The Digital Divide

Though the Internet may be seen as Habbermas' wet dream , Sharon Mazzarella notes, in her art ice, Girl Wide Web, that one of the difficulties of her study was "recruiting a racially and economically diverse group of participants" and that this "digital divide potentially silences not only individual voices in individual social milieus (like middle schools), but also entire groups within the public sphere" (197). The difficulties Mazzarella came upon and nature of computers as inherently "white-collar" create a sphere of discourse that is only accessible by material means.

Even if economics were not a factor in accessibility, the nature of class ethos limits many of the possible uses of the Internet. Typically (an unsubstantiated generalization), the working class is practical, shunning the theoretical. For them, it is not about how they can make their voice heard, as much, as it is a tool that is used to get things done. They want to know, "How do I get to Chicago?", "How do I clean my garbage disposal?", or "What do I need to change the oil for my Harley Fat Boy?" The use of the tool is not dictated by the capability of the tool, but how the tool best fits with the philosophy, ethic and goals of that social group.

Unfortunately, the tool is already limited in its use because of social perceptions and the way, in which, these perceptions shape individuals and social groups. These perceptions limit the discourse between the tool and the individual and how the individual interacts with the tool, in this case the networked computer.

How to bridge the divide? Unfortunately, "a leap from the lions head" is not the best answer. The tool--and the potential uses of the tool--need to be enculturated. Socialization of the various uses for the networked computer must become an exigency for technology and education, where, regardless of class and race, students can learn and use a the computer in more ways that just as a tool of production.

Formative Self Assesment

The difference of assessment between traditional texts and multimodal texts is no more than a matter of training, and very little at that. Assessing websites and digital compositions is no different than navigating the beaten path of rhetorical features. However, the difference of assessment begins to take shape in the move from a final evaluative assessment, where students get a letter grade and gold star from the instructor, to students who become aware of their own rhetorical choices and who are able to assess the reception of these choices on their own.

Borton and Hout note, "[when] we helps students learn to assess their own compositions...." (99).

Sorry to interrupt this quote, but students come to composition courses able to do assess their own texts, just not the standard FYC essay. The genre of the academic essay is alien to them. The instructor is the central authority, who has gained authority from consumption, not production of the academic essay.

If authority can be gained from consumption of a form, then mutlimodal and new media texts exist in the domain that students have authority over--even before setting foot into a classroom. The student can discern how these texts produce the effect that they do and how these texts move towards their ultimate goal. The exposure students gain from everyday interaction with these texts give them the ability to form their own assessment on multimodal texts, while also allowing the student to train that lens on their own work producing digital texts.

Although, as Borton and Hout argue, "it is entirely possible that the processes of creating texts that [goes] beyond the alphabetic will be less familiar to many students" (99); however, the creation of these texts--the material production of multimodal texts--using software and other digital media as creation maybe foreign to students, the rhetorical moves made in digital texts are more familiar to students, than the traditional academic essay.

Remediated Voyeurism

The remediated self mutates the concept of subjectivity through the interplay of multimedia; however much the concept of self is mediated and remediated, the object--the windows of digital reality--are also remediated and reordered. This remediation of the object causes a constant dialogic shift of definition between both the object and the subject through the infinite regression of pop-up browser jacking.

The frames that define both the object and subject, define them in capitalistic terms, defining the subject as browser and the object as a consumable good. But this mere capitalistic rendering of subject/object interplay becomes far more sinister as the frame dissolves, where subject and browser become one. The nature of transparent immediacy, as Bolter would call it, reorients the user's point of view with that of the browser window "in an apparently seamless visual environment" (232). This reorientation is not simply a new perspective, but also a shift of the ideological nature of both the subject (the user) and the object (data viewed in the browser window). No longer are the subject and object defined in the simple terms of capitalism--the consumer and the consumed; They are now the voyeur and the fetish.

In some ways this binary was already present, except that the static framework placed a concrete barrier between the subject and object. Though the browser window is still present, the reorientation of perspective places the framework outside the peripheral view of the subject. The subject's presences is situated between the ideologies of the Enlightenment and Romantic. Unlike the Romantics, the remediated self does not want to actively search for reality nor, like the subject of the Enlightenment, does it want to be just a window shopper: it wants to be the window; it wants annihilation, where reality passively occurs in the bounds of the subject's frame, not aware of the subject's presence.

