writing: is it a black box?

As the Aramis designers did with their project, we too often want writing to stay the same (fit our original ideal), and yet we still don’t see how we change it.

By taking advantage of new writing technologies but wanting to limit our theory of writing to print linguistic text, we follow in the footsteps of the Aramis designers. Take a look at this quote from Van Ittersum’s essay:

As scholars such as Bertram C. Bruce and Andee Rubin (1993) and Christina Haas (1996) have noted, there is no singular “computer,” only situated instantiations of various hardware and software put to different ends by a variety of people. Yet, for the most part, these assorted configurations are taken as one, obscuring the differences that shape the diverse range off literate activity (Prior, 1998) they support. (pp. 143-144)

The connection I’m about to make might be a stretch, but it does seem plausible. As argued above, although we combine various parts for different purposes, we still reduce this collective technology to a black box computer. It seems as though we reduce writing in much the same way. If we look back to Stephen Kline’s essay, a technology can be many things, including a “knowledge, technique, know-how, or methodology,” and “a sociotechnical system of use” (p. 211). By those definitions, writing is very much a technology (as we’ve discussed in class). That much is obvious.

This realization (writing is a technology) helps connect Van Ittersum’s point with our view of writing as a fixed system/black box. Yet, we compose with so many different “parts” for so many different purposes.

There is no singular “writing,” only situated instantiations of various modes of meaning-making put to different ends by a variety of people.

*When I say “we” I mean our friend, society.