Re: computers and isolation

["Karen Degerstrom" <kdeg@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

one can pencil and paper write and face others in the room and even talk and
share with them while one pauses from pencil composing. the computer seems
to engulf the composer. there are many ways to process and to make outcomes.
----- Original Message -----
From: Kafkaz <kafkaz@kwom.com>
To: <cwonline@nwe.ufl.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 12:06 AM
Subject: Re: computers and isolation


> "John Walter" wrote
>
> <<books and pencils seem to hold an almost sacred place for some of us.
Why
> is this? Because they're the technologies we grew up with? I'd take a well
> developed memory over a pencil or a computer any day of the
> week.>>
>
> Mostly, the things that we grow up with (books and pencils, microwaves,
> microwave popcorn, cell phones, Walkperson type devices, instant
messaging,
> Gamegrrrl,
> spell-checkers, calculators, e-tickets, or whatever) don't seem like
> technologies at all.  They're just part of the world, part of our
day-to-day
> routines, part of us.  They only become recognizable as technologies when
> they *won't* work, as when a thunderstorm knocks out the power and we
> suddenly realize how very unconsciously we do things like reaching for a
> light switch the moment we enter a room.  Only academics and free-lance
> intellectuals routinely think of a sharpened #2 as an instance of
> technology--more than one, even, if its killer point came by way of one of
> those automatic pencil eaters.  (Whrrrrrr--I love those things.)
>
> Recently, one of my online students allowed as to how he HATES (he shouted
> it) reading and he HATES (he kept on shouting) writing.  Interesting tack
to
> take during week one of a writing course, I thought--I almost always end
up
> deeply appreciating the handful of students brash enough to do that kind
of
> thing.  Then, he went on, with no apparent awareness of the emerging
> contradiction, to explain how much of both of those very things he does
> *daily* via the technologies with which he's comfortable--the ones that
are
> transparent to*him*.  Because he enjoys reading and writing in online
> environments, those things don't merit a shout or a sneer, or count as at
> all related to what he simultaneously learned to do and to hate in school.
> He hates reading and writing, he shouts,  but he loves making web pages,
> playing multiple-user games, finding interesting information on the Web,
and
> participating in online conversations about all of those things.
>
> So, I think we have both students and teachers for whom the connection
> between reading, writing, and learning and what all might unfold online is
> not at all apparent.  In an environment in which reading and writing
aren't
> sacred things to be genuflected to from afar, this student routinely
> splashes around in the stuff of which composition is spun and loves it.
To
> many teachers, he'd count as the very embodiment of all that is
alienating,
> partly because he's already blazed a path into learning and text, and it
> doesn't have anything to do with school; it quite deliberately excludes
all
> that smacks of school-as-usual.  Coping with such a student in the
> traditional classroom would prove a challenge for any teacher not willing
to
> say something along the lines of, "Oh, I'm really struck by your "HATE IT"
> shout since to me you seem so clearly a writer already.  Why do you think
> you want to call this 'not writing' and 'not learning'?"  And I guess
that's
> pretty much the approach I'm taking with teachers, too:  here's a way,
even
> if you don't like or *want* to like all of it, that you might extend your
> explorations of that which you already love.  Odd thing, this spending
time
> urging students and teachers to see that they occupy the same continuum
> already--or maybe the same conveyer belt.  Some stand, some walk, some
run;
> everybody moves.
>
> And you know what?  Sometimes one little link, one little web site, will
get
> things inching along--
>
> http://www.pencollectors.com/
>
> for instance.
>
> Convincing my student that Plato has anything to do with hypertext might
be
> a weensy bit harder (though it would certainly be easy enough to show him
> how much of Plato *is* hypertext, now) but we have time.  First, I gotta
let
> him continue teaching me why this doesn't count as text at all.
>
> Kathy at C.O.D.
>
> P.S. <<A noumenal world--a world of hyperspace, of higher
dimensions--awaits
> discovery by all the sciences, which it will unite and unify, awaits
> discovery under its first aspect of a realm of PATTERNED RELATIONS,
> inconceivably manifold and yet bearing a recognizable affinity to the rich
> and systematic organization of LANGUAGE, including au fond mathematics and
> music, which are ultimately the same kindred language. The idea is older
> than Plato, and at the same time as new as our most revolutionary
> thinkers...All that I have to say on the subject that may be new is of the
> PREMONITION IN LANGUAGE of the unknown, vaster world--that world of which
> the physical is but a surface or skin, and yet which we ARE IN, and BELONG
> TO. >>
>
> Benjamin Lee Whorf, _ Language, mind, and reality_, 1942. (But ripped off
> from http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue2/bardini.html)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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