Situating the subject as the window does not orient it's gaze in just one direction. I am not claiming that the subject's gaze returns upon its self, but situates the browser in ways that it views other subjects, which also view the object of fetish.

As illustration--a vulgar illustration--the web phenomena of 2girls1cup. The object of the video did not gain its popularity just because of the video's nature, but because of the numerous webcam reaction of people watching the original. This phenomena turned both the video and the viewers as objects of fetish. In both cases, the subject is passively allowing the reality of the videos to pass through the browser. The subject is not an active participant in either case, but a voyeur hiding in the bushes watching the virtual and the real world.

Acsess and Validation of Digital Media

It seems, that if we, as a society, as Jay Bolter notes in Writing Space, move towards digital media as the primary medium that there are possible detriments that undercut the ethos of the open and democratic forum of online publication. The blog, the wiki, the list-serve, the discussion board will need validation and this will happen by some form of governance.

Information is the most valuable commodity in our society. The valuation of any commodity causes systems of governance and oversight to be created to validate that commodity. Information, in the form of online publications, will by its very nature be censored and restricted in both its publication and access by its commodification. Systems of peer-review, or worse, systems controlled by government or corporate entities, will restrict the nature of writing and media on the web, in order to better catalog and sort the information being posted in online arenas. The restriction of digital production, necessitates a lack of access to writing on the web by valuing certain forms of information, causing users to have screen names and passwords to gain entry to information posted in these forums, which will be controlled by whatever entity is in control.

This may seem alarmist, but the value and power of the Internet comes from the ability of its users to go where they want and produce what they want. Unlike books, whose information is valued because of the material nature of production, publication in digital forms is easy and cheap. Because of this nature, in combination with a move towards "valid" forms of digital publication, it seems only certain that someone--or something--will step to valide the media published in digital environments.

Romanticising the Digital

Victor Hugo noted Romanticism as "liberalism in literature". Generally, Blake, Byron, Colerdige, Shelly, etc were tryting to break away from traditional restraints in regards to poetic verse and form, seeking to free the artist. None more so noted this ideal as William Blake, who said "I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans". Blake, an extremist, even by romantic standards, went so far as to create his own unique form of printing using copper plates and acid baths. For the romantic, creativity and imagination were prefered over traditional and formal values.

New Media and Multimodal Composition are the children of romantic ideals. The advent and acess of new software and technology allows for writers to publish their work, while working in non-traditional forms. The ablility for people to incorporate all forms of visual and audio media breaks from culturally accepted and dominant forms of composition. For Blake's vision, using standardized software would still be too limiting; however, the acess and simplicty of composing in these forms, even he would agree, allows for more freedom of expression compared to formal standards.

Viewing 'New Media' and 'Multimodal Composition' as neo-Romantic forms, we can try to place opposition to these new forms of composition in the cycle of tradition and revolution. If, as I believe, we are in a period that values tradition; then it could be that these new forms of composition might usher in a new wave of revolution, of liberalism in composition--a liberalism of the forms of composition.

As observed by Stanley Cavell, in Bolter's Remediation, "[to] speak of our subjectivity as the route back to our conviction in reality is to speak of romanticism" (234). This return to our conviction--our subjectivity--is another romantic value: placing value on the individual and individual creativity. This move is contrary to beliefs that writing does not happen in a vacume; that writing--and the writer--cannot be seperated from the social space in which they occupy. The divergence of social-constructivist and romantic ideals become blurred in the pop-up, hypertextual enviornment.

This blurring occurs in the mediums of multimodal composition. Using images, audio, video and text from varried sources allows the individual to develop a sense of self, which is singular and is constructed from societal and virtual artifacts. By using these artifiacts, the individual is returning to subjectivity. And by returning to subjectivity, the individual becomes more aware of societal impacts on the self and, also, how the self impacts and creates the world around it.

Virtual Collaboration

Why weren't my punchcards working? I have this new-fangled doo-hickey and it won't accept my punch cards. The little button on the side pops out this tray that only accepts a disk-like object--not my punchcard I thought, this new tricked-out model would be able to handle all the work that I would complete over the next few years and my work form the past, but lo, that is not the case.

Though, the punch card line is an exaggeration, the difficulties posed by distance learning were beginning to irk me. The lack of a physical communal space for collaboration was somewhat of an issue to overcome. In some ways, I think entering the discourse of the virtual space is just as hard as any new environment. It took time for our project to get rolling in the virtual environment. The years that have built my educational experience have accustomed me to the "brick-and-mortar" environment and have not acclimated me to digital spaces as a center for learning and collaboration.

