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The Remediation of PrintSince the original publication of Writing Space first edition (hereafter WS1) in 1991, a powerful metaphor for interpreting the effects of digital technology on all modes of expression has emerged in the term "remediation." With Richard Grusin, Bolter published a book by that name in 1999 that examined new media in terms of how they have adopted and modified previous technological forms, concentrating on painting, photography, film, and television. (See the Kairos review by David Blakesley). As the revised subtitle of Writing Space makes clear, the "remediation of print" is one of its central concerns.
Writing Space second edition (hereafter WS2) has less of an historical orientation than the first edition, which traced the history of writing in more detail, in order to pay attention to ways in which new media, particularly the Web, are "refashioning" (another term Bolter often employs) the ways text and hypertext work. In a sense, the whole concept of digital processing of communication and expression implies that new ways of reading and writing are the norm now, that new media have changed all the rules of the literacy game. As in WS1, however, Bolter goes to some lengths to point out that new media, in whatever historical era, first serve the forms and genres of traditional writing before breaking out with modes of expression implied in and developed from the newer media.
For example, as movable-type printing emerged in the fifteenth century, it remediated the common form of permanent writing, the manuscript codex. At first, print forms imitated manuscript forms in letter type formations, rubricated initial letters, continued use of abbreviated words, ligatures, and so on. Slowly, as printers discovered that printed letters need not be thickly formed in order to be legible, and that word abbreviations were not necessary to save time and effort, printing fashion changed into the formats we are familiar with today. On other levels, remediations also occurred with the rise of topographic writing and associated technologies such as the table of contents and the index. As Walter Ong and others have remarked, manuscript compositions usually reflect a more oral, highly rhetorical narrative mode, often repeating and reemphasizing topics to aid memory (Ong, Rhetoric; Ong, Orality); with the resources of print, these strategies were no longer necessary and indeed interfered with communication efficiency. So over a period of about a hundred and fifty years, the nature of print as the preferred final and permanent form of writing remediated older practices, substituting its obvious and more subtle qualities and becoming the paradigm for literacy.
The advent of digital technologies in recent decades has turned out, according to Bolter, to be “one of the more traumatic remediations in the history of Western writing” (WS2 24). Basing much of his discussion on the work of French cultural historian Roger Chartier, Bolter suggests that the differences between digital texts and traditional printed or written ones are so numerous and radical that reader and writer dislocation has been common, not to mention the cultural, economic, and pedagogical implications of the change in emphasis from permanent, “monumental,” and stable forms of literacy technologies to digital modes that are essentially ephemeral. Surely, the speed at which digital remediation has proceeded, especially compared with the leisurely process of print remediation five centuries ago, is one of the major reasons for this trauma, although Bolter does not emphasize this aspect.
To many of us in higher education, though, the dislocation of digital remediation is past, and electronic writing is the norm for personal, professional, and pedagogical literacies. An interesting part of Bolter’s discussion involves a look at “refashioned dialogues” in chapter 6, where he examines the ways traditional linear-hierarchical writing is giving way to new hypertextual or networked forms – or not, as the case may be. Bolter sees the role of the Web as significant in adding a structure to our writing that makes explicit the underlying associational or networked thinking process that writing depends on for coherence and meaning. Hypertext reading and writing, as instantiated on the Web, adds a third dimension to the traditional linear (at sentence level) and hierarchical (at topical level) processing of text: “the network as visible and operative structure” (WS2 106).
Given the remediation of writing in the face of digital technology and the Web in particular, Bolter considers – with some inescapable irony – the current practices of academics in writing and disseminating texts:Academics are not publishing their most valued thoughts about new media – the ones for which they hope to obtain tenure or promotion – in new media. Although there is more experimentation than ever before, only the most consciously avant-garde among scholars are producing hypertextual “essays.” (WS2 111)Kairos readers will no doubt have reflected on this paradox before as we have discussed and debated many arguments made in traditional print form (Bolter lists a dozen or so on p. 112) that describe and theorize about digital media. The self reference is also clear – – WS2 is a monumental print text, not hypermedia. (Although the first edition was made available in Storyspace hypertext format, it was never put into Windows format and thus excluded many potential hypertext readers. Even if WS2 is ultimately released as a hypertext, the primary emphasis by the publishers is clearly to thoroughly exploit its traditional print form first.) Why don’t we practice what we preach? Bolter suggests that hypertext could potentially alter the form of the academic argument, or at least make it more complicated to write and interpret; since the argument has been the operative form of scholarly discourse since ancient times, such reluctance to change it is understandable (WS2 112). Moreover, hypertext, a diffuse and often open-ended mode, may subvert the effectiveness and authority of the argument itself. Scholars may feel intuitively, writes Bolter, that the “fixed quality of print is necessary to legitimize their arguments” (WS2 112).
Even so, an analogy to Congressional campaign finance reform may be instructive here. Campaign reform is a good idea – everybody says as much – but it’s hard for elected officials to change it when they have benefited so much from the old system. After all, it is not the incumbents who should worry about money. Scholars may bow to the importance and innovation of new media, and even theorize endlessly about them, but their (our) reputations have been made in print, where the gatekeeping function is fairly straightforward and where the scholarly rules are well known and well managed by incumbents. So, the remediating potential of hypertext generally and the Web in particular at present remains underused. Kairos, as a forum publishing native hypertexts, is an encouraging exception to this rule.
Hypertext and new media forms have been applied in teaching, however, and Bolter reports on several fronts where writing instruction has been and is being changed by digital media to “refashion the voice of the text and reform the dialogue that goes on inside and outside the classroom” (WS2 114). Several common applications of hypermedia are surveyed: as a reference for cultural critique (114); as a classroom discussion environment (both synchronous and asynchronous) (115); as an arena for examining the politics of identity (116); as new types of interactive textbooks (116); and as a composing environment (117). This movement is well known to Kairos readers, who comprise much of what has come to be known as the computers and writing community, with roots in the National Council of Teachers of English and Conference on College Composition and Communication, and looking to Computers & Composition (both the journal itself and publication series) and the annual Computers & Writing Conference as professional epicenters.
Bolter’s presentation of the field of hypermediated, refashioned writing instruction seems generally accurate if necessarily brief (but see discussion about MOOs). No mention is made of the increasing movement toward networked distributed teaching, or “distance education,” where communication is totally mediated through synchronous, asynchronous, and visual forms (See Newbold). The degree to which this environment encourages new media processes and products would be useful to explore, as would the wider issue of the extent to which core writing programs should be preparing students to use hypermedia in written expression. As Bolter’s final section of chapter 6 suggests, the general culture, both business entities and individual users, have responded enthusiastically to the new forms of visually-based Web writing (119). Are we as teachers then doing a disservice to our students by not emphasizing this new kind of writing as a significant part of our general writing instruction? Or is our primary function to teach the forms that are accepted in academia – the linear argument embodied in standard usage? Or is there a productive mixture of both in this transitional period of remediation?