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Jerome

I should have read your message before posting mine - an artefact of the
technology we are using to communicate!

I agree wth your analysis but it is not as unresearched as you seem to
suggest - there is plenty of interesting work on how different technologies
mediate activity under the banner of Cultural Historical Activity Theory
(see the Mind, Culture and Activity home page
http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/ for starting points, if you don't know it
already).

I can think of several variables that seem to be signification in people's
experience of technology and how it mediates their activity, for example the
degree to which they have to make aspects of the activity explicit (I guess
inversely related to how 'embedded' or 'embodied' the technology is); the
degree and nature of connectivity to other people afforded by the
technology, etc etc. But I don't think these are fixed aspects of the
technology. Writing, for example, was once beyond the control of the vast
majority of people; now it is ready-at-hand for almost all of us. Practices
change; technologies call us into being in new ways, like Althusser's shout
in the street.

I encourage my student poets to compose in their heads, to write things
down, and to edit things on the screen, at different points in the writing
process, and to experiment with how this influences their writing practice.
Different technologies set up different resistances - in the creative arts
we require resistance. So long live technophobia!

Helen

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jerome Fletcher" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 11:13 AM
Subject: [WDL] technophobia


> Hello . This is Jerome Fletcher, director of writing at dartington college
> of arts.
>
> Can I start with a simple observation - which I'm sure has already been
> made - to the
> effect that when talking about technophobia, what we mean is fear of
> digital
> technology. Franc makes the point about the flexibility and comfort of pen
> and paper
> in comparison to 'technology' but these tools are in themselves
> technologies. The
> difference between the pen and the computer is twofold. Firstly, most of
> us are more
> used to the technology of the pen (the generarational point) and secondly
> the gap
> between them is one of mediation. The computer is more highly mediated
> technology than the pen. Handwriting is an embodied practice in ways in
> which
> typing is not because we can see, or at least believe we can see, the
> IMmediate
> effect of handwriting. It is much less obvious how the process of
> mediation works
> with digital technology, how we get from the striking of a key to the
> appearance of a
> letter on a screen (I realise that everything I said is highly contentious
> and  an area
> ripe for enquiry). In other words the difference revolves around levels of
> control of
> the technology. For some people that is unproblematic. For others it is at
> the root of
> their 'phobia', I suspect.
>