The Future of Writing in a Digital Age

1. The Future of Writing in a Digital Age Writing Development: Multiple Perspectives; Institute of Education, University of London, July 2-3, 2009 Doreen Starke-Meyerring, McGill University, Montréal, Canada

2. Where Do Students Write?

3. Contestation • Discipline, dismissal, or arrest of citizens/ students for their blogs, social networking sites, etc. • Lawsuits against students/ citizens by content industries over their use of digital files • Banning of social networking sites or Wikipedia from writing assignments in entire departments or universities (Cohen, 2007) • Student protests against privacy invading features of corporate-sponsored digital writing spaces, e.g. Facebook (Story and Stone, 2007; Calore, 2006) • Student protests against plagiarism detection software to police their writing and to generate corporate profits (CBC News, 2004; Glod, 2006).

4. The materialities of writing • Writing as a technology: “Whether it is the stylus of the ancients, the pen and ink of the medieval scribe, a toddler’s fat crayons, or a new Powerbook, technology makes writing possible” … “writing is technology” (Haas, 1996, p. xi). Writing as material because of its existence through and as material artifacts

5. …The materialities of writing • Digital writing spaces exist in and through technologies Need for integration of technology theory • Not neutral tools • Highly political and therefore contested dynamic material artifacts or systems of artifacts, whose design, use, and regulation are deeply implicated in reproducing, challenging, or reshaping existing social practices and orders (Benkler, 2006; Feenberg, 2002; Longford, 2005; Winner, 1986) • “Unacknowledged/ silent legislators” (Longford, 2005; Winner, 1986) • “Scenes of struggle” (Feenberg, 2002) • Digital technologies as highly malleable  contested: constantly coded, recoded, regulated, re-regulated.; constantly in flux; subject to incessant contestation

6. … The materialities of writing • Socio-economic materialities of writing The ways in which writing works to assemble, orchestrate, and organize human activity in communities, institutions, organizations, and societies (e.g., Artemeva and Freedman, 2006; Bazerman and Prior, 2004, 2005; Coe et al, 2002; Devitt, 2004; DeVoss and Porter, 2006; Horner, 2001; Wysocki et al., 2004; Paré, 2002, 2005; Schryer, 1993; Smart, 2007)

7. … Materialities as highly contested • Central question from a critical perspective: In whose interest will emerging materialities of writing in digital environments be shaped and regulated, and who can participate in making decisions about the design, regulation, and use of digital writing spaces?

8. Specific questions • How do the materialities of writing change in digital environments? • How are divergent interests in these changes negotiated? • What consequences do these changes have for the socioeconomic materialities of writing—for how writing organizes and regulates human activity? • What are the implications of these changes for writing development?

9. Three key areas of contestation • The struggle over equal access as a precondition to writing in digital environments • The struggle over the ownership and sharing of written work • The struggle over privacy and surveillance

10. Contestation: Equal access • Key QuestionWho owns and controls access to publishing/writing technologies?Who can say what to whom, under what conditions, and who decides (Benkler, 2006)? • Competing interestsCorporate/ government control of public sphere & profits versus robust public sphere and access to diverse perspectives

11. … Contestation: Equal access Access as coded into digital writing spaces/ technologies

12. … Contestation: Equal access

13. … Contestation: Equal access • Consequences for writers: What kinds of voices and resources will writers be able to access, draw on, and engage with in their writing? What kind of reach will writers have in these environments?

14. Contestation: Ownership and sharing • Key QuestionWho owns written work? • When and with whom can written work be shared and under what conditions (e.g., free or for a fee?) • What existing written work can writers access, build on, critique, or otherwise draw on to create new knowledge, cultural products, innovation, etc.? • Competing interests • Writers depend on their ability to draw on, critique, build on, or "re-mix" existing work to create new knowledge, cultural products, and innovation • Incumbent industries with business models invested in print materialities depend on exclusive rights to distribution of work

15. …Contestation: Ownership and sharing

16. …Contestation: Ownership and sharing • Corporate "education campaigns" (e.g., MPAA—Motion Picture Association of America)

17. …Contestation: Ownership and sharing

18. …Contestation: Ownership and sharing • Consequences for writers What opportunities will writers have to research existing work, access files, compare and engage diverse perspectives, consider and build and build on more work than ever before?

19. Contestation: Privacy & surveillance • Key question Under what conditions do writers write (e.g., to what extent are they subjected to censorship or surveillance/ self-censorship?) • Competing interestsPersonal data protection, robust public sphere without self-censorship versus government/ corporate control and monitoring and corporate profits from data collection

20. … Contestation: Privacy & surveillance

21. ... Contestation: Privacy & surveillance • Illustration (ACLU) • Examples: • Phorm • European Data Retention Directive

22. … Contestation: Privacy & surveillance • Consequences for writersTo what extent will writers be able to participate in cultural production, in social activism, under what conditions, and with what consequences to themselves and society?

23. Consequences of contestation • Economic interests of incumbent industries invested in print materialities have attempted to reshape or regulate digital technologies in ways that maintain and expand established print-based business models (e.g., data collection, surveillance, exclusive rights to written work, corporate control of public sphere)

24. Implications for writing development • Need for critical understanding of technologies • Not simply as a new neutral medium into which writing practices simply travel • But as highly political “scenes of struggle” (Feenberg, 2002), with competing interests vying over their shape • Need for the active engagement of writing teachers and researchers in the design, use, and regulation of digital writing environments • Need for reconsidering writing pedagogies and policies in educational institutions

25. … Implications for writing development • Pedagogies for critical engagement • Making highly contested nature of digital writing spaces visible—technologies as hidden in plain sight ("what is ubiquitous becomes transparent" (Haas, 1996, p. xi). • Supporting students in developing the technological-rhetorical sophistication needed to engage productively in robust deliberation in order to participate in shaping the design, use, and regulation of digital writing spaces

26. … Implications: Questions for students, teachers, and researchers of writing • What consequences do particular designs, pedagogies, and policies for writing in digital environments (e.g., plagiarism policies, access or surveillance encoded in technologies) have for writers, the work they do, their ability to learn and develop as writers, and their participation in democratic deliberation and decision making? • What kinds of graduates do we envision from our programs and courses? Students "skilled in the use of technologies" or …? • To what extent do established pedagogies and institutional policies regulating writing reproduce the values, practices, assumptions, or notions of authorship rooted in print materialities? • What kinds of resources are available to support students and teachers of writing in examining the complex ways in which writing, along with the social orders it assembles, is enabled or constrained in different materialities?

27. Debate • What questions arise from multiple perspectives for teachers and researchers of writing in digital environments? • How can they best be addressed from multiple perspectives?