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Electronic Writing Technologies

670	Blair, Kristine, and Pamela Takayoshi, eds. Feminist Cyberspaces: Mapping Gendered Academic Space. Stamford, Conn.: Ablex, 1999. The complex relationship between women and technology is explored through multiple locations in a feminist cyberscape: the body, online identities, discourse communities, coalitions and collaborations, and the future. Thirteen chapters include Joanne Addison and Susan Hilligoss, "Technological Fronts: Lesbian Lives 'On the Line' "; Barbara Monroe, "Re-Membering Mama: The Female Body in Embodied and Disembodied Communication"; Shannon Wilson, "Pedagogy, Emotion, and the Protocol of Care"; Donna LeCourt, "Writing (Without) the Body: Gender and Power in Networked Discussion Groups"; Dene Grigar, "Over the Line, Online, and Gender Lines: E-mail and Women in the Classroom"; Mary E. Hocks, "Designing Feminist Multimedia for the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women"; Margaret Daisley and Susan Romano, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at an M-Word"; Lisa Gerrard, "Feminist Research in Computers and Composition." Also featured are interviews with Helen Schwartz, Gail Hawisher, Mary Lay and Elizabeth Tebeaux, and Cynthia Selfe, and an online dialogue with the contributors.
671	Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillside, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991. Writing is a technology inseparable from the materials and techniques of writing. Forms of text—scroll, codex book, electronic text—determine the organization and presentation of knowledge. Print books make text seem permanent and widen the gap between text and author. Electronic text does the opposite: the reader organizes, shapes, and adds to text, calls up other texts from databases, and creates a unique text in the process of reading. Print text must impose a hierarchy on ideas, reducing the typically associative writing process to linear form. Hypertext restores associative composing and requires associative reading through the layering of text. It comprises a network of verbal ideas. Electronic text recalls older forms of literacy, using picture writing in its icons, and restoring the formulaic, associative, and dynamic qualities of oral literature. Electronic texts dissolve into parts to be recombined and merge into larger textual structures, disrupting the traditional notion of authorship. Electronic fiction takes advantage of these qualities, offering a multitude of paths for the reader to travel. The plurality of the text and the disappearance of the author, imagined by innovative authors and critical theorists, are realized in electronic texts.
672	Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Two seemingly contradictory logics—immediacy and hyper-mediacy—are mutually dependent; both old and new media invoke these twin logics to remake themselves and each other, and new digital media oscillate between immediacy and hypermediacy, between transparency and opacity, with a social dimension as important as their formal and technical dimensions. A double logic of remediation, which can function explicitly or implicitly, began with the introduction of digital media and borrows from film, television, and photography. However, no medium today does its cultural work in isolation from other media; all new media emerge from within cultural contexts and refashion other media, and a particular medium is always understood in relation to other past and present media. The kind of borrowing extremely common in popular culture today is very old, but unlike paintings, the digital medium can be more aggressive in its remediation. Such contemporary media as computer games, digital photography, film, virtual reality, and the World Wide Web illustrate the process of remediation. Users or viewers enter into a twofold relationship with the medium; the reflexive relationship between user and medium results in consequences for our culture's definitions of the self, defined by the perspectives that the subject occupies in the virtual space. New media are fully involved in the struggle to define the self as both embodied and mediated by the body. The remediated self, virtual self, and the networked self illustrate that whenever identity is mediated, it is also remediated.
673	Doheny-Farina, Stephen. The Wired Neighborhood. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1996. Networked virtual realities offer gee-whiz experiences, but they cut people off from geophysical communities and increase the "place-lessness" of modern life. MediaMOO, for example, is not a public space with the opportunity for public discourse, as advocates of online communities claim. Essentially a collection of private rooms, the MOO requires both complex socialization as well as technical expertise; it also reproduces cultural biases and resembles an airport bar more than a democratic space. Telecommuting, virtual schools, and community nets extend Doheny-Farina's argument that our dissolving communities cannot be "fixed" through technology and that users must become Net savvy without ignoring their cities, towns, and neighborhoods. See: Lester Faigley, Fragments of Rationality [179].
