Wysocki’s “Opening New Media to Writing: openings and justifications”
The point Wysocki makes that “what we know about writing can usefully affect how we approach new media” makes me reflect on how theorists build off of the ideas of those who came before (5). That is—building from Piaget for theorizing how students learn is important. So building from our knowledge of writing and applying it toward an approach to media makes perfect sense. Wysocki’s reasoning that writing needs to find a home in new media is, of course, something that only some care to come to terms with. Writing “needs to find a home in new media” (this is me quoting myself paraphrasing Wysocki) is so important because, the way our culture is evolving, without doing so, writing may nearly die out of popular culture.
Wysocki constantly refers to change, or that media has changed the world, and that writing might as well change with it, I think implying that it will change or die. Kenneth Bruffee says something about needing teachers take on the responsibility of “inducting new members into the community [of knowledge]” in his essay Collaborative Learning and the “Conversation of Mankind.” “Without [them, Bruffee points out] the community will die when its current members die, and knowledge as assented to by that community will cease to exist” (431). If we adapt this statement to consider the current voices who support the use of writing in conjunction with new media, we can reasonably say that if they do not successfully pass the torch, then writing within new media will die. And if it dies there, a space where so many people spend their time instead of with more traditional forms of literature, then writing will be hanging on instead of thriving in a world wide web of great potential.
We know that we can make a difference, that truth is not static, and that we are not simply helpless and completely dependent on the machine of which we are afraid to rage against. Let us be a part of a new media revolution that includes writing within its construct, not a new media revolution that shuns it. If we become “situated people [and] make things happen,” we will have overcome the idea that so many have—that we only make a difference if the superstructure allows it (5)
I won’t say much about the exercises except that I am anxious to try some of them, even with high schoolers.
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2 comments:
I find it an interesting argument that writing needs to find a home in new media - as though it really is divorced from it. As I've been reading about all this new media, I've personally failed to see writing disappear completely - even in the comic book chapter of our Visual Rhetoric book, "writing" fills in the voice in the bubbles. I see more of a pairing of visuals with writing, rather than a removal of writing.
That said, I do see a move towards changing "traditional" forms of writing (that is, writing w/o visuals). Do you think that it is this writing that will die out of popular culture? If so, why should it matter? (I'm just curious.)
Finally, I also noticed you mentioned something about knowledge ceasing to exist - I agree that the traditional pursuit of knowledge seems to be dying out, but the new pursuit of different knowledge seems to be replacing it. It seems that, like energy, knowledge cannot be destroyed - rather, it changes form. Whether that "form" is good or bad is something deconstructionists want to do away with; I think the deconstructionist will live a long, frustrated, miserable life if that is indeed his/her goal. It seems notions of something being good or bad will also always exist.
If we value the printed word, and the new generation values visual rhetoric, there is the potential to integrate both. But if we don't learn to value visuals and how they might compliment words, while the new generation does not value the written word and how it might integrate with visuals, our words will fade while images become dominant. That is not to say words will completely die. I was just quoting Bruffee to make my point.
If words and visuals play with each other, develop a beautiful and trusting relationship, engage in freeplay or even foreplay, (censored), conceive hybrid and beatiful offspring, then generations down the line will have a richer rhetoric. If not, generations far from now might see the result of a split in rhetoric: some texts with lots of words but few visuals, and others with lots of visuals but few words.
I am positive I don't know what I am saying here--I certainly can't see into the future. I don't mean to sound as if I think I really know.
The main thing is to recognize that everything we do matters. If we ignore a potential relationship, then what should have had grown together will never develop into anything. BUT if we all nurture both halves of a potential hybrid rhetoric, carefully joining visual rhetoric with other rhetorics, a beautiful and more complex rhetoric might result.
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