This environmental discord and disconnection of a physical interaction with other students created a greater amount of inertia to overcome in the collaboration and learning process. Feedback was not instantaneous, causing a slow down in development of the required PowerPoint project and making the transition from slide-to-slide weak at best. However weak the transitions felt, becoming adapted to these new learning spaces would stream-line collaboration in digital spaces.

Skynet: The Computerized-Classroom

Student-Centered, Teacher-Centered, the Democratic Classroom. These terms can't help but be dropped to describe pedagogies of classrooms. But, as we move into the digital classroom, the binary of student and teacher dissolves, centers do not hold and everything is shifted to zeroes.

The only input is one: The Technology.

Though my first inclination is to be suspect of the techno-centered classroom; the way it plays the queens gambit, holding the center, value free; the technology is ideological neutral. Neutrality is good? Technology fills the center pushing teacher and student to inhabit the diameter. This move makes student and teacher have equal input and the division of authority is lessened. This is the ideal for the democratic classroom, where no ideology is center and students can fill this ideological void with their voices.

But sound does not resonate in a vacuum. By moving to the techno-centered class, the lack of reflective teaching and reflective learning creates a somnambulist learning environment where the tools are not wielded with intention. Both the student and teacher are blindly writing, using the technology as modes of design and control, allowing this value-neutral entity to pull the strings. Even a teacher so bent on total control is still a puppet to the technology.

The nature of software can give students and teachers a foothold in the center. Blogs, wikis, discussion boards, synchronous and asynchronous chat are ways to break the constraints of technological, environmental, and institutional designs of the digital classroom. These modes can create a new center within these environments that allows for a Democratic digital classroom.

Information Overload: Undercutting the Blogocracy

Decentralized dissemination of information may be a boon for the democratization of public spheres; however, it also undercuts the power of the texts produced in those spheres, creating a problem of recognition of the critical discourses occurring in blog communities. By critical discourse, my scope is limited to the use of the blog in realms that are not the ego-centric, day-in-the-life, dear diary, entries. I do find these entries interesting to the way that 'self' is defined using the blog as a dialogic tool and the necessity of a perceived audience, which allows the writers to enter into a phase of pseudo-self discovery by entering into a Hegelian Dialectic, but I see these blogs as more intimate in nature not effecting the conversations of critical-rational debate.

Democratization of access pulls the "proverbial rug" of credibility out from under the texts produced in this setting, which in many ways is the issue for most on-line publications. Blog sites do not promote rational debate so much as they do navel gazing. For a critical-rational debate to occur, blogs taking part in the conversations of particular debates need to be centralized or given nodes within the network of the specific debate. There are so many blogs varied in mode and topic that it overwhelms and saturates the amount of discourse in the community, that trying to distinguish a particular thread within the blogging community seems near impossible, especially finding credible blogs not run by conspiracy theorist schizophrenic psychos.

Another aspect of the blog that worries me, is that writers of strictly the "dear diary" mode rely on an audience, or, in the very least. a concept of an audience. But who or what is that audience? Who controls the perception of that audience? Blogs can be accessed by anyone, but it seems that these perceived audiences are faux constructions developed by marketers and advertisers, whose desire is to use the blogs as havens for Internet promotion and consumer demographics.

Marionettes of the Interface

The strings connect through the keys. Pulling each finger down in succession, the interface guides the cacophony of words and punctuation. Strange. I think, "No, I am the one pressing the button. It responds to me". Computers do what we say--We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.

How we write depends so much on the tools at our disposal. The machine may not be in control, but it constructs the entire schema of interaction, exerting cookie-cutter precision. The conventions of software and human relations, no matter what the programmer says, are dictated by the interface.

The control that software interfaces exert over the writing process, as noted in Computer and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History, can be detrimental or have unexpected results. The authors note that at the University of Delaware in 1988 there were sections of composition in which students used both Macs and PCs. At the end of the semester the director of the program surveyed the instructors, asking them if any issues occurred or anything else happened that they might have observed. It was observed that the sections of composition that exhibited the most problems were the ones using Macs. One of the instructors replied, "[It] dawned on us that the sections we have been complaining about all semester because of sloppy writing and the fluffiness of the topics are Macintosh sections"(75). Another instructor responded noting that "Students write differently on the Mac--frankly, i think their writing is worse....There is something about the large print and big margins on the Mac that seems to encourage a sentence structure and childish vocabulary" (75).

