Baron, Chapters 4-6

Blog posting due February 24, 2014:

Summary

            In Ch. 4, “National Handwriting Day,” Baron discusses the holiday, which symbolizes the larger phenomenon of romanticizing handwriting versus type for its ability to reflect individual personality.  However, Baron then debunks this idea by describing the mechanical, rote manner in which handwriting was taught to be as uniform as possible.  He then discusses how typewriting made writing uniform and now we are returning to handwriting in a different way as computers adopt fonts that look increasingly similar to handwriting.  Ch. 5 begins with a discussion of one of the earliest writing technologies, writing on clay.  Baron discusses a project in which students write on clay only to discover that it limits the amount of writing they can do and the corrections they can make.  Baron then makes the point that typewriters and computers did not allow for easy correction when they first began.  Ch. 6 discusses the advent of the personal computer and makes the point that computers first began to replace the calculator, not the typewriter.  Computers have been a technology since the 1940s, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that word processing programs were introduced.  Baron ends this chapter suggesting that the computer eventually overtook the typewriter due to its affordance of allowing writers to easily revise.

Critique

            “The teaching of writing, or composition, was also rote: students copied model essays as well as model invoices so that they would internalize the structures used by successful clerks and authors” (Baron, 2009, p. 56).  The dichotomy of handwriting as personal and technology as mechanical was interesting to me in Chapter 4.  This quotation from Chapter 4 demonstrates the educators labored to make writing mechanical and that, even though handwriting is perceived as personal, Baron demonstrates that its goal was to be uniform.  Today, I believe, that rather than making writing mechanical, technology has the potential to make writing creative and personal.  For example through blogging or personal websites, students can write traditional genres, yet publish the to a personalized audience and combine text with images and audio to make writing more of a creative, multimodal design process.

Connection

            In Chapter 6, Baron discusses how technology today has affected the way we write, transitioning what was once very personal into a public act.  In education, research has shown that this public nature of digital writing is often engaging for students.  Because of the authenticity of having a real audience other than their teacher in online environments, students are often more engaged in digital than traditional writing.  However, I wonder if anything is lost due to the publicity of this audience.  Does writing lose any of its positive qualities, such as honesty or reflection, when it is published for more public than private audiences?

Blog Post Due 2/10

Baron, Chapters 1-3

Summary

            Baron discusses the history of writing and how it fits in with technology in Ch. 1.  Going back to our reading of Phaedrus, Baron reminds us that writing itself is a technology, and one that has not always been welcomed.  He reminds us that writing was once feared for its effects upon memory.  In the second chapter, “TecknoFear,” Baron discusses how new technologies have always been associated with an element of fear.  For example, he discusses the case of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and his dislike of technology and relates this case of a luddite to those that claim Thoreau was a luddite as well, abandoning technology for Walden Pond.  However, Baron points out that Kaczynski was incorrect in citing Thoreau in his cause because althought Thoreau did often escape to Walden Pond, he was also in the pencil industry, a technology that is more complicated than we perceive it today because, just as the case with writing, we often take these technologies for granted as we have become so accustomed to and reliant upon them.

Critique

            I liked Baron’s writing style as he is somewhat easier read than our previous chapters, but is still well researched and academic.  I especially like his discussion of technology through the perspective of what he presents as almost case studies.  For instance, for his discussion of technofear, he uses Kaczynski as his case study, and for his discussion of technologies we take for granted, he uses Thoreau, both people that I have not thought of in light of the discussion of writing as a technology.

Connection

            Baron made a few connections in his discussion of society’s seemingly innate fear of technology, at least by some, and education: “Even the deceptively untechnological pencil became a victim of the wrath of educators who feared the impact of new technologies.  For much of their history, American schools allowed no crossing out” (Baron, 2009, p. 44).  He mentions other examples of education resisting technology as well. For instance, he discusses teachers who went back and forth about whether or not to hide or introduce the spell check function of word processing.  In addition, he also discusses teachers’ fear that calculators would decrease students’ ability to think mathematically.  I wonder why education has historically been slow to adapt technology and how this has effected education.  In my research on technology and literacy there is much discussion over the inability to use technology because of access to technology, a lack of hardware, software, or inefficient internet connections.  However, this chapter made me wonder if we are not also trying to overcome a luddite ethos in education.  If this is the case, how might education be changed if the system of education saw technology as a priority? 

Blog post due February 3, 2013

Blog posting due February 3, 2014:

Summary

            Lupton described the evolution of fonts.  He began by describing the structure of a font: serif and stems, thickness or design, and the vertical versus horizontal stress of a font.  He then described the transition from wood to pantograph printing and discussed how the ability to quickly reproduce letters revolutionized printing.  He discussed the evolution of fonts over time from days when it was considered immoral to alter fonts to the 1990s, characterized by the “decay” of typeface (p. 30).  There are three categories of typeface, humanist, transitional, and modern, and it was interesting to learn the differences between them.

