It is certainly easier to do, read, write, travel....more with the aid of technology, but is it always necessary? I think that so often, the technium (as Kelly terms it) is the driving force behind our implementation and usage of a certain technology as well. Just because we can now often means that we must. One example is mass media itself. We have the ability to read online articles and texts with relative easy, and often from our phones. We can update our Facebook pages and read our 'friends' Facebook updates as often as we'd like, but so many are feeling compelled to update and read. We even harangue those within our social and work circles who do not update 'often enough' or who haven't heard and read the latest news/gossip. Those who choose to turnoff the stream of information, even for a short period of time, are doomed to face scathing criticism for being uninformed.
So composition needs to be addressed as well....I can post it, so should I? Where is my editor to help me perfect the piece? In texting and Twitter space, that editor is the character limit as I must be as efficient as possible, and thus succinctness is mandated unless I were to fall into the crutch of Textspeech....(makes me think of Doublethink and 1984). lol
Ok...it seems that Selber talks about this as well. I find it interesting that productivity has not gone up dramatically since the onset of the 'computer generation.' Selber cites William Bowen, "'So far productivity [in the United States] has grown more slowly in the computer age than it did before computers came into wide use'(267)."
ReplyDeleteSo we are able to do more, write more, talk more, travel more & further, but how do we measure productivity. It is a question I ask of my teaching colleagues fairly often --"Yes, we can do that, but do we need to and will it be beneficial to the students? How?"
It seems that the infatuation we have with the new trinkets of technology may not be at all beneficial, or at least may not be as beneficial as we first think them to be.