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01/10/2005 Archived Entry: "Computer Literacy"

Computer Literacy
I'm gonna snag this off of John's blog (dang, John, that Manila makes linking to posts hard to do), a post
on a recent TechRhet thread on Computer Literacy.
I link to it because such topics are the focus of much of my critique on how composition meets the digital: we see everything through familiar eyes. I call this practice conservative pedagogy, conservative not for its political view points (Bush vs. Kerry) but rather for the act of conservation/preservation. Pedagogy depends on being conservative in order to function, no matter what label it slaps on its practices (radical, progressive, etc.).
Since I bailed TechRhet awhile back, I rely on John's quoting of the thread. These quotes are all about how to use tools. Students should be able to identify file formats, turn on the box, save, print, attach, use images, break the defaults, etc. Great. All very useful things we should know how to do. Are these traits of a literacy? To an extent. But they lack something else. They lack the knowledge generating skills necessary for negotiating information in a new media environment. Typically, we see that part met with demands for "critical" thinking or "the ability to identify reliable sources" or something else of this sort which doesn't come to mind at the moment. Ok. Again, all useful.
But is that it? If that is all this notion of "computer literacy" entails, is that all these negotiations demand, and how is it all that different from the literacy we already know? Well, you use a computer. And. . . And nothing. That's it. And there lies the limitations regarding this kind of thinking; it's conservative. Its basis comes from the conservation of an already established definition of literacy. In other words, there is little which recognizes that the logics of computers (whatever I may mean by such a general term) may, in fact, alter our perceptions of literacy in quite dramatic fashion. To negotiate the new media environment may have little in common with the non-new media environment (a point I do find truth in and often write about).
All of this is to say that I’m drawn into these discussions easily, for I don’t understand yet why we continue to force new media/computers/whatever into the mold of literacy. The easiest answer is that: we only understand new concepts in terms of familiar ones. But by doing so, we also prevent any new understandings of rhetoric and writing, and – what Brendan is writing about over on his blog – invention. To work with the unfamiliar is not necessarily to be progressive (a term I find equally as conservative as conservative). Instead, it is to work with the notion of possibility. Once you frame an emerging logic as the known (thinking critically, for example, or how to use a tool, or the essay form), you are not working with possibility (which always suggests the unknown). You are working with what has been preserved. If the outcome of these investigations differs little from what we’ve already been doing (and I believe that is what most of the scholarship/discussion so far reveals), what has been the point of calling any of this computer literacy, digital literacy, techo-literacy, whatever flavor you choose? Meet the new boss. Just the same as the old boss.
This is a blog post, so the argument is simplified, of course. But one last point to leave hanging: the notion of critique. Cultural studies found the discovery of critiques centered on race/class/gender to be radical for challenging the status quo’s choices for representation and power sharing (and even more radical when shifted from literature to popular culture). Very helpful. But the practice of critique is still conservative. The teaching of this practice becomes quickly very conservative (show the race/class/gender breakdown in this ad/pamphlet/novel/song). The actual teaching practice is seldom – if ever – broke down. We preserved the same methods without ever addressing whether the new objects of study forced changes in how we use the methods themselves.
That’s my analogy with computer literacy. Do with it/jump all over it/as you will.

Posted by joanna @ 01/11/2005 01:19 PM EST

Good points, as usual, Jeff. The title of my CCCC Chair's address was "All Good Writing Begins at the Edge of Risk" and I used a PowerPoint metatext with visuals and sound unlike anything ever done in that forum before. It got lots of positive response, including from our mutual friend, Geoff Sirc. But I'm not certain it led others to see multi-modal writing as a new form.

Part of the issue is that new forms often need to incorporate the old as a way of validating themselves. Early printing tried to make its books look just like manuscripts so they would be credible. I see on-line journals looking almost exactly like print journals--that makes them credible.

Since this is the month of Janus, maybe that's an image to play with. We are in the middle of this great shift to digital everything, so we have a face looking forward and a face looking backward, but most of us are afraid of being called two-faced--when that's what we are and have to be right now.

One local example: our department's distance learning committee is trying to figure out how to address our literature committee which has arbitrarily declared that no literature course can be taught on line, even in hybrid format. Some faculty looking one way and some looking the other.

Posted by John @ 01/10/2005 09:20 PM EST

Soc. And you would speak of a surface and also of a solid, as for example in geometry.

Men. Yes.

Soc. Well then, you are now in a condition to understand my definition of figure. I define figure to be that in which the solid ends; or, more concisely, the limit of solid.

figure
this out.

Posted by jeff @ 01/10/2005 08:35 PM EST

I think that the geometry lesson in the Meno has important things to tell us here.

Posted by Jonathan @ 01/10/2005 08:16 PM EST

One more elaboration/comment/addition:
When we were in grad school, I saw a call for papers for Radical Teacher on technology. Bradley and I wrote up a proposal about the NWE and what we felt it was doing to reimagine the role of teacher/student/and technology.
Richard Ohmann wrote back that he didn't understand how the students resisted the system of control.
Ok. There you go: conservatism. The "where's the resistance" question. Frame it as radical or whatever, but if it is always (what Bradley now calls the logic of default) the fall to answer, it is conservative.
That's how I see the computer literacy threads. There's a serious default option being enacted.

Posted by jeff @ 01/10/2005 07:37 PM EST