Computers and writing : the cyborg era

317 Pages·2004·4.163 MB·English

by  James A Inman

Computers and Writing
The Cyborg Era

Computers and Writing
The Cyborg Era
James A. Inman
University of South Florida

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS
2004 Mahwah, New Jersey London
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
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Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
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Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
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Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Inman, James A.
Computers and writing : the cyborg era / James A. Inman
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 0–8058–4160–1 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0–8058–4161–X (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching—Data processing.
2. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching—Computer network
resources. 3. English language—Rhetoric—Computer-assisted instruction.
4. Report writing—Study and teaching—Data processing. 5. Report writing—
Computer-assisted instruction. 6. Report writing—Computer network resources.
I. Title.

PE1404 .I46 2003
808'.042'0285—dc21 2002192536
ISBN 1-4106-0999-5 Master e-book ISBN
Contents
Foreword vii
Anne Ruggles Gere
Preface ix
1 Defining Computers and Writing:Defining the Cyborg Era 1
Community Voices 27
2 Computers and Writing From 1960 to 1979:Cyborg History 59
Community Voices 73
3 Recasting Canonized Computers and Writing Scholarship, 107
1979–2000: Cyborg Narratives
Community Voices 125
4 Integrated Meaning-Making Systems in Computers and Writing: 159
Cyborg Literacy
Community Voices 175
5 Challenging Material Conditions and the Nature of Teaching 209
and Learning in Computers and Writing: Cyborg Pedagogy
Community Voices 229

6 Setting an Agenda for the Future in and Beyond Computers 261
and Writing: Cyborg Responsibility
References 289
Author Index 299
Subject Index 303
v

Foreword
Anne Ruggles Gere
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
These days the word computer is frequently followed by posthuman, a term that
has already taken on multiple meanings including human identity as information
pattern rather than embodied action, human nature transformed by biotechnology,
or the material human body as something to be redesigned or left behind alto-
gether. Accordingly, it is refreshing to open a book that insists computers must be
considered in light of the people who work with them, and the human community
is every bit as important as the technology.
James Inman uses a variety of strategies to make good on his claims for the
importance of the human community of computers and writing. I didn’t count, but
he includes many, many people from the community. Some of them respond to
questions, some appear in a montage of scholarly voices, and some participate in
an electronic conversation. The questions include “How did you come to be active
in the computers and writing community?” “What is the best lesson you have
learned from the computers and writing community?” “What scholarly project in
computers and writing has been most influential for you, and why has it been so
influential?” Som e responses are highly personal accounts, whereas others offer a
perspective on the computers and writing community, but there are no commen-
taries on the posthuman.
The question I found most interesting was “What worries you about the com-
puters and writing community, and why does it worry you?” Responses varied
from what I would call status concerns—how computers and writing does or does
not connect with other communities, fields, and disciplines in the academy—to
wondering where the community will go next and if it will be able to retain its cut-
ting edge quality, to concerns about how little the community problematizes soft-
vii
viii FOREWORD
ware, to questions about what technology does for students. No one worries about
the implications of posthumanism.
The montage of scholarly voices includes a variety of pronouncements on what
the computers and writing community is accomplishing, its varying levels of
effectiveness, and issues it will need to face. Participants in the Tuesday Café dis-
cussion of the Netoric Project focus on the future of computers and writing, con-
sidering technical support, compensation, and disagreements within the commu-
nity. There’s nothing about the posthuman in either of these, or anywhere else in
the book.
Given both Inman’s argument for the importance of the human community and
the way he makes that argument, the absence of the posthuman is not surprising.
Instead of looking toward the ways human nature will be changed by technology,
he does several things to underscore the community among the humans repre-
sented in the book. In addition to including comments by a great number of indi-
viduals, Inman presents everyone in a nonhierarchical way. None of the usual
markers of institutional affiliation and status are included. Graduate students
appear alongside graying professors, and the comments of each receive equal
attention. What Inman does include is a photograph of each of the individuals who
responds to a question in one of the “Community Voices” sections. We see faces
and bodies along with the words.
In her book, How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles (1999) ob-
serves that thought depends on the specificities of the embodied form enacting it.
She argues that it does matter that emotions in humans are mediated through the
hormonal system, whereas emotions in computers are created through feedback
loops between algorithmically encoded goals, scripts, and personality parameters.
Inman’s inclusion of images of the embodied selves who participate in the com-
puters and writing community speaks directly to that issue by displaying images
of the embodied forms that generated the thought encoded on the page. Further-
more, Inman’s concept of the cyborg era, which he defines as a present in which
individuals, technologies, and their contexts all receive equal attention, insists that
people have a necessary relationship to their technologies. Because the term
cyborg era builds on the concept of the cyborg as an agent of change, the human–
technology relationship in this view will include agency for the human.
With that agency comes an agenda which Inman details as (a) remembering
individuals in an y technology and/or technology-adoption decision, (b) actively
seeking and promoting diversity, (c) articulating and modeling resistance, and
(d) participating in the design of technologies. In many ways this book shares a
common perspective with what is called humanistic informatics, a broad inter-
disciplinary area that studies the interactions between humans, the institutions
they create, and the information technologies, especially computers. Regardless
of what we call it, Inman’s perspective offers an important alternative to those who
elide what Hayles (1999) calls the very real and significant differences in embod-
iment between protein and silicon life forms.
Preface
Computers and Writing: The Cyborg Era explores the landscape of the contempo-
rary computers and writing community. Its six chapters engage critical issues in
the community, including redefining its generally accepted history, connecting
contemporary innovators with the community’s longstanding spirit of innovation,
advocating for increased access and diversity through pedagogy, and more.
Between chapters, readers will find “Community Voices” segments, which are
designed to provide a snapshot of the contemporary computers and writing com-
munity and to introduce community members in their own voices. These elements
together define what I am calling the cyborg era of computers and writing.
The defining features of Computers and Writing are its introduction of the
cyborg era as a term requiring consistent and equitable attention on individuals,
technologies, and the contexts they share all at once, rather than on only one or
two such elements, and its argument that the computers and writing community
is best represented by many voices, rather than a single perspective or series of
perspectives. These emphases inform and indeed shape each of the six chapters, as
well as the “Community Voices” segments. No previous project has presented the
issues and individuals of the community all at once and at such a broad scale, as
this book does. In this way, Computers and Writing is a unique venture.
As already noted, Computers and Writing’s chapters address key issues in the
contemporary computers and writing community:

• Chapter 1 defines computers and writing as a community, emphasizing the
individuals who interact and do work in the area, rather than the work they do
alone. The chapter also defines the cyborg era, arguing that it reflects a necessary
and compelling contemporary convergence of individuals, technologies, and the
contexts they share. Chapter 1 concludes with a montage of scholarly views,
emphasizing the many voices of the community in form and content.
• In chapter 2, I argue for an extended history of the computers and writing
community, one grounded not in when computers first entered writing class-
ix