Writing in a Material World

Literacy scholar Christina Haas writes in Writing Technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy:

For over a decade, academic and practitioner journals in electronics, business, language studies, as well as popular press, have been proclaiming the arrival of the "computer revolution" and making far-reaching claims about the impact of computers on Western culture. Although the actual technology identified as revolutionary force may have changed -- from word processing in the late 1970s to electronic mail and hypertext in the 1980s to the InterNet as "information highway" in the 1990s -- in most cases it is a technology of words, a technology that changes how written language is produces, processed, transported, and used. Implicit in many arguments about the revolutionary power of computers is the assumption that communication, language, and words are intimately tied to culture -- that computers' transformation of communication means a transformation, or a revolutionizing, of culture. [....] The challenge of accounting for the relationship between writing -- as both a cognitive process and a cultural practice to material technologies that support and constrain it is great. [....] Technology and writing are not distinct phenomena; that is, writing has never been and cannot be separate from technology. Whether is is the stylus of the ancients, the pen and ink of the medieval scribe, a toddler's fat crayons, or a new Powerbook, technology makes writing possible. To go further, writing is technology, for without a crayon or the stylus or the Powerbook, writing simply is not writing."

Carl A. Rashke writes in The Digital Revolution and the Coming of the Postmodern University:
"Those corporate and academic interests that stand in the way of 'digitalizing' higher education may be without realizing it attempting to retard the entire course of Western history. Higher education is the last redoubt of Medieval privilege and aristocracy. Digital learning is the true bulwark of global democracy."

Consider the following: What do you think about Haas and Raschke? Do you agree or disagree with them? Do you think our use of computers in this class has influenced what you think, how you think, or how you write? Have they hindered or enhanced your learning?