I fear that I’m becoming a Luddite
In The End of Cyberspace Alex Soojung-Kim Pang raises questions about criticisms of computerized pedagogy: “many of these criticisms rest on an assumption that dealing with computers automatically divorces you from the real world; that the seductive universe of zeroes and ones pulls your attention away from the messy world of atoms and people; and that the character of students’ interactions with computers are very different from those with paper, ink, compass, or modeling clay.”
In my previous post I mentioned my time away from massive doses of technology this year. During that time I did sense that my own thinking was deeper and clearer than when I’m spending hours & hours a day online.
I suspect that it’s because I was more focused on thoughts and ideas rather than absorbing new information or learning the mechanics of a technological tool. I also was only focused on only one or two topics rather than the onslaught of ideas that come to me online. Indeed, now is such an example. I should be working on the draft of my novel rather than addressing this topic, but here I am.
I still find that my best, most creative writing is done with pen and paper. The longer process forces me to think about each paragraph, each sentence, each word. When writing with a word processor I really have to force myself to slow down. It’s too easy too ramble. Obviously, my blogs are always written not by pen otherwise my postings would be much more concise. Also, with word processors it’s too distracting knowing that Firefox is so nearby.
I think that indepth learning can take place with technology and it’s certainly an almost necessary way to engage today’s students. Yet, being away from technology forces us to slow down. I’m not sure exactly what but there does seem to be something positive about being offline when it comes to learning and thinking. (Can’t believe I’m saying this since I, of all people, am no critic of teaching & learning with technology). Or, perhaps, we just haven’t yet developed critical forms of introspective intellectual engagement in the digital environment. (Not sure what that last sentence means, if anything; I need to go offline with pen and paper to think about that more fully).
June 2nd, 2006 at 7:22 am
Great post! I share your pain.
The internet… How I have a love/hate relationship with it.
I actually found that the only way I can consistently sit down and work on my novel is to type it on a crappy old laptop that isn’t connected to the web at all. That way I’m not tempted to check my email/sluggy freelance or whatever.
I’ve always been a typer, not a writer, though. When I was twelve I got a typewriter for Christmas and I wrote my first novella on it. Since then, typing has been part of my creative process. It allows the words to stream out of my head at the same speed I can think of them. Writing is too slow. My brain works faster than my fingers.
That, and I have handwriting like a dsylexic three year old.
June 2nd, 2006 at 8:51 am
I think you might be going a bit far in your position. here is what i think…. technologies are part of human life– books, papers, lectures, computers, pdas–they are all technologies. some have longer cultural histories, but none are definitively more or less enabling of critical thought. you can have a lecture or a book that does just as little with ‘critical forms of introspective intellectual engagement’ as well as a computer game. you see the ‘engagement’ isn’t in the technics… it is in the people. the problem that i see is that, over the years, people have been taught by their primary media, their classrooms, etc. that ‘knowledge is x’ and either they possess it or not. They haven’t been taught that ‘life is a process of coming to know, both yourself and the world’. They are taught commodities, instead of existance. now, the thing is that books and lectures are farther away from the commodity ideology in some people’s minds, but…. they probably won’t be in 10-50 years.
this is not to say that different mental processes aren’t enabled by different activities. i was talking to a priest on the plane back from milan a few weeks ago and he conveyed a belief that i share, that writing by hand, with pen and paper, can be much easier and more spontaneously well thought than writing with a computer. the argument goes that writing with pen and paper stimulates different mental processes than typing. if you imagine the popular images of the two practices, i think you’ll find that typing is usually portrayed as mechanical instead of creative…
anyway…. the luddites didn’t actually hate technology… they hated what certain people were doing to society with technology. it is a very particular history, and the term luddite does tend to misrepresent what the followers of ludd were actually doing.
June 2nd, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Jeremey - thanks for your comment. Ultimately, I think that you’re right. The issue has more to do with humans than technology.
Eddy - Glad to hear I’m not the only one with a love/hate relationship with the Internet when it comes to writing.