Community Meetings
The Way We Will Have Become
The Future (Histories) of Computers and Writing

Position Statement
Cindy Selfe
I would like to think that the kinds of texts that we're beginning to ask students to create in online environments (and those we are beginning to create ourselves) are not limited only to conventional genres, and certainly not limited only to conventional conceptions of "writing." One of the most interesting areas of work that I can see in our field has to do with an expanded notion of both composition and text that goes way beyond our current-traditional understanding of those terms to include the use of still and moving images, video, animation, sound, and other elements that are composed to create a text.

Where do I see such composition work happening? I can mention three kinds of examples--the WWW work that Geofff Sirc has students do at the University of Minnesota in the tradition of the artist Marcel Duchamp, the work that Anne Wysocki has students do in composing multimedia texts at Michigan Tech, and the work that students around the country are doing in creating their personal homepages.

To me, these texts are much richer, much more robust and engaging--both to create as an author/designer and to re-create as a reader/viewer/listener--than are text-only documents. Indeed, text-only documents--what we generally call writing--are looking a bit pale and anemic these days.

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