Kairos Issue 7.3 Kairotic Technologization About the Structure of this Hypertext Works Cited Angelo Bonadonna Megan Hughes

Introduction to Kairotic Technologization Identity Narratives Professional Identity         Scholarly Identity         Learning/Teaching Identity         Personal Identity         Collaborative Reflections Collaborating with Megan Hughes         Megan Hughes's Reflections         Conclusion: Towards the New Coherence

Conclusion: Towards the New Coherence

Ultimately, the new coherence of kairotic technologization remains largely a matter of faith. Or perhaps bravado. The realities of the stories presented here point toward many things, few of them having the earmarks of "order." My journey began in my role as a beginning assistant professor in a position (English education) that was on the periphery of my academic training (composition/rhetoric); that provided me (in 1996) little technological support (no computer, restricted Internet access, no academic technology movement, minimal Web development support, etc.); that required me to learn network and server technology to host the simplest forms of interactive courseware; that pushed me toward service; that encouraged my leadership in professional development initiatives; that positioned me in numerous grant-writing projects; that encouraged my most obsessive geek tendencies; and so it went. . . .

But this disintegrating professional life possessed a logic that I perceived, albeit guiltily and with uncertainty. I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing, but I was working hard--and I was getting powerful results: working systems, Linux chic, adulation from colleagues, grant money, a reputation, and most of all, a sense of academic mission in terms of a new moment in higher education along the lines Fred Kemp best <rants> articulates </rants>.

In all, the only coherence to this story is the type of order one gets through extreme involvements--in this case the quirky passion of an enthusiastic, frightened, borderline arrogant, energetic/deflated, manic, "young" (not really, but "junior" in professional terms), misbehaving-but-with-a-purpose scholar/teacher/geek...

Did I entitle this section "Towards the New Coherence"?

Calling on Burke for a Fix

Dare I implicate Kenneth Burke in the role of tech support? And to fix a problem in coherence? But conclusions must facilitate the sorting of all that has gone before, and Burke provides the necessary tools here:

The critical ideal, according to Kenneth Burke, "is to use all that is there to use" (Philosophy of Literary Form, 23) The Web--technology in general--lets you put lots there. In its plenitude, the Web enables powerful means of making teaching, scholarship, and service visible. Because of its capability to put together so many different kinds of work, the Web is making available a new kind of criticism, or assessment, of professional work. Burke also advocates the conversion of liabilities to assets (Attitudes Toward History, 171). The problems of technology, as presented in these links, became resources for me. Because of my institution's inability to meet my needs, I was forced to learn new things, and as I learned them, I was able to reflect on my learning processes and turn those reflections into scholarly endeavors. Institutionally, I was catapulted into positions of authority and leadership I never would have attained through more traditional career processes. Much of my development followed the prompting of wise, caring mentors in faculty development who saw immediately the implicit coherence behind all the "stuff" in which I had become entangled. The question for institutional planning then becomes, how do we systemize this bit of fortunate wisdom, so that such alternate types of professional coherence become less guilty, illicit, counter-cultural, and self-destructive?

All told, this article celebrates a "dirty" type of "total involvement," a synthesis of different activities and roles that was made possible and necessary by the problems of technology. Or, (taking a somewhat smaller view), there's a chance that all the work here is the residue of a good, professional friendship that was able to evolve out of conditions favorable to that friendship. Or, (taking an even smaller, more cynical, view), there's a chance that this "total involvement" via technology is a kind of personality idiosyncrasy that I am attempting to rationalize in an article like this. The questions and answers range; but I intend "to use all that is there to use," and to keep on figuring it out.