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August 28, 2003
Hyperliteracy
I'm in the process of weeding out the detritus of my life, which includes digging through various files (Do I really need this 1996 phone bill from four phone numbers ago? What if the FBI decides I'm really an international terrorist, and I need to prove that I was living in a group house in Adams Morgan back then?!?), opening boxes that I packed four years ago (There's the damn printer cable!), and deciding what to do with pictures of ex-girlfriends (no comment).
One of the more enjoyable parts of this has been scouring a bunch of ancient 3.5" floppies discovered in a box and finding digital copies (in WordPerfect 5.1 for Unix format, no less!) of most of my creative and professional writing from the early- to mid-nineties.
Just to demonstrate I've been thinking about this computer stuff for quite some time now, I'll share this one gem from my archeological dig: an essay I wrote back in 1994 on the impact of computers on writing and literacy titled "Hyperliteracy: Envisioning a Literacy for the Information Age." Here's a blurb:
Computer technologies provide a means to circumvent the linear limitations of the print medium when writing, but, for the most part, they have not been used in this fashion--either by writers or by teachers. On the contrary, most computer-based writing environments attempt to extend the conventions of the print medium into the electronic medium, imposing print standards on a non-print form.I wish I could say that this is a brilliant piece of critical work in computers and composition, but it's pretty much just a grad student essay (toward a second Master's degree that I never finished), complete with the requisite Derrida reference.
Though it's somewhat naive and over-researched, it's not without merit (and was required reading in at least one graduate course). From a historical vantage, it's interesting that the assumptions of that particular point in computers and writing research (which perhaps are not clear from the essay alone) were pretty far off. E.g. much of the buzz ten to fifteen years ago was about the heuristic possibilities of computers as writing tools, most of which never panned out. I remember using tools like Norton Connect (which appears to be defunct) and the Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment (which is apparently still alive and released a new version a few months ago!) in my writing classrooms.
Instead, I believe today that computer technology is starting to, and likely will, revolutionize writing through erasure of the costs of reproduction and distribution, not through software that teaches us to be better writers. Provide a better medium for writing (i.e. cheaper, faster, wider in audience), and we'll find ways to be better writers.
Besides, it's kind of fun to look back and remember the excitement with which I was approaching the much more nascent field back then.
Read the whole thing: Hyperliteracy: Envisioning a Literacy for the Information Age
Posted August 28, 2003 07:24 PM
Comments
Funny, I may be wrong, but I seem to remember having read this back around 1995 or so. Did you ever mention it or point to it on the FutureC list?
Comments by l.m.orchard . Posted August 28, 2003 09:45 PM
Har! Yeah, it's quite likely that I circulated this to the Future Culture listserv back then. I had an HTML version of "Hyperliteracy" up on my personal site until about '99, too.
The story about the flight simulator in the opening paragraph came from FutureC via Dwayne, and the comment re: "discussed ideas for this essay with people in other parts of the country via e-mail and real-time conferences" is also partially a reference to FutureC.
The other piece that I found today is "The Word and The Body" the essay I wrote about the first death of an online acquaintance (Michael Current from FC) and my first f2f meeting with an online acquaintance (Pip Holloway, again from FC). I'll have to clean that up and post it, too.
A real walk down memory lane, eh, Leslie?
Comments by Greg . Posted August 28, 2003 10:19 PM