Writing as Technology

So, I know that class lecture seemed a bit messy, so I want to type up the major points you should have gotten from the lecture. Furthermore, my third period class got some information that I need to relate to my second period class.

Plato

Plato/Socrates' critique of writing: writing does not help improve memory, but actually makes us rely on "external marks" "alien" to ourselves. Writing is framed as derivative knowledge in comparison to the dialectician, who gives the interlocutor the chance to respond and talk back, since words are "silent."

The problem with this is that, as we showed in class, Socrates doesn't really alllow students to "talk back," but usually just asks for consent.

Plato vs. Sophists
True knowledge (episteme) vs. sophistry

Plato and Contemporary Technology

In class, I pointed out that the argument that technology makes us "dependent" and "lazy" is present in Plato. I also made the point that by reading Plato we complicate our initial arguments about technology. We engage Plato in terms of our own question, complicating the straightforward prompt.

Writing and Critical Thinking (Allyn and Bacon)

• Good Writers ask useful and interesting questions. Good research questions cannot be answered with a yes/no answer (like the prompt); rather, good research questions complicate the way we usually think about a topic
• Writing is the process of thinking. We think through writing. 

• Good academic writing  has a purpose and an audience. 

Allyn and Bacon and our Technology Prompt

• Our prompt "Has technology made us smarter?" is a yes/no question--a bad research question. Yes, there can be non-productive (a euphemism for 'stupid') questions

•  Purpose/Audience -- The audience of this prompt is me in the role of "the teacher." The audience is so general that it could not possible contribute knowledge to an academic community, which will call for different (more specific, more complex) questions. 

• Genre--A genre is defined by Allyn and Bacon as " categories of writing that follow certain conventions of style, structure, approach to subject matter, and document design" (AB 21). I made the argument in class today that the "5-paragraph-essay-on-a-prompt-question-for-a-generic teacher" is its own genre of writing we are all ALREADY familiar with (I should note that Anis Barwashi's book Genre and the Invention of the Writer is responsible for my insight). It limits you because YOU are not asking the question--and the question will come from your purpose and audience. 

Technology Prompt and Academic Disciplines

In the third period class, we brain stormed how we could make "Has technology made us smarter" into a valid research question. For one, we could simply change the "has" to a "how," but this still does not direct the question to a specific audience.

Instead, let us ask a question about technology from the perspective of your discipline

• Economics: How has information technologies improved the standard of living in the United States?
• Politics/Ethics: How has information technology's distribution among first world countries disenfranchised the third world? How has it empowered the third world? Why? etc. 
• Philosophy: What is the essence of technology? (see Heidegger, "Question Concerning Technology")
• Health Science: How has medical technologies changed the relationship between doctors and patients in the 20th century? (this could also be a philosopher question--Michel Foucault takes this up in some of his writing) What specific technologies are responsible for such and such advancement
• Engineering: How has CAD programs affected urban design? 

etc. etc. These are just off the top of my head. "Technology" is a large abstraction as is "smarter" (or "intelligence"). We need to move beyond yes/no questions!

The take home "moral" of the story

If there is one thing I want you to think about it is the difference between demonstrating your knowledge to me (as a teacher) as if your papers are tests and contributing to the knowledge of a particular community you hope to enter as a professional. Research should not only be gathering support (though it is that too) but you need to research to figure out what the community is talking and writing about. What is a current question for your discipline?

I would argue (and this is not an original argument to me) that writing lays the foundation for democratic participation in constituting knowledge (the internet puts this into hyper-drive)