Review of Writing in an Electronic World: A Rhetoric with Readings
by Beth E. Kolko, Alison E. Regan, and Susan Romano
Addison Wesley Longman 2001
ISBN: 0-321-01964-4 $42.00 (paper) 592 pp.Review by Ruth Mirtz
Ferris State University
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General Description
The authors of Writing in an
Electronic World write in their introduction that in this book, "you’ll
find a process approach to writing and a cultural-studies approach to reading,
each geared for existing and emerging technologies" with the goal of moving
students "toward becoming engaged citizens and critical consumers of
technology" (xv). This textbook
integrates the technology of writing with a rhetorical and cultural-studies
stance by either infusing traditional textbook fare with technology issues, as
in the discussion of academic discourse, or by taking technology as the starting
point, as in the chapter "Listening in to Local and National
Communities" which uses web forums to examine how communities form around
issues.
For teachers who are looking for a writing text that assumes students will catch on quickly to uses of computers for educational purposes
beyond word processing, and for teachers who assume their classes will consist
of a mix of techno-geeks and techno-novices, this book will provide some
introductory material for examining technology as it affects writers and writing
processes. While the authors imagine that the students using this text will be expected to use multiple technologies, they don’t assume that
all students will be equally eager to use those technologies. However, the authors do assume that many students will blindly accept the technologies
handed to them if not prompted to think about them more critically.
Indeed, this book’s purpose is
to raise questions, not only on issues such as how technology affects
writing as an act of meaning-making, but also on matters of how and where to use
those technologies. What makes this textbook
different from many others with similar goals and pedagogical stances is that Writing
in an Electronic World starts with technology as a given, as, for instance,
when it gives a history of the technology of writing (pen to PDA) as a central
theme in its first chapters. Many
other new textbooks still treat questions of computers as an add-on to
the questions of writing, rhetoric, and argument, as though students had a
choice about using word processing, search engines, and email.
Technically, Writing in an
Electronic World is a rhetoric-reader. It has much in common with
traditional rhetoric-readers: it combines thematic readings (four or five per
chapter, from one to nine pages in length) with material on a range of writerly
issues such as invention, revision, organization, the rhetorical situation,
argument, peer response, research, genre, critical reading, visual rhetoric, and
collaboration. Apparatus includes response questions after readings and writing
suggestions at the ends of chapters, plus activities and prompts interspersed
within chapters. What makes it a textbook for an electronic world are its
"Technology Profiles," which describe and explain how to use
technologies such as email, search engines, databases, FTP, file sharing in
LANs, usenets, MOOs, and basic HTML. In addition, each chapter includes a
section called "Writers Using Technology": brief narratives by professional writers,
computer programmers, students, and even a cyber-activist, describing how they
use technology in their work.
Highlights
This textbook’s presentation of
valid, timely, and balanced perspectives on issues is what makes the book stand out among its competitors. For
example, one set of readings in Chapter 13, "Listening in to the Global
Community," contains a one-page editorial from The Economist about how the
global nature of communication is also making censorship global, an eight-page
article comparing censorship in Singapore with censorship in other cultures, and a three-page
article from the UNESCO Courier that discusses the multitude of cultural
attitudes toward the internet and its regulation.
All three readings are interconnected without repeating each other and
provide the kind of perspective and background information that most traditional
American undergraduates need in order to think globally. Some students (and
teachers) will need more background than the short introductions provided before
each set of readings in order to explore the issues fully and maintain their
interest, while other students will appreciate the presence of primary texts with a
place in history alongside editorials and personal essays. Some readings will be
familiar to most teachers, such as "Objections Noted: Word Processing"
by Sven Birkerts, "Why I Write" by George Orwell, and "The
Argument Culture" by Deborah Tannen. Others will not be so familiar.
The second strong point of this textbook is its emphasis on community,
which fits well with its emphasis on the rhetorical nature of all writing. The
readings, in particular, follow the path from academic communities to global
community: each kind of community is divided into chapters following a process
from "exploring" to "listening in" to "composing for" these
communities, with appropriate forays into the kind of communication technologies
that support the exploring, listening, and composing.
My favorite parts of this book are the sections
called "Writers Using Technology." For example, in Chapter 8, "Composing Arguments
in Academic Communities," a technical editor describes how in an advanced
writing course she used the Internet to research a local issue, how she gained
more context by getting fuller accounts via Internet sources and interacted with
people with different opinions on the issue. These are the sections I won’t
have to assign, because my students will read them anyway. The sections are intrinsically
interesting because they tell stories about real people in their own voices.
Downsides
It's easy to criticize the genre of "reader-rhetorics," because it's
simply impossible to please every teacher's individual needs for rhetorical
instruction and challenging-yet-not-daunting readings in one affordable book.
For my own first-year course, for instance, the rhetorical instruction is much
too slim; it doesn't cover thoroughly enough a repertoire of drafting, revising,
and editing strategies or feedback and interpretive methods for my
less-experienced first-year college students. This textbook might work much
better for my sophomore-level writing course, which stresses research and
reading. Yet since most of my students have difficulty seeing themselves as part
of any online community or any global community, the second half of this
textbook would present difficulties without more transition assignments than
the book provides. With a reasonable (that is, in keeping with the
prices of comparable textbooks) new-book price of $42.00, even if I used only half to two-thirds of the book, it might be a
good choice.
Worth Ordering an Exam Copy?
To make thorough use of this textbook, a
course would have to be designed around assignments that explored various new
technologies, that moved from academic to global audiences, or that
concentrated heavily on the theme of community. However, this textbook could also be used as a reader and supplement in a
writing course that used the Internet, email, usenet, and databases for
information sources in written papers, even if the assignments for those written
papers were not specifically matched to the chapters in the text. So even if an
instructor isn’t ready to assign website design and publication or to spend
time on a MOO, this textbook provides valuable instruction and
readings.
For an instructor just starting to imagine a course that
fully integrates technology and writing, this textbook is worth a close
look. I can recommend this textbook as an example of what our courses are coming to look like as we find ways to reintegrate rhetoric and
citizenship with technology and critical thinking in college writing
curricula.