674	Gurak, Laura J. Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace: The Online Protests over Lotus Marketplace and the Clipper Chip. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1997. Two online protests—both motivated by concerns about privacy Ñoffer different models for community action in cyberspace and illustrate the technological determinism embedded in many views of cyberspace. In this empirical study of life on the Internet, the Marketplace and Clipper cases provide the basis for an analysis of the structures of online communication, where ethos and delivery take on new significance and are critical to rhetorical online communities. Although the two case studies demonstrate the potential of communication technologies for more participation in public discourse, Gurak notes the circulation of inaccurate information and also argues that these technologies reproduce, and may even magnify, gender inequity and sexism.
675	Handa, Carolyn, ed. Computers and Community: Teaching Composition in the Twenty-First Century. Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook, 1990. Nine essays, five on teaching and four on theory, describe and explore the changes to pedagogy and classroom structure wrought by computerized classrooms: enhanced collaboration, a stonger sense of community and audience, less focus on the teacher as reader, more fun with writing. Essays include Thomas Barker and Fred Kemp, "Network Theory: A Postmodern Pedagogy for the Writing Classroom"; Carolyn Boiarsky, "Computers in the Classroom: The Instruction, the Mess, the Noise, the Writing"; Kathleen Skubikowski and John Elder, "Computers and the Social Contexts of Writing"; Mary Flores, "Computer Conferencing: Composing a Feminist Community of Writers"; and Carolyn Handa, "Politics, Ideology, and Strange, Slow Death of the Isolated Composer or Why We Need Community in the Writing Classroom." See: Stuart Blythe, "Networked Computers + Writing Centers = ? Thinking about Networked Computers in Writing Center Practice" [620].
676	Hawisher, Gail E., and Sidney I. Dobrin, eds. Evolving Perspectives on Computers and Composition Studies: Questions for the 1990s. Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1991. Fifteen essays divided into sections that address research, classrooms, hypertext, and politics suggest directions for future work. Included are Nancy Kaplan, "Ideology, Technology, and the Future of Writing Instruction"; Patricia Sullivan, "Taking Control of the Page: Electronic Writing and Word Publishing"; Elizabeth Klem and Charles Moran, "Computers and Instructional Strategies in the Teaching of Writing"; Stuart Moulthrop, "The Politics of Hypertext"; Mary Louise Gomez, "The Equitable Teaching of Composition with Computers: A Case for Change"; and Emily Jessup, "Feminism and Computers in Composition Instruction."
677	Hawisher, Gail E., Paul LeBlanc, Charles Moran, and Cynthia L. Selfe. Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979–1994: A History. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1996. Computers and composition has become a coherent subfield within composition studies, growing from early experimental beginnings. Its development is chronicled in five chapters: 1979–1982, focusing on how personal computers were integrated into writing instruction; 1983–1985, described as the period of greatest enthusiasm for computer use; 1986–1988, when computers and composition emerged as a field; 1989–1991, when revisionist critiques of computer use began to appear; and 1992–1994, exploring the sudden impact of the Internet and commercially viable multimedia. Each chapter situates the field of computers and composition within a time period's developments in both composition studies and computer technology; notes then-current trends in the field; and links the field's issues with contemporary social and political developments. All but the first chapter also include interviews with key figures, both pioneers and emerging leaders.
