The above article is a quick read, and beyond its humorous quality, is also generative of questions regarding the assumptions we make about technology (and what a certain technology might accomplish or require in the future).
Jakob Nielsen is an Internet usability expert, and while much of what he has written is not directly linked to rhetoric and composition, his work is relevant, especially to the things we are discussing with regards to writing technologies. In this specific article, Nielsen creates two possible seminar topics in which he thinks he could possibly discuss at the Internet World 2008 conference. This piece was written in 1998.
While it is amusing that Nielsen assumes the death of print media will occur by 2008 (see his first presentation topic), I do think that these assumptions point to some critical ideas concerning the social construction of technology, and the technical construction of society. Bijker discusses “implicit assumption[s] of linear development. Such assumptions were often found in earlier technology studies, sometimes at the level of the singular invention and sometimes in the genealogy of related innovations…Too easily, linear models result in reading an implicit teleology into the material, suggesting that ‘the whole history of technological development had followed an orderly or rational path, as though today’s world was the precise goal toward all decisions, made since the beginning of history, were consciously directed’ (Ferguson, 1974: 19)” (pp. 6-7). In addition, Bijker discusses the asymmetrical analysis of technology: “The focus on successful innovations suggests an underlying assumption that it is precisely the success of an artifact that offers some explanatory ground for the dynamics of its development” (p. 7).
In 1998, Nielsen, and I’m sure many others, assumed that the death of print news (and other texts) was imminent; it was simply a question of when. I’m sure I’ve thought about this possibility, and I still wonder if and when it might happen. In addition, it is interesting to think about why we might assume these technologies will “die”: is it because we think other technologies are superior, or is it because of the historical “death” of now obsolete technologies? For example, papyrus and clay tokens are no longer used as the dominant writing technologies/surfaces/graphic spaces in our society. We have replaced them with other, often quite similar, technologies. Paper, for instance. It is versatile, cheap, portable, and, sadly, often too easily wasted. The only thing that I can imagine might replace paper is some form of electronic medium such as a paper-like electronic tablet.
But it seems that our writing practices have to change before we make the technology change. Why would we make electronic “paper” unless we have no use for traditional paper? Or that traditional paper no longer fulfills our expanding needs? These questions point to the working and non-working technology Bijker discusses. When paper is no longer a working technology, it might be due to a technology that has become dominant, and essentially, has become the working technology. But does it become the working technology because we’ve created a technology that usurps the former (paper)? Or is it because we have changed our writing/communication practices, and out of necessity, we begin to use a different technology to fulfill our needs?
I’m not trying to explain the possible death of paper; I just want to ask questions about the relationship between our assumptions and the actualities that occur with the social construction of technology/technical construction of society. Any thoughts?
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