McLuhan, Baron, Porter
My graduate course at Rowan University, Writing for Eletronic Communities, required that we read pieces of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Me: Lectures and Inverviews. As I read, I couldn’t help but notice the progressive technological conversation between McLuhan (1959-1979), Dennis Baron (From Pencils to Pixels–chapter 1 “The Stages of Literacy Technologies”) and Jim Porter (“Why technology matters to writing: A cyberwriter’s tale).
In each of these three discussions, the idea of technology and its uses are considered and then taken a step further, trying to answer the question, “How will our lives change as we interact with new technology?” For Baron and Porter, the concept of writing technologies holds precedent, but overlapping Baron and McLuhan, the greater concept of communication technologies is considered.
It makes me want to consider the Amazon reader that many are coming to accept, the Kindle. It is an electronic device that allows a person to read digitalized copies of textbooks as well as books from the mass market. At first, I thought this idea was awful, that I wouldn’t want to sit there staring at a screen when I could hold a book right there in my hands. But, after reading the viewpoint of McLuhan, I can’t help but wonder if this is going to be the new shape that books take on. Everyone says books will be around forever, but that their shape/appearance will probably change–that the book must adapt itself to our ever-growing technological universe….wow.
Bec said,
February 14, 2008 at 6:58 pm
It’s like what we discussed in Core II with Penrod, right? Technology can dictate what we write, not just how a book is presented.