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October 18, 1999: This message was distributed by Papyrus News, a free e-mail distribution list on the global impact of information technology on language, literacy, and education. Feel free to forward this message to others, but please include this introductory paragraph. For information on subscribing or unsubscribing to Papyrus News see http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/web/faculty/markw/papyrus-news.html.
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by Mark Warschauer
a draft essay - comments welcome
Every major transformation of human communications and cognition brings about new literacy practices, inevitably causing consternation that previously-valued literacy skills will be lost. With the emergence of writing, many feared that we would become mentally lazy by constantly referring to written works rather than committing things to memory (and thus lose great literacy traditions such as epic oral poetry). Similarly, with the introduction of the printed book, there was concern that we would lose literacy practices involved in copying or reading aloud hand-printed manuscripts. Marshall McLuhan (1962) mocked conservative attitudes of "sixteenth century administrators" who feared how literacy was changing in those days, comparing it to the fearful attitudes toward new technology today:
"Had any of our current testers of media and various educational aids been available to the harassed sixteenth century administrator they would have been asked to find out whether the new teaching machine, the printed book, could do the full educational job. Could a portable, private instrument like the new book take the place of the book one made by hand and memorized as one made it? Could a book which could be read quickly and even silently take the place of a book read slowly? Could students trained by such printed books measure up to the skilled orators and disputants produced by manuscript means?" (p. 145)
While there are many who have expressed concerns about the changing nature of literacy with the advent of the Internet (see, for example, Birkerts, 1994) a particularly interesting case of what might be termed literacy ludditism surfaced this month.
For the full details, see a recent article in Salon <http://www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/10/08/geek_journalism/index.html >. But the quick summary is this. Johan J Ingles-le Nobel, a writer for a publication called "Jane's Intelligence Review" was writing about a highly technical topic that was outside his normal area of expertise (cyberterrorism). In order to make sure that he had all his facts and arguments straight, Nobel posted a pre-publication draft of his manuscript on Slashdot <http://slashdot.org/ >, a Website read by tends of thousands of techies. He then received numerous detailed comments on his manuscript, most of them trashing it. Based on the feedback that he got, he decided to throw out what he had written and write a newer, better piece, incorporating the comments and ideas of the respondents. This kind of journalism, which shares and improves writing based on the Internet-based feedback of many, has been termed "open source journalism," adapting the term "open source software" which refers to the Linux operating system and other software based on widespread public net-based collaboration.
So far so good, right? To many of us, this seems like a real success story of the Internet, and is exactly the type of broad fast-paced feedback which makes the Internet so revolutionary. But not everyone sees it that way. Shortly after this occurred, an online columnist for the US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Robert X. Cringely, attacked Nobel and the entire idea of open-source journalism in an online commentary <http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19991007.html >. Cringely wrote that "The only way to write the news is to write the news. You have to do it the best that you can then take the heat, because the censorship of the nerderati is still censorship. That's why newspapers make corrections." In other words, to write an article that is full of errors is fine, because you can always correct it later (and you would thus be "taking the heat"). But to seek corrections *before* you write an article would be to submit yourself to censorship.
A rather odd stance indeed. I have to agree instead with Bakhtin, who 70 years ago wroote that "Words, intonations, and inner-word gestures that have undergone the experience of outward expression" acquire "a high social polish and lustre by the effect of reactions and responses, resistance or support, on the part of a social audience" (Volosinov, 1929/1973, p. 92). When Bakhtin wrote this though, such interaction was restricted by the less-advanced technologies at hand. Today, the Internet facilitates fast-paced social interaction with thousands of people around the world. It is precisely this feature of the Internet, which for the first time combines the speed and interactivity of speech with the reflection of writing, that makes the Internet a revolution in human communication and cognition (Harnad, 1991; see also Warschauer, 1997). As Harnad (1991) noted, this fast-paced international written interaction, which he calls scholarly skywriting, is transforming the production of human knowledge and is responsible for the heightened pace of scientific research today. And this kind of vetting of ideas through online pre-publication is bound to expand in a great variety of ways (colleagues sharing their articles via individual e-mail or on e-mail lists, scholars posting their pre-published versions of papers either on their own Web sites or on special Web sites set up for this kind of exchange, etc.). The peer review process for journals may change as well, with reviews sought from a larger pool of readers with access to an article rather than 2-3 reviewers designated by an editor. Note as well the popularity of Amazon.com, due in part to the public's ability to review books and read each others' reviews. And indeed, this very essay is an example of what I am writing about, since I hope to benefit from the feedback from Papyrus News readers (and am already benefitting from trying to organize my thoughts in a way that readers will find clear and interesting).
Can this process eventually have unintended consequences which may be negative? Certainly. But in my opinion the benefits are much greater. I don't usually take an unequivocal stand on academic controversies, but in this case I'll do so. I think Cringely's position is downright silly. We are better off for the intense exchange of ideas facilitated by the Internet and by open-source journalism.
References
Birkerts, S. (1994). The Gutenberg elegies: The fate of reading in an electronic age. Boston: Faber and Faber.
Harnad, S. (1991). Post-Gutenberg galaxy: The fourth revolution in the means of production and knowledge. Public-Access Computer Systems Review, 2(1), 39-53.
McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg galaxy: The making of typographic man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press
Volosinov, V. N. (1929/1973). Marxism and the philosophy of language (L. Matejka & I.R. Titunik, Trans.). New York: Seminar Press.
Warschauer, M. (1997). Computer-mediated collaborative learning: Theory and practice. Modern Language Journal, 81(3), 470-481.
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