Let’s keep this party rolling!

Just to riff on Collin some more (cause this is what we “outside” compositionists do, eh?): I’ve been reading over the WPA follow up comments on their outcomes blog, and in spaces where some folks  have added to the conversation, and in a few more threads on the listserv archives, and I’m convinced that we are not speaking with anyone. Those who think they know better will think they know better. Never mind that the ones who should be agreeing with the tech-oriented plank (i.e., those with the most active research and teaching agendas regarding technology) you’ve come up with don’t agree with what you’re doing (A BIG BELL GOES OFF! WAIT A MINUTE, TECH-ORIENTED PEOPLE DON’T EVEN AGREE WITH OUR IDEAS! SHOULDN’T WE THINK ABOUT THIS???). Fine. You don’t care. But just get meta for one second, ok? For just a second, compositionists, don’t fret over my tone (”haughty” or not haughty) and listen:

Let’s get meta. Let’s look at the meta-level writing that just took place.
See what’s going on here? See how an idea develops, expands, meets resistance, responds, carries over into a number of spaces? That’s a piece of the online writing puzzle. That is so much more important than what you all are coming up with: “understand basic file management” or worrying about “cash cows” or “social reproduction” or how to write an email, or access (my goodness, where in the history of technology did universal access ever take place - beyond the pencil - and where did it take place in less than twenty years?) or software training (always the red herring thrown in for good measure…though none of us “critics” every mentions it), or the ever present cliche of “critical awareness” (as opposed to its much more lovely cousin we all try to teach, the uncritical awareness) or other superficial gestures which replicate the already existing superficial gestures popularized in textbook writing prompts or textbook research strategies (”first, narrow your topic….second, find a thesis statement…third, go to the library.. fourth, look up your topic.YAWN).

In other words, out of all the textbooks I’ve reviewed, read, taught from, had GTAs teach from, and so on, I’ve never seen the kind of writing taking place on our blogs and within our blogs taught.

And see something else: the ability to do this type of writing, to respond, riff, appropriate, link to, assemble, and so on (which I claim to be a part - not the only part but ONE part - of a digital writing puzzle) can be done with a computer (like I do here with this blog, but I could be writing in a wiki, in a hypertextual piece, in a video, and so on), or it can be done on paper (it occurs at lower levels on paper already). The digital aspect is what foregrounds the process in ways print culture and its logics didn’t do. The digital aspect didn’t erase a piece of print; it added to it.

Ok? We cool? Probably not. But, then again, that’s why we’re out here on the Web. Because we’re obviously not working ideas out well together (one part of comp and us “tech” folks), and we eventually went to the spaces where we could work out ideas together (us so-called “tech” folks). My suggestion: hang with us. Read our blogs. Not one day. Not two days. Read ‘em over a year. Follow the threads. See how ideas form, fall apart, get redone, build off one another, and so on. That’s not all there is to digital writing. But it is a digital writing occuring.