Granted, this was noted in 1988 during the infancy of computers in the classroom. Since then, word processing has become fairly homogeneous; Microsoft Word dominates both platforms of computer. It has become the industry standard, no matter the industry: engineering, publishing, academics, retail...etc, documents are expected to be in Microsoft Word file types.

Because of the universality of Microsoft Word and the expectations of its usage insisted upon by economic constructions, I have to wonder how much writing and the process of writing has been molded and sterilized by its implementation? Are there forms of writing that allow for more varied approaches to writing and thinking? Limiting the forms and interface of writing also binds the structures of communication. In many ways, a move towards multi-modal approaches would give students avenues of communication not governed by the physics of Word. It would allow them modes of inquiry and authority that are outside the bounds of traditional word processing.

Writing in Textured Dimensions

Writing does not occur two-demesnionally; It is a multi-textured and multi-layered process. Even the 2-D plane of woodpulp and print stratums and worms through multiple dimensions: Texts are built on intertextual flesh.

Multimodal composition complicates the dynamic of the writing classroom. Since arguments can be formed using text, audio, and visuals, invariably, there will be instructors and administrators that say, "Teaching a student to write using only pen and paper is difficult enough. So, how do you expect to teach students to write using other forms of literacy, when they are not savvy enough to write just using one mode?" My answer to this question is writing in the multimodal classroom is much more natural.

In many ways simple ink and pulp methods of writing do not connect to the visceral, especially with students in FYC. Though language creates an aural sensation, even unspoken, it does not engage the senses as actively as a text created using the various forms available in the multimodal class. Artifacts created in these classrooms are more sensual, touching on the textual, visual, and aural sensibilities of both reader and writer.

Because the texts are more engaging, the composer (not sure if writer is the correct word) would be using means that are more accessible. Regardless of the accessibility, these texts become more kinetic and complex. The hypertextul and intertextual elements in a multimodal composition make apparent the social nature of writing, situating the students as, both, artist and critic.

Dream on Rails

I don't know the exact moment it happened or how the movements and mashings of thumbs wired their patterns into my subconscious; All that I know is that I was no longer in control of my dreams.

It was winter break. I had just graduated with my B.A. and in between periods of drinking and applying to grad schools, I found myself bored. I had read the entire Harry Potter series in a week and started to play my GameCube--again.

Gamer ADD is the only way to describe it. Games, unlike books, are easy for me to put down. Most games do not keep my attention for more than an hour at a time. It took me months to beat a game. I was playing games that I had began, but never finished. But having played those before, everything was so predictable and bland. But that changed. I bought a new game and I became obsessed.

I was obsessed with potato-bag zombies with chainsaws; Obsessed with conserving ammo; Obsessed with mutated genetic abominations: Obsessed with Resident Evil 4.

There was something about the combination of game-play and narrative that left me vulnerable. I do not know if it was the fantastic nature of the game, opening up doors into my unconscious, but somehow the patterns had infected me.

"Why can't I move?", I thought to myself?
"Stop. Stop. I want to go left." I could feel something constraining me as I tried to turn. I was a puppet of the system. I kept moving straight. Everything was so logical. Imprecision was out of bounds--everything was in straight lines: My dreams were bound.

I have always had lucid dreams. Sometimes, I would let my subconscious take over and I would ride out the dream; But, most of the time I was in complete control. I could change the environment, the people, the situations. But somehow the movements and patterns from the video game were restricting my dreams. I was no longer free.

My dream was on rails. In the video game landscape there is a genre of game that best describes my dreams: Rail Shooters. Its the type of game where movement is controlled by the game and the player observes and shoots at zombies, aliens, terrorists, or whatever the enemy is in the game. Even games that allow more freedom in movement still have paths that confine mobility.

It was very strange to realize that video game logic and physics were somehow controlling my subconscious. Those dreams had an effect on my sleep. I was not getting the rest I needed.

The technology was reformatting my brain. I never knew the impact a video game could have on me. I only wish I knew how and what parts of me have been determined and molded by the technology I use. Is it possible separate the person from the technology?

And so it begins.

I've avoided this for so long, but now it has happened: I have a blog. Luckily, for you reader, most of what will appear on this page will be unlike most of my writing and thoughts; It will resemble what might be termed "sane".