Critique

            I enjoyed the section discussing the difference between bitmap fonts and traditional fonts.  Bitmap fonts are made for digital screens and work by emphasizing the size and digital display of geometric shapes.  I liked the connection the author made that typeface relies upon connecting many visual elements and is much more complex than it at first appears.  The fact that newer, digital fonts are made out of pixels or “picture elements” (p. 57) emphasized to me how writing seems to go through cycles.  We began with a very visual system of communication in ancient times with hieroglyphics and other systems that represented symbols as pictures, then we moved to an oral era where the oral tradition was valued and letters were strongly tied to their phonetic sound representation, and now, in the digital era, we seem to be moving once again toward a more visual system of communication.

Connection

            This discussion of fonts and the connection to bitmap fonts, which are specifically designed for the screen reminded me of my reading of Kress (2003) Literacy in the New Media Age.  In this text, Kress describes how the screen is displacing the text and how literacy is becoming more visual than ever.  The reading of Lupton also emphasized how writing and fonts has always been a very visual process and that the creation of typeface is artistic rather than perfunctory.  As we move to the digital age in which text is often surrounded by visuals, sound, and hyperlinks, I am reminded that are need for visual representation of meaning is not new, but has always been an emphasis.

Blog Post for January 27

Blog post due January 27, 2013

Summary

            Plato’s Phaedrus is a discussion between Phaedrus and Socrates.  Phaedrus has just come from listening to a speech by Lysias, and he makes his own speech to recount Lysias’s speech for Socrates on the subject of love.  Then, Socrates and Phaedrus have a discussion on the written word versus the art of speech making, in which Socrates seems to suggest that rhetoric is for serious matters and writing is for lighter matters.

Critique

            I thought the most interesting and applicable point of my reading was when they talked about what makes a good argument and whether or not the person arguing merely had to have rhetoric techniques or needed true knowledge of his or her subject.  I agree with Socrates that those that argue well know the subtleties of their subject well enough to argue fine lines of argument. 

            Socrates’ point about the written word being unable to stand by itself was interesting to me: “Then he will not, when in earnest, write them in ink, sowing them through a pen with words which cannot defend themselves by argument and cannot teach the truth effectually” (p. 166).  I thought this was interesting because our readings thus far have emphasized the connection between writing and making things permanent and lasting, such as writing beliefs about religion, law, or taxes to keep a permanent record.  However, Socrates brings up an interesting point that even though writing is lasting it is also mutable as it is subject to the reader’s perspective.  I like the idea that are words carry more weight if we are able to orally defend what we write.

Connection

            I am a doctoral student in my second year of my program.  If all goes according to plan, I will take my comps this summer, and begin my dissertation work next year.  This reading made me wonder about the tradition of defending the written dissertation before a committee.  The oral defense seems to be something that Socrates would approve of as the committee has a chance to raise questions and the researcher must orally defend his or her written word.  By ordering the defense in such a way, the oral after the written, this tradition seems to value rhetoric over writing, just as Socrates argues in this piece.

Blog post for January 20th

Blog Post for January 20, 2014

Boorstin, Ch. 60-

Summary of Main Points:

            In this chapter, Boorstin discusses that memory was not only a skill, but an almost sacred virtue in ancient times.  He discusses that memory was valued and even taught, urging those wanting to improve their memory to associate memories with images and store the in rooms as if the mind was a cathedral with infinite rooms to connect images and memories.  However, as the invention of the printed word became more and more of a possibility as printed pages solved some of the problems of the roll, people began to value memory less.  Socrates predicted that this substitution of the written word for memory would cause learners to become forgetful.

Critique of the Reading:

            I thought Boorstin’s discussion of memory as not only a skill, but a virtue was interesting and made me question my lack of value for memory.  The ancients seemed to equate memory with a person’s learning and virtue, and I have never placed much esteem in memory.  Especially as an educator, I always prioritized writing, critical reading, and reasoning skills and was not a teacher who focused upon memory as a skill.  When some of my colleagues would make their students memorize poetry, I often wondered what value such a practice had for students.  However, this reading made me appreciate memory more, especially as I think about the reading I have done so far in The Shallows, which suggests that the Internet may be decreasing our ability to focus and retain information.  I wonder if my lack of reverence for memory has been a mistake.

Application of the Reading:

            This reading on memory made me think of the latest news about Alzheimer’s disease.  I seem to be hearing more and more about this disease in the news, whether that is because the disease is actually increasing or more Americans are aging, I am unsure.  As I was reading an article on Alzheimer’s (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/opinion/sunday/alzheimers-anxiety.html?_r=0), I was struck by just how much damage a loss of memory can do.  It is not simply an inability to recall facts and figures, our memory is tied to our memories, our past, and our fundamental identities.  Thus, maybe we should focus more on the skill of memory and not completely ignore memory as a skill to be retained and developed.  Maybe memory is still important even now that our written word is easier than ever to record and distribute.