678	Hawisher, Gail E., and Cynthia L. Selfe, eds. Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies. Logan: Utah State Univ. Press and NCTE, 1999. This substantial collection addresses issues of information technologies and the technocultural contexts facing those in the English profession. Each of the four parts contains a response essay. Essays include Doug Hesse, "Saving a Place for Essayistic Literacy"; Gunther Kress, " 'English' at the Crossroads: Rethinking Curricula of Communication in the Context of the Turn to the Visual"; Lester Faigley, "Beyond Imagination: The Internet and Global Digital Literacy"; Marilyn Cooper, "Postmodern Pedagogy in Electronic Conversations"; Charles Moran, "Access: The A Word in Technology Studies"; James Porter, "Liberal Individualism and Internet Policy: A Communitarian Critique"; Gail E. Hawisher and Patricia A. Sullivan, "Fleeting Images: Women Visually Writing the Web"; Cynthia L. Selfe, "Lest We Think the Revolution Is a Revolution: Images of Technology and the Nature of Change"; Anne Frances Wysocki and Johndan Johnson-Eilola, "Blinded by the Letter: Why Are We Using Literacy as a Metaphor for Everything Else?"; and Janet Carey Eldred, "Technology's Strange, Familiar Voices."
679	Hawisher, Gail E., and Cynthia L. Selfe. "The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class." College Composition and Communication 42 (February 1991): 55–65. Articles on computers and composition are overwhelmingly laudatory, praising the rise of collaboration among students in the networked classroom. Observations in such classrooms show, however, that students often work alone at their computers, interact with peers in nonsubstantive ways, or rigidly follow an agenda set by the teacher. Hence noncollaborative activities are not prevented by computer use. Computer-based pedagogies must be informed by critical perspectives, as well as the usual optimistic enthusiasm, to circumvent such problems. For example, assignments involving electronic conferencing should be informed by Foucault's critique of surveillance strategies.
680	Holdstein, Deborah, and Cynthia L. Selfe, eds. Computers and Writing: Theory, Research, Practice. New York: MLA, 1990. Ten essays address problems associated with computers and writing, such as software selection, staffing, control of equipment and facilities, and courseware development. Helen Schwartz argues in "Ethical Considerations of Educational Computer Use" that the inflexibility of software affects teacher-student interactions, that teachers are responsible for training as well as using software, that student ownership of texts in networks must be protected, that program limitations may cause miseducation, that software piracy must be prevented, and that access to technology must be spread as widely as possible. In "A Limitation on the Use of Computers in Composition," David N. Dobrin maintains that text processors are reliable and make no claims to give advice or analyze meaning, but that style analyzers, idea processors, and invention programs do not live up to their claims and are of little use. Michael Spitzer, in "Local and Global Networking: Implications for the Future," discusses how recognition of the capabilities of different kinds of networks facilitates selection of a variety of opportunities for collaborative writing, such as coauthorship, text swapping, conferencing, teacher coaching, and research.
681	Johnson-Eilola, Johndan, and Stuart A. Selber. "Policing Ourselves: Defining the Boundaries of Appropriate Discussion in Online Forums." Computers and Composition 13 (1996): 269–91. Computers and writing specialists need to consider the mechanisms of language and how discourses "write us." For example, as individuals operate in online forums, they internalize certain discourse laws and then "police" themselves and others. An analysis of one public, nonacademic listserv for technical writers, TECHWR-L, demonstrates the regulating mechanisms that function in online forums and the consequences of violating them. Common messages were strictly on-topic and followed accepted practices, for example, that participants should make their presence known. When threads developed that transgressed the boundaries of conventional discourse in technical communication—such as discussions of racism and sexism—subscribers posted complaints and commands to get back on topic, or they enacted the silent treatment. The authors analyze the debate over appropriate topics and recommend that students learn to recognize discourse regulations.
