Form. Function. (Con)junction? How (much) the overlap? When does form become function, or vice versa? In real life, somewhat, in books, yes, but even more so in cyberspace, we write our bodies, ourselves, each other, constructing them (socially) to be received, consumed. Yet this consumption isn’t final, declarative act, but rather a reassemblage. Here's how I see the assemblage of this book:
    In the introduction, the editors hope that this text will become “a benchmark for the complex and ever changing relations between computer technology, literacy, and culturally situated cognition” (15). Because the “author-explorers” are both teachers and writers (and, I would add, scholars) in electronic spaces, their ethos echoes loudly.  Victor Vitanza and John Barber both take us on wild rides to be enjoyed if not learned from. Mick Doerhty plays with academics, hypertext, and "kludging" in his kairotic, self-conscious (flat) "linking" to other chapters, and to the new words, ideas, practices, and concepts that come from the web. Kathi Yancey and Michael Spooner find poetics in their "composit" voices as they join in a self-reflection on their experiences collaborating/performing online.

    In the latter half of the book (before the final MOO), the chapters tend to become more recognizable, more traditional, more "academ-ick" (Mick Doherty's kludge). Michael Day gives a global and historical overview of research--a literature review, if you will--from which he focuses on a movement towards process, sighting/citing problems such as copyright/copyleft, what constitutes literacy, and how collaboration will be rewarded. Jeff Galin and Joan Latchaw take this chapter further, towards the development of professional archives and how our profession's "cultural capital" will be affected.

    Two of the chapters in this section are primarily pedagogical: Dickie Selfe and his collaborators, do a nice job of categorizing how various audiences have reacted to technology, then giving us guidelines for change locally and within our discipline (and now I know who/what to blame...). Judi Kirkpatrick helps each of us to get in touch with the techno-rhetorician within in her insightful pedagogical piece (which even includes a top ten list of how to "Morph yourself into a techno-rhetorician"). Both of these chapters, written by experienced early adopters, are fairly traditional but solid and timely.

    In the transitional chapter--that which serves as a bridge from the early playfulness and which begins our trek into the traditional--Nick Carbone uses Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck" as a metaphor for re-examining our connection with books, publishing, and all things academ-ick-y.  He closes with a call for "new models. That's what I want this book to be.

In the mean time, here are my final thoughts.

-beckster