"Electronic
Writing as More than Writing: What the Experts Say"
"Writing is headed into *more*
of everything (alphabetic text, multi-media texts, hypertexts). Some scholars
are saying that e-mail has led to a revival of the personal letter (as
opposed to telephone), and I know that my students spend hours on e-mail.
And you should have heard them groan when I told them that for their final
projects, their groups needed to turn in at least 20 single-spaced pages
not counting the front matter & back matter---yet I'm now looking at
projects of 40 pages and more. Yes, they are interspersed with graphics,
but if we added up the alphabetic text, we'd find that they have written
more text. Indeed, more of everything."
"Composition is both invention
and compilation, creation and appropriation, both of ideas and of the very
selves those ideas are meant to represent. To be sure, online and web-related
writing environments appear to be taking writing exactly where it has been
headed already. MOOs are almost completely linguistic environments, and
they afford the opportunity--the necessity--to literally create oneself
in language, i.e., through writing." --- Lance Massey
"I'm not sure what the writing
was that we might have lost. I think the danger is not that we'll lose
anything in writing on computers but that we'll gain too much and that
that gain will lay the groundwork for much more profound and material losses
later. When the ideology of traditional writing attached to paper has been
sufficiently debunked, then the economic arguments in favor of moving students
entirely or largely out of the classroom and creating much larger classes
over computer networks with equipment paid for by students themselves may
become overwhelming." --- Sigfried Gold
"Teaching on-line writing or hypertext
writing or web authoring (etc.) gives students more skills with which to
improve their lives than the "college essay" does. In this way I not only
call it writing, but call it creating their world through writing." ---
Rick Stock
"Writing (no matter how it was
done in any era) has always been more than the mere inscription of words
upon the page. There are still the questions of audience and intent, questions
which must be considered not only with regard to textual elements but also
with regard to non-textual elements (pictures, graphics, etc.) If anything,
those questions are even more important in the electronic arena." --- Walt
Huntsman
"As a verb, electronic or screen
writing is still the act of writing. As a noun, it is digital, it is data
as much as it is art, currency, or knowledge. As data, its value is derived
from the extent of its immersion in and reconfiguration by global communication
flows. To me, then, writing is still writing, but it is not so much a distinct
form of communication as it is a pattern we trace in the pool of our general
communication." --- Carey Campbell
For the past couple of years, I've required
students in my courses to become web authors before the semester is through.
To promote this process, I ask them to compile an online portfolio, replete
with reflective cover letter and selected writings, and to present their
portfolio for my and their classmates' viewing. The above comments, all
written in response to the five Town Meeting questions by last semester's
web authors, reflect the graduate students' own experiences with electronic
writing, as well as those of the students with whom they work. Each comment
underscores that writing on the web is, well, writing, and that to regard
it as something other than writing approaches foolishness. In all its myriad
manifestations--MOOing, emailing, project preparation, and web authoring--electronic
writing reflects the kinds of thinking, assembling, connecting, and synthesizing
that mark us as writers. As the comments suggest, electronic writing makes
visible the processes in which we immerse ourselves as writers but extends
their reach in ways that are intriguing and exhilarating--but also uncertain.
Using my students' comments, I argue both
for the necessity--and inherent dangers--in broadly defining the subject(s)
of our field. |