682	Selfe, Cynthia. Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. The national project to expand technological literacy supports and exacerbates inequities within our culture and the public education system. The Technology Literacy Challenge, a federal literacy project begun in 1996, provides a case study of the failure of such an initiative when it does not address the uneven distribution of technologies along the lines of race and socioeconomic status and the continuing reproduction of both illiteracy and poverty. Government initiatives, educators, businesses, parents, and ideology all play a role in creating a potent configuration for technological literacy that feeds Americans' belief that science + technology = progress, and that disguises the fact that technology is not available to everyone. Discounting the importance of multiple literacies and presenting either/or versions of technology, the dominant brand of technological literacy is defined as "competence with computers" rather than as a complex set of values, practices, and skills. The tendency to construct computers as either bane or boon encourages people to ignore the complicated relationships between technology and literacy, or to assume that the social and financial costs of technological literacy are inevitable. Humanist educators and literacy professionals should work on the local level to construct a larger vision of these issues; then intervene in the national project of expansion; and finally advocate critical technological literacy, which analyzes the technology-literacy link at fundamental levels of both conception and social practice.
683	Selfe, Cynthia L., and Susan Hilligoss. Literacy and Computers: The Complications of Teaching and Learning with Technology. New York: MLA, 1994. While providing a good introduction to the issues involved in using computers in literacy education, this collection also considers philosophical concerns of interest to experienced computer users, concerns that seem unlikely to become dated soon. Three sections explore how computer technology changes literacy instruction; issues for teachers and scholars in using collaborative computer networks and hypertext; and suggestions for further research on literacy and technology. These sections begin with overviews and conclude with critical responses and a fourth section concludes the book. Essays include Paul J. LeBlanc, "The Politics of Literacy and Technology in Secondary School Classrooms"; Gail E. Hawisher, "Blinding Insights: Classification Schemes and Software for Literacy Instruction"; Ann Hill Duin and Craig Hansen, "Reading and Writing on Computer Networks as Social Construction and Social Interaction"; William Goodrich Jones, "Humanist Scholars' Use of Computers in Libraries and Writing"; Billie J. Wahlstrom, "Communication and Technology: Defining a Feminist Presence in Research and Practice"; Stuart Moulthrop and Nancy Kaplan, "They Became What They Beheld: The Futility of Resistance in the Space of Electronic Writing"; Davida Charney, "The Effect of Hypertext on Processes of Reading and Writing"; and Christina Haas and Christine M. Neuwirth, "Writing the Technology that Writes Us: Research on Literacy and the Shape of Technology."
684	Selfe, Cynthia L., and Richard J. Selfe, Jr. "The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones." CCC 45 (December 1994): 480–504. Limited access is the most obvious political issue related to computers; more serious are the ways in which computer interfaces reproduce racist, sexist, and colonialist attitudes. Mapping computer interfaces illustrates their representation of knowledge as hierarchial, rational, and logical, including the dominance of American corporate culture in the languages and icons. A critically reflective stance toward computers will highlight the effects of domination and colonialism and will require educators and computer specialists to locate themselves on the map of interfaces. One tactic is to teach students to be technology critics, not just technology users; another is to redesign interfaces around different metaphors of work and production.
685	Sibyelle, Gruber. "Technology and Tenure: Creating Oppositional Discourse in an Offline and Online World." Computers and Composition 17.1 (2000): 41–56. Specialists in computers and composition may be positioned as outsiders to the traditional promotion and tenure process, but simple dichotomies don't do justice to the contradictions and multiplicity that characterize the status of technorhetoricians, who can take advantage of the complexity of their status to enact change. Sandoval's idea of differential movement creates an oppositional consciousness that can help to form coalitions. Those faculty working with instructional uses of technology should see their work as an oppositional form of praxis, where current value systems can be used to promote transformation within the academy. Technology-enhanced work does not simply follow accepted norms nor does it undermine those norms. Those who become chimeras, cyborgs, or boundary crossers employ theories of opposition to renegotiate what is marginal.
686	Spooner, Michael, and Kathleen Yancey. "Postings on a Genre of Email." CCC 47.2 (May 1996): 252–78. Does e-mail differ from other types of writing, or is the only distinctive feature of online writing its transmission via computer? Is e-mail a genre-in-the-making, with parallels to the development of the Victorian novel, or are electronic communications simply reproducing extant genres, rather than creating new ones? How much does the technology change the rhetorical situation? In an essay/dialogue that uses the tropes and codes of the net, two voices discuss whether e-mail constitutes a genre and raise questions about teaching with technology. E-mail can be categorized in at least five ways; none of the categories, as practiced in electronic classrooms, promises innovative pedagogy. What students need is strategies for "how to manage the multi-vocality and at the same time create enough coherence that a spectating conversationalist can enter the fray."
