge difference: not only was it fun to watch, but the story was richer and had more depth due to the impact of human voice combined with the images. Yes it took longer for me to put together, and I had to learn a variety of new programs to execute my project, but I did learn important skills in what I now know as rhetorical choices. As Hess argues, “one of the most important reasons to design assignments for multimodal composition is to expand students’ thinking about composing and how this complex set of processes works….Effective composing assignments, we believe, involve students in reflection about not only the processes, but the products of composing” (p. 29). In addition, “we encourage both teachers and students to undertake such work with the goal of thinking about what humans can accomplish when they use different modalities – and all available rhetorical means – to communicate as effectively as possible” (p. 30).

I like the assignments discussed in _Multimodal Composition_ not because I “like” multimodality and have a beef with traditional academic writing (I’ll probably assign both types of writing). I think the point to understand about any writing (multi- or monomodal) is that the form is chosen by the writer to best convey the content, argument, etc. through the effective use of the rhetorical means available. The writer needs to understand the importance of the context, audience, content, etc. and then have the skills to combine all the elements necessary to invent and create. I don’t think the authors we have been reading are arguing for our students to learn multimodal composition just because it’s trendy or because they want to kill print text. There are choices that need to be made during the writing process, and the mode used shouldn’t be taken lightly; it serves a purpose.

Note: This post isn't necessarily a defense of the so-called 'millennial' way of existence. I know that students (and adults) need to be able to take responsibility for their learning and actions, and therefore, a certain level of respect for everyone in the classroom needs to occur. What I'm not sure I agree with, though, is the argument that new technology is the reason for a lack of personal responsibility and classroom decorum. These things need to be addressed in the ground rules as well as throughout the semester in how the teacher respects the students and vice versa.