Who is afraid of New Media?

I couldn't agree with Wysocki more, or less, or more.  One one hand, she brilliantly "flips the script" on much of our class discussion when she writes about the valuable critique teachers of writing can bring to new media, "...to help composers of texts think usefully about effects of their particular decisions as they compose in a new media text." (6) Our class discussions often focus on new media in terms of its utility, complexity and questionable benefit to the task of teaching writing. For good or bad, invasive new media are assaulting and changing our established methodology.  A reactive gesture that merely adjusts writing instruction to the onslaught misses opportunities and obligations. I hear her saying that although new media may be exotically compelling, using modes that are visually, aurally, interactively and in other ways stunning, they are still a philistine presence in our well-established and thought out discipline, and badly in need of rhetorical critique and accountability.  New media needs a scholarly spanking to be shown who is boss. The thinking and scholarship invested in composition and communication studies needs to be applied toward all new media. Socrates has been speaking across the millennia to inform our rhetoric and writing.   Surely, he has something to say to the web page, the social network, the online journal, the audio essay, etc.  Just because it is new and and uncomfortable to stretch, doesn't mean it isn't the job of rhetoricians.


One the other hand, I don't quite get where Wysocki is going with her argument about raising consciousness about the interface,"texts where we keep their materialism visible." (19)  Composition that is self-conscious about its form is Warholian in its ironic newness, and in its stimulating and self-important manner.  Twisting texts in the ways she describes does indeed change the thinking processes involved, privileging the form over the content.  For rhetorical criticism and for and investigation of  new possibilities, of course, enhanced awareness is useful.  Just like when critiquing an argument we look at its claims and warrants.  She seems to want to go further, looking not only at new media but even the written word in terms of the paper and ink it is written with.  Something is lost here.  We possess a well honed means of communicating complex thought through words on an invisible interface.  That means has value and purpose.  Slowing down to notice the margins, and font on each .pdf Mary assigns limits my time and ability to address the ideas.  I know Wysocki is after something, an awareness and equivalence that puts new media on a level playing field for criticism perhaps?  While I am comfortable welcoming new means of communications, I am not interested in the deconstructing written text to the point of distraction, or even meaninglessness.


On the final hand, I agree with Wysocki's call for "...producing texts using a wide and alertly chosen range of materials." (20) Digitally comprehensive composition instruction can only be a good thing in a culture where people are already "reading" and "writing" multimodal compositions everyday.  They are just doing so in relative ignorance.  Writing teachers, willing to embrace these new modes and methods, are in a great position change that.  They simply need an expanded view of what they are already doing, teaching literacy and knowledge through composition, and increasing awareness and meaning through practice.

Images

Robot           http://io9.com/5013950
Draw Good  http://drawinghowtodraw.com
Bob Dylan   http://withloveandswallow.blogspot.com