687	Sullivan, Patricia and James E. Porter. Opening Spaces: Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices. Greenwich, Conn.: Ablex, 1997. Critical research practices in computers and composition, key to the development of knowledge, require a revision of methodology that calls attention to its rhetorical nature as well as to the rhetorical situation of participants, writing technologies, and technology design. Methodology has theoretical dimensions and should be seen as a heuristic rather than as a set of rules; "announcing" a method, for example, does not ground a study in site-specific, situated ways. Postmodern researchers can develop a critical praxis to combat traditional methodological rules or guidelines; methodology in a postmodern sense is local, contingent, malleable, and heuristic, and research becomes a form of political and ethical action. Postmodern mapping serves as an analytic tool for critical framing; mapping relationships and positions visually and spatially helps to achieve methodological reflectiveness and epistemological vigilance in examining issues in the study of computers in the classroom and in the workplace. Critical postmodern theory helps to articulate criteria for determining uses of computers for studying writing with a focus on the politics and ethics of research in terms of both participants and aims. Enacting critical research practices requires a doubling action: an interplay of tensions and tactics not only at the level of overarching concerns but also in terms of specific critical moves. Tactics such as advocacy charting are offered for exploring the tensions between researchers and participants, and an early chapter serves as a glossary.
688	Taylor, Todd and Irene Ward. Literacy Theory in the Age of the Internet. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Concerned with the politics of technology and education, the eleven chapters in this volume suggest ways to solve complex issues regarding instructional technology. In three sections, Literacy in the Information Age, Literacy and the Body Electric, and Electronic Pedagogies, the essays include: Lester Faigley, "Literacy After the Revolution: 1996 CCCC Chair's Address"; Johndan Johnson-Eilola, "Negative Spaces: From Production to Connection in Composition"; Cynthia Haynes, "prosthetic rhetorics@writing.loss.technology"; Raul Sanchez, "Our Bodies? Our Selves?: Questions About Teaching in the MUD"; Todd Taylor, "The Persistence of Authority: Coercing the Student Body"; Tim Mayers and Kevin Swafford, "Reading the Networks of Power: Rethinking 'Critical Thinking' in Computerized Classrooms"; Patricia Fitzsimmons-Hunter and Charles Moran, "Writing Teachers, Schools, Access, and Change." See: Barbara Warnick, "Rhetorical Criticism of Public Discourse on the Internet: Theoretical Implications" [223].
689	Yagelski, Robert P. and Jeffrey T. Grabill, "Computer-Mediated Communication in the Undergraduate Writing Classroom: A Study of the Relationship of Online Discourse and Classroom Discourse in Two Writing Classes." Computers and Composition 15 (1998): 11–40. Online discourse in educational settings is characterized by complex relationships, more complicated than the findings of previous studies on the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Benefits are cited routinely in studies of CMC, but little attention has been paid to the ways in which online discussions and conventional in-class discourse may relate to and influence each other. Qualitative and quantitative techniques were employed to collect a variety of data related to the in-class and online discourse of two undergraduate writing courses at Purdue University: field notes of class meetings, interviews, surveys, and monitoring online discussions. Results of content coding were tabulated and then put into context through qualitative analyses. Findings indicated that how instructors set up, assigned, and managed the CMC components seemed to play a key role in shaping students' online participation, also a function of the perceptions about and experiences with CMC in general. Without models of online discussions, for example, students focused on issues that rarely surfaced in class; in addition, students as students reproduced in online discussions "normal" in-class discourse. Simply putting students online does not necessarily increases their rates of participation, change the nature of that participation, or provide a